But the sexual parallel is correct: punitive measures are more fun than teaching safety.

Makes me wonder… what about public intoxication laws? Those same scolds aren’t likely to want to punish the drunk bus riders for being drunk on a public bus?

It’s hard for me to believe there is a taboo at/near universities about drinking.  I remember tons of posters about drinking responsibly, not binging, etc during my time in college.

The first school I went to had the nightlife and most students lived very near the University, and the bus service was often and regular until 3 am.  Because of this, I never remember hearing about drunk driving being a problem.  The second school was comparable size (both were 40k+), but had most of the nightlife in a separate area and students living all over the place.  Buses were actually needed much more, but most people couldn’t get a bus downtown and arrive in a reasonable manner or near to where they wanted to go (it used to be a 10 min+ wait for the bus followed by getting off and walking 15 min to the bars!).  Then the “late night” bus service was even worse, with only 4 or so routes for a huge area, the buses only coming every 30 minutes, and service stopping basically right when the bars closed at 2.  Needless to say, there were always lots of drunks on the road.  Because it basically screws people to get a DUI, enforcement was basically non-existent until a police officer got killed by a drunk driver.

I’m sorry, this makes too much sense.

Go back and try again.

Having lived in Chicago (without a car) before I moved to Atlanta, the difference is night and day.  Atlanta’s public transit system has a lot of problems, but chief among them is the perception that only poor black people take public transit.  And Atlanta could really benefit from improvements to public transit and other infrastructure--we have lots of pedestrian fatalities (because everyone has a car, why do we need practical bus routes, sidewalks or properly signed crosswalks?) and really bad air pollution.

I would love to take public transit to work, but the connecting bus from the train station gets me to the office at either 8:05 or 9:20am.  Kinda sucks if I miss that first bus.  Yay for living in the only major city in the country that doesn’t get state tax funds to pay for its public transit system’s operating costs.

What else do trains offer, besides a better idea of when they’ll actually arrive? 

How about a warm (or cool), dry/shaded place, with seats, to wait while it comes. 

We need solar/wind powered huts, with seats, at all bus stops that can run infra-red heaters, or fans/misters, instead of just a friggin’ curb.

When I was a student at UT, I almost never took the free buses back home.  I did a couple of times, but the problem is that a) you have to be there at an actual, specific time to pick up the bus and b) once you get to your neighbhorhood, you still have to walk to your house.  In the summer, or if you’re not totally wasted that is fine. But I felt like most ofp the times I wanted to take that bus, I was either too drunk or too inadequately dressed to walk much. 

That said, we always just piled 5 into a cab.  At $6 to get home, it’s pretty cheap.

Also, trains are easier in large part because they always stop at the same places, which are highly visible.  When it’s late and your tired, it super super sucks to have ot go wandering around the nieghborhood wondering “wait, after 9 pm, does the 71 stop here, or on Virginia?”

Living in the Bay Area and having a strong interest in public trans (I rely on it since I don’t have a car) I often read reviews on Yelp of local transit agencies. One of the more frequent complaints about BART and Caltrain is that they don’t run late enough to accommodate late night drinkers. Though “late night” is misleading-if the last Friday night train leaves SF at 11:30, then you need to leave at least an hour earlier in order to make sure you make it to the train station via MUNI, or if you want to take BART to Millbrae to connect there.

The point here being that it can be very frustrating for people who want to enjoy a carbonfootprint-less night out without having to leave extremely early. Of course, at the opposite end of the spectrum is VTA light rail in San Jose, which has two lines, one of which does stop early at night, and the other runs very infrequently, like every 30-45 minutes at night.

The only problem that I have with this is that we’d have to pay the bus drivers combat pay… Still, that’s a ton better than getting behind the wheel.

Really, public transit is a win-win-win-win: less air pollution, better cardiovascular health for people who walk more, fewer drunk drivers, less sprawl.  Frankly, I can’t think of any downsides.

When I was a student at UT, I almost never took the free buses back home.  I did a couple of times, but the problem is that a) you have to be there at an actual, specific time to pick up the bus and b) once you get to your neighbhorhood, you still have to walk to your house.

I find it’s a lot easier to get in the “take the bus mode” when you just make it part of your routine.  When gas was approaching $5 a gallon, my colleague and I decided to give carpooling a try.  I didn’t think it was going to work because we often kept different schedules, but it’s turned out so well that we’re still doing it with gas back below $2 a gallon.  Sometimes you just need a kick in the butt (like the pain of paying $50+ to fill up your little Accord) to get into it.

i live in los angeles and work at night seven miles from my home.  i have to take two buses to get to work.  it’s really frustrating because i live and work on the same street.  they don’t have a bus that runs seven miles down one street.

I did my undergrad at UC Berkeley, which didn’t seem to suffer from student drunk driving for two reasons: (1) There is ZERO affordable parking available during the day within a few blocks of campus and very limited parking in the near-campus Berkeley neighborhoods, so no undergrads had cars, and (2) all the drinking hot spots were within walking distance of campus and student residences! It seems counter-intuitive to want to put bars close to students, but I’d be curious to see data comparing student drunk driving instances to proximity of bars to campus/student housing.

Really, public transit is a win-win-win-win: less air pollution, better cardiovascular health for people who walk more, fewer drunk drivers, less sprawl.  Frankly, I can’t think of any downsides.

But then white people have to share public space with BLACK PEOPLE! ZOMG!!!111!!one!!!

It seems counter-intuitive to want to put bars close to students

Not from a business perspective.

