YOUNGER PEOPLE ARE LIVING IN CITIES AND RELYING MORE ON PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. BUT COULD I?
By Emily Hollingsworth
I walked to the second row of the Fredericksburg Regional Transit bus on the S1 route. I just transferred from route F1 to get from the Spotsylvania Town Center to my home on Roosevelt Road, a strange area situated between Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County. I was new to this route and was trying it out because I was curious about what it might be like to get around town without a car. It was close to 5 p.m. on a cloudy, cold Monday at the approach of fall.
It was when I sat by the window seat and put down my bag that I realized my laptop, an HP Pavilion in a black case that is easily a good third of my height, was not propped against my backpack. When I’d transferred buses, I had left it behind. “I don’t have my laptop here,” I said out loud. I was so disoriented that I actually can’t remember many other details of the moment. Everyone’s worst fear was happening to me. Still disoriented, I told a friend I had met on the bus what happened, and she and I told the driver. The driver phoned the driver of my previous bus. The F1, which had before been parked in front of our bus, had already pulled out of the mall stopping area and was driving down the road. “They’ll turn it in to the station,” my new driver told me. As I cautiously sat back in my seat, I contemplated the fate of my English projects.
I grew up relying on cars. I was homeschooled, so I never experienced school buses. My parents enjoyed rural settings over big cities, so we never considered taking public transportation. We just relied on our family cars: a 1998 Mazda MPV, a 4-door 2005 Mazda B4000 and a 2005 Nissan Pathfinder. But I was curious about what it might be like to ditch the driver’s seat.
More young adults are congregating in cities, according to the 2010 Census Bureau. One of the main demographics of this shift are young adults postponing marriage, families and lacking the money and desire to buy a home in the suburbs. A consequence of city living is also less driving. According to a survey of about 618 adults ages 18-39 conducted by the University of Michigan in 2013, about 13 percent of responders between the ages of 20-29 said they prefer to use public transportation. Exchanging car keys for fare cards has only grown more popular over the past several years, and young adults my age were leading the trend.
Fredericksburg is a city of commuters, many of whom have jobs in big cities, such as Washington D.C. and Richmond. While Fredericksburg isn’t the kind of big city where people choose not to own cars, I wondered if it might be possible to at least supplement some of my driving with sitting in the back of a bus or train. I decided that, to start making public transportation a new habit, I’d have to do something drastic. I decided to rely solely on public transportation for three entire days. The laptop incident happened the very first day. When I drove to the station (in my car) to pick it up at the bus station, it had a piece of paper taped on the case with my name on it. I started to wonder whether I was really cut out for this urban living experiment.
* * *
The trip from my house to the University of Mary Washington takes 15 to 20 minutes by car. With Fredericksburg Regional Transit bus, affectionately called the FRED bus, even with the three or four stops the bus makes in between, it takes roughly 30 minutes. That’s 30 minutes I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about stopping at yellow lights, where I can send a text or review class notes.
Following that first disastrous day with the laptop, I took the bus again several days later. The morning commute went without a hitch. My laptop was secure beside me, and I was much more aware of my surroundings, much less disoriented by the frequent stops and higher view from the ground. Aside from the bus arriving a few minutes late from my house, everything went smoothly. That is, until 2 p.m.
At the end of my school day, I waited at the bus stop in front of the university, with a group of nine other students. The bus, scheduled for 2 p.m., finally pulled in around 2:21, nearly a half an hour late. A few of the students, who were switching from the bus to the Fredericksburg Amtrak to come home to their families for the weekend, were worried they would miss the trains. It might have been the weather, another gray, cloudy day with some rain, but I felt sluggish and had a headache, ready to go home. When I switched from the F1 route to S1, I found out the bus approaching UMW was not the only one behind schedule.
A man sitting a few rows in front of me complained to the driver about the delays in the buses he had to take. “They should tear this whole thing down and build a monorail or something,” the man told the driver.
“That would be nice,” the driver responded.
Considering I was going to arrive home 40 minutes later than I thought, I had to agree with them.
* * *
Taking the bus taught me a set of new skills I had not had to learn from the comfort of my car. It was tough at first, admittedly. I had to memorize bus schedules. I confused S1 with F1, frequently. I called FRED Transit, usually having to ask, after four questions, if I could ask one more. “Sorry, you filled your quota for questions,” an older gentleman on the other line joked once. Eventually, I figured it out.
I liked the sense of community on the bus. The cloudy days made the bus feel that much more secure as people started conversations with the driver, exchanged small talk or smiled briefly. There was another benefit to public transportation that I had not seen before; it was more environmentally friendly. It carried the amount of people that two or three vans could. And while these benefits were just becoming clear to me now, they had been apparent for some time now for a central demographic: the twenty-somethings.
When it comes to getting to an area in a hurry, I think I will stick with my car. The unpredictable arrival times from the buses and possible delays made using the bus too precarious. Though, if I ever need a taste of the Fredericksburg community, or need an additional half-hour to do my homework, I may consider waiting at the bus stop near my house.
My third and final day in the experiment took place one week after day two, as Hurricane Joaquin sent rain (and more gray skies) over Fredericksburg. The weather made everyone subdued. There was not too much conversation, save for one of the passengers and the driver, who talked about crackers and hummus. Despite the rain, the bus moved carefully through the route with few delays. Either because of the rain, or because I refused to learn from day 1, I walked out of the bus for the last time, came home, and realized I had left my cell phone behind on the bus.
My painfully naïve entry into public transportation for this experiment was made even more painful by its conclusion: my dad drove me to the station at 8 p.m. and the driver handed me the phone as he stopped in the station for the last time that evening. I realized, as a young adult, I could learn a thing or two by getting acclimated to public transportation, particularly as others my own age are separating from relying only on cars, even some young adults here in Fredericksburg.