That lament had someone calling him or herself Anonymous making a blog comment informing me that I could have used public transit to get within walking distance of the Dallas Cowboy stadium......
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "I Won't Be Pedaling The Cowtown Cycle Party To Arlington To Watch The USA Beat Belguim Today":
You could have gotten off of the Max bus at Collins and Andrews. It would have been a 10 minute walk to the stadium.
When I read the above suggestion from Anonymous I vaguely recollected reading about a new bus service in Arlington that was some sort of limited test type deal.
Googling brought me to the RIDE THE MAX website, a screencap of which is what you see above.
From the RIDE THE MAX website I learned that ".....for a roundtrip price of $5/day (or $80/month), Metro ArlingtonXpress buses will travel between the TRE CentrePort/DFW Airport Station and College Park Center at UT Arlington. From CentrePort/DFW Airport Station, riders access any DART bus or train or T bus to travel to Dallas or Fort Worth."
So, for me to take public transit to get myself to the Dallas Cowboy stadium I would need to figure out which Fort Worth T buses I needed to get on to get to the CentrePort DFW Airport Station where I would then get on a MAX bus which would then take me to the intersection of Collins and Andrews from whence I could take a brisk 10 minute HOT walk to the stadium.
Or, I could drive about two miles from my abode, to the Richland Hills Trinity Railway Express station and hop a train which would take me to CentrePort where I could get on a MAX bus to get to the point where I take a brisk 10 minute HOT walk to the stadium.
I am assuming that I would need to pay to ride the Fort Worth T bus or the TRE to CentrePort, adding to the $5 roundtrip MAX fare.
I don't think I burned $5 worth of gas driving to Arlington to watch the World Cup last week.
So, this method of getting oneself to the Dallas Cowboy stadium from my location in Fort Worth is what Anonymous thinks is functional public transit?
I have been in towns with functional public transit. I know what functional public transit is. You can use functional public transit to easily get yourself from one location to another. The town to the east of Fort Worth, called Dallas, has functional public transit in both bus and light rail form. Soon one will be able to take a DART train to D/FW Airport.
Vancouver, up north in this country called Canada, has a very cool public transit system called SkyTrain. You can get on SkyTrain south of Vancouver and have yourself a mighty fine ride into town, where you can hop on a seabus, included in your fare, and cross some saltwater to North Vancouver. And a SkyTrain line runs to the Vancouver airport.
Portland, in Oregon, has a light rail system which runs all over town, including the airport. If I remember right, and I am fairly certain I do, the Portland light rail is called the MAX.
Seattle, in Washington, has light rail known as the Link, which takes you from the downtown Seattle transit tunnel to the airport. Buses also travel through Seattle's downtown transit tunnel, with those buses taking you to locations all over Seattle, and beyond.
Unlike Arlington, one can easily take public transit in both rail and bus form directly to the sports facilities in downtown Seattle. You don't get dumped off a 10 minute walk from the Seahawk Stadium or the Mariner's Ballpark.
The video below, which I took in August of 2008, should give Anonymous an idea of what actual functional public transit looks like. First I walk across Westlake Center, which is Seattle's version of Fort Worth's Sundance Square Plaza, only bigger and surrounded by big stores, like Nordstrom. I then walk into Westlake Center, which is a vertical mall and the south terminus of the Seattle Monorail. I then descend to the Westlake Center transit station. There you will see the transit tunnel which runs under Seattle. Near the end of the video I exit a bus and you will see a long line of buses, filled with fans heading to a Seattle Mariners game, with no 10 minute walk needed, just an escalator ride to the street level.....
