Filling the Gap

Weather can make or break a trip across town using alternative forms of transportation – i.e., walking, cycling, bus, etc. – if you don’t have options.

Last week, I traveled to a morning meeting on the bus without a problem. It was a nice morning – sunny, low 70’s. I sat on a bench in the shade – a must in the Austin, Texas sun – for a few minutes while I waited for the bus to arrive.

When I arrived at my destination in South Austin, I walked through a cool, shaded residential neighborhood, arriving only a few minutes later than if I had driven there.

The next stage of my journey, traveling from the meeting location to my co-working space, Conjunctured, was not as pleasant. The weather had changed over the intervening hour and a half – and, not for the better. I found myself standing in 90+ heat at an unshaded bus stop on a loud, busy street with no prospect of a bus arriving for at least 20 minutes.

Not excited about losing part of my workday to another experiment with public transportation in Central Texas, I was on the verge of wishing I had driven our family car to the meeting, when it dawned on me that I could use car2go – one of several car sharing options in Austin. I tend to think of Zipcar when both my husband and I need to drive somewhere at the same time, because it worked so well when we lived in Cambridge. But, car2go was the right option in this situation, because it allows one-way trips.


So, I checked car2go’s website on my iPhone (check out their mobile apps here), found an available car parked less than a block from the bus stop, headed its way, hopped in, and arrived at conjunctured before the bus I was waiting for would have arrived at the bus stop.

In cities like Austin, where many buses run on 30, 45, and 60 minute schedules rather than the 10-20 minute schedules seen in cities with higher ridership, supplementary options like car2go fill an important gap that could otherwise discourage car owners from thinking of the bus system as a viable option for intown transportation.

The fundamental question of when it makes sense to take the bus rather than a form of transportation that you can control – e.g., driving, walking, or cycling – lies in being able to determine whether you can plan ahead to fit your schedule into the transit system’s schedule.

To wit, I rode back home that afternoon from my co-working space on the bus without a hitch. But, that was because I checked the bus schedule ahead of time and organized my work schedule to arrive at the bus stop (shaded, with a bench) several minutes before its scheduled arrival. If I had missed the bus, I probably would have used car2go a second time that day rather than wait in the heat for 45 minutes until the next bus was scheduled to arrive.