Let me say, at this writing, gasoline is up to $4.25 a gallon and I know, yes I know, many of you are in places where the prices are two and three dollars above that.

That said, Tucson and most of Arizona is very car dependent due to the fact that everything is so spread out. It is pretty impossible to exist here, in any comfort, without a car. Recently, my car has been in the shop three times for a repeated number of repairs. At $1200 for repairs and over $200 in Lyft/Uber rides, we’ll see if three times is the charm.

The bus system: the bus system here runs every 30 minutes on weekdays (when they aren’t late) and every hour on weekends. Most services stop around 7ish, so if you have some evening event to attend, you are out of luck. The system has good apps for your phone. However, if you don’t have a phone, if your phone is out of charge, if you don’t know/can’t find the app, you are out of luck. The bus stops all have metal signs with the route number. There are no bus schedules with the times, no maps with the routes, their starting/stopping points and no information about when they stop running. Inside of the bus, a digital screen displays a stop when a customer pulls the stop cord. Again, there are no bus schedules, no times, no maps, no starting/stopping points, etc. As a result of this, bus drivers are continuely beleagered by passengers asking a thousand questions. This is stressful to them because 1) they have to answer the same questions over and over and b) they are on a tight schedule and are not supposed to be late to their next stop.

Lyft/Uber: since I have taken so many rides this month, I have spent time tracking the costs. During the day, approximately before 4-5 pm, the cost, per mile, can be as low at $1.78 per mile. As the day progresses, the cost can then jump to $3.00+ per mile. The evenings are the real killers; rides to entertainment events in the evenings for the basic same distance can be a whopping $30 each way! Boy, am I in the wrong business!

A lot of this, of course, is pushed by the rising and fluctuating prices of gas. If the city had decent and dependable public transportation, then all of us would not have to be stuck in the giant maw which is the automotive/petrol complex. Like flys stuck in a sticky webb, we can never break free. Again, time to wake up and smell the petrol!!!!!!