I've been published locally

[BailOut]

For the first time in my life someone has paid me for a story. :smile: I recently made a business trip from Reno, NV to Sacramento, CA using only public transportation. I wrote about it and the Reno News & Review magazine bought the story from me.

It is the cover of this month's issue. :cool: The publication is only available in the Reno/Tahoe area but they have an on-line edition: http://www.newsreview.com/reno/content?oid=1027031

The original story was much longer and more colorful but I had to shrink it to 3k words in order to fit the magazine's layout.

[texkid]

Woo hoo! Not too shabby.

[cali yaris]

CONGRATS, that is really cool. Way to get the word out there.

[cali yaris]

chinese-made luggage? for shame!

[cali yaris]

Hey that's a good read. I think they must have edited some end discussion about how the experience as a whole was. Would you like to comment here, so the story is complete for us? :smile:


Statics:
Commuter rail: 2.9 miles, $0.50
Walked: 5.85 miles
City buses: 50.2 miles, $13
Greyhound buses: 264 miles, $41
Total: 323 miles, $54.50 ($0.06/mile)

Do they mean 'Statics' or 'Statistics'?

[Shroomster]

I'm under the assumption that they own the rights to the story so you might not be able to publish the unedited version?

even though some of us wouldn't mind the longer read myself included!

[Altitude]

Nice work BailOut! Grats!

[AlexNet0]

nice work, sounds like my day around here

[tk-421]

well done sir!

[Kaotic Lazagna]

Congrats, Brian. Good work.

[GeneW]

For the first time in my life someone has paid me for a story. :smile: I recently made a business trip from Reno, NV to Sacramento, CA using only public transportation. I wrote about it and the Reno News & Review magazine bought the story from me.

It is the cover of this month's issue. :cool: The publication is only available in the Reno/Tahoe area but they have an on-line edition: http://www.newsreview.com/reno/content?oid=1027031

The original story was much longer and more colorful but I had to shrink it to 3k words in order to fit the magazine's layout.

Good story about mass transit. I did intercity commutes many many times.

What I liked about mass transit is that I could multitask or meet other people. What I disliked about mass transit was the amount of time I expended waiting.

Gene

[Revsson]

Well done "commando" BailOut :laugh:
You must have mentioned the Yaris in the part that got cut down, right? :biggrin:

[rningonfumes]

Good work BailOut, Keep it up!

Edit: I read the article. I loved the descriptions and you pulled me right along quite smoothly. Stupid wheel! haha.

Let me play devil's advocate... Considering we know who you are, couldn't the 330 miles be made in your car, on about say 10 or 15 bucks?-- my numbers are conservative, I know you get 500 miles tanks.

What if you could adjust this trip. Drive to Sac, park, then ride the city transportation?

I realize that you were traveling as if you had no other means of transportation. 50 bucks for a round trip cuts in budgets quite a lot, and I realize that no one making minimum would ever have to make that trip but for a person with a job which requires traveling, even 3 trips would cost a lot. Then there is the what ifs situations, where a new sudden need appears and it is off hours from your location?

Okay, done with Devil's Advocacy for now.


I know if you did this many times enough, you would bring become more efficient, but an individual can only do so much to adapt in an evironment which does not support his efforts. California is no New York City where transportation is everywhere and at all hours.

[yaris-me]

Very entertaining, good humor and you survived.:laugh:

[Nutzoids]

WAY TO GO!

:evil:

[eTiMaGo]

Good work BailOut, Keep it up!

Edit: I read the article. I loved the descriptions and you pulled me right along quite smoothly. Stupid wheel! haha.

Let me play devil's advocate... Considering we know who you are, couldn't the 330 miles be made in your car, on about say 10 or 15 bucks?-- my numbers are conservative, I know you get 500 miles tanks.

What if you could adjust this trip. Drive to Sac, park, then ride the city transportation?

I realize that you were traveling as if you had no other means of transportation. 50 bucks for a round trip cuts in budgets quite a lot, and I realize that no one making minimum would ever have to make that trip but for a person with a job which requires traveling, even 3 trips would cost a lot. Then there is the what ifs situations, where a new sudden need appears and it is off hours from your location?

Okay, done with Devil's Advocacy for now.


I know if you did this many times enough, you would bring become more efficient, but an individual can only do so much to adapt in an evironment which does not support his efforts. California is no New York City where transportation is everywhere and at all hours.

Another thing to look at is, on a per-person basis, having 30 people in a bus is a heck of a lot less polluting that a single person in a car, no matter how efficient it is...

[rningonfumes]

Oh definitely no arguement there!

What I see is people finding fault in the financial side for not trying this out for themselves. I see Brian's scenerio working out perfectly for people living in direct suburbs of medium to large metropolitan areas.

As an example, I have a professor who lives in LA who uses the Metrolink to get to San Bernardino, then he uses the city bus to get to the college. I'm sure he also used the city bus in LA to get to the metrolink station there. Man does it M-Th.

