Capital Newspaper
Eric Hartley: You can't get there from here

By ERIC HARTLEY, Staff Writer
Published 09/20/09

On Wednesday night, I set my alarm for 5:45 a.m. I actually got up at 6. It was still dark when I left home at 6:28, passing school kids at bus stops in a light drizzle. I took a city local bus from the Giant on Bay Ridge Road to the Spa Road "transfer center," where I hopped on the northbound C-60 at 7 a.m. I met people taking the bus to jobs as a cement-mixer driver, an accountant and an aluminum machinist. Many get up at 5:30 or 6 to take as many as three buses, and sometimes the light rail, to be at work by 8:30 or 9 a.m. Later there were people shopping for shoes, groceries and kids' birthday gifts. Many of these are people without cars who have no other options. If the bus breaks down or traffic makes them miss a connection, they're out of luck. "I wouldn't trust them for work," said Floyd Johnson, who lives near Fort George G. Meade and was on his way to Glen Burnie to visit his mother in the hospital. "I know a lot of people who lost their jobs behind these buses."

The people I met generally praised the MTA. The Annapolis system drew mixed reviews, praised for being punctual and having lots of routes, but hated for its bankers' hours (most buses stop at 6 or 7 p.m.) and the constantly failing air-conditioning that turns crowded buses into saunas. "I'm from D.C., and this is the worst transit system I've ever seen for a capital city," said Wanda Daniels, now of Annapolis, who takes the bus and light rail to her job in downtown Baltimore. "Think about it. That's how D.C. promotes tourism: 'Ride Metro.' " Matland said most of the city's buses are too puny to give their air-conditioners enough juice, so she's ordering heavy-duty buses. But no one's convinced because past fixes have failed. (What's with this town and air-conditioning?)

Over 11 hours, I took eight buses more than 105 miles, from Edgewater to Glen Burnie, and spent $15.50. I was pleasantly surprised by how many places I could get to: malls, the airport, downtown Annapolis, light rail stations, the community college branches. But I didn't have to be anywhere at a certain time. In real life, people usually do. To make transit really competitive, Matland said, you have to run buses every 15 minutes, not every 30 to 60 as we do here, and build a strong "rail backbone" that all the buses feed. That requires cooperation between a slew of political entities.

Cars have a lot of advantages: They're quick, private, usually air-conditioned. You can listen to music as loud as you like and drum on the steering wheel. People know what they spend on gas, but often don't think about all the built-in costs, like insurance, wear and tear, repairs, tires and oil changes. One advantage of buses, though, is the people-watching. Over the course of the day, I heard or had conversations about Annapolis politics, teen pregnancy, Ravens football, clothes shopping in Africa, how to make your grown kids move out of the house, a grisly motorcycle wreck, steroids in ultimate fighting and whether boxing is fixed. My fellow travelers spoke Spanish, German and sign language. In Pasadena, I heard a 24-year-old in a Ravens jersey behind me deliver this pick-up line to the teenage girl next to him: "You'd have fun with me. I drink often." Amazingly, it worked. She said she liked vodka and took his number. Now, you won't see that in your car.