Gas prices are exorbitant.
The guilt of contributing to the climate change quagmire settles on you every time you start your engine. Parking is impossible on campus and elsewhere. The Long Beach Transit system, for all its effort to be “green,” is inconvenient, seldom punctual and rather expensive – 90 cents a ride – and you don’t get your dime back if you pay a dollar.
In addition to the current problems, two Orange County Transportation Authority bus lines running past Cal State Long Beach stopped running Saturday due to striking drivers.
But you still need to get to where you’re going, right?
Wouldn’t it be grand if this city had an electric streetcar network linking Long Beach’s places of interest, allowing its citizens to circumvent many of these obstacles?
City Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal thinks so.
Her idea to institute an east-west streetcar service in Long Beach made local headlines in May. The Long Beach City Council approved a feasibility study for the project.
In a previous visit to Portland, Ore., Lowenthal noticed the city’s effective streetcar system and determined Long Beach’s infrastructure to be similar. Lowenthal further mentioned that CSULB would be a focal point for the project, enabling students, staff and faculty to get to campus without having to drive.
Think of it – all the space allotted to parking could be used for future campus development – more trees, more benches, more Starbucks. Members of the community could interact intelligently, instead of exploding upon one another with the road rage that creates potential health and fender perils.
The Portland Streetcar service charges $100 for an annual pass; it’s hard to say for certain if Long Beach will have a similar rate. But assuming it will, consider the savings.
Say you bus to and from campus four days a week for two semesters. You’re spending approximately $230. Again, this is just an annual estimate for Long Beach Transit travel to campus, considering you give the exact change to the bus driver.
If you’re spending $98 per semester to park and $3.50 per gallon of gas to drive (and who knows how much in unforeseen auto maintenance), you’ll certainly be spending more than the annual $100 streetcar fee.
The streetcar pass would not limit you to campus travel either. Upon its completion, the streetcar network would link to destinations all over the city.
So why is there such stigma attached to mass transportation in Los Angeles County? Of course, it’s “cool” to drive a Land Rover, and glass-shattering bass is an indispensable component of car culture, but what’s wrong with taking the streetcar? Can’t we make that a fashion statement?
Then again, with nearly 14,000 student drivers on campus, CSULB may loose as much as $1.37 million in parking fees per semester if everyone starts riding the streetcar to school. But the sky might not be so yellow on stagnant days, you may have more sit-down time to read the paper and you wouldn’t be driving around for 20 minutes cursing the asphalt for a parking space. Wouldn’t it be grand?
Jenny Stockdale is a senior journalism major and the assistant photo editor for the Summer Forty-Niner.