Really, it just takes getting used to. People like their habits, I for one am included.

[BailOut]

Thank you for the kind words, all. I'm glad that everyone is enjoying the story. :smile:

chinese-made luggage? for shame!
I hear you but if you buy just about anything from a big box store, which is where we got that suitcase a decade ago when we still shopped primarily at those kinds of places, it is likely that it was made in China.


Hey that's a good read. I think they must have edited some end discussion about how the experience as a whole was. Would you like to comment here, so the story is complete for us? :smile:
I still own the rights to the story and the full version of it will be on-line this week. I'll post a link to it when it becomes available.


50 bucks for a round trip cuts in budgets quite a lot, and I realize that no one making minimum would ever have to make that trip but for a person with a job which requires traveling, even 3 trips would cost a lot.
That totally depends on your circumstances. In my case it was actually cheaper for my company to have me travel like this because if I use my personal car they reimburse me at the current IRS deduction rate of $0.55/mile, but when I travel via public transportation they only have to reimburse me for the cost of the tickets and fares. This saves them about $100 per trip.

Let's look at this from the perspective of the monthly cost of a vehicle. Even making 3 trips for a total of $150 is a heck of a lot cheaper than a monthly car payment, insurance, registration, maintenance and fuel.


I know if you did this many times enough, you would bring become more efficient, but an individual can only do so much to adapt in an evironment which does not support his efforts. California is no New York City where transportation is everywhere and at all hours.
True, but the city buses in Sacramento run until about 11pm, and there are always cabs if you find yourself stranded in the middle of the night. The only time I could see that happening to me is if some work I've done in the data center the previous day goes totally haywire at o-dark-30, in which case it is relatively cheap for me to take a cab back to the data center as compared to the direct business losses and image harm that stem from an extended service outage.

[GeneW]

Another thing to look at is, on a per-person basis, having 30 people in a bus is a heck of a lot less polluting that a single person in a car, no matter how efficient it is...

I don't know..... older buses can be horribly polluting. Spend some time in an established US urban area behind a bus, especially a diesel bus. I used to use it as a curse, "May you be stuck behind a bus!" When you consider that cars made in 2009 probably are a hundred times less polluting than cars made in the 1980s we're not talking less pollution unless the bus is of recent manufacture.

At least in Pennsylvania I don't think that Mass Transit has to submit to emissions checks. Many of the buses SEEM to be of 1980s manufacture or somewhat later and because they're diesel transport they are not subject to emissions checks. We're talking about partial asphyxiation here if you're stuck behind one for periods of time.

Where mass transit shines is the utilization of capital costs. An automobile spends a LOT of its life parked unless the person uses it for business or work. Buses are usually on the move throughout the day, we hope hauling folks here and there, but at least they're on runs and are available for anyone who wants them.

Where automobiles shine is that they give people a lot more flexibility in their lives. You're not at the mercy of a bus schedule. This is especially important in rural areas where people don't have much access to taxi cabs or buses and almost none in the evenings.

Gene

[eTiMaGo]

true, good point about the old buses, we more than our fair share of black smoke-belching ones too...

[supmet]

^^ buses around here run on CNG




The read was interesting, but it just reinforced my ideas about public transportation. If we had anything remotely close to the mass transit systems found all across europe, I'd sell the yaris today. Even some east coast cities would be livable without a vehicle. Unfortunately with congressmen on the bankroll of detroit for so long, public transportation has taken a backseat to everything else. For me to get to LA, a 30 minute car ride, take 5 minutes walking, 35 minutes on a bus, 20 minutes waiting, 30 minutes on a train, and then another bus ride wherever you are going. Monthly train passes can run 300 dollars depending on where you are going, bus passes are around 45. If it were closer to 1/3 the cost of driving, rather than 2/3, I would be more willing to spend over 3 times as long to get where I was going. Throw in the added stress of poorly marked stations, and finding your way around unfamiliar places, and forget about it.

Then there's a couple hundred thousand people living in victorville and working in the inland empire or LA. They all have NO public transportation available to them.

I applaud you for sacrificing yourself for the good of the environment, but the US has a long, long way to go before the average joe will consider public transport.

[GeneW]

Even some east coast cities would be livable without a vehicle.

My Mom, a Pittsburgh PA native, didn't drive until she was in her mid twenties because she could ride the bus anywhere she needed to go. In the 1980s, before the light rail system went into the Pittsburgh, I didn't need a car for about two years while I lived down there.

Things are even better now with light rail transit and it better be given how much money is spent on PAT (Port Authority Transit, Pgh's transit authority) and SEPTA (South East Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philly's transit authority). Drivers for PAT are paid exorbitant wages, over thirty bucks an hour, to drive bus. They also get lavish pensions, more than those of us in the "private sector" receive.

Nice that SoCal mass transit runs on CNG. We're still in the diesel age out here and does it stink with the older units.

Gene