Living Like Ed (10 page)

Public Transportation

When walking or biking simply isn’t practical, I always look to public transportation before hitting the garage door opener. By public transportation, of course I mean buses, trolleys, subways, commuter trains, and light-rail service—even cable cars, if I’m in San Francisco. The official definition of public transportation, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), also includes paratransit services for senior citizens and people with disabilities, as well as ferries and vanpool services.

You could say public transportation is like carpooling, on a grander scale. Carpooling clearly reduces the use of fossil fuel: It reduces tailpipe emissions, it saves money, and it reduces traffic congestion. Using public transportation obviously takes carpooling to a whole other level, with dozens—if not hundreds—of people able to share a ride at the same time.

For public transportation to make sense for you as a regular option, of course you need to live in a place that makes it convenient. Luckily, I do. A natural gas bus stops at a corner near my home, and I can take it—only one stop—to a big, beautiful electric subway that goes to many parts of Los Angeles and connects to other light-rail systems that go to other parts of the city. So I’m very fortunate on one hand, and very clever on the other hand, to have chosen this home, where it’s easy for me to get to the places I want to go by walking, biking, and taking public transportation.

If I have to go downtown or into Hollywood, I often take the subway. I can avoid the traffic, and if I buy tokens, it costs me just $1.10 per trip. You can’t even park downtown for $1.10!

And when I’m on the subway, I can leave the driving to someone else. I can do a Sudoku puzzle or a crossword puzzle or the Jumble. Occasionally, I have to go downtown to testify for some City Council meeting or the L.A. Board of Supervisors. In that case, I can review the material I’m going to talk about on the way down there, or I can read the newspaper and relax. The same on the way back. It’s very convenient.

And let me be clear that I take public transportation by choice. There are many people who are dependent on it for financial reasons. But though I have alternatives, I take public transportation pretty regularly—just not with my wife.

                  I did take public transportation with Ed one time when we were first dating. We were going out to some restaurant. I was in high heels, which I usually don’t wear, and a miniskirt. We got on the bus at West Hollywood, and the bus didn’t come directly over to the Valley, so we had to change buses—on Western Avenue, underneath a strip club, next to the freeway. At midnight! I was like, “I can’t believe this. I’m not doing this! I’m not doing this! I’m not this dedicated.” We got home, finally, but, clearly, our transportation choices were a major source of conflict.

Today, we’ve reached a compromise. Mostly, I drive my hybrid. And, yes, I have come to understand the benefits of public transportation. I even use the carpooling analogy sometimes when I’m talking to friends—you know, explaining about Ed.

And if you want to know the truth, I don’t mind riding the subway. It reminds me of New York City, only cleaner and newer. But I still let Ed ride the bus on his own.

THE BENEFITS OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

Rachelle’s opinion of buses notwithstanding, we do have a pretty good transportation system in L.A., given the size of the city and the number of people who are transported. This city is so spread out, from Trancas to Santa Clarita to Pomona to the Orange County line. That’s a lot of territory and a lot of people. There’s no transit system anywhere else on the globe that takes more people over greater distances every day.

For my money, transportation systems need to be multifaceted. They need to have many different tools in the toolbox. The backbone of the transportation system, the spine of it, here in L.A.—and in most cities—is the bus system. Even in New York City, which is famous for a tremendous subway network, the bus system still carries almost half as many riders as the sub-way. That’s a significant number. And in a city like L.A., the bus system carries nineteen times as many passengers as the light-rail system.

So the city’s transportation system is like a big-city hospital. Most of the work is done with sutures and tongue depressors and thermometers, the basic tools. The bus system is part of that basic infrastructure.

But you still need a big MRI unit, too! And that’s the subway or the light-rail system. It’s another important tool in the transportation toolbox. We still need to get people off the roads entirely, not just create more bus lanes.

According to the APTA, throughout the United States as a whole:

•
There are more than 6,400 providers of public and community transportation.

