What Would You Do? The Driving to Work Edition

Dear Internets,

I am torn. I am truly torn. I couldn’t be more torn if I was a 95% off wedding dress trapped between two bridezillas.

Here is the situation. I currently drive to work 2-3 days a week and attempt to use public transportation the rest of the time. I have to drive on Mondays (band practice in a non-T-accesible location) and Tuesdays (I work 11-7 and the bus schedule sucks at those times). I usually have to drive at least one other day. But I try my darndest to take public transportation. And, when the weather is nice, I ride my bike. The weather has rarely been nice this year and I am now done riding until Daylight Savings Time returns. Mama didn’t raise no fool. My commute would be attempted-suicide now that it gets dark at like 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

*Mumbles something about our country’s addiction to fossil fuels*

*Mumbles something else about terrible, terrible road rage*

This is a perfectly workable situation. I wish that the MBTA didn’t quite suck so badly, but I can deal with it. So, why do things have to change?

Our department is moving our office spaces. This is mostly a good thing, although I will miss the ability to close my door and be anti-social when I have to start sharing an office. The only catch? We’re moving to a location that is very, very far away from where I usually find free parking. Also? The City of Somerville is doing away with all of their free parking. So, the available pool of non-permit/non-staff-parking spaces is going to get much smaller. And a lot of the spaces are going to be very far away. Almost as far away as my bus stop, which is going to go from being a manageable 15-20 minute walk away to a totally untenable 30-40 minute walk away.

So, what’s a girl to do?

I could give up on driving/taking the bus and start commuting into downtown Boston with Kristian and taking the subway from there. The new office is far from my bus, but not any further from the T than I am now. I drive in with Kristian on days when I miss the bus and it sortof works. We get to spend a little time together, which is nice. What’s not so nice? I’m usually about 15 minutes late on those days. My boss says he’d be ok with this, but I’d feel somewhat weird about it. Also, I’d be completely screwed on days when Kristian isn’t working anywhere near a T stop.

Logically, I am pretty sure that the answer is to stop being such a cheapskate and pay for an actual staff-permit instead of trying to find free parking on the local streets. The natural progression from that would be to pretty much start driving all the time. I’d give myself an extra hour every day where I wouldn’t be commuting. I would never have to deal with angry bus drivers or smelly fellow passengers. It’s silly to pay for a parking pass and never use it. I could claim that I was going to purchase a pass and then take the T anyway, but we all know that would never happen.

But, the tree-hugging side of me can’t stand the idea of driving a gas guzzler to work every day. I let Kristian talk me into buying another truck because I assumed that it would spend a good chunk of time sitting in our driveway looking lovely and emitting absolutely no greenhouse gases. The gas mileage isn’t terrible (it’s actually better than if I had bought a Suburu), but it’s not exactly fantastic. Driving all the time would put a lot more miles on it (we’re trying to keep the miles down as it had high mileage when we bought it). It increases the likelihood of something expensive breaking. It means I have to deal with other drivers every day. I’d openly weep every time I had to pay for a full tank of gas. Also, I’m a little terrified about driving my truck in the snow.

I really and truly wish that I had known about the office move or permit change before I bought my truck. I would have bought a cute little hatchback and we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.

So, what would you do?

I see my options as this:

1. Stop whining. Purchase parking permit. Drive to work every day. Enjoy the extra free time. Ignore annoying little voice yelling about climate change and peak oil.
2. Stop whining. Don’t purchase parking permit. Deal with extra long commute time. Pretend to enjoy long walk from free parking and bus. Take comfort in having a manageable bike commute when the weather improves.
3. Go to sleep tonight. Wake up tomorrow magically transformed into someone a lot more hard core. Start biking to work in rain, sleet and snow. Purchase light for front of bike. Start attending Critical Mass events.
4. Convince Kristian to purchase me a pony. Name my pony Sparkles. Ride Sparkles through the gumdrop forest, past I-93 and right up to our new office space. Teach Sparkles how to replace projector lamps for me. ??? Profit.

Am I missing something here? Also, does anyone want to trade a Jetta Diesel Wagon for a Tacoma? It’s made of pure awesome. You just need to learn how to drive stick.

Edited to add: Kristian has been tracking the gas mileage on the truck, and it seems to get about 20mpg. The best it ever got was 22mpg and the worst was 17.5mpg. As Beans put it, “it’s not exactly a Hummer.”