Mass Transit is Pleasant Travel

Let me count the ways.. I love mass transit.

Love to drive? Some people do. But do you love to drive in LA? The pleasure of driving goes down dramatically in congested conditions, where what was once a carefree sail down the freeway turns into a white-knuckled fight for free space, slowing to a frustrating crawl through a baking, exhaust-filled parking lot. Then there is the fear of accident and injury. Every day, the radio traffic report provides bland "injuryaccident" reports from the metro area. Driving has turned into a nightmare.

The US has not built significant infrastructure, particularly roads, for decades, and it shows in worsening traffic conditions. In parallel, housing prices go up, thanks to an unwillingness to zone for growth in housing as well as in traffic. Yet our population still goes up, despite the sclerosis in public policy. What can be done?

Entering BART trains is easy...

Some urban areas have an answer to the car, and it is mass transit, either by train or bus. The New York subway system ridership has gone up steadily, and is now at 5.7 million per day. The Bay area subway system, BART, has also experienced strong gains, to half a million riders per day. All this despite the growth of ride-share services which, while they may relieve the user of the task of driving, do nothing to resolve the uncertainty and unpleasantness of congestion on the roads.

I have recently switched to transit for a long cross-Bay Area trip, and it has been a revelation. Gone is the road rage and isolation, replaced by abundant people-watching and the ability to just look out the window, or rest (or work). The occasional stress of making a properly-timed bus or train is significantly less than the constant stress of preventing death or collision in a car. Granted, the seats are rarely very comfortable, and not everyone is friendly, or even sane. But on the whole, it is an easy call, especially since the direct costs are almost precisely the same, even before amortizing the cost of the car itself, not to mention those to the planet.

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• Environmental graph of the week: California electricity grid during the eclipse. Overall peak demand is about 40,000 Megawatts, so solar generation provides roughly one quarter of peak demand in the state.

The California Electric grid, 08/212017, 5 PM (top), compared to the day before (bottom).