•
From 1995 through 2006, public transportation ridership increased 30 percent, while the U.S. population increased only 12 percent. During the same period, use of U.S. highways increased only 24 percent—less than the growth rate for public transportation. That’s good news.

•
In 2006, Americans took 10.1
billion
trips on public transportation, the highest ridership level in forty-nine years.

Using public transportation is certainly a good way to save money, too.

Augmenting your driving with public transportation could even eliminate your family’s need for an additional car, and that’s a way to save
real
money.

Public transportation is also a great way to save fuel. According to the APTA:

•
Public transportation use in the United States saves 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline each year, or nearly 4 million gallons of gasoline per day.

•
That eliminates the need for thirty-four supertankers of oil to make their way to the United States each year.

•
It also eliminates 140,769 local fuel deliveries, those big tanker trucks that clog our streets on their way to local gas stations, not to mention the wear and tear they exact on our roads.

Public transportation also reduces traffic congestion, which reduces travel time for everyone on the road. In 2003, according to the APTA, public transportation in America’s most congested cities saved travelers 1.1 billion hours in travel time.

All that public transportation use reduces emissions dramatically. When you compare its per-passenger mile against private vehicles, public transportation produces 95 percent less carbon monoxide (CO), 90 percent less volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and about half as much carbon dioxide (CO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Those savings really add up.

Electric Cars

There are times when I just need more flexibility than public transportation can offer, and on those occasions, I turn to my electric car. Some places are hard to reach via bus, light rail, or subway, and of course, I’m at the mercy of their schedules. Driving the electric car is also much more convenient when I need to transport a lot of stuff or heavy items.

Let me be clear here: By
electric car,
I mean a vehicle powered
exclusively
by an onboard battery pack. That’s different from a hybrid vehicle, which has both an electric motor
and
a gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine. When I say
electric car,
I mean 100 percent electric.

And here’s one of my favorite things about the electric car. As I’ve mentioned, I have solar panels on the roof of my house. The rooftop is a perfect place to gather energy, and that energy then gets stored in a battery system in my garage.

If you charge your electric car using any kind of green power—by using solar panels like I have on my roof, or by buying green power from your utility company (more on that in Chapter 4, “Energy”)—then your electric car can be a true, 100 percent zero-emissions vehicle.

Now technically, by definition, a zero-emissions vehicle creates zero pollution while it’s
in use.
(As in all things, there’s still pollution created in building the vehicle and in transporting it to the dealership, and so on.) But a zero-emissions vehicle, or ZEV, creates zero pollution while you own and drive it because it produces

•
zero tailpipe emissions

•
zero evaporative emissions (gasoline can escape from various parts of an internal-combustion-engine vehicle’s fuel system and evaporate into the atmosphere)

•
zero emissions as the result of the gasoline refining process

•
zero emissions as the result of the transport and sale of gasoline

Plus, an electric car doesn’t even have—or need—an onboard emissions-control system, which can go bad over time and allow further polluting emissions into the atmosphere.

So when we’re talking about green cars, an electric car is the greenest of the green. That’s why I’m a longtime believer in this technology. I bought my first electric car in 1970. Of course, electric cars have come a long way since then.

                  You know how dependent we are on our cars, especially in L.A.? Well, when Ed and I started dating, he would not
get into
a gasoline-powered vehicle, or only in the most dire of circumstances.

He did have an electric vehicle, but back then electric vehicles were not as reliable as they are today—and that’s putting it mildly! I remember going out and then running out of electricity many times. One time, we were going down the hill on Laurel Canyon and the car caught fire!

And then there was the time when I was in labor with our daughter, Hayden. Ed wanted to drive me to the hospital in his electric car; I said, “Oh no, we are
not
taking an electric car today.” It probably would have made it fine, but just the thought of running out of electricity with me in labor—no way was I going to take that risk.

Today, things are really different. Now, when we go out we always take Ed’s car. This electric car is great. I love it, especially now that gas is over $3 a gallon, ’cause we have solar power, so it’s like we’re not really paying to fuel the car.