The Pleasure of Public Transportation

I don’t want to bore you with yet one more talk about the need for public transportation and how we must stop relying totally on cars -- in fact, in many cases, on two, three & four cars per family.  I know that my talks will not change your behavior -- or even change my behavior.

I now own two cars now: one car here in America & one car in Southampton, England.  Since I retired and decided to live in two countries, I have spent more time inside a car than I spent in the twenty years before I retired.  I drive everywhere, and I drive long distances in America & long distances in Europe, & I drive somewhere almost every day in England.

Just the other day I was forced to take a bus to & from Southampton to Winchester in England: a half hour bus ride each way.  What a pleasure; how wonderfully peaceful & relaxing.

I didn’t do it by choice.  I would have preferred to drive by car, but for a variety of reasons, I could not drive.  I had to take a bus & as they say, leave the driving to us.

What a pleasure it was to not have to drive.  I could relax, space out.  They were driving; they were nervous; they had to concentrate.

You don’t realize how tense you are in a car, even if someone else is driving the car you are in.  You are often next to them in the front seat & you are, for all intents & purposes, driving the vehicle.

The bus I was on was one of those double decker busses & I was on the front seat, top deck.  I was eye level with tree branches, looking down at the lovely surrounding countryside.  It was so peaceful, so relaxing.  Since I had nothing to do I could think about my life, I could think about this very talk I am now giving to all of you, I could think about whatever I wanted to think about.  Or I could see the landscape I was passing through, and that was because I did not have to pay attention to the hair raising task of driving a car.

Good, frequent, public transportation is a blessing, a plus that could make our geographically spread out, hectic lives, more pleasant.  In many ways, having to drive a car everywhere is a curse.  Driving, once upon a time, was a pleasure.  Driving, nowadays, on congested roads full of crazy drivers is a chore, a death defying chore: 50,000 people are killed on American roads every year.

You don’t realize it.  Often I do not realize it.  Public transportation can be a blessing.  I wish America was blessed with more & more, & more frequent, means of public transportation.

 

Copyright © 2004   Henry Morgenstein

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