Your Commute

When we lived on the East Coast, Amtrak was totally where it was at -- pick up an Au Bon Pain raspberry cheese croissant at Boston's South Station, emerge in Penn Station and pick up a Village Voice. So we're crushed to see that the California version of the Acela bullet train has run into some snags. Legislators are now balking at putting up a bond measure to fund the 220-mph SF-to-LA-in-2.5 hours rail program, saying they'd rather focus on transportation measures that could relieve vehicular congestion instead. Sure, it would take about $33 billion to build over a 10-20 year period (and we'd need to raise $1 billion in seed money now), but it would be so rad! We can't wait to get to these parties LAist is always talking about! Plus, if we don't get a high-speed rail, we'll just have to spend comparable amounts of money to expand highways and airports to accommodate intrastate travel anyways, right?

And you know how we're getting the money to expand those highways? Bridge fare hikes. In 2007, all bridges are going up by another dollar. We saw some excellent interviews on the local news of stoically disgruntled commuters hearing the news. "Sure I'm unhappy, but -- well, how else you gonna get into the city?" one Emeryville driver grumbled, eyes squinting in repressed rage.

....So you spend all that money to get on the bridge in the first place, and then what? Yesterday afternoon, a truck heading into the city caught on fire. This morning, when you drove into SF over the weird new Fastrak lanes, you then promptly got stuck in traffic because Mission Street's closed down after a water main broke yesterday on Mission and Fremont. And if you were heading to City Hall, you got stuck in a bomb scare. (no, not at Starbucks this time, but the cops did shout "Fire in the hole!" before blowing it up, which is always cool.)