Originally Posted by
B. Carfree
I heartily agree with you and have another anecdote:
A dozen years ago, my son was playing in the Oregon Open chess tournament, the largest chess tournament in the state and a qualifier for the state championship. On day one, he played a nice gentleman who happened to be in his mid-70s. On day two, as I drove my son to the playing site (on the far edge of town along the freeway), we passed this same half-blind gentleman as he was walking to the tournament. Since he was going to be late, we pulled over and gave him a ride. He relies on the bus to get where he needs to be and the bus does not run on Labor Day weekend, which is when this tournament is played. Faced with the choice of walking five miles over hills on 55 mph roads or skipping his favorite tournament, he chose to walk. I admire his pluck, but such a choice is the result of a complete failure on the part of our unelected public transit board, none of whom depend on the bus as their primary means of transportation.
One of our local transit agencies, Community Transit, decided to eliminate all their bus services on Sundays as part of their drastic cost reduction measure a few years ago. They received tons of complaints from the users who relied on the CT buses to go to church services and work and other things on Sunday. (I went to two of their public meetings.) Their response: "It was a very difficult decision for us." Easy to say when none of the decision-makers would be affected by the service cut.