Today is National Dump the Pump day as I reported in a blog entry last week. And so my fellow blogger, Phil Pitchford, a.k.a. the commuting blogger, took up the challenge of finding me a route to the Morongo Casino Resort and Spa where I have to cover today's Riverside County Water Symposium. We wanted to see just what would happen if I dumped the pump.

So here's what Phil found out, after spending a couple of hours getting intimately acquainted with bus schedules all over western Riverside County:

1. I would walk from the Press-Enterprise office in downtown Riverside to the nearby Metrolink station to pick up a 7:26 a.m. bus to the Moreno Valley Mall. There I'd have to wait 50 minutes to get another bus (maybe I could get a little shopping in).

2. That bus would take me to Sun Lakes Boulevard in Banning in another 45 minutes or so.

3. Then I would have to wait about 40 minutes, not sure what I would do there, before grabbing my final bus and arriving at Morongo by 10:37 a.m.

By that time, I would miss the talk on global warming and water supply by one of the best-known experts in the subject, William Patzert from JPL. And I would miss the state's top water man, Lester Snow, who will give an update on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a key source of water for our region.

Since I can't miss those, I will put the pedal to the metal and drive through the Badlands to get to my destination. Plus, taking the bus would consume most of my day - a six-hour bus ride in total! It wouldn't give me enough time to cover the event, write it and make my pesky deadline. Perhaps one day it won't be such a challenge to use public transit.

If anyone found a way to dump the pump, let us know!

1 Comments

Drew Feldmann on June 21, 2007 3:13 PM said:

Of course for most connections in southern California, mass transit simply won't work and a car is unfortunately the only way to avoid hours of delays. By contrast, I lived in Philadelphia for 15 years and did not own a car. The difference is the amount of investment in the mass transit system. In Philadelphia, buses, trains, and trolleys ran every 5-20 minutes, depending on demand, and one had to only walk a few blocks at the most to find one. Much of the system was underground, which also helped. I came to the simple conclusion that the bigger the system, the more convenient it is, and the more people will use it. Make it very convenient, and everyone will use it.

---

Leave a comment

Name: (required)

Email: (required; will not be displayed)

URL:  (optional)

Remember personal info?

Comment: (you may use basic HTML tags for style)

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.

Note: You will need to re-enter the captcha field after previewing