In addition to the “better facilities” argument that Harry R Sohl pointed out, and Amanda’s “more regular schedules and faster”, trains, including light rail are much more capital intensive.  This means that routes are far more likely to stay in place, which means that if you depend on a specific route, you’re less likely to be screwed 2 years down the line when they redo all the bus lines.

Annie is right. 

I lived in Lexington, KY for eight years from 2000-2008.  There the local police wait for UK students to emerge from bars on foot and then arrest them for public intoxication as they walk home.  Makes me wonder whether they were trying to encourage drunk driving, which has a higher “yield” to the local budget.  All university towns are not like this, however.  In Athens, GA (admittedly a long time ago) the only way to get arrested for public intoxication was to be found directing traffic while naked.  And even then the local police would ask first if anyone in the crowd knew the jackass in the middle of the street and would be willing to take him home.

Of course, this police behavior is probably part and parcel of the infantilization of everyone (including Chimpy McFilghtsuit, who got a pass on adolescent behavior until he was 40).  If you are old enough to get drafted, sign a binding contract, or commit a capital or other infamous crime and be punished as an adult, you are old enough to drink.  Period.

Some Universities contract with the city bus to provide student bus service as part of fees.  Student ID gets a bus ride anywhere.  Part of the contract includes ‘Night Rider” bus to get students to and from community activities (including bars) safely.

MADD would do well to promote public transit as a way to reduce DUI.

Train routes are also often easier to figure out, with their clear maps and designated stops. Even if you find a bus schedule with a map of the route, they often specify only the start and end points, without listing the stops in between.

I used to live in Pittsburgh and I never could understand why the buses stopped running a half an hour before the bars closed. I always said that they should make a whole campaign into having just one run from the areas with the most bars to residential neighborhoods after the bars close at 2am. Particularly considering that there are hardly any cabs in that city and you can’t just hail one, you have to call for one.

I’ll add that I think another problem with talking about these issues like grown-ups is the witch hunt phenomenon.  If you defend the rights of people who have certain kinds of sex (promiscuous sex being the big no-no right now) or who drink or use drugs, then suddenly people think that you’re One Of Them, and will dismiss you for it.  I see it a lot in my defenses of the so-called hook-up culture.  Even though I’m in a monogamous relationship that’s easy enough to verify in our super online culture, I get accused of being a drunken slut by people who are trying to dissuade me from defending the rights of women to be promiscuous.  Same problem when you talk about protecting drunk people from their own worst decisions.  People think you’re a drunk.

MADD would do well to promote public transit as a way to reduce DUI.
bakho on 01/11 at 01:08 PM

That assumes that MADD is an anti-drunk driving group and not a neo-prohibitionist group.  If they were the former, they should disband or shrink; what more can they possibly accomplish?  Legal penalties are severe, social penalties are severe, and employment prospects can be destroyed.  It’s pretty much a disaster to get a DUI in most states, so much so that I think enforcement is actually more lax than it should be in some places.

In Athens, GA (admittedly a long time ago) the only way to get arrested for public intoxication was to be found directing traffic while naked.  And even then the local police would ask first if anyone in the crowd knew the jackass in the middle of the street and would be willing to take him home.

I think they’re working on changing this (although the AJC’s archives aren’t terribly user-friendly and I’m having trouble finding the link).

But then white people have to share public space with BLACK PEOPLE! ZOMG!!!111!!one!!!

Indeed--the world might end.

then suddenly people think that you’re One Of Them, and will dismiss you for it

This is why I don’t really talk about the fact that I’m in favor of decriminalizing possession of marijuana.  I’ve never smoked pot, but I assume that if I say I support legalization everyone will think “oh, she’s just a stoner looking out for her own best interest.”

What the hell is wrong with those kids? The whole point of going to college is to learn to smoke pot instead of drinking.
They could be sitting quietly with their friends, sharing a bowl and talking life over, instead they go to noisy, uncomfortable and dangerous bars to consume alcohol? How the hell did they get into college in the first place?

Went down to Vegas once for a friends’ wedding. I’m from Vancouver, and I take public transit all the time. This is no big deal to me. My wife and I decided to go to a murder mystery dinner, which was a blast. We were overdressed and decided to splurge on a limo to get there; me in my suit, her in her qipao.

Coming back, we were feeling much more poor, so we figured we’d take the bus. Could see that downtown was that way, waited at what looked like an appropriate bus stop. One of the actors from the dinner came over and was surprised and alarmed we were taking the bus. “It’s for… well, people who ride the bus are… not normal.” He gave us a ride back to the strip where our hotel was rather than let us take the bus. Nice of him, but… honestly, we could have just taken the bus. We’re used to weirdos.

In that case I think it was more a class thing than a race thing (what with the actor being black, I don’t think he was worried about us encountering other black people).

The problem with public transit is simple: as the conveyance of last resort, it is the conveyance of people who are on their last resort. I’m sorry, but drunk or not, I don’t want to sit on the bus next to the guy who’s masturbating under his trench coat or the shrieking mentally ill (presumably) homeless guy who smells like a dumpster crawled up inside a rotten cow. The buses I’ve ridden are generally quite safe and convenient during the daylight hours, but at midnight? Wino central.

The “solution” to this problem involves having the cops be assholes to people on the margins, which is not really a “win”. Which is more important, college kids able to ride back to the dorm so that they don’t have to make the awful choice between a cab or one more drink, or homeless guys able to get back to the shelter?

Take a cab, walk, or stay home.

“oh, she’s just a stoner looking out for her own best interest.”

Something people who drink are notoriously incapable of doing.  Anytime you shikkers wanna match bowl-for-shot and then drive home I’m ready.  Just to add extra frisson, let’s do it with motorcycles.

