My thoughts on being poor and riding the bus

[Lyric]

God, I just need to vent for a few minutes. Sometimes I hate life.

Last Fall our '99 Dodge Stratus had a grievous transmission malfunction that would have literally cost thousands to fix. We couldn't afford it, period--so the car got sadly towed away to the junkyard, and we've been taking the bus ever since.

Now the bus service where we live isn't all that great. A bus runs to the front of the mobile home park where we live roughly every two hours, from 6:30 am until 5:30 pm. We live way out past the edge of the city limits in a rural area with lots of insanely steep hills and narrow roads, so walking is just not a possibility. Our first classes of the day start at 11:30 am, which means we have to take the 10:05 am bus in order to get to class on time. We get to campus at around 11:05 most days, attend classes from 11:30 am until 2:30 pm, and then ride the 3:05 bus home, which gets us home at around 4:00--just in time to meet our 7-year-old as he gets off of *his* bus. Sounds pretty ideal, other than the few hours wasted in transit, right? Well it *would* be...except that we have to make *money* somehow, too. Our daytime hours are completely eaten up by getting the kidlet ready for school, getting him on the bus, getting *ourselves* ready for school, our classes, and the annoyingly long-ass waits during bus transit.

The hours we have available for work (and only one of us can work, as the other has to be at home with the kidlet--no family in town to babysit, unfortunately) are from 4:00 pm until midnight or so. But the last bus (Monday through Friday) that runs out here drops off and picks up at 5:30 pm. It's worse on weekends--the bus only runs *half* of the usual M-F times, and on Sundays it doesn't run at *all*. Getting to the grocery store is an utter nightmare--we have to go on Saturdays (because all weekdays are eaten up by school and the bus) which means leaving the house at 10:05 am and getting home sometime around 4 or 5, all for the sake of getting only the small amount of groceries that we can carry by hand. Taking advantage of sales, buying in bulk, buying frozen goods--all practically impossible. We eat a lot of beans and rice lately. They don't spoil or melt during the 3-hour wait for the bus.

Doing laundry is also hell. We have a washer, but there's something wrong with our dryer, so we have to load up big duffle bags (the kind that were originally used to store hockey equipment) with a hundred pounds of wet clothes and hike a half-mile up a steep hill to get to the nearest laundromat, where we stand a chance of getting bitched at by the management because "You're not supposed to use the dryers unless you also used the washers"--which we simply cannot afford to do. Argh.

ThinkBlue1966 just lost yet another freaking job because her employer insisted that she start working Sundays--which simply is not possible, as this place is easily 5-6 miles away from our house. ThinkBlue1966 has bad knees, and I have a herniated disc in my lower back--walking or bike riding (even if we could *afford* to buy a secondhand bicycle) is just not possible, and not safe either--there are no sidewalks, and our rural road is narrow, steep, and full of people driving SUVs *waaay* too fast.

So now I'm looking around at my life, wondering why it has to be so damned hard to get by in a supposedly wealthy nation. I'm praying that we can somehow get by until the semester ends (May 8th) and our daytime hours are freed up again for work. When we got our student aid this past spring, we were smart and paid our rent and utilities ahead--we're covered rent-wise until June 1st, and the utilities are only now starting to come due, which means we should be safe from losing our power or gas service for at least another month--but the job market here is shrinking at an alarming rate, and the competition is fierce. I'm talking menial jobs here--fast food, grocery stores, video stores, Wal-Mart--that kind of job. Those places don't want to hire you unless you swear that you're available for *any* hours they might decide to assign you. Telling those places that you're only available from 7:00 am until 5:00 pm (and not available on Sundays) is practically a death sentence for your application. There are twenty other people who want that job and are willing and able to work whatever weird-ass hours they arbitrarily assign. *sigh*

I just read "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich, and she really nails some of the issues that people like my family face. The middle-class is getting squeezed, but down here at the bottom, we're getting smothered to death. It's downright freaking scary right now.

[lost-in-nj]

1. I don't have any advice or ideas

but I do have hugs....



:hug: :hug:

wish I could help......



lost

[Lyric]

2. You can help

Come kick the ass of the bus service here so that they'll run their Gold Line 24 hours a day. Voila! Problems solved. :) :hug:

[lost-in-nj]

6. Kind of like a DU mafia!!!

That would be cool

we could go to all these places and KICK some ASS

i wish........

lost

[Inchworm]

3. Them folks that you worry about

are just that, folks.

