not easy being green

The suburbs are organized for people's cars. This point is driven home to me (pun intended) every single day I try to travel to work without my car.

The Metra train, just a few blocks from my apartment, gets me to a station three miles from where I work. The train runs on a very infrequent schedule and is often late. In theory, bicycles are allowed on the train (three miles is a pretty easy distance to cover on a bike), but also supposed to be limited to three bikes per car, and cyclists are completely at the mercy of conductors who can throw them off the train anywhere, or refuse to let them on at all. This sort of thing doesn't happen often, but I'm holding my breath for the day it happens to me on my way to work. "Hi, this is Karin, I have to cancel my morning class today because the Metra conductor wouldn't let me on the train with my bike, and it was an hour until the next train." I do not want to make that phone call.

I tried a folding bike as a way of combatting this problem, but I don't really like riding the folding bike. It feels kinda little and wobbly, and the adjustment points don't hold, so they have to be readjusted all the time. I like my old hybrid bike, Bessie, best for commuting - it's more comfortable and bigger and I feel more visible on it. So now that Daylight Savings is over, I have been riding Bessie instead.

But last night I wished I had had the folding bike - the Metra train was running on the center track and couldn't board passengers from the platforms. So they were boarding at the grade crossings, and everyone had to get on and off from the head car. This slowed the boarding process, and as I was waiting for the train, and waiting, and waiting, it gradually dawned on me that there were probably gonna be a lot of bikes in that one head car already - and very likely, the conductor was not going to let mine on - and, of course, the next train would be an hour later.

At the last minute, I hastily locked Bessie to the nearest railing and got on the train without her. I was right - the bike area was stuffed already and the conductors were commenting to each other that they couldn't take any more bikes.

So that's Metra. Late, unreliable, poor accommodations for bikes, unpredictable conductors, infrequent service.

Then there's Pace - the bus service. There's no real coordination that I can discover between any bus and train schedules, and the bus service is just as infrequent and unreliable as the train service. You can get a bus on any given route about once per hour, and it may or may not be on time. One of the drivers I have encountered most often drives like she's in Nascar, taking turns in ways that make people's unsecured belongings fly and roll all over the bus. She's scary and loud and insulting, too. And that's just the driver - I'll leave the passengers to your imagination.

If I leave my apartment at 7:45am and take the train and the bus and everything works just right, I can walk into my office at just about 9am. This is half an hour longer than it takes to drive, and about 10 minutes longer than it takes if I bike instead of bus.

In the afternoon, I can leave my office at 4:10, catch the bus, wait in downtown Glen Ellyn for the 5pm train, and if the train is on time, arrive home in Oak Park about 5:45. This is about 45 minutes longer than it takes to drive, and about 25 minutes longer than if I have my bike.

I can read, and sometimes I can do work, on the train and on the bus. But most of my real work requires a laptop and an internet connection, since I am trying to be "green" - that is, paperless - in collecting assignments from my students thru Blackboard. I also need access to Blackboard to post lesson plans and assignments, and I need to get to my email for most other kinds of faculty work. I don't exactly waste time on the train and bus, since napping and spacing out at least part of the time can be considered of great value in my busy life, but still, green commuting in the suburbs is really not at all efficient. It takes a lot of extra time and effort.

This does not mean I am giving up or quitting all of this. I am going to keep on mixing it up; some days I will drive, and other days I will ride and read. I'll be as green as I can without going around being pissed off about how difficult it is.