Leave No Turn Un-stoned!

The drunk driving problem could also be solved rapidly and without resorting either to prohibition or excesses of criminalization.  Simply equip every car with an interlock that requires the driver to blow less than the legal limit before the car will start.  The technology is available, and is imposed on DUI convicted offenders in some states.

It’ll never happen.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, I’m aware that if they have money for booze, they should have money for a cab, but I suspect that grousing and scolding isn’t going to change this calculation any time soon, so it’s time for us to work with the kids that we’ve got instead of the ones that we want.

i’ll speak from experience and say that it’s often the case that drunk students really *don’t* have the cash for a cab for the ride home. too often the point of college drinking is to get SuperDrunk, and spending every last dime on drinks and tips to the hawt waitresses. college is where one learns “how to drink,” and it is only logical to provide college students with as much late night, free/cheap public transportation as possible.

we’re such stupid puritans in this country. i was recently in England, and those people drink constantly, and don’t think twice about it. heh, one of the cabs i took home from a london gay bar had a public service announcement, “try two alcohol-free days for a change!”

Stock your home bar and stay put.

Dan, I take the bus all the time, and have never had that problem.

Prof, that doesn’t address how to get the drunk person home safely, though.

Bedbug, cute, but again, we’re talking about addressing behavior as it really exists instead of ineffective scolding.

@annie - there is a difference between being visibly drunk and being too drunk to drive.

“"I’ve been saying this for years, and I’m glad that it’s finally catching on as part of the argument for why the federal government should make a huge investment in making American cities more walkable---they reduce drunk driving. “

There are laws against walking drunk, too. Public intoxication is a nuisance itself, but obviously still preferable to driving.

How about a policy that makes getting so stoned you are a danger to yourself or others carries some social cost?

@KLG - OTOH, walking while intoxicated and wearing a UK jersey might present more of a problem than walking out of the same bar with the same BAC wearing a shirt and tie.  If I were a shithouse lawyer, I’d bring that up at my client’s hearing, should any of them wish to take the matter to court.

Does anyone have a safety issue with this?  As a college-aged student from Seattle who relies on public transportation entirely to get around when in town, I’m blessed to have a home on one of the few routes that runs more or less consistently throughout the entire night.  I still don’t usually even consider the bus an option when I’m out late.  When I was in high school I refused to take the bus home after 10 PM or so unless someone else was going with me.  Even now, I try to get someone to wait at the stop with me if I need to take it home.  It’s a lot safer on the buses than waiting for the bus, because if you sit near the front the bus driver will be looking out for your safety.  Even so, my rate of harassment on late-night buses is light years higher than on buses during the day, to the point where I can only think of one trip I’ve taken after midnight that has passed without incident.  Waiting for the buses is even worse, and they’re very inconsistent that late, so you’re going to be doing it for a while.  For instance, on New Year’s Eve, I decided to take the bus home from a rockin’ party at a friend’s apartment at around 3:30 AM.  I looked up time tables online, arrived there about 10 minutes early.  I waited for half an hour after the bus was supposed to arrive without success, and during that time, despite being dressed in a heavy coat and suit (it was a drag-themed event) got propositioned as a prostitute three times.  I feel that young women shouldn’t have to endure being assumed to be a prostitute more than once per day.  I finally got sick of it and called back to the friend’s apartment to see if there was room on the floor.

I grew up in a supposedly dangerous neighborhood and I don’t tend to be too uptight about safety, and get scolded about that by friends and parents not infrequently.  But taking late-night buses makes me feel VERY unsafe and, if I had a car, avoiding that prospect is one of the few times I’d be tempted to use it unnecessarily.  So I’m just saying, the mere existence of late-night bus routes is NOT enough, at least for someone in the demographic you’re talking about, if female.

When I was in college, there was a constant back-and-forth about whether the student-run bus service would carry late night routes to the bars. On the one hand, there was general consensus that it was a useful service, but on the other, the drivers hated dealing with drunk jerks and cleaning up puke at the end of their runs.

City bus drivers presumably don’t have to clean the puke themselves, but they do have to deal with the drunk jerks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had safety concerns as well. (I once watched a drunk yahoo sit down on a subway platform with his legs dangling over the side while a train pulled in. The conductor had to stop the train half out of the station until he got out of the way.)

So yes, late night bar runs are great for students and other drinkers, but they suck for the people ferrying those drinkers home.

I know for a fact that such concerns have limited late-night service in at least one college town, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that opposition from drivers is a big reason “drink and ride” PSAs aren’t more common.

The problem with public transit is simple: as the conveyance of last resort, it is the conveyance of people who are on their last resort. I’m sorry, but drunk or not, I don’t want to sit on the bus next to the guy who’s masturbating under his trench coat or the shrieking mentally ill (presumably) homeless guy who smells like a dumpster crawled up inside a rotten cow. The buses I’ve ridden are generally quite safe and convenient during the daylight hours, but at midnight? Wino central.

Though this problem does exist on the NYC subways, it tended to be quite seldom IME....even when I’ve frequently ridden them home after working past midnight.  Secondly, none of my high school classmates nor I ever allowed that to deter us from riding it......even well after midnight in some supposedly “bad neighborhoods”.

Your aversion to taking mass transit sounds similar to that exhibited by many upper/upper-middle class suburban raised classmates/relatives who were raised on stereotype-laden portrayals of NYC and believe they’ll be mugged on every street corner.

Talk of public transportation always makes me nostalgic for Berlin.  They’re PT was AWESOME- during the day, most routes were every five minutes (and no more than every 20 minutes for some of the residential areas).  At night, some of the residential did drop, but the main routes were still all running (which was really great because high heels on cobblestones hurt, let me tell you).  There fleets were all hybrids too, which was nice..

