The Cost of Doing Business

In the last two days, I have burned through a $20 metrocard transporting my children to activities all over town.  Perhaps this would have been a good week for an unlimited card, but I haven't bought one of those since I was going to work every day, and you never know until you're midway into your heavy transit week that it's going to be that, and by then, it's just too late.

But this is actually not a post about metrocards.  What I realized in all my transport (which actually included a couple of cabs for when there were a few of us not going far or when it was very late at night) was how specific it all was to being a city family.  If we lived in the suburbs, we'd all be hopping in and out of the car, parking in ubiquitous free parking lots and driveways, perhaps sometimes dependent on traffic and always bearing the expense of gas, but independent of so many things that city life requires--

1.  $2.25 for each bus or subway ride, which is a bargain if you're going across town and way uptown, but annoying if you're going someplace that would be walkable if you'd left enough time or if it weren't late at night.

2.  Riding transportation that is often overcrowded and on which a stranger can destroy your child's carefully made art project, when you'd really rather be driving but would never be able to park your car in order to deliver your kids to where they need to be.

3.  Being out in the dark with the whole of the city, even when you'd rather be enclosed in your car, or better yet, just at home.

I could probably go to 10 with this--the point is, even something as simple as getting around has a price in the city, a cost of doing business.  You simply can't walk to everywhere you want to go, so one way or the other, unless you never leave home (which wouldn't go over too well with the kids), you're going to pay the price.

The day may come when we move out of New York, and I imagine it will be a huge adjustment for me not to have buses and trains and cabs right outside my door.  Perhaps the cost of doing business, at least transit business, is well worth it.