Humans have to strike to be heard by systems. Too often, strikers and employers have forgotten their reason for existence – the humans they serve.
Engaging in a strike and relinquishing essential transportation without informing the passengers that they serve is irresponsible and a lack of comprehension of one’s purpose. This turns a strike into pure entitlement and manipulation.
This is not about right or wrong. Both participants are unconscious of all of us humans living/coexisting with each other.
Understood, drivers/maintenance workers have to support their families, the OCTA works on financial principles and has to keep expanding and increasing their profits.
The whole purpose of this service, the passengers of public transportation, are mostly of the lowest income bracket. Passengers are helpless when buses continuously come late or not at all due to “technical difficulties.”
Passengers are thankful that public transportation even exists at all but this does not entitle those services or its employees to forget their source of income.
It is obvious that neither striker nor employer has the awareness that without humans to transport, they are obsolete. There is no need for drivers or buses.
Especially in Laguna, where the last bus (1 route) runs 9:30 p.m. And 8:30 p.m. On weekends, and no Uber or Lyft driver wants to serve Laguna Beach because of too little business. What should workers do that serve Laguna businesses and either don’t have a car or need to save and use public transportation?
Please give us a humane answer why the OCTA was incapable of telling its passengers of the upcoming strike or informing google and their own app that drivers are on strike?
How should passengers who went one way not know they can’t return?
Michaell Magrutsche, Laguna Beach
This year the Dutch are investing 1.1-Billion Euros into new cycling lanes throughout the Netherlands. At the same time hundreds of millions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill are flowing to cities to fund grants for Complete Streets. Meanwhile in Laguna Beach the 2016 PCH Transportation Corridor Plan from OCTA/Caltrans has yet to be discovered by city hall. Maybe 2023 is the year our city hall cuts loose a staff member to complete the application for free federal grant money. For questions address the US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Department of Transportation.