Changing Times: Today I Took The Train

I took the train from San Jose to Menlo Park today for a 3 o'clock appointment there. In the past I would have driven. Maybe I am still in a city mentality from DC, where I was in the habit of taking public transit everywhere. But I was also very influenced by a post I read this morning on an acquaintance's blog, Two Years Of A Fierce Heart. She was analyzing her impact on the environment and how she can improve her lifestyle to minimize her use of resources. Although she finds her current lifestyle fairly consistent with her values, she realizes that she does use a lot of gas driving. Now, unlike many people, who would simply say that their good habits in other parts of their life make up for any undesirable behaviors, she resolved to change her driving habits, starting with bicycling to work one day a week. I found this so remarkable and inspiring, that I decided that instead of driving today, I would take the train.

However, the train is not without some major drawbacks. First of all, it is expensive. $8 round-trip to be exact. Driving would certainly cost me less in gas, and maybe less overall even after I factored in the cost of putting those miles on my car (I'm not entirely sure how to do this easily). Second, Caltrain is notoriously unreliable. I know this from riding it on and off over the years (when I worked as a chemist, and then later to a job in a veterinary hospital in San Mateo). Today, shortly after our train started rolling, the conductors came on over the intercom to inform us that there was police activity at the Redwood city station and all Northbound trains were being held at Menlo Park, but that our train would only be able to make it as far as Palo Alto. This seemed rather bad luck as Palo Alto is the station before Menlo Park. As it turns out, the police cleared the trains to go through Redwood city in time for me to make it to my appointment, but it was a near disaster, and not only would I have missed my appointment, in my experience Caltrain would not have refunded my money and I would have had no way to get back home until the trains started running again because there were no Southbound trains either.

It frustrates me that we don't put more money into our public transit infrastructure. I've talked to a lot of people who seem to think that the price of gas rising is a really good thing for the environment, but the extra cost of gas is not going into improving our public transit system so I'm not sure how things will improve drastically just from gas going up.

But today I succeeded in changing my old habits, and for all my complaining, I enjoyed reading a book on the train instead of driving or being stuck in traffic.