Mobility needed for upward mobility

Let’s go to Delaware Park for the day, shall we?

I wonder what the best way is to get there. Let me cruise over to map.google.com and make myself a map.

Type type click. Lockport, NY to Delaware Park, Buffalo.

If I want to go by car, it’ll take 34 minutes to go 28.2 miles.

But what if I don’t want to drive? There are occasions when I want to go to Buffalo and not have to drive. Or more accurately, not have to drive home.

I could take the bus. It would take an hour and 48 minutes. More than three times the length of time it would take by car.

Heck I could probably bike there just as quickly. Fortunately, Google Maps can figure that out, too — with freakish accuracy, I might add. By bike it would take 2 hours even.

What about Metro Rail? If I add that to the equation, it shaves 34 minutes off the trip. But that’s assuming I catch it at the right time.

Of course, taking the bus assumes that I catch it at the right time. Or for that matter, the right day.

See, NFTA buses don’t run in eastern Niagara County on weekends. Which, ironically, is the best time to go to Delaware Park. It’s also the most likely time that I’ll want to go to Buffalo without having to drive home.

Welcome to Western New York, where having a car is pretty much a requirement. Where we have a train system that travels a whole six miles in a straight line in the city of Buffalo and otherwise our “public transit” is buses, which don’t run on weekends in my neck of the woods.

I have often joked that Western New York is still in the Bush recession. No … the other Bush. I’ve also wondered aloud whether part of the blame for that is our lack of mobility.

Stay with me here.

Let’s say you live in Medina and want a job in Buffalo. With no viable public transportation, you’re looking at a daily commute of 41 miles in 48 minutes if you take the Thruway, or 45 miles in just under an hour if you prefer to not pay the toll.

Assuming 20 miles per gallon, you’re also looking at a daily cost of $15 to get back and forth.

Most people aren’t going to want to deal with that frustration or cost. I mean, $75 a week just to get back and forth to work? So you either have to move to Buffalo or take a job a lot closer to Medina.

For all intents and purposes, Western New York is very segmented. You live in North Tonawanda, you work in North Tonawanda. If you switch jobs, you move.

What if we could live in one place and work somewhere else? It would enlarge the job possibilities for all of us. It would create more competition. And more economic opportunity. It would be good for employers and employees alike.

But with no viable public transportation, forget it. And with no plan by the NFTA to ever improve, we’re just going to have to be happy living where we work. And vice versa.

My question is, why are there no plans to improve? And why are we OK with that?

I understand wanting to be proud of where we’re from and defending Western New York when outsiders mock it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t want to improve. We should all get together at Delaware Park and talk about it.

Just not on a weekend, OK?

Scott Leffler goes places. Just not via the NFTA. Follow his whereabouts on twitter @scottleffler.

Looney GOP keeps playing same Tunes

Shouldn’t there have been a point at which Wyle E. Coyote — super genius — realized that maybe he wasn’t actually that bright and was never going to catch and eat the Road Runner?

Over the course of about 50 cartoons, that stupid coyote devised more and more elaborate plans to catch his nemesis — or on a few occasions, Bugs Bunny. On a few occasions, the coyote was actually able to catch the Road Runner briefly, but he always got away.

The coyote was always his own biggest enemy, oftentimes falling prey to his own traps and looking foolish in the end.

In his book “Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist,” Chuck Jones said that there were certain rules to the Road Runner/Wyle E. Coyote cartoons which he and the writers strictly adhered to. One of those rules was that “The Coyote could stop anytime — if he were not a fanatic.” According to the book, "A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim."

Jones also said that the coyote should be a sympathetic character. He wanted us to want him to catch that Road Runner. He wanted us to feel bad when he fell off cliffs. Or dropped a boulder on his own head.

I guess I should have read the rules when I was a kid because I didn’t feel bad for the coyote. I never wanted him to eat the Road Runner. Just like I never wanted Sylvester to eat Tweety. Or Tom to eat Jerry. Or the dog to get the best of Foghorn Leghorn. Or … well, you get my point.

I just got increasingly angry with the coyote for being such a numbskull. I mean, how many times do you have to make yourself look stupid before you realise that you look stupid? Can we agree that 50 times is enough? What about 40?

Allow me to introduce you to House Republicans — super genuis.

Since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act was signed into law three and a half years ago — and more importantly since the GOP took the House in 2011 — there have been 40 separate votes to essentially kill Obamacare.

In fact, a story in The New York Times stated that the House has spent as much as 15 percent of all of its time on the floor focused on repeal. Fifteen percent of Republican congressmen’s salaries over that time cost us about $17 million, based on numbers from the Congressional Research Service.

But they’re hoping that the 41st time will be the charm. They feel that they’ve devised a newer, bigger, better, faster, Rube Goldberg machine that will drop everything they need into place and allow them to finally get their way with that stupid Road Runner … er, Obama.

This time they’re offering up the entire economy in exchange for Obamacare, threatening to allow the U.S. to default on its loans unless the Democrats willingly give up their prized healthcare reform.

We’ve been here before. The GOP has threatened to shut down government on a number of occasions. They’ve even succeeded a couple times. But just like the Road Runner, the government always seems to get away in the end. Just as it will this time.

Is there going to come a point where House Republicans realize they look stupid spending all their time focusing on one bill that’s now been law for three and a half years while refusing to do anything to actually fix the healthcare system, help the economy, or the long forgotten middle class?

"A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim."

Maybe not.

Scott Leffler loved Looney Tunes growing up. And as an adult. He also thinks that most cartoons are smarter than House Republicans. Follow him on Twitter @scottleffler. Beep. Beep.