Get on the Bart: you have nothing to lose but your chains
June 6th, 2006
I’m mystified by the reluctance of people here in the Bay Area to use Bart and other public transport. I just had an easy breakfast meeting across the Bay in San Francisco thanks to Bart.
Over the last few days, the local news media have warned everyone that lane reconfiguration on the Bay Bridge – which links the East Bay to San Francisco – would cause traffic chaos. The result? Bart had a magnificent 3.7% increase in usage yesterday.
A friend who is also a Bart fan reckons the system’s problem is that it shuts down late at night. That might deter a few people, but this area is so not a late-night place I don’t think that explanation is sufficient. It’s much more basic: people refuse to be torn away from their car, even when it’s irrational.
The extreme example of the car’s hold on the imagination out here? My wife is writing an article about recovering from disaster for the Financial Times and she has interviewed some people about the Oakland Hills fire of 1991. She spoke to someone who lost their home and all their possessions – pets, art, clothes, personal mementoes. But what horrified their friends? “Ohmigod… your car was reduced to ashes!”
It worked!
June 6th, 2006
Well, maybe I can climb back up the marginally geekish ranks. With plenty of hand-holding from DreamHost and Zack Rosen of Civicspace Labs, I set up my crontab. And it works. But I think I’ll steer clear of Unix commands in future.