Coming from the frozen north, I have no problem waiting 10 minutes (because that’s normally how long it takes to warm up my car anyway).  I do have a problem waiting a half an hour (particularly since it’s cold).  Our public transit is a joke; in a town that it takes no more than 10 minutes of driving to get from one side to the other, it takes 30 minutes on a bus to get ANYWHERE.  Plus, it doesn’t start early enough for people who have jobs at 6 or 7 am (factory workers), reduces to 1 line (from 6) at 7 pm, and completely knocks off at 11 pm.  Totally worthless.

Of course, since no one uses it, they’re reducing the line again *rolls eyes*

Don’t forget the absence of any kind of local bar/pub in many ‘burbs. Can’t be selling likker near the kids, can we? So instead you get the downtown bars and the scattered roadside joints, no walking possible, driving essential.

On chidyke’s point: British drink culture is troublesome, to be honest—it has the northern European binge culture, with the associated social problems. But you can get a bus into town, get plastered, and either have a night bus running or share a cab home. But the 18+ limit and the expense of running a car generally means that young drinkers generally don’t have cars of their own, and may not have even passed their driving test. The shrugged-shoulders acceptance of driving slightly drunk in the US—i.e. driving when you wouldn’t, were easy alternatives available—is not a good thing.

Some people have suggested giving teenagers the option of a ‘drinking license’ or a ‘driving license’—you can go to bars or drive, but not both. But that doesn’t solve the problem of accessibility for, well, everything in a culture ruled by cars.

The problem with public transit is simple: as the conveyance of last resort, it is the conveyance of people who are on their last resort.

And the solution is simple: if you want to change the demographic profile of “bus riders”, you have to take the bus. If you’re going to wait until everybody else takes that leap, you’ll be waiting for ever. And to be honest, it can be a convenient excuse to avoid taking that leap. (Now, there are other ways to do that too: for instance, integrating the school bus with regular bus service. “But what about the children?” Tch. In other countries, kids take the regular bus.)

Speaking of Athens, GA...during my time there, one guy got busted for a DWI on his bicycle. Granted, he was knee-walking drunk, andwhile he was trying to get started he fell off his bike three times in front of the cop who busted him. I think the cop finally realized he needed to arrest the guy just to keep him from getting hurt.

As for what drives the punitive approach, in the VA legislature, the biggest advocate for extreme punishment for DUI is Dave Albo, a rep whose main outside job is defending drunk drivers, and some of his biggest contributors are the beer and wine wholesalers. It’s sick.

they go so fast and they come by more regularly, so you feel like you have more control, even if that is an illusion.

Trains also don’t get stuck in traffic.  Buses also have many other issues that slow them down.

People have to pay their fare as they get on, which takes forever.  All the trains I’ve ever ridden you have to buy a ticket ahead of time.

All buses have to lower ramps or lifts for elderly or disabled passengers.  Some trains have stairs and no lifts as far as I can see (which must really suck for disabled passengers), but most new trains are at level with the station, so people can just step or wheel onto the train.

Bad behavior by passengers holds up buses far more than trains.  Passengers can generally only hold up a train by holding the doors or committing such an egregious crime the train has to stop at the next station for the police to arrive.  I’ve been a regular bus rider for several years and buses can get held up by confused tourists, fare jumpers, and unruly passengers.  If the unruly passenger refuses to get off the bus, the bus can be held up for 30 minutes waiting for the cops to arrive to remove him/her by force.

In short, buses are a pain in the ass.  Trains are far from perfect, but are still far more convenient and reliable.

I believe Peter Griffin’s personal brand of complete stupidity is illustrative of most people’s hang-ups about buses.

From season 5, episode 3, “Hell Comes to Quahog”:

“OK, who’s drunk, but that special kind of drunk, that you’re a better driver because you know you’re drunk. You know the kinda drunk that you probably shouldn’t drive but you do anyway, because… come on, you gotta get a car home, right, I mean what do they expect me to do? Take a bus? Is that what they want? For me to take a bus? Well screw that! You take a bus!”

This really is a “solve one problem, create another” kind of situation. I’ve been a regular rider of public transit (rail and light rail daily, trolleys and subways weekly, and buses a few times a month) for 20+ years, in a number of cities, mostly on the East Coast. In my experience and observation:

- The class and race stigma of ridership ranges from medium in some places to very high in others. (The latter being the Margaret Thatcher type—“A man who, after the age of 26, finds himself on a city bus, can consider himself a failure.") Given that, it’s hard to accumulate a critical mass of non-socially-marginal riders.

- For those of us who are sober and coming home midnight on weekends, it doesn’t make for a pleasant end to the evening to be surrounded by loud, obnoxious, foul-smelling drunks. Obviously I’m glad they’re not on the road, and obviously it’s not a dealbreaker for me—after all, I’m still on the train. But it certainly isn’t fun.

- The weather issues, personal safety, and general comfort involved in waiting for transit late at night can be considerable, especially but not only for women. It is just exhausting, at the end of a long day, to contend with a guy who thinks it’s his God-given right to get smiles and conversation and attention from you, or worse. Buses that run infrequently or service that is unreliable make this much worse. I know several women with first-shift jobs requiring them to leave home at 4:30 a.m. to be there at 6, and their husbands come down and wait with them at the bus stop because it’s dark, cold, and very dangerous. Granted, they live in an extremely violent part of the city, but they’re not wrong to be wary.

So I’m all for considering drinking habits/patterns in doing urban design and transit planning. I think it would solve a number of problems. I do think it’s important to keep in mind that it would create a few others.

I just returned from Tokyo, where I’d say the public transportation system is the best in the world. The trains are clean and on time and well maintained. And yes, sometimes insanely packed with people. The subways make their last run around midnight, so the 11:55 pm trains were full of drunken Tokyoites - at least one weekends. Getting stuck after midnight means taking very expensive cabs. I read somewhere that the taxi union is all-powerful and has lobbied hard for the late night crowd.

Other than this shortcoming, the trains in Japan put the US (and everyone else) to shame.

Stock your home bar and stay put.

Most of the colleges I’ve been to don’t let students keep booze in their dorm rooms in order to curb underage drinking.  Surprisingly, a lot of them had no issue with grow lights in the closet, though.

How come no one has mentioned the association of butt sex and drinking? Or drunken butt sex driving? It seems to there must be some correlation.

That assumes that MADD is an anti-drunk driving group and not a neo-prohibitionist group.  If they were the former, they should disband or shrink; what more can they possibly accomplish?  Legal penalties are severe, social penalties are severe, and employment prospects can be destroyed.

This.

And this: Drinkers Against Mad Mothers: http://www.sunjambooks.com/DAMM

As an American currently living in Canada, I’ve realized just how integral a decent public transport system is to the future of American cities. *Everyone* uses the transport system here in Montreal, and I’ve traveled home many a late night without much incident. The metro cars are seventies orange but clean, as are the buses, and the buses just increased their service so that they run even more frequently than before. Then again, young people drinking is normalized here to the point of nice, quiet family neighborhoods having at least a few bars, so I do recognize that it’s partly a cultural thing.

Neighborhood bars are much better than having to rely on public transportation, cabs, and driving drunk.  Let more liquor licenses be issued and most of the problem is solved quite easily.  Instead, every college area has an unofficial “drinking zone”, which tends to ghettoize young people into stupid college binge-drinking culture or have to go further to “real” bars to learn to act like “mature” drunk people.

Just another problem caused as much by government trying to control the uncontrollable as it is caused by human stupidity.

As for the person upthread who said ignition locks should be installed on every car: fuck off.  I don’t want to be treated like a child every time I get into my car.  And I really don’t want to have to pay for the privilege.  Why not just insist that all driving be done by professionals?  Since half of all the drivers are below average, Americans just shouldn’t be trusted with cars in the first place.  I am for better driver education and stricter enforcement of everyday unsafe and inefficient driving, and that’s a much better idea than an overpriced--and easily misused, tampered with, or avoided--device on every dashboard.

People have to pay their fare as they get on, which takes forever.  All the trains I’ve ever ridden you have to buy a ticket ahead of time.

Really? In the British city I live in, you can buy a bus ticket at ticket machines by the bus stop, or you pay the driver for a day ticket as you get on the bus, the first time you get on the bus, or - if you ride the bus regularly - you pay for a week or 4 weeks season ticket. Some people have to pay when they get on the bus, always, but generally, people speed through the queue pretty fast.

KLG wrote:

I lived in Lexington, KY for eight years from 2000-2008.  There the local police wait for UK students to emerge from bars on foot and then arrest them for public intoxication as they walk home.  Makes me wonder whether they were trying to encourage drunk driving, which has a higher “yield” to the local budget. 

I lived in Lexington from 1971 through 1984, and never saw this, but that’s an earlier time frame.  I didn’t frequent many bars, the Clubhouse (High on Rose) being the most frequent, and that was within crawling distance of my apartment, though I never got that drunk!

Is the Clubhouse still there?

Of course, last time I was in Austin for the SXSW, the cabbie I got was so drunk he was literally falling asleep at the wheel.  And he was a pretty surly drunk to boot.  I can laugh about it now, but it was pretty scary at the time.  And I still feel guilty for not taking down the license # and calling the police (I was just so happy to get out alive that I spaced).

Godless Heathen wrote:

Most of the colleges I’ve been to don’t let students keep booze in their dorm rooms in order to curb underage drinking.

That’s what fraternities are for: to have a place to keep the beer.

Seriously, it’s more than to just “curb underage drinking,” but to reduce the colleges’ exposure to legal liability.

“I don’t want to be seated next to homeless, smelly drunks on the bus home.”

This is the most frequent argument I’ve heard against public transit.  My question is: who the fuck cares?

There are homeless people.  There are poor people.  These do not overlap with criminals the vast majority of the time, and in general, there are a fair number of people on buses, including the driver (who usually has a radio so he can inform authorities if there’s a problem) so safety isn’t generally an issue on a bus. 

It’s less a safety issue and more a prejudice issue.  I assume this attitude arises from people who grow up in isolated suburban areas where they’re taught poor people are criminals, and that people who are seen around poor people are trash.  It’s classism in the crassest sense--they’re afraid the poor people are going to mug them, and that people will assume THEY’RE poor if seen around poor people.  It seems that some people believe they have a right not to see poor people. or to have them spirited out of sight.  Such people would do well to gain perspective on reality.

“And the solution is simple: if you want to change the demographic profile of “bus riders”, you have to take the bus. If you’re going to wait until everybody else takes that leap, you’ll be waiting for ever.”

I think it’s very hard to make the argument to people to support a shitty service in the hopes that it will improve at some later time.

“Neighborhood bars are much better than having to rely on public transportation, cabs, and driving drunk.  Let more liquor licenses be issued and most of the problem is solved quite easily. “

I would say that it depends. I had a ‘neighborhood’ bar up the street from me that was a magnet for drugs, prostitution, rowdy behavior, trash, etc. I don’t think my neighbors in that case felt like more bars were the answer.

