Category: the Rant Board
Ok, so this might not qualify as a full fledged rant, it should certainly score high on the whining scale.
A new Wal-Mart opened today about a mile from my house. This would be awesome if therre was anything closely resembling well maintained road sholders or God forbid, sidewalks. Oh yeah, and then I'd have to cross a major highway with a speed limit of 55 mph with no traffic light.
All that to say, it might as well be in Siberia for all the good it does me. There's no taking a cab there either because we live far enough out so that a driver would lose money taking the call.
I love life in the suburbs. It's quiet and peaceful here at night, no screaming sirens all night, and the schools are beyond good. However, I might as well be a prisoner in my house. Good thing I like my house so much but damn, I miss being able to walk to the corner store for smokes and milk. I miss bus service, even if the service in our old neighborhood sorta sucked.
The only way for us to walk anywhere is to cross a jungle-like field, then jump over the railroad tracks and finally meander through a maze of parking lots.
I don't feel comfortable taking my guide dog on this rout because of the high weeds, brush, small creek when it rains, snakes, etc. I also don't like having him walk up the mound of river rocks or what ever kind of rocks they have that border the train tracks. It would be nice though to have him with me once we got to the other side because there are a few places to which we could walk.
Before you ask why 2 blind people would move away from a neighborhood that was relatively accessible to this transportations hell, our old neighborhood was going to crap and the schools sucked majorly. My son deserves better so it was worth the sacrifice.
I just needed to bitch for a minute because I'm so frigging tired of transportation or the lack there of being such an issue. My husband takes para transit to work but it isn't a good option for me because of how unreliable they are and how impracticle para transit is for running erronds. Oh yeah, here's the other little catch. We're litterally on the border of 3 cities. If I throw a rock one way, I'm in one, throw it another way, I'm in another. Para transit takes my husband to work because we technically live in the city and therefore are eligible for the service. All the grocery stores, activities for my son, etc, are in the other 2 cities to which para transit doesn't travel and which are too small to have PT of their own. I'm stuck like chuck.
Ok, I'm done.
to be honest, as unreliable as paratransit is, sometimes, it gets the job done. Of course it won't be the most convenient, but if you like where you live, and you have no plans on moving, some sacrifices must be made. I understand the frustration,especially with paratransit's lack of reliability, but sometimes you just have to keep hounding them to hold up their end of the bargain.
I fully understand where you're coming from.
I live in a neighborhood where for different reasons I'm out of the loop transportation wise. And I am here because of the daughter's education. I definitely will make it a priority to move back to the city when she is done, though. And I'm only half the marriage, but still, transportation and the ability to walk to the store are paramount for our well-being. I'm definitely very much worse off for not being able to. It's been for the last year of her junior high, plus her high school years. She's in her junior year now, and might graduate early. Not for that reason of course, but provided we can move, we will. I understand feeling like a prisoner, and in my situation I am the only means of an income around here, the wife's second career is taking its sweet time getting off the ground. I'm supportive of it, very much so. But the proverbial fuel tank is startin' to run dry.
Don't expect young unattached people to appreciate it. That's one thing I have seen being on these boards. It's how it is, and all we can do is make the best of it, and wait it out.
yep, leo, sounds about right. My boy is in 2nd grade so we've got a while to go but the Hubs and I have already decided that as soon as he goes to college and Hubs retires, we're moving right smack downtown somewhere.
Ocean, I do agree and as a last resort I will take para transit. However, constantly fighting for them to hold up their end of the bargain does me no good when I've been left stranded and my son gets home to an empty house because my ride didn't pick me up. Plus, they can keep you on the bus for an hour and a half and they will, even if your destination is 10 minutes away. So, let's say I have a 9 a.m. appointment. Son gets on the school bus at 7. PT picks me up at 7:30. By some myrical I arrive on time to my appointment. They require you to stay at your destination for a minimum of one hour so even if the appointment was just to pick up a prescription, I couldn't get picked up again until 10. We'll be very generous and say that they arrive on time to pick me up to go back home so I get home at 11:30. That's 4 hours to accomplish 1 simple task, run into the doctor's office and pick up a script. If I drove, or could afford $40 cab trips all the time, this would take me about 45 minutes, and that's allowing for traffic. Plus, like I said in my earlier post, most of the places I go in our new area are not served by para transit because of how the municipalities are divided.
I have to say that my city has the worst para transit system I've ever seen. My husband complains each time they're late or each time they don't get him home in time for a family activity and all they can do is send 2 free tickets. Soon we won't even have to buy his tickets any more. lol For example, he gets picked up between 4:15 and 4:45 and sometimes doesn't get home until 7:00. It takes 20 minutes to drive from downtown to our house. I realize they have to pick up other people but the way they schedule the rides makes no sense. Plus, he would get better service if he were able to use the cab feature of our service. Since he's a guide dog user though, and they can't guarantee that the cab drivers will pick him up, they've put him on bus only service. Yeah yeah yeah, the law says they can't do that but what the law says and what drivers do are 2 different things. He was stranded 3 times for over 2 hours each in temperatures over 110 degrees by cab company independents who contract with our service who saw the dog, drove off and turned off their radios or said that he wasn't there when he was standing right outside.
