I'm riding the train home from an evening in San Francisco with Ian.M, and it occurs to me the strange experience of mass transit in California.
First, I took the MUNI to get from Ian's flat at Church Street to the 4th and King Caltrain station. Plastered all over the walls of the MUNI cars were signs explaining a new rule of ride: Beginning in the new year, all passengers must be able to present a MUNI pass in order to ride...
The motivation for this mandate, so-far as I can tell, is to justify throwing off hobos and cretins who may not have paid. However, doesn't the ability to get past the turnstiles assume that I've paid my ticket price? Perhaps not, but how much does it cost to print every single paper ticket, and pay to clean them up when I throw mine on the ground? Does that sanitation cost somehow not outweigh the cost of a few people getting a free ride?
Second is the train I'm riding in now. The whole thing is dressed in advertising for some Spanish-speaking radio station. As I told Elizabeth.J as I walked the platform, it brings new meaning to the lyric, "I'm on a Mexican, whoa oh, radio."
Finally, the train pulls into each station, and the station names are called out by a woman's voice. Her voice is that of someone who's soul has been reaved from them over a long, painful existence. Do we really need to pay someone an insultingly-low wage in order to sit on a train at night and call out station names? Can't a 'Victoria' just as easily do this job?
