Thursday, April 17, 2008

My Own Private Holiday

As longtime readers know, I usually ride Metro to my job in Washington. I drive on a handful of days, mostly when the demands of my job or family obligations on a particular day can't be served by public transportation. But for the most part, I stick to mass transit because it's more green. More green for the environment. More green in my pocket, especially when you factor in the cost of garage parking or the less expensive hassle of street parking, which requires a lot of quarters and moving your car to another block every two hours to evade the evil clutches of the DPW ticketwriters.
The dozen or so driving times a year I view as a luxury--the ability to listen (and sing along) to whatever I want on the Sirius, freedom to eat, drink or spit, and a comfortable reclining leather seat to boot. Not to mention commuting time of 30 minutes versus an hour on public.

Some of my driving days are the Federal holidays when ScroogeTech, my employer, is open for business. Traffic is lighter than normal, and to slam-dunk the deal (since these coincide with D.C. holidays), street parking is free, unlimited and readily available around my office. Occasionally I'll see a meter that's been paid on a Federal holiday, but for the most part, everybody knows the deal.

As an additional disincentive to use mass transit on holidays, a few years ago Metro felt enough private-sector businesses like ScroogeTech were open so they could justify charging full fare and parking fees as if these were regular working days. Some of my co-workers who normally do the mass transit thing join me in thumbing our noses at Metro and have joined the driving/free parking revolution.

So, you're probably asking yourself, why am I bringing this up in the middle of April--two months since the last Federal holiday and one month before the next? Simple. In Washington, D.C., April 16th is Emancipation Day, honoring the day in 1862 that Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, freeing 3,100 slaves in D.C. some nine months before the more famous Emancipation Proclamation.

Emancipation Day receives virtually no publicity. Why? For starters, it has only been in existence since 2005. If a tradition has somehow managed to develop from the three previous Emancipation Days--a parade, for example--today's visit from the Pope has pretty much utilized every available city resource and left Emancipation Day in the shoeprints of the fisherman.

More notably, nobody gets the day off except D.C. government workers, who are but a blip in a workforce dominated by Federal and private-sector employees. I would conservatively venture to guess that 99.9% of those who need to work on April 16th have absolutely no clue they're doing so on a D.C. holiday.


But here's the really nice part of D.C. Emancipation Day. Some of those D.C. government workers taking the day off are the aforementioned DPW ticketwriters, and--with nobody to enforce them--meter payments and two-hour limits, among other parking regulations, are waived.

Being the only one to know about this holiday gives me--for one day, anyway--comic book superpowers I have only dreamed of. I leave my car on the street for the day and put nothing in the meter knowing I am invincible from ticketing, while thousands of others are locked into the programmed street parking drill--move the car, cough up another eight quarters, set the countdown timer on your cell phone for just under two hours.

Looking at the meters while walking the streets to go to lunch and back, the streets are full of parked cars and fed meters. I see only four or five meters with no time on them in my six-block walk, which is a typical number on a normal workday.

I should put on my Kevlar jockstrap before I post this, but I respect the DPW ticketwriters and the work they do. Like them or hate them, you have to admit that they are among the most competent, efficient employees in the D.C. government and they follow through on their assigned duties fairly (unless, of course, you're the one who just got ticketed). Those who hate them feel they're exempt from the rules and can take up a parking space for more than two hours or refuse to pay for it. The real reason for the two hour limit isn't to make commuters play an environmentally unfriendly version of musical chairs, it's to make short-term parking available for those conducting business (and no, that's not an eight-hour workday). Conduct your business, and then please leave the area.

While we may not like to admit it, everybody has a little schadenfreude in them; my daily dose comes from walking the streets around my office and seeing the ticketed cars belonging to those who feel they're above the law. My bonus comes when I see someone trying to negotiate with the DPW guy after he has started the ticketing process. Once it's printed...he's dead, Jim.


But on my own private holiday, my schadenfreude mode goes into reverse, and becomes a public education obsession. In my three years of knowing about the holiday (including today), I've saved at least twenty people from pumping hundreds of quarters into the meters and moving their cars. Some of these are co-workers, but most are freshly-parked total strangers I've seen reaching into their pockets who were genuinely appreciative of my intervention.

And there are always a few cynics--including one today--who question the sanity of a total stranger telling them that they could park for free at will without incurring the wrath of the DPW. Some continue to pump quarters into the meter as I tell them; others subtly wait until I walk away to do so.

The flipside of publicizing D.C. Emancipation Day is that someday I won't be able to get a parking space with all the added drivers taking advantage on a busy workday. But at this pace, I'll be long-retired by then. Anybody who has ever given out the name of their exclusive babysitter to a friend and then finds her unavailable when you need her knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Look forward to next year's blurb on D.C. Emancipation Day. But for now you'll have to mark your own 2009 calendar to remind you, as I won't until it's over.

