The 30 day pass is handy, and encourages me to keep a car parked when I go to work. I keep experimenting with places to get on or off the bus. My latest route cuts my commute down to an hour from the original route I was taking. The funny thing is, I don’t think that the route is that much farther to ride. But the crux issue for us, like most families, is getting kids to their evening extracurricular activities. That’s why most families keep a second car. With kids scheduled tight around dinner time, it has been difficult to keep at least one car parked at all times.

I’ve been thinking about how to get beyond the 2 bikes per bus limit. First, I’m going to try to get our tag-along trailer approved as a carry on. If that doesn’t work, I plan to lock our old tag along bike attachment near the bus stop serving a frequent destination. When we dismount from the bus with an extra child along, we could unlock it and attach it to one of our bikes, and haul him along. That means one young child could ride to the first bus stop and lock up his bike there, and then still be able to ride to our destinations served by that bus stop.

The one thing I need is for a couple of the Valley Transit bus routes to be extended to the other side of our interstate highway so that I can safely get my kids to the soccer/baseball parks when they play and practice a couple of times per week. It just isn’t safe for them to ride their bikes on the high traffic roads that cross that barrier.