Bedbugs amongst other things may be found on public transportation. . But because it's just that PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION we need to keep it in mind that it's your choice to ride... even if COTA took the precautions to prevent them it want make to much of a difference considering the same pple have the right to ride just like you.... it saddens me to know that there are pple like you ridding around lurking &looking for something wrong ..yes there is a bedbug epidemic in Columbus not just in poverty stricken areas you can go to work n pick them up from your boss ...geeeessshhhh get a car or perhaps get a job with COTA as a coach cleaner and see how many buses stay clean with you on they team... creep
I was gratified to receive my first comment, even if I was called a creep! I did not respond to him personally, but since I've been moribund since I received it in March, I feel obliged to make it my first item of business to do so. Here goes: PTD says "bedbugs amongst (sic) other things may be found on public transportation because "it's just that PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION we need to keep it in mind that it's your choice to ride." Well, I don't think I want to know what "other things" might be found on public transportation--bedbugs and trash are enough. Maybe he knows something I don't. I do take issue with PTD's assertion that COTA riders have a choice. I can bet you that most COTA riders don't feel they have a choice. In fact, for many it is the only option to go to work, shop, visit relatives, or otherwise move around the sprawling megalopolis of Columbus. It's not a choice for us like it is for the giggly gaggles of OSU students who crowd the North High Street line--it's a necessity.
Remember PTD, we live in a city, and in cities, not everyone has the means or the ability to afford to have and maintain a car. Hence, the necessity of public transportation. And like so many these days, you appear to look down on things "public" with its socialistic connotations and the nightmare images of the great unwashed the term apparently conjures among many these days. In fact, the term "public" has become so pejorative that Columbus Public Schools last year officially changed its name to Columbus CITY Schools, presumably to mitigate the negative associations our current (right-leaning) political atmosphere has attached to it. Me, I still believe in contributing to the public good--which PTD, you do as a public bus driver, whether you acknowledge it or not!
Additionally, PTD (once I was able to decipher his somewhat fractured grammar) states I was singling out poor people and neighborhoods as the greatest source of bedbugs. Not true. I should have worded it differently and I didn't mean it the way you think. In fact, I pointed out that bedbugs are found in the fanciest, most exclusive neighborhoods "like Riverside Drive." I should have made the reference to New York City's Riverside Drive more explicit. New York's Riverside Drive winds up the Hudson River on the Upper West Side of Manhattan--some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Columbus, too, has a Riverside Drive, which winds along the Scioto River through tony Upper Arlington. Trivia: For many years, local urban legend had it that legendary guitar god and sometime-Columbus resident Eric Clapton, who is married to a UA girl, had a mansion somewhere along the Scioto!
Then PTD tells me to "get a car" (not possible in my current financial state) or even better, "a job with COTA as a coach cleaner"! My only response to that is: What do they pay? All nit-picking (or is it bedbug-picking?) aside, I was pleased to receive a comment from a reader, and hope to receive more. Thanks, PTD! I salute you because your job is rough and I know you guys put up with a lot of crap from management, riders, and other (non-bus) drivers.
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