Monday, April 14, 2008

License to E-Mail?

I read an interesting piece last year on the debate about licensing requirements for senior drivers. Okay, I really didn't read it last year, and just Googled to find something to fit the lead-in for this piece. But anybody who's ever been to Florida knows what I'm talking about: that moment you're stuck behind a 2001 Continental doing 46 mph on I-95, and all you can see is a fedora over the steering wheel. You know to keep your distance and prepare for their reverse lights to come on after they miss their exit.

But a car is nothing in the hands of seniors struggling to maintain a sense of independence in the world today. Yesterday, I began lobbying my Congressman for legislation to require licensing before seniors are allowed to send and receive e-mail.

My proposal first requires identifying the target audience with a simple test:

1) Ask them for their e-mail address. If they give you their AOL screenname with no "@aol.com," they're subject to the licensing requirement.

2) Give them your own e-mail address. If they ask "is that with a capital 'C'?," they're subject to the licensing requirement.

As further evidence, I provided my Congressman with examples of the unlicensed senior e-mailers currently cluttering my inbox.

The Western Union e-mailer. My Dad doesn't always have a lot to say, but when he says something, it's short and to the point.

Dad grew up poor through the Great Depression, and treats e-mail like we're living in 1940 and he's writing a telegram, being charged by the word. Also, he never really learned to type, so fewer typed words are easier while longer treatises are still delivered in his illegible retired physician's longhand.

The few messages I get from him via e-mail are usually all caps, with all the charm of World War II-era death notices. But in Dad's inimitable style, they're short and to the point.

WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU MOM AND I CANNOT BABYSIT STOP CAN YOU PUT IN TONER CARTRIDGE STOP LOVE YOU STOP

The Telephone Confirmer. These are the seniors who have no trust in the reliability of electronic communications, but nevertheless use them so they can be viewed as being in touch with the times. But they find the need to followup with more conventional communications immediately after hitting the "send" button.

I work with a guy like this. My in-box dings, I read his e-mail. Within minutes, either the phone rings or he'll appears personally at my office door to confirm receipt.

Telephone Confirmer: "I just sent you the latest data for the Pinsky file."

Me: "And if you didn't have such shpilkes, you'd see my response back in your inbox."

Then there's the variant to this, the Jewish Senior Telephone Confirmer. If you've been contemplating the purchase of a Blackberry, iPhone or similar device to have instant access to your e-mail, you've just saved yourself a few hundred dollars if your only contacts are JSTCs.

At 11:42, the JSTC sends the e-mail. At 11:44, your phone rings.

JSTC: Did you get the e-mail I just sent?

You want to choose your yes-or-no answer very carefully with this one.

Answer "Yes," and immediately enter into a full-blown discussion on the topic at hand for which you're not adequately prepared.

Answer "No," and you'll get a word-for-word reading of what was just e-mailed to you, immediately followed by a full-blown discussion on the topic at hand for which you're not adequately prepared.
My mom is sort of the Reverse Jewish Senior Telephone Confirmer. Mom freely gives out her e-mail address to others in an effort to appear hip, but--unless prompted to do so--checks her mail about once a month, and then only after you explain how to do it. So I wind up in the role of confirmer/explainer after sending the e-mail.

Me: "Mom, I sent you something Thursday about Uncle Hesh. Did you get it?"

Mom: "I haven't checked. He was going in for bypass or something?"

Me: "Uh...did you want to kick in $25 for a shiva platter?"

The Serial E-Mail Forwarder. This is the senior in whom the Internet has created a newfound sense of humor or cause celebre they feel compelled to share with you. This demonstrates their mastery of not only the "forward" function in their e-mail, but the ability to indiscriminately include all 300 names in their address book; coincidentally, the number of remaining dial-up AOL customers nationwide.

My aunt is the queen of pro-Israel sentiment and virus warnings that are no more valid today than when they first circulated. Yesterday I got one warning me, "If you get an e-mail marked 'Click here for a special surprise from Izzy,' don't click on it!"

From my wife's uncle, we get every misleading illegal immigration argument and "America, Love It or Leave It" tidbit misattributed to Andy Rooney. Battered women and homeless animals from my cousin. And from numerous relatives old enough to personally remember the Borscht Belt-era of comedy, plenty of Borscht Belt one-liners along with things George Carlin never wrote. And lots of sentimental "Remember when...getting stoned was when David slew Goliath?" routines.

I've always gotten along well with seniors, sharing my interests in old movies and early 20th century history that pre-date me by decades, but are still quite fresh in their memories. I think that's why so many of them feel this kinship and comfort in including me in their e-mailings. Seeing myself included in the listing of recipients sandwiched between "Sadie & Manny Feldbloom" and "Sol Lefkowitz" is a mark of honor. And a reminder that my own license to e-mail isn't that far off.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

I've Got A Ticket To Ride (Free!)

