Perilous Public Transportation

I live and work in a major U.S. city. It is the 5th largest city in the U.S. by population and happens to be in the desert. I work in the city center and I live at the outskirts of the city, so my work is 27 miles from my house, but on paper I live and work in the same city. A year and a half ago I was given the opportunity to "do the right thing" and take a bus from near my house to near my work, so I took it. I mean, it's good economically, environmentally, and all that, right?

On Tuesday I made the news. (Okay, not me, but I was there.) The afternoon bus broke down on the freeway ... in the fast lane ... in the 115° heat ... in the sun. No air conditioning. No windows to open for air. No help. About 10 minutes after our initial demise, the next scheduled bus pulled in front of us to allow us to offload passengers. "Oh," they told us, "this bus only goes to the first bus stop. If you need to go to the others, we won't be going there." Protocol, you know. So those who were going there got off and the rest of us were stuck. They eventually pushed us off to the right side of the road and we sat for nearly an hour and a half while bus after bus drove by without stopping and no help arrived. The highway patrol (DPS) took one woman off for heat stroke. A tow vehicle arrived but couldn't tow the bus because ... you know ... there were still passengers on it. And "for your safety" we were kept on the bus ... in the heat ... without air. "All our personnel followed protocols," the city proudly proclaimed. Six of the passengers actually escaped by calling an Uber to pick them up ... on the freeway. Eventually a bus arrived to take us to safety.

Now, in our part of the world it is a crime to leave a child or a pet in a hot car, but apparently it is perfectly fine to leave a bus full of adults for an extended period of time. Ironically, that's exactly what happened on the very same day, with a very different result. This mother is looking at criminal charges; the city is "sorry."

Well, look, this was terribly dangerous in that heat and irresponsible -- it shouldn't have taken nearly that long to send help -- but it was a one-off, a single event, in fact, an extreme rarity according to the seasoned bus riders. Nothing we can do. Move on.

So I got on the bus on Wednesday with the same driver but a different bus. We got all the way to the second to last stop when the different bus broke down in the intersection. We sat through two lights before he got it to move again. Rather than chance a second disaster, I (and several others) got off, waited in the sun for the next bus (10 minutes or so), and made our way home.

That's odd, of course, but still a statistical anomaly. Let's not blow it out of proportion.

So the bus arrives Thursday morning. In my part of the world in our current heat wave it was 100° at 5 in the morning. And I went to get on the bus only to discover that the air conditioning had failed. And, of course, no windows could be opened. We could expect an hour in a sealed can rising above 100° as we went. I got off and drove to work.

The events caused all sorts of questions for me. When does "do the right thing for the environment" become more dangerous than other alternatives? What recourse do the people of a town, city, state, or nation have in matters like these? (I'm pretty sure there will be no recompense, for instance, for those intrepid passenters who paid for an Uber ride to safety.) They tell me that private transportation is a problem and parking is a major issue and we all need to switch over to public transportation. Is that reasonable if public transportation is free to be random (I can't tell you how many times they've been late or not shown up at all) or even hazardous? Lots of questions.

I know ... not my usual posting. I'm just wondering out loud.