Productivity, Commuting, and Cincinnati Metro

Why would I ride the bus? Why would any­one with a work­ing auto­mo­bile choose to ride the bus for that mat­ter. The auto­mo­bile offers free­dom, flex­i­bil­ity, and auton­omy — not to men­tion music, news, heat, and com­fort. Pub­lic tran­sit author­i­ties have tried “save the air” as a mar­ket­ing mes­sage, but that is too big a prob­lem to suf­fi­ciently moti­vate most of us. It is just too tough to see an imme­di­ate impact — which is nec­es­sary to get peo­ple to change their habits. The “save money” approach has been tried too, but even gas prices over $3.00 have not been suf­fi­cient to make the save money argu­ment very effec­tive. The hit at the gas pump just does not res­onate as a rea­son to give up dri­ving. What makes this really inter­est­ing is that if you ask peo­ple what they think about the morn­ing drive through traf­fic, most will say it is awful. Still we are crea­tures of habit. So what would be suf­fi­cient moti­va­tion for irre­spon­si­ble, gas guz­zling, sub­ur­ban­ites like me to hop on a bus? Well, Cincin­nati Metro may have the answer to that ques­tion — Time. Specif­i­cally Cincin­nati Metro is exper­i­ment­ing with adding wire­less inter­net to buses. What that means is that I could use that new found time to get things done. What that means is that although I might add 10 to 15 min­utes to my door to door time, I can recoup dou­ble or triple that in pro­duc­tive time. This could be a great oppor­tu­nity to check email, read the news, and get pre­pared to deal with the real “to-do’s” that the day presents as soon as I walk through the door of the office. I am a lit­tle reluc­tant to sac­ri­fice the auton­omy of hav­ing my car parked a few hun­dred yards from the office in exchange for this extra pro­duc­tive time, but none the less I am very intrigued by the idea of hav­ing that extra time to focus on some­thing that is not dri­ving. Time is indeed the most pre­cious com­mod­ity we have — and it is grow­ing ever more scarce. It might be nice to give up the dance of brake pedal and gas pedal that is dri­ven by the brake lights in my wind­shield for the beauty of my Mac­Book. It would def­i­nitely be nice to elim­i­nate some of the work that per­vades into home life by doing it on the way home in the evening. I can’t say for sure that this will work. Heck, I am not even sure if I have been suf­fi­ciently con­vinced yet. I do know that this idea got my atten­tion and now at the very least I am seri­ously think­ing about rid­ing the bus. The fact that pub­lic tran­sit got my atten­tion should indi­cate that Cincin­nati Metro is on to some­thing. If they could put a mobile Star­bucks on that bus, it would be a done deal.

As an aside, rid­ing the bus would have the added ben­e­fit of keep­ing me from hav­ing to stare at those ghastly ads for the “Bod­ies” exhibit, which adorn the back of the Metro buses I am stuck behind every day. Regard­less of the value of the exhibit, dead peo­ple star­ing at me down I 75 is an awful way to start the day. They don’t have those pic­tures on the inside of the bus do they?

Cincin­nati Metro to debut wi-fi on Kings Island bus — Busi­ness Courier of Cincinnati: