Dinero Habla, Everybody Rides
by guest columnist Doug Nufer
“THEY DIDN’T EVEN give me five minutes to consummate my marriage!” ejaculates from the video on the Primera Plus autobus en route to Zamora, Mexico.
While the able-bodied seaman on the tube is snatched from his wedding in order to perform some mystery mission against a Nazi U-boat, the Spanish subtitles of the American war movie can hardly explain what the hell is happening.
To the people around us, five minutes is neither a joke nor the measure of a man: It’s simply the length of time you wait for a city bus.
Even in the smallest towns, it takes about five minutes for the coming of the next combi (a 10-20 seat van). Fifty cents and a half hour later, you’re where you wanted to go.
While Sound Transit wastes fortunes to conjure a commuter line for car-dependent suburbanites, monorail supporters jump through hoops to provide a better way for city dwellers to get around, and Tim Eyman files initiatives to destroy what public transportation we do have, Mexicans make good use of a system most Americans should envy.
And, before the World Bank began urging that debt-ridden nation to tighten its belts, the system used to be even better.
Some years ago, in a fit of greedy desperation that only a consortium of international investors could love, the government sold the railroads to private companies, who ended passenger service in favor of freight trains.
This wasn’t a complete disaster. Long distance bus rides down there are a lot easier to endure than they are in the U.S., and service between cities is frequent. But then, as the intercity bus lines made room for more passengers, terminals had to expand and so moved far from the centers of cities and towns, making them almost as hard and/or expensive to reach as airports.
A tourist getting about ten pesos for a dollar doesn’t have the same appreciation for value that a resident making the equivalent of $10 a day would have. Between these extremes lies an enormous middle class of people who migrate north of the border to work for most of the year. They send money home to support families and build houses, fill their driveways with pickup trucks and cars packed with stereo systems that seem custom-built for cruising with the music at top volume.
No matter how many vehicles or how much or little money anyone has, though, it’s usually easier to catch a ride than to drive. Unfortunately, $10 is at the upper end of the pay scale for day labor. Offered $4 a day to work in a shoe store ten miles from home, who wouldn’t turn it down? Would you spend $10 riding Metro to and from a job that paid $40 a day?
Whatever the expense, the value of public transportation in Mexico is above reproach. On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in Guadalajara, the streets are full of busses going everywhere. The First World idea of tailoring public transit to commuter schedules (cutting service when people don’t have to go to work) doesn’t seem to have trickled down to this civilization.
“People have places to go on the holidays, maybe more than ever,” says the driver. “Why have fewer busses?”
NEXT: Some more of this.
IN OTHER NEWS: Phillips 66 is taking over Tosco, the parent company of Union 76. Will they call the new company “142?” I sure hope so.
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