They just do it different. I'm sure you are a nice person. That is enough.

:hug:

[bicentennial_baby]

4. ...

:hug:

[Faygo Kid]

5. You're a good writer. That is a rare and valuable skill. Use it.

I know. I work (and write) for a large organization where good writers are few and excellent ones are fewer still. I suggest you take what you have already written and rework it as a column for your local paper. Follow the paper's guidelines and submit it; follow up. If they don't publish it, find someone else. Then use that as your ticket to get out of the menial jobs in which you seem to be stuck.

You are a fine writer, and your punctuation and spelling are strong, too. No little feat, as you know so well from blogging. Glad to have you post here, but I would rather see you take this and run with it.

It's already written. Tighten it up for general consumption in your community, and good luck.

[KamaAina]

8. Seconded! How about "Nickel and Dimed" from the perspective of one who lives it every day?

unlike Ehrenreich, who entered the low-wage, menial job world for long enough to write the book, then returned to the DC/Manhattan cocktail circuit. (In fairness, she did grow up in Appalachia, and besides, the book's a classic.)

For the laundry, what about a "solar clothes dryer"?



I realize that kidlet = massive volumes of laundry, but what can one do?

This is even worse than it sounds: if she can't get to the market, she can't make the awesome Southern food she once described for us here (although I still maintain that mashing cheese directly into mashed potatoes should be at least a misdemeanor :-) )

[Lyric]

10. Actually the Southern food is pretty easy!

Biscuits and gravy is a mainstay during lean times. All it takes to have a months' worth of biscuits and gravy is a couple of bags of flour, some baking powder, some manteca shortening, salt, and chicken or beef bouillon.

My fried chicken I miss, though.

[KamaAina]

11. Perhaps a DU meetup with a twist is in order?

there are simply tons of DUers in the 'Burgh (the nearest large city to where she is) who, I'm sure, would jump at the opportunity to come on down, bring 'em some chicken, and have oktober fry up same. And if there happened to be a little left over, that wouldn't be a tragedy, either. :-)

[Lyric]

12. ....

:hug: :loveya:

I'd love to meet other DU'ers. I've gotten to meet MountainLaurel, but that's it so far.

[grasswire]

7. I know you have already considered all the angles...

...and you aren't really asking for advice, so I don't mean to offend by offering any. But could you move closer to town? The transportation problem is not likely to get any better, with oil short. Believe me, I know all the expenses involved in moving and it seems insurmountable. Maybe there's an agency in town that could help you get some transportation. What a life. I've carried groceries for years now, but I have bus service available. My best wishes to you and yours. I wish things were better for you.

[Lyric]

9. Oh, we intend on doing so as soon as we can afford it.

The stinky part about moving is that the places further out from town are the places we can easily afford. The ones closer are more expensive--it's a college town, so anything within a few miles of campus in rent-inflated and poorly cared-for by mostly absentee landlords.

I'm working like hell to get straight A's this semester, so I can perhaps win a scholarship or two. Any extra money would be a godsend. Thanks for the thoughts, grasswire. *hugs*

[UndertheOcean]

13. I road the bus for 3 years in Orlando

a very car oriented city , until I just gave up and borrowed money from a friend to get an old car and get me through.

Sorry for what you are going through

[Yavin4]

14. Divestment in Mass Transit Is Another Means of Making Us Indentured Servants

Because car loans are easily obtainable, everyone should "own" car. Thus, the need for full mass transit is obviated.

Hence, you have millions of Americans in debt because of their cars and millions more paying $4 a gallon for gas which further erodes your financial security.

[Lyric]

15. I've never gotten a car loan--heck, I can't even

qualify for a credit card. Too many late utility payments and medical bills, I guess. But I consider it a point in our favor--we have no credit card debt either, thank goodness. Student loan debt yes, but that won't come due for years yet.

I'd just like to feel secure and safe for a while, I guess. Just the assurance that I won't be homeless, or without electricity/gas, or without enough food. That would be wonderful, truly.

[leftyclimber]

16. Transit in Morgantown is DISGUSTING.

I feel your pain, oktoberain. I really do.

Check your PM's, eh? ;)

[Lyric]

18. Oh my god, THANK you!

I responded. I'm actually giddy at the notion of getting to do laundry, lol. :hug: :yourock:

[av8rdave]

A thought...

"So now I'm looking around at my life, wondering why it has to be so damned hard to get by in a supposedly wealthy nation."