The Ride On, MoCo's local bus system, is often the first part of my daily commute to downtown Washington. Ride On has a fare structure, and I take full advantage of it, buying a $20/20 trip ticket that works out to $1/trip. (Having gone through the MoCo public school system, doing the calcs in my head was a snap.)

This low-tech option--your driver punches a hole in one of 20 spaces each time it's used--is 25¢ cheaper per trip than using the more convenient, durable, high-tech SmarTrip card most of us Metrorail riders also happen to carry. So when the last space on the ticket is punched, I go out of my way to do something really frivolous with the $5 I've saved, like buy an extra gallon of milk or gas.

I bought my current ticket over two months ago (January 30 to be exact, as Quicken reminds me) and it still has seven punches left. Sometimes I drive to the Metro or catch a ride with a neighbor, sometimes I'll walk the two miles to the train if the weather is decent, and then there's an occasional day off to go find brisket in Texas or tend to a sick MoCoKid at home. But there's no way I've only used the Ride On just 13 times in the last two months. Something's not right here.

Then I thought about it some more. A few weeks ago, I gave my driver the pass for punching. And he tells me his bus isn't "equipped" with a hole punch. ("Equipping" isn't a major undertaking, as the 99¢ punch is typically connected to the transfer-holder with a cable, string or cheap chain.) He shoos me along to take my seat, free of charge, along with another pass-carrying rider at my stop. The next day--same driver, different bus--there is a hole punch, and I remind the driver that I owe him an extra one. "It's okay," he says, as he punches my pass once.

The next day, he returns with the first bus. Still not equipped. And I'm shooed along to take a seat, my counteroffer to cough up an extra quarter and pay with my SmarTrip card politely rejected. And the next day.

Sometimes, like this morning, he waves me along for no apparent reason when I see the punch hanging there. My speculation was that it takes about 15 seconds to fumble for the hole punch, find the available slot on the ticket (my old driver needed to take time to put on his glasses), punch it and give it back to me. And 15 seconds to deal with my pass now could mean an additional red light down the line, putting him another two minutes behind if he's running late.

But this morning, he wasn't running late. In fact, he was running a minute early. The punch was in easy reach. And once again, I got the wave and no explanation. So here's another theory: A lot of riders on the route are flashing 100 different passes at him (seniors, students, riders of cooperating transit systems) that presumably entitle them to a legitimate free ride, and he waves them on quickly. He couldn't possibly keep track of all of them in his head, so it's easier just to let anyone by rather than checking out what's actually being put in front of him. So just for smiles, tomorrow we'll see how far I get with my Snyder's Creative Pretzel Eaters Club card.

A few times, everyone has gotten a free ride. At least twice I've been on buses that had malfunctioning fare collection equipment, and the driver simply sends everyone to their seat telling them "the box is broken." Then there's the one bus that has no fare collection equipment whatsoever on which I've gotten at least four free rides. Watching the reactions of the passengers boarding this one gives you the eerie feeling that the ghost of Allen Funt is going to be boarding at the next stop.

Then there are the few times everyone has been comped for no apparent reason, accepting a grunt from the driver accompanied by a wave of the hands to take their seats as he rejects their offers of tickets, SmarTrip cards, and cash.

And now I get to look forward to Ride On's public policy free rides. Anyone rides free the week of April 7-13 if they donate a canned/boxed food item when they board. (Note to self: Visit the Giant. Find the marked-down dented cans of kidney beans. Ride On will actually be paying me to ride that week.) And with summer rapidly approaching, everyone rides free whenever the air quality index reaches "Code Red," which around these parts is, oh, pretty much daily throughout July and August.

The ticket itself is made of paper, just slightly thicker and no more durable than what comes out of the office copier. Mine has long exceeded its typical 2-4 week lifespan, falling apart by being removed from and returned to its resting place between the IDs in my badge holder for so many punches that never seem to materialize. The cynic in me has pegged Ride On's business model: Let the ticket disintegrate faster than it can be punched.

The unfortunate irony is that while I'm being given a free ride perhaps half the time over the last two months, MoCo is simultaneously cutting back on or eliminating bus routes to the detriment of some of its neediest citizens in order to close the county's massive budget shortfall. At a micro level, just adding a 99¢ hole punch to one bus would have brought in at least $8 in revenue from me and the other guy at my stop over the course of a few weeks. While I may not be able to extrapolate $400 million in found revenue over the course of a year by ensuring buses are equipped with working fare collection equipment and operated by drivers who will let riders pay what they owe, it could be a start to saving a few needed bus routes and restoring other vital county services.