MADD would do well to promote public transit as a way to reduce DUI.

MADD doesn’t want to reduce DUIs.  MADD wants to end drinking.  MADD also wants to continue to exist as a perpetual lobby.  The reduction of drunk-driving rates has resulted in MADD simply ramping up its demands for harsher penalties, fewer civil liberties, and more and more restrictions on alcohol.  My god, its founder, Candy Lightner, has stated She has since stated that MADD “has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving”.

Let’s not forget, too, how fast-and-loose MADD is with statistics regarding “alcohol related” deaths.

jdw, of course it depends.  It sounds like you had a bad neighborhood as well as a bad neighbor, which is doubly unfortunate.  And I wasn’t saying get more bars right next to each other, since I said that was the problem in the first place.  More smaller bars would be less of a problem than fewer and generally bigger bars, I believe.  Can’t promise utopia, but it’s probably better than the status quo in most places.

jdw, the fact that homeless people ride the bus doesn’t make the bus poor service.  It’s something that the city could only change by infringing on people’s civil liberties and targeting the most vulnerable people to boot.  Other people riding the bus does impact the way it feels to be on the bus.  My local bus stops on campus on the way downtown, and the mood lightens significantly on the bus when a rush of young people having fun get on.  I have some positive experiences on the bus, like when everyone on the bus burst out laughing when they saw Marc and my Halloween costumes.

Dana:

Clubhouse is still there, I think.  Two Keys, too.  Your time in Lexington overlaps with my time in Athens, so the new police behavior in both places is likely the result of a drinking age of 21 rather than 18.  I knew plenty of drunks in college, some of whom left after a freshman GPA of 0.33.  But cases of alcohol poisoning were unheard of.  Not the case now, is it, with drinking driven underground by MADD hysteria.  Glad to see the antipathy to MADD in this thread.  They really are a bunch of WCTU types, without the sense of humor.

Is it so wrong to offer a safe alternative

In the usual conservative/economic libertarian formulation, it absolutely is:

1. Sidewalks and mass transit cost him money, even though he drives his own car and doesn’t use them.

2. His vision of utopia generally resembles an Arizona gated exurb (or alternately the US Embassy complex in Baghdad): no sidewalks, one driver per core, no scary “different” people.

3. He’ll be the first to tell you that public transit is unsafe, poorly maintained, etc. Of course, that’s due in large part to underfunding driven by point 1, but it’s easier to put the blame entirely on those scary “different” people.

4. Punishment for “moral vices” is more satisfying (and easy!) than limiting the damage they do. It must give him, after being hit by a drunk driver, a sense of moral superiority as he awaits his amputation in hospital.

It’s less a safety issue and more a prejudice issue.

Number one:  As I stated earlier, I use the bus to get everywhere, and that’s because I like it.  I make a conscious decision not to drive.  I think the classist/racist/whatever reasons that people come up with against riding the bus are close-minded and ridiculous.

On the other hand, from the perspective of a young woman, I have to question this assertion.  Yes, your physical safety usually isn’t a concern once you’re on the bus.  But waiting for it roots you in one obvious spot for a long period of time, often an isolated spot.  It makes you a really obvious target, especially in the nighttime, when a young woman standing alone on the sidewalk is an anomaly.  And even on the bus, harassment is a huge problem.  Bus drivers will interfere if there’s physical assault, but more low-key harassment is something you have to deal with on your own.  And it happens.  Myself and all of my female friends who have taken the bus on a regular basis since their teens have numerous and colorful stories of harassment, ranging from the humorous to the scary, both verbal and physical.  You get used to it, but that doesn’t keep it from being a very real problem, probably one of the biggest ones with using public transportation in my opinion.  And it’s always scary when it’s happening to you and you don’t know how far the other person is going to escalate it.

I feel like saying that’s not a safety issue really discounts the issues women face in public spaces in our society.

Woo, Montreal!
...ahem, the buses suck during the winter when affected by snow and some of the heavier lines I’ve lived near. Which makes it important to live near a metro station instead, because they only stop for excess humidity (ha!). But I’m a poor student and love this fair city’s PT fully and (un?)reasonably. Sure the metro stops early: 12:30am weeknights and 1:30am weekends, and the late buses are never all that convenient, but I have never worried excessively about taking the bus or walking home in the wee hours of the morning as a woman(although I’m *more* likely to walk the whole one-hour-plus from downtown if drunk).

I have a friend who occasionally drunk drives, we try to shame him but if he brought his car out then you really have to be aware and steal his keys otherwise he will sneak away from our demands that he crash one of our(nearby!) couches for a couple hours. I understand the buses are really shitty in the suburb he lives in compared to the main island but it drives me up the wall.

Really, public transit is a win-win-win-win: less air pollution, better cardiovascular health for people who walk more, fewer drunk drivers, less sprawl.  Frankly, I can’t think of any downsides.

But you are vastly less powerful than the Oil industry, and they can think of lots of downsides.

<I feel like saying that’s not a safety issue really discounts the issues women face in public spaces in our society.
Jennnifer S.>

Yeah. I lived in Seattle in my early twenties. I relied entirely on buses and walking. Harassment was very frequent. Like daily. And bus drivers don’t do shit.

And by harassment, I mean actual physical contact, not just “hey baby” stuff. I’d share anecdotes, but they’re so numerous, it all just became part of my day to day life.