99.9% of us are one paycheck or so away from that exact same situation. The concept of "wealthy nation" is largely an illusion. I don't mean to be insensitive to the truly poverty stricken countries, but we're not as far from that as we'd like to think. People forget that for the last 30 years, we have sacrificed more and more to maintain our standard of living (gone to two income families, worked longer hours, fewer benefits, etc).

As the gap between the wealthy and nonwealthy grows, the gap between the middle class and the poor will narrow.

[DarkTirade]

17. Every two hours?

Jesus... and I complained about the buses in Orlando... :\

:hug:

[Lyric]

19. Well, it's technically only supposed to be

about an hour and twenty minutes between runs, but it never works out that way. The buses here are *always* late--usually because of traffic. It's a vicious cycle in a college town. The students refuse to take the bus instead of driving because the buses are always late...but the buses are only late because the students are clogging up the streets and causing traffic. Argh! :banghead:

[DarkTirade]

20. Yeah, that was a good portion of the problem in my city too.

The public transit sucked and urban sprawl meant that there was no way to get anywhere without going on the roads. So everyone drove, and the public transit got bogged down with the traffic too and sucked even worse. So no one wanted to switch.

That, and whoever planned the bus routes really did a shitty job. The one time they actually had a bus that would have been useful for people like me who lived in the college area to get to A) a big shopping center and B) continue on to downtown, they didn't give it long enough for people to discover it and start taking it. They just decided it wasn't getting enough riders so it wasn't worth keeping. So they cancelled it right after they started it.

Which is a large portion why I had to drop out of school. Because that would have been my one chance to have a bus that was a straight shot to two places that I could have tried to find a job to keep a roof over my head and pay for school with. And they took it away before any other people like me had a chance to use it.

That's why you'll find that most cities with good public transit do a lot of it either elevated or underground... because that way it CAN'T get caught up in the flow of traffic. A train can't be late because of traffic unless it's a light-rail that's on the ground. If Orlando had a monorail system and just used the buses to go out from the main lines and do quick, short trips through the areas that people need to get to that would have been perfect. (Can't do subways in FL. Water table's too high. :P )

[Lyric]

22. That's part of the problem we have, too.

The bus that runs out to where I live is pretty much a campus "loop"--it comes here, goes to both local hospitals, then heads to the student residence halls (called "Towers") and then to campus. Then it's back to the depot and it starts all over again. The closest our bus comes to a grocery store is the Kroger near Towers, and the fast-food joints and such that sit along that road. If we want to go to Target or Wal-Mart (I hate Wal-Mart, but I'm realistic--we're poor) we have to ride the bus all the way to the depot, and then take *another* bus out to where Wal-Mart is. We ride for free with our student ID's, but when we have the kidlet with us, we have to pay his fare, and there are no free "transfers" here, so we end up paying his fare *four* times--twice on the way there, and twice on the way home.

THAT pisses me off severely. When we lived in Utica, NY, the bus transfers were always free of charge, so you only paid once to get where you were going, and again to get back home. Our bus system is truly a rip-off--it just doesn't run often enough or to enough places to justify paying four fares for one seven-year-old kid to go shopping.

[DarkTirade]

23. Jeez, even in my city we had cheap transfers... last I checked it was 10 cents to transfer.

Not free, but cheap.

[leftyclimber]

24. Yeah, the routes here are ridiculous.

For context, I live on a different bus line, but in the same town as oktoberain and ThinkBlue1966. "My" bus line goes to retail stores and the welfare office. And the downtown station. Period. These routes are not close to a lot of residential areas. I live near the welfare office, so I can get on THAT bus, ride downtown, get on another bus, and get to my office on campus (I'm a grad student). WVU has three campuses, counting the med school, and I'm on the "middle" campus. It takes me two to two-and-one-half hours to get from the closest bus stop to my office. Buses start running at 8; my first class starts at 9. And my apartment complex has quite a few students in it: students like me (and presumably oktoberain and ThinkBlue1966), who can't afford to live within walking distance of school because the rent is so ridiculous in the close-to-campus areas. There are also a lot of elderly people here. And we all gripe about the bus in my apartment complex.

I didn't know about the no-transfer policy. While it doesn't shock me entirely (it falls into the category I call "this is West Virginia" -- bearing in mind that I adore this state, but the ridiculous policies bother the crap out of me), it's absolutely ludicrous that they expect y'all to pay repeatedly to go in a single direction.

