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Showerthought: I counted 47 bus rides in one month and the number bugs me more than it should
So I keep a little note on my phone every time I tap my card, mostly because I wanted to see if the monthly pass in Portland was actually worth it. Last month I hit 47 rides on TriMet. I pulled up the pass math and the break even point is around 42 rides, so I was "saving" money by about a dollar and a half. A dollar and a half. That is somehow worse than not saving anything, because now I feel like a guy who did a month of spreadsheets for pocket change. The real kicker is I could not tell you what 30 of those rides were for. I know 10 were work, 2 were the dentist, and the rest are just a blur of staring at the same Safeway sign going by. I think I have been riding on autopilot and the number is the first proof. Has anyone else actually tracked their rides and found their number was way higher or lower than they guessed? I want to know if 47 is normal or if I have a problem.
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wright.taylor5d ago
Tracked mine for three months straight last year and hit 51, 44, then 49. Same deal as you. Could account for maybe 15 of them. The rest were just trips I made without thinking, grabbing something from the store, killing time, whatever. What helped was switching to a weekly count instead of monthly. Seeing "12 rides this week" made me actually ask where they went while I could still remember. Turns out a lot of mine were dumb little trips I could have walked. Cut it down to like 30 a month just by paying attention. So 47 is not crazy, but the blur part is the real sign something needs to change.
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