After five years of city living as a pedestrian, I got a car.
It was not a purchase I made willingly. In fact, it pains me that I had to give in to acquiring a convenient mule for my travels. I was triumphant years ago when I sold my previous one, delighted to be able to walk most places I needed to be. I thought nothing of a 20-minute trip by foot, there and back. If I had to get somewhere outside of that range, I begged a ride or took the bus, but, over time, the challenge of getting from A to B to A to C to B to A has become greater.
The most frustrating part of having to get a car is that I don’t need it to go to places outside of the city since I don’t really do that often.
No, I need it to trek around the city.
That’s because Harrisburg has such inconvenient means of travel if you don’t have access to a vehicle (see my previous “Road Ramble” article [TheBurg, March 2014] to hear what I think of driving improvement needs around here. All of these one-way streets? This city needs to reconfigure!).
Sure, there are buses, taxis and the recently added Uber service. However, those are not the most efficient or most cost-effective ways if I need to get from my upper Midtown office to downtown to Midtown to Allison Hill and back to my starting point, which is exactly how my days are increasingly going. Never mind what any naysayer says—there are many things to do, see and engage in all around the city.
Okay, so I may have more complicated travels than the average person. While I wouldn’t be so sure of that, the city’s deficient transit system is glaringly obvious even in simpler journeys.
Say, for instance, a person wants to go from Uptown to Allison Hill, there and back, for a visit to Hamilton Health Center or Matangos Candies. To walk it is a crisis of crossing Cameron Street, going up hill, and battling broken sidewalks and steps.
These perils are similar for bike riders and skateboarders. This is even more so if said cyclists and skaters are attempting to share the road, which is where we all know they should be—on the street. However, the take-one’s-life-into-one’s-own-hands element of trying to travel alongside vehicles around here results in these un-motorized wheels on the sidewalks. And the result of that is another peril for pedestrians.
A bus trip requires a transfer, which means getting on one bus, going to the Market Square Transfer Station, and getting on another bus. The only circuit route in the city goes from City Island and circles the downtown Central Business District. It’s clear that route isn’t designed for residents as much as it is for commuters.
Then there’s just the plumb unreliability of the bus system. We’ve all seen the people standing in the middle of the street, peering down the road for an anticipated bus running late. It’s also worth pointing out that it can be quite uncomfortable for riders to wait on a bus. Few bus stops have benches or even trees to cut the heated wait.
A taxi cab? Uber? Yes, those are options and ones that can be expensive, especially if these are the only means of travel, especially for work. And, quite frankly, although these services are increasing and getting better in regard to reliability, they don’t make up for the lack of reliable, safe, convenient and inexpensive options in Harrisburg.
In fact, these options can be so expensive and so unreliable that employers will sometimes ask prospective employees about their means of travel to and from work. If someone doesn’t have a vehicle or access to one, chances of being hired can be adversely affected.
Of course, I’m not the first person to call for better mass transit, for safer shared roadways or for a better pedestrian setting. I’m certainly not the first to write about it, and I’m also not the only one to point to other cities and say, “Come on! What’s the hold up? Look at what they’re doing there, and Harrisburg is such a small city. Let’s fix this broken system and provide the residents with better transportation options. We’re a city after all.”
When I do say that, I hear a gamut of reasons why things haven’t changed—from federal bureaucracy to union issues to lack of money to lack of desire.
Bollocks, I say. All of those things can be overcome.
So, it begs the question, what will drive change? Yes, pun intended.
Tara Leo Auchey is the creator and editor of today’s the day, Harrisburg. www.todaysthedayhbg.com