To top things off in my case, I'm over $600 I don't have into rims and tires this year because the city has decided not to fix potholes to take revenge on the voters who turned down the "user fee" they wanted to us to pay for the privilege of being employed in Monongalia County. We've got a pothole on our street that I think might end up somewhere in Australia -- it's so big you can't even straddle it without hitting the edges, and it's just getting bigger.

It's rough being skint in WV; even somewhere like Morgantown, which is more of Pittsburgh South than it is like the rest of the state. There's no transit worth mentioning, no easily-available grocery stores, and so on and so on. Ugh.

[KamaAina]

27. But not the most ridiculous I've seen. Not by a long shot.

An old colleague is helping to start an agency similar to mine in another college town in the South. Here's their not-so-"GREAT" transit system:

http://www.greenvillenc.gov/uploadedFiles/Departments/Public_Works_Dept/Information/Transit/GreatBusRoutes.pdf

As you can see, there are four (4) routes serving a city of 75,000. Each makes a giant loop around one-quarter of the city, meaning that even if you're fairly close to downtown on the way out, it'll take you 45 minutes to go all the way around to get back in, or vice versa. Plus, the (present) agency site is on a "loop within a loop", making it all but impossible to get to at all from places in the immediate area!

edit: And, the kicker: Route 4 (Purple) apparently alternates between two different mobile home parks of the type that oktober and ThinkBlue live in, leading to service -- you guessed it -- every two hours.

(sigh) I probably won't be joining her any time soon...

[leftyclimber]

29. Holy crap.

That's just WRONG.

[KamaAina]

31. Might this lead to a spinoff in our Public Transportation and Smart Growth forum?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=398

[ikojo]

21. I feel ya...I bought a scooter in 2005 because I got tired of

spending almost four hours a day on the bus. Even now when it rains, as it's supposed to tomorrow, I must take the bus. I've not had a car for 18 years.

I live 20 miles from where I work because I cannot afford to live in the affluent suburb where the office is located. I must be at work at 7AM. In order to accomplish that I catch my first bus at 4:50AM. I then catch the light rail which takes me to my second bus. I board my second bus at 5:30AM and arrive at work at 6:15AM.

Getting home takes at least 2.5 hours. I get off work at 3:45PM and catch my first bus. It takes the bus an hour and 15 minutes to get from the western suburbs to a transfer station in another suburb where I catch a light rail train. I take the light rail to another transfer station to wait for another bus. If I'm lucky that bus will be on time, but it still takes approximately 20 minutes for me to get home from my final transfer point.

Before I got my scooter my day was like this and I was always tired. I cannot imagine factoring a kid in the equation.

[crispini]

25. Oh man!

:hug:

Can I offer you one practical bit of advice... how about a clothesline? I have one, and hardly ever use my dryer anymore.

:hug:

[Lyric]

26. I would totally go for that, except

they are expressly forbidden in our mobile home park's lease. I guess they're trying to get rid of the old stereotypical notion of "poor people" living in a trailer park. Our dog has a 60-foot "run" cable in the backyard that I've been tempted to use for this purpose, though I'd have to find a long stick with a "Y" joint at the top to use as a support for the middle part of it. If only I didn't worry about getting caught. We already got yelled at once because the kidlet left his bicycle and a couple of toys in the front yard, and the park manager saw it.

[ThomCat]

28. I am very sorry. Reading this makes me very upset.

We need better public transportation. You are absolutely right that reliance on bad public transit prohibits you from doing a lot of things that would improve your life.

Lack of public investment in public transit impoverishes people! x(

I wish you could somehow get a good used car. That would make a huge difference.

I am going to think about you a lot, and I'm going to wrack my brains trying to figure out any kind of advice I might be able to give that would be worth a damn. But if nothing else comes of this, at least know that I am thinking about you and hope something good happens.

:hug:

[hippywife]

30. Please to check your PM's.

:hug:

[hippywife]

32. We live in a very small house.

About 869 sq. ft. I usually dry our clothes outside on the line because I don't want to use a dryer anymore. We gave it away. When the weather doesn't allow, we dry things inside. Takes only about a day and half over the weekend for them to dry. Can't do sheets and towels too well that way but it works for everything else! It really isn't that hard to do if you're creative with some wire hangers and clothespins. That would at least save you trudging to the laundromat with that load.

I really hope things get better for you soon. You're working so hard, I just know that it will. :hug: