Spare Me

Today is the second “Spare the Air” day here in the San Francisco Bay Area, a sort of snow day from paying for public transportation due to high temperatures and poor air quality.

While getting a free ride to and from work is always a good thing, the entire concept of Spare the Air is so ass backwards it makes my head hurt, especially here in Marin County.

At least two-three days a week I take the Golden Gate Ferry from Larkspur into my office in San Francisco. The other days I either carpool, and very rarely, I drive alone. I enjoy taking the boat into work although it costs almost as much as it does for me to drive, cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and park in downtown San Francisco.

In order for me to get to my ferry from my house, I have to sit through about eight miles of stop-and-go traffic. The trip takes me at least 25 minutes due to a variety of factors including school being back in session, losing a lane of freeway for a two mile stretch of road in Central San Rafael, and the most recent bane of my existence – a freeway construction project where US 101 and Eastbound 580 merge together.

There are a couple of buses that run out of my neighborhood to San Francisco, but they are express buses and they don’t run frequently or when I need to be at work. From what I’ve researched, there are no options for me to get from my house to the ferry terminal in Larkspur.
What does all this mean? It means I still have to get in my car on Spare the Air days to get to the free ride to work, thus defeating the purpose of the campaign. Part of the push of Spare the Air is to work from home, but as we can never predict when these days are going to come, it is hard to plan for working from home.

The bigger picture, at least for Marin County, is the need for better infrastructure. I looked around this morning and saw an empty carpool lane, and three lanes of single drivers. While some people just don’t care and do like to drive, I have to suspect many are people like me, who want to do the right thing and use public transportation, but have no other choice than to get into their cars.

(And for you hippies out there, yes, I could ride a bike to the ferry terminal if I A) owned one B) had a shower to clean up in at work afterwards and C) had somewhere to store it in downtown SF).

Marin County voters have shot down the last several initiatives for a light rail system in the county. Meanwhile, the roads are clogged and the quality of life in my county struggles. Not to mention the 300-lb. gorilla in the room, global warming.

So yes, I can say I rode public transportation and “spared the air” today. While it sounds noble, I know the truth. I’m a total fraud, much like this entire program is.