Posted on 06/20/2006 7:10:10 AM PDT by Cat loving Texan
Personally, I think we should get rid of all the Capital Metro buses, because they're always in the way.
If you gave everybody in Austin who rides the bus a battery-powered Vespa, you'd save tax money, you'd help the environment, and traffic would move more smoothly. The only trouble with this plan is that the crazy people wouldn't have any place to go tee-tee.
I've found yet another reason why Cap Metro should be mothballed. Having trouble telling if that Cap Metro bus you're stuck behind in downtown traffic is dead or actually moving? Well, no wonder. It seems that the 34 "clean diesel" New Flyer buses Cap Metro bought just three years ago are having a little acceleration problem.
Because of a design flaw in the diesel particulate filter, when the air conditioner is on, it takes the New Flyers almost nine seconds to get up to 10 miles an hour.
That's all we need: one more reason to get a great big stinking case of road rage.
To make these buses look faster, maybe Cap Metro could spring for some racing stripes. Nine seconds to get to 10 miles an hour: That's about the same speed the Ice Age moved across Iowa. I wonder which would win in a race: a Cap Metro bus or Greenland.
OK, so one of these buses does move a little faster than the world's fastest glacier. Between 2000 and 2003, Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae speeded up from 5.8 miles a year to 7.8 miles a year, according to a study funded by NASA.
At least the glacier is picking up speed. You can't say that about Capital Metro.
One reason I don't take the bus? I have to be somewhere next February. Nine seconds to get up to 10 miles an hour — that's slower than the service at Lowe's. These buses are going so slow that if you took one to the mall to get a pair of pants, by the time you got there everything would be out of style. And they call these lemons New Flyers? They should rename them Old Creepers.
You know what this means. Not only does this mean that there's a good chance that you, the typically impatient Austin driver, have turned to the right in front of one of these buses while multitasking: that is, honking and swearing. It also means that even I can outrun one of these buses on foot for a short distance.
It's annoying enough as it is to be held up during rush hour when one of these Cap Metro lunkers is stopped by the curb to pick up five or six people. And now the buses are moving at about the same speed as the Frost Bank Tower?
I wonder how many people have come up behind one of these things downtown and wondered if the driver has had a heart attack behind the wheel,.
Oh, Capital Metro could get the buses going faster by turning off the air conditioning. Like I really want to ride around town in 98-degree heat with no AC and 40 to 45 winos.
John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com.
The joys of public transportation. Everything the promoters promised...and more.
Yeah the austin buses do suck.
the only good thing I see about the buses here is the ozone day. The ride is free.
I thought Kelso would love these buses. They're so "one size fits all."
being a UT student, the campus buses are essential for me getting around. But the only other CapMetro route I've found of any use is the e-Bus, cuz it runs from campus to 6th street until 3 am. =P
The homeless activists are already howling and calling up the ACLU.
"One reason I don't take the bus? I have to be somewhere next February."
Obviously this guy has no credibility to voice his opinion, then. Cap metro buses will get me from downtown to the Arboretum at rush hour faster than in a car. That is mainly because they cheat and drive up the fast lane all the way up to the exits where everyone else has been waiting for 5 minutes. When cars do that to me I pray for their painful death.
I got the author's point, but his metaphors need work. First he needs to stop mixing "speed" with "accelleration." Second, did the Iowa glacier advance 10 miles per hour? I'd get tired trying to outrun that on my 10 speed. Or is he saying it accellerated at a faster rate than the Austin buses?
That is your money you're wasting on 6th Street and not your parents', right?
What a HOOT!!!!
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!
Wasting ???
The night my son graduated from UT the wife and I were at a bar on 6th street with some of his friends when one of them pulled me aside and, gazing wistfully at the austin female scenery, said
do you see all the talent in this place ... this is the reason your son and I weren't wearing one those tassles (cum laude) when we graduated today.
Or, "nothing the promoters promised... and less!"
My first two years at UT were fully paid for by academic scholarships. The second two years were about 75% paid for, because two of the scholarships were for two years only.
This is my third summer interning for an engineering company. I make enough money in the summer to pay for everything else during the school year, and then some. I have not asked my parents for a dime since I began school, though they've made it very clear that they'll be there to help me out should I need it.
I hope you werent trying to be facetious in your comment. =P
Whew. For a moment I was confusing 'Vespa' with 'Vestal'....
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