Still, like Jennifer, I used public transit, because I had to, I couldn’t afford a car, and I didn’t actually want a car. And because I detest car culture, I still rely on public transportation in the city where I live now. I’m older, and not as much of a target, but I still use public transport differently than, say, my boyfriend. As do all women - the few times I’m out very late on a weeknight, it’s striking how few women, particularly lone women, are using the subway.

Brandon - you really have no fucking idea. It’s not just classism and snobbishness. There are legitimate safety concerns for many people, just not for you. Must be nice to have that kind of personal freedom. Hope you appreciate it!

Obvious similarity between public transportation and sex: to do it safely, you have to plan for it ahead of time. You have to know where the stops are and which route to take, and ideally you want to take the public transport to your drinking binge as well as back, because otherwise you’re hung over all to the 23rd circle of hell and you have no idea within a square mile of where you or your friends parked your car. (As a former new yorker, I’m completely effing spoiled with this—when I was drinking two or three pints a few nights a week, it was all of a five-minute walk home. Did have a long conversation with a bus driver once about how the crosstown buses through the park would be full when then bars let out though.)

I’m trying to figure out the shape of a service that would reconnect hungover drivers with their vehicles the next day at affordable cost; avoiding two or three ER admissions a year would probably cover it.

KLG: A monstrosity of a “new” multi-store kiosk was built at the corner of Rose and Euclid while I was there.  The Two Keys was in the old, ramshackle - to use a polite word - building that had been there, but it was never the same afterward. I think they moved out of the new building, but I’m not sure.

Most of my alcohol consumption—which was never al that much—was at the Clubhouse, with afew stints at the Library (a late 70s disco on Euclid, that I think is gone now) and 803 South.

The famous Curitiba bus stops fix some of these problems— they’re enclosed and level with the bus entries, you pay when entering the stop, not the bus. I’d like to combine that with some carefully maintained cameras and police call buttons, against human hazards, but it would be nice almost all the time to be out of the weather while waiting.

“jdw, the fact that homeless people ride the bus doesn’t make the bus poor service.  It’s something that the city could only change by infringing on people’s civil liberties and targeting the most vulnerable people to boot.  Other people riding the bus does impact the way it feels to be on the bus.”

Did I say anything about homeless people? I may be mixed up, but was referring to a poster that posited that shitty bus service can be made better if more people used it, which seemed sort of backwards to me insofar as a business owner I can’t say, ‘buy my products that are shitty today if you ever want them to get better later.’ That’s a very hard sell.

But my original point stands: walking while intoxicated/public intoxication is illegal and unsafe so I think it would be preferable for society to first try to make it socially unacceptable, rather then exacerbate the problem by encouraging it ot just accepting it as a given.

I take the bus all the time, and have never had that problem.

You live in a boutique college town. Lucky for you - and I mean that, I’d love to live in Austin some day - but in a lot of places the buses are filled with scummy people. Is that classist of me? Probably, but when I’m coming home from the night shift I do not need to be surrounded by rowdy drunks and vomit-encrusted hobos. I (being a quite privileged white man) didn’t even think about sexual harassment of women on the buses, but that does happen too, and a previous commenter is right - the drivers don’t do shit. So my bad for my comfort bubble invisibling the oppression of other people, but add it to the list of reasons why riding the bus late at night is a crappy idea for a lot of people. I think your comfort bubble of living in a small city full of educated yuppies is causing some invisibling of the problems in your perspective.

I may be mixed up

Yes, you are. Go back and try again.

I’d like to see existing public transit systems extended to run every half hour or so until bars close, but it can be so expensive the transit systems don’t recoup the cost of operating trains/subway/buses with such limited ridership.

I’m a fervent advocate of public transit development (and specifically moved to a city with multiple types of PT easily accessible from my home, so that I can live car-free) but I’d rather see it grown around commuter needs so you can build a dedicated ridership and identify traffic patterns that can be overlaid with PT.

I don’t think my neighbors in that case felt like more bars were the answer.

Clearly, that’s because all local bars are by definition marginal places, rather than having been marginalized by zoning and an eew-local-drinking attitude.

I think it’s very hard to make the argument to people to support a shitty service in the hopes that it will improve at some later time.

It’s hard to improve the service when people are better at coming up with objections than they are at supporting it, or lobbying the right people—as this thread amply proves. Dan In Denver has declared that Austin doesn’t count because it’s a yuppie college bubble. Which is usually the cue for a quasi-argument where all cities with popular bus services will be declared somehow anomalous from, I presume, Denver. (When were you last on a bus, btw, Dan In Denver? Just curious.)

Since bus services cannot drag non-"scary", non-ethnic people out of their cars and put them on buses, it takes a degree of buy-in to change things. Treat it like a ghetto on wheels, and that’s what you’ll end up with. Same thing applies if you live in a marginal area: you can try to make it better, cower behind triple-locked doors, or move away.

Anyway, thoughts drawn from time in other countries: when schoolkids and seniors ride the city buses, it changes the way buses are perceived. (Let’s not forget that a 70-something with poor eyesight can be as big a risk as a drunk.) And if times get hard over the next couple of years, more people might end up on the bus, no matter what.

I took the bus fairly often in the small southern city I went to grad school in- usually in the AM- service stopped at 10, and I got off work at 10:30, so I never rode late night. It was clean, orderly, and generally pleasant, with a surprisingly high number of white people, especially compared with richmond, VA, the only other town where I rode the bus much.

It was also really underfunded, and you could be standing around on the sidewalk in the cold for half an hour waiting- but that’s a problem everywhere. They need to install those systems you see in every subway station, that tells you when the next train will be there.

One issue that hasn’t been explicitly raised is the intersection of personal safety and intoxication… not other people’s intoxication, but one’s own.

