June 26, 2008

How TTA changed my life (or how to better spend $25 million/yr in toll road subsidies)

Posted at 2:50 PM by Adam Searing

It is no exaggeration to say that the Triangle Transit Authority has changed my life. No, they didn’t hire me at an outrageous six-figure salary to be their official blogger. And no, they are still running their big noisy buses up a street near my house. In fact, it actually wasn’t very hard for the TTA folks to have this effect on me – they just kept quietly running their daily Chapel Hill-Raleigh Express bus and adjusted the times in response to demand. The result? I could finally regularly take the bus to work.

Sounds nice, but life changing?

Well, as someone who has spent much more than his share of drive time on I-40, getting off the highway is a real revelation. And I’m not talking about the financial advantage in an era of $4 a gallon gas, although clearly that is considerable.

No, for the first time in years I’m actually –more or less – walking to work. Both ends of TTA’s express terminate in the downtowns of Chapel Hill and Raleigh. I can walk to each stop from both my home and office. Suddenly an hour and twenty minutes of roundtrip driving has been transformed into an hour and 45 minutes of time to get work done. Between a smartphone, iPod, and plenty of written material, I often get more done on the bus than I do in my office with all those pesky coworkers about. The biggest change though is the amount of energy I save by not driving. I thought dragging around in the evening was just a side-effect of turning 40, but it turns out it’s more of a side effect of threading the boredom and few moments of pure terror involved in a daily 35 mile drive on the interstate.

Now, if we could just provide this opportunity to more Triangle commuters. I’ve got a modest suggestion. Right now the proposed NC state budget commits $25 million a year for 39 years in taxpayer money to a Triangle toll road. Instead of building a toll road with tax money (I still don’t quite understand why tax money is needed for a road you pay to drive on), why not allocate that $25 million to TTA? We could have a top tier regional bus system with an emphasis on express service between multiple communities. Heck, with that kind of money we could probably get busses with Wi-Fi and leather seats.

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2 Comments

2 Comments Add yours »

Stephen J 26 Jun 2008 3:01 pm

I like it!

JaneP 1 Jul 2008 10:46 am

wish I could get bus service like that in Raleigh.

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