I realize I'm preaching to the choir here. It's just really really frustrating because growing up, and even in college, I had no idea that living the kind of life I want would be so difficult simply because I can't drive. It just seems endless; that's all. Grrr. Oh well. Such is life.
I could go on and on but you all probably are in similar situations or have been so know what I'm talking about. I guess it's just nice to vent to people who actually understand what I'm talking about, unlike my sighted friends and family.
O, definitely. I'm not at all trying to suggest your frustrations aren't justified, especially if you do have a child. I've seen first hand just how utterly horrible paratransit can be at times. I'm just saying, if you're not under time constraint, and you need to/want to go somewhere, they're better than being stranded at your house.
Better to have one leg chopped off, rather than two, yes. I understand that thinking but it never really makes sense, or gets the job done.
When I used to take paratransit to work, I was late almost every day.
They tell you to make your appointment 24 hours in advance, then they show up 15 or 20 minutes early and leave immediately if you're not standing outside. Either that or they're 20 minutes late... if they come at all.
I remember one time a couple years ago. I was down with the flu, I'm talking brutally sick. I called paratransit to take me to the doctor, the guy shows up half an hour late. This would've been ok, as I had budgeted in extra time exactly for this reason, but the guy informs me as I'm getting in that he's got to go get somebody all the way across town, and if I want to get there on time I should just go ahead and buy a cab ride.
I'm not one of those people who feel entitled to have the world delivered to me on a silver platter just cause I'm blind, but if there's a service that's advertised to give people a ride, it shouldn't be a huge issue to use it.
It's humiliating enough to have to ride paratransit, and to have it not work, and have rude drivers who give you shit and don't take you to work on time.
Thank god I've moved and I don't have to use it anymore.
Oh I know. I tried using paratransit when I was in college, and while they never made me late to class they did somehow screw up once and send two buses to pick me up. The second one apparently arrived not long before the first was pulling in to drop me off at college. So right as I was getting off I got a call from dispatch to ask where I was. Uhm, getting off the bus at school? Now it happens that here in Twin Falls the paratransit also doubles, at least at certain times of the day, as a school bus for elementary school kids. It just so happens that my last class of the day appened to end at rigt around the time when school cildren would be going home, so I'd end up riding home with a bunch of noisy grade schoolers. Well one time the class ended a few minutes later than the schedule said it would (it was a debate class), and so I went out with my lapop and bag to wait for the ride. I waited ten or fifteen minutes only to realize that rather than wait the full ten minutes they'd gone and left me. So I had to call my mother and ask her to pick me up. I was just glad she happened to be home since I had no money for cab fare.
well, time for me to weigh in, I guess. I used to live in the suburbs as a child, from when I was 7 to when I was 14, and I loved the quietness of it ... There's just one problem. because of the frustrations expressed on this board, I will never, ever move back to them, despite my love of the "country quiet". The problem here in tennessee is, once you get outside of the big 5, chatanooga, Jackson, Memphis, Nashville and Knoxville, all the towns are podunk and as such, their paratransit services double as medicaid transportation for people's medical appointments. Luckily, I now live in Nashville and do not have the unreliable paratransit problem, ours is rather good in fact, but I know about shitty paratransit from living in Murfreesboro, a little town about 45 minutes outside of Nashville. That being said, let me say this. even when I have children, there will be no moving to the burbs again. I know how it feels to be "a prisoner in your own house" literally, because you can't leave it. I am not willing to suffer that again, for anybody. Concerning education, at least in this city, there are still a couple of good public schools left. Living in the city where I can use paratransit would provide me the ability to take any future children to and from their activities and for me to go places I needed to go.
Oh, you'd be surprised what you'll endure for your kids. That's one thing I've learned as a mom. Most of the things I'd sneer at and say I'd never do before having my son, I've now done as a mother. lol
As an update to this post, my husband, who works for our City, met with the development department this very morning. Guess what? We're getting a traffic light with an audible timed podestrian crossing. Woohoo! They're going to lay some sidewalks as well but I'm not sure if those will be on the highway or just on the street that leads to our subdivision. Either way, being able to cross the highway will open up some options. The Walmart I mentioned in my original post is just on the other side of the border of our city and another so the other city would have to put in sidewalks there. I'm not holding my breath as it is a very small municipality. I'm ok with offroading though. lol
Another thing they're talking about doing is putting in a walk/bike trail at the other end of the subdivision. This would connect us to the street that my son's school is on as well as make the treck through the jungle and over the railroad tracks obselete.
All and all, things are looking up. It isn't perfect, i.e. good bus service, but the pros still outway the cons.