October 31st, 2016 at 11:59pm was a very important time for me. No, not because of the holidays, though they are pretty cool, instead it was the time when Philadelphia's main and only transit system, SEPTA, would announce whether or not they would go on strike due to contract issues and neither sides making an agreement. Once the clock struck, midnight, everything was quiet online. All news about the potential strike silenced. That is until 12:01am on November 1st, then Philadelphia news outlets erupted with multiple sources publishing articles with the same headline, "SEPTA Strike".
It took me a while to take this in. How would I get to school? How would I get to work? How would I get anywhere? Growing up, neither of my parents had a car. To this day, they still don't have car. Myself, a nineteen year old student, I still have yet to even attempt to get my permit. At this stage in life, I couldn't even afford to buy a car, or set time out of my busy days to learn to drive. Having my only option of transportation ripped away from me shook me. By November 2nd, they still weren't off strike. At this point, I'm stuck.
Now obviously, I do have other options. There's always the new trendy way to get around, Uber. Now, I've been in a few Ubers before, but never alone. The idea of Uber to me terrifies me. I could never get into a car with a complete stranger, but now it seems like it would've been my only option. And so, I did it. I took my first alone Uber ride up to school. Despite my fears, it actually wasn't bad at all. The ride was quite pleasant, my driver was nothing but kind to me. Uber actually wasn't that bad for me, I still get a little nervous hitting the 'request ride' button, but eventually that'll go away. (Hopefully)
However, this still leaves me with one worry hanging over me, money. I'm a broke college student with a part-time job, all my money goes right to school. Round-trip, an Uber ride to school would be around $24-$28 for me. Four days a week, just getting to school alone would leave me bankrupt. This isn't even counting the amount of money it would take for me to get to work and back. I couldn't even imagine how much that would cost. For me, it costs $24 a week to do all my traveling. The $24 being how much a weekly transpass costs. A weekly transpass would cost the same amount as one ride to and back from school. Now that doesn't seem fair... does it?
Luckily for me, a friend ended up offering to drive me to and from school, as long as she has time to do it, for a small rate of $3. I'm extremely thankful for that. Now, I still have to take an Uber to work and back, but that's just about $14 roundtrip. Not everyone is lucky as me though. There's still thousands of people in the city left with no way to and from work. No way to and from school, or all the other reasons people leave their house. That only leaves one question... how long will this last?
