We should've prepared for gas troubles
June 5, 2008
Laurel Walker

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=758741&format=print

I don't know about you, but I remember the energy crisis that came with the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

I was in grad school at the time, relying almost entirely on foot and bicycle to get around in Eugene, Ore., a city especially friendly to foot and pedal power.

My economics prof, on the other hand, was ornery as all get out one day. He'd waited in a gas station line for hours during the wee morning to fill up his car for a weekend trip out of town. He walked into class late and vowed out loud that any Arab student in class had better be wary. (He was only half kidding, I think.)

It seems that as a country, we didn't learn much of anything from that experience. All that pain and not much gain.

So here we are in another predicament. It's not lines to the gas pumps so much as lines to our bank vaults, where thanks to $4-plus a gallon gasoline, we need bushels of cash to cover the tab.

No wonder people are flocking to mass transit.

Witness the 14% increase in commuter bus ridership between Waukesha and Milwaukee counties and the 25% jump between Washington and Milwaukee counties so far this year compared to the same time stretch last year.

The discouraging message of Tuesday's report in this newspaper was that local transit systems are poorly positioned - both logistically and financially - to expand services as demand explodes. Worse yet, without more transit funds down the road, service cuts are looming.

The fact is that mass transit has been underappreciated for way too long around here.

Suburban counties like Waukesha have turned up their noses to light rail - a system we could really use right now. Officials elsewhere have squandered nearly two decades and tens of millions in transit aid that could have broadened the Milwaukee area transit system.

Decision-makers can't get their act together on a regional transportation authority.

What a shame. More pain.

Thanks to some family commitments - a wedding just north of San Francisco last weekend and a college graduation in Boston a couple of weeks before that - I've gotten a double dose of other people's transportation reality lately.

Love that California weather, but its traffic? Not so much.

The San Francisco airport has a clean, quiet electric tram service linking to other transit links. But north out of San Francisco, where the major collector Highway 101 is often a headache, they're adding more and more traffic lanes, they're arguing about whether to add commuter rail service to supplement buses, and they're boosting the one-direction fee for using the Golden Gate Bridge into the city up to $7.

Give me Boston, instead.

Not to drive in - no, that would be a mistake. But the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, a system of subways, above-ground trains, trolleys and boats that can usually get you where you need to go. They even have fun with it - selling the so-called "CharlieCard" discount fare ticket named for the character in a folk music song about a man trapped forever 'neath the streets of Boston because he didn't have the fare needed to exit.

His fate, the song goes, is still unknown.

So is ours, as long as we rely so much on cars, roads and ever-increasing gasoline prices.