If I lived in city where I felt I had to be wary at the bus stop or on the bus late at night, then I’d be doubly wary of taking the bus while intoxicated.  All the faculties that are impaired by drinking—alertness, judgement, reaction time—are required in dealing with any sort of self-defense situation, physical or otherwise.

I’m not saying I’d feel any better about driving drunk, but that could be another reason women might be leery of using public transportation after drinking.

(When were you last on a bus, btw, Dan In Denver? Just curious.)

A few months ago. Denver’s buses are a mixed bag - it really depends on when and where you’re riding.

In my salad days I rode the bus all the time. My tolerance for drunken puke hobos was higher then, but I didn’t love it then, either.

I live in Prague. Almost everybody uses the public transport here, so it’s quite safe and clean, and the lines cover the city quite well. In fact, I don’t even have a driving license, because I really don’t need a car here. Regarding safety at night – the metro is always safe, I’ve never had a problem. Unfortunately, it stops at midnight, which is quite early. There are late night buses and trams that run through the whole night, but you need to plan ahead when to leave the pub, if you live at the edge of the city and you don’t want to wait for fifteen or thirty minutes at the bus stop. When I used to go home alone, I usually used the last metro or, if I wanted to leave later, I arranged with friends to stay over. With my boyfriend, I often use the late night trams without trouble. There are all kinds of people on the trams, drunk and sober, homeless and middle-class. But most of them, I think, are young or youngish people returning from pubs, clubs and cinemas. It doesn’t feel too dangerous, but I suppose sooner or later I’d be harassed by some drunk if I were on my own.

On the whole however, I think public transport is much safer for women than a car-dependent culture. It gives you independence when you go out for a date. I shudder at the thought of having to get in the car with someone I barely know, not to mention letting him know where exactly I live so that he could pick me up / drive me home. With public transport, you just meet downtown, go in a cinema / café, go for a walk through the city centre, and then part your ways at the metro station. Plenty of people everywhere, you’re always safe.

Take this description of Prague; why can’t American cities be like this? We have holed ourselves up in suburbia to keep anyone remotely different out of our individual Stepford bubbles. And, as Amanda suggests, drunk-driving policy is more about punishing sin than keeping anyone safe.

“It gives you independence when you go out for a date. I shudder at the thought of having to get in the car with someone I barely know, not to mention letting him know where exactly I live so that he could pick me up / drive me home.”

You can also pick him up or meet at the date-spot.  Obviously not a substitute for being able to get wherever you need to go without leaving a public space, but it’s not like you’re doomed to potentially dangerous situations with dates you don’t know well if public transport isn’t workable where you live.

Abso-frigging-lutely.  Remember: sober drivers kill more people than drunk pedestrians.

I was a consistent bus rider in Austin for 8 years. It is not a boutique college town. There are 1.6 million people in city and its suburbs. People think of it as a college town, but it’s also the state capital (with all its attendant staff, lobbyists, state offices that make everything in Texas run, etc.), and a major technology center (Dell, Motorola, Apple, etc). It’s not tiny utopia by a long shot.

I must say I was harassed plenty of times on the bus there, ranging from extremely aggressive and repeated attempts to get me to give out personal information, to being groped (granted, it was “only” on my knee, but goddamn, it was MY knee and it didn’t appreciate the invasion). The culture seems to be this: women who are captive in public places are fair game for anything you want to throw at them. If you don’t play nice and submit to the harassment with a smile, you will get yelled at and threatened with violence. However, I experienced this all over Austin, not just the bus, and I attribute it to the Texas good ole boy culture - yell and hoot at the babes, and they damn well better like it. I don’t blame the bus. I blame the patriarchy.

At the same time, the bus got me where I needed to go, I did some of my best reading on my route to work, it was cheap, and it was mostly air conditioned. I was not displeased with the service, but the routes tended to jibe with my destinations. Getting to less common destinations was a pain in the butt. It once took me 3 buses, 1.5 miles of walking, and 2 hours to get from central Austin to a friend’s apartment near Braker. It could use some improvements, but it’s always the chicken-and-egg dilemma: why, ask people influenced by anti-transit forces, would we want to dump more money into a system that isn’t working perfectly? Never mind that it’s not working perfectly because it’s underfunded ...

<The problem with public transit is simple: as the conveyance of last resort, it is the conveyance of people who are on their last resort. >

You obviously have never lived in a public transit friendly city.  Here in the Chi, EVERYONE takes the CTA.  The buses, L, and Metra trains are always packed at rush hour with people leaving/going to work in their business clothes.  Parking is hell here and it is almost always easier/better to take the CTA.  Even when I was serving at a bar downtown and worked weird hours (i.e. off at 4am), I never had a problem.

Granted, that doesn’t mean people don’t have problems on the CTA with crime, harassment, cleanliness, etc.  But overall, it is certainly my preferred way to get around the city.  It also has to due with comfort level and awareness too.  If you are a white person that isn’t too comfortable around black people, well then you shouldn’t take the Red line down to 95th or the Green to the west side…

Annie:  I live in Austin, and I have know people who were busted for public intoxication while walking home.  Even when the reason they were walking home was because they were too drunk to drive.  The cops told them that in Austin, cabs work for free if you’re drunk and so they shouldn’t have been walking home. 

It makes little to no sense, but there you are.  They tried to do the right thing and still got busted because they weren’t doing the right thing by the cops’ definition.

IIRC, the public intoxication laws apply in full to buses around here (San Francisco Bay area) while the trains are exempt.  So you see drunk people piling on to the trains (with their beers still in hand!) instead of onto the buses.  A combination of archaic laws & anti-bus stigma.