a brief foray into what I learned in grad school

kind of. in lieu of working I've been doing a lot of thinking, due in large part to Ben's recent post about commuting and unhappiness, followed by Amanda's incendiary comment about living in Lowell, and my recent discovery that I'll be living in Lowell for at least another year, if not longer.

so public transportation in Lowell basically sucks. the bus system is completely out of touch with the needs of people who would actually take the bus to get to work and back. the buses don't run often enough that you could take them and get to work on time, so the buses are often pretty empty. since there aren't enough people riding the buses to justify more routes or more frequent trips, the problem is kind of a vicious cycle.

the bus and train station used to be downtown (good) but when they expanded route 3 and the Lowell Connector, they moved the station to a weird location that's right off the highway, but a long walk from downtown. so ironically, the public transportation is now convenient only for people with cars. although I can't prove it, I suspect that a lot of these drivers live in the suburbs and spend their money outside of Lowell.

so the bus sucks, driving sucks (especially my car), there's no subway, and Lowell isn't especially bike-friendly. however, it's pretty easy to walk places in my neighborhood, and even more so downtown. There used to be a supermarket pretty close to my house, but they closed it and opened a shiny new one directly across the street from another supermarket, in a fancy neighborhood. apparently the hannaford brothers felt that maximizing their profits and squashing the competition were more important than my personal hunger. but there are a few convenience and liquor stores, a 24-hour Walgreens, plenty of restaurants, and some other good stuff within a few minutes walk, and another supermarket about a mile and a half away.

on a related note, I found a cool distraction called Walk Score that calculates the "walkability" of your address. you put in your address and it lists grocery stores, schools, parks, bars, libraries, movies, etc. within walking distance of your house, and rates the address on a scale from 0-100. my house got a 48 out of 100, which is better than I thought, but probably due to stuff like the claim that "Christine L. Allum, Independent Herbalife Distributor" is considered a "grocery store."

Walk Score can't tell you that the nearby bar is a super-shady dive, or that the supermarket closed a year ago. also, it seems to calculate distances "as the crow flies" as opposed to how you would actually walk there (you know, on streets and stuff). I MapQuest-ed a store that Walk Score said was 0.66 miles away, and found out it's more like 1.39 miles. anyhoo, I wouldn't use this to scope out potential places to live, knowing the reality of where I live vs. what Walk Score thinks, but it's a really good idea in theory. check it.