Dump The Pump Day

Yesterday was Dump The Pump Day, organized and promoted by the American Public Transportation Association and their “Public Transportation: Wherever Life Takes You” program.  One of the more interesting factoids on their website was: “By getting rid of a car, and using transit instead to commute to work, a person would save between $3,300 and $11,100 annually. Transit use saves more than 855 million gallons of gasoline every year.”  That’s a lot of gas!

Fortunately, I dump the pump every day, as I live about five blocks from the NARP office and either bike or walk to work.  However, my girlfriend is not as lucky.  Her new job just south of Towson, Maryland requires her to drive; transit is simply not a viable option.  And it doesn’t have to be that way.

She could easily take transit—to—work.  In the morning, there is a MARC commuter rail “super express” train from Washington non-stop to Baltimore Penn Station.  Then, ten mintues later, an express #3 Maryland Transit Administration bus leaves from Penn Station and would deliver her to the front door of her office.  Total commute time (with transfer): 1 hour, 5 minutes.

However, the evenings are a different story.  There is no counterpart return express #3 bus, so she would have to take the hour-and-a-half-travel-time #3 local bus, then wait 30 minutes for a MARC train which isn’t non-stop.  Total travel time: 2 hours 45 minutes.

Amanda would love to “dump the pump,” but it’s just not practical.  The continued work of APTA and other groups to expand and promote transit will make it accessible to many more people.

And, by the way, we are going to move to Laurel, Maryland, to make her drive a bit more bearable.  I’ll become a daily MARC commuter on the Camden Line.  But, we aren’t living in suburban box land, we’re living in revitalized downtown Laurel in a really neat transit-oriented mixed use development complex, Patuxent Place.