My $111.08 Commute from Hell, or Why Technology Isn’t Always the Answer

(BART.gov)

I made it to the office the other day, thanks almost entirely to the wonders of technology. It took me four times as long as usual and cost $111.08.

Now, I consider myself a digitally savvy commuter. I wield the transit apps on my Nexus 5 the way Guy Fieri wields a pork chop.

On this day, though, they failed me utterly. So much so that it made me wonder if I love my apps perhaps a little too much. Here’s my story.

There’s a map for that
I started, as I do each day, by checking Google Maps on my walk to the local Bay Area Rapid Transit station, aka San Francisco’s intersuburban subway. Thanks to the real-time traffic reports Google collects from the Google Maps app and from Waze, I saw that the drive time to SF was 48 minutes — not great, but not awful either. So I elected to wait in line for the casual carpool, where private citizens who also live in the East Bay offer rides across the Bay Bridge so they can take advantage of carpool lanes, cutting 20 minutes off their commute.

(Google Maps)

Yes, people here really do put their lives in the hands of total strangers — and normally it works like a charm. On this day, however, there were more passengers than cars. So I launched my BART Runner app, which offers real-time updates on trains throughout the Bay Area’s commuter rail system. I saw that if I left the carpool line and walked with a determined but not overtly dorky stride, I would just make the 8:47 train.

The train arrived as I ascended to the platform. I bounded up the escalator and into the waiting car, congratulating myself on my exquisite time and app management.

Train in vain
As the train doors closed, the BART driver warned of a “major medical emergency” at the station where I normally disembark and ominously suggested we might consider alternate forms of transport.

Suddenly, my decision to abandon the casual carpoolers seemed a tad hasty. Still, I jammed myself into a prime spot against the wall of the standing-room-only train car and braced for a long commute.

The next station was jammed with people, who filled up every remaining space left in the car. The train crawled to the next station. The doors opened to another, even more packed platform. More people squeezed on. Then we just sat there with the train doors open.

Five minutes passed. Then 10. More and more people showed up at the platform and, apparently unfamiliar with the laws of physics, insisted loudly that we make room for them. Their entreaties were met with (mostly) polite sarcasm.

I thought, Hold on. I have a smartphone. I can solve this problem. So I whipped out the Nexus 5 and begin searching for buses or ferries to take me the rest of the way. Or that is to say I would have, had I been able to actually get a data connection underground.

I decided to leave the train and find alternate means of transit, as the BART driver had so wisely suggested 30 minutes earlier. Also, my head was swimming from oxygen debt, and my stomach was starting to do the cabbage patch dance. While barfing on BART would likely allow me to reclaim a scosh more personal space, it was unlikely to make me popular with my fellow passengers.

Lyft me up
I emerged into the crisp air of downtown Oakland and encountered another stranded commuter named John, busy checking his smartphone. He told me there was a transbay bus stop at the next corner. Eureka! When we arrived at the corner we encountered a line for the bus five times longer than the one to buy an iPhone.

I said to him, “Want to share a Lyft?”

He replied, “Is that like Uber?”

“Yes,” I said, “only the guys who run the company aren’t total $#$@s.”

Read: 18 Things You Didn’t Know About Uber or Lyft — and Some You’ll Wish You Still Didn’t

A third stranger, Lindsay, came up and asked about the bus. I said, “Want to share a Lyft?” She agreed, saying, “Thank god you asked, because my phone just died and I wasn’t sure what to do next.”

(Lyft.com)

I tapped my app to order a ride. Lyft informed me there would be a 200 percent surcharge tacked onto the normal fare because we’re in “prime time.”

I called the driver, a 50-ish guy named David, to ask what it was likely to cost. He told me that the most it’s ever cost him to get from Oakland to SF is around $50. I tell John and Lindsay to each give me $20 and I’ll cover the difference.

When David arrived 15 minutes later, he explained that, because we’d now be able to use the high-occupancy lanes, we’d be “flying” into San Francisco.

But we didn’t fly. We crawled in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Partly because by now everyone had heard about the BART snafu and was doing the exact same thing, and partly because David had only been driving for Lyft for a couple of weeks and took a less-than-optimal path for our approach to the bridge.

It took us about an hour to get into the city, or more than twice the usual time. We dropped my fellow passengers downtown and headed to the Yahoo offices.

Only then did I get to see what Lyft had charged me for this ride: $111.08, with tip. For perhaps the 17th time in two hours I questioned my determination to head into the office, if not merely my sanity.

The mobile savage
And it occurred to me, what if I didn’t have a smartphone in my pocket? What if I didn’t have all this information at my fingertips — or, as was mostly the case, just out of the reach of my fingertips — and had to rely entirely on my finely honed urban survival instincts and pure dumb luck?  

Odds are I’d just have gone home. Or maybe found a cafe and worked from there until the crisis had passed. Why didn’t I do that? Because I was so focused on solving this problem through technology that taking the easy way out didn’t occur to me. Duh.

Sometimes we are at the mercy of larger forces, with problems no venture-funded startup or Kickstarter campaign will solve, no matter how clever.

When I arrived at work I discovered what the major medical emergency at the heart of all of this was: Some troubled soul had decided to end his life by stepping in front of a BART train.

Suddenly my commute, being two hours late, spending a ridiculous amount of money, or any of the other minor irritants of modern living, didn’t seem so awful anymore. I was grumpy but still breathing. And that was more than enough.

Email Dan Tynan at ModFamily1@yahoo.com.