Back when I first started attending high school -- and in Sacramento we had just converted junior high schools to middle schools (grades 7 and 8 only) and moving grade 9 to the high schools a year before I went to middle school -- we started using the bus to get to school. Before then I could walk less than ten minutes to get to my grade school and about half and hour to get to my middle school. My high school though is a good ten miles away, actually probably not that far, but still you can't easily walk there.

For high schools, the Sacramento City Unified School District has a contract with Regional Transit so that they provide the buses and drivers. The kids have to pay each way, although you could get a monthly pass for about $22. Closest distance to the nearest bus stop was about a 15 minute walk, and it was about halfway through the route of picking up kids, so sometimes it was full but you could usually get a seat, just not an empty one. I would usually go to my friend Mike's house to catch the bus there with him, and that was at the second or third stop so the bus was still rather sparsely filled.

Anyway, early on we got this bright idea that if we took and earlier bus we'd get to school earlier. Let me say first that before this time neither of us had used Regional Transit, so we didn't know that they had regular routes and that the regular bus route that happens to go along the way the school bus goes in the beginning actually ends up somewhere totally different. So we get up really early and catch a bus before 07:00. Totally empty -- and did I mention that the monthly bus pass works on all RT buses, not just the ones for school?

We're both kind of tired so we drop off to sleep. Twenty minutes later or so I wake up and note that I have no idea where the bus is. I wake up Mike and we both ponder where the frak we're going to. Eventually we reach the end of the line, somewhere in the north of Sacramento proper. The bus driver is kind enough to point us to the right bus once we explain our woeful situation to him. And so we hop onto this other bus and make another transfer later and a long time later we get to school somewhen towaards the end of first period, quite late. And so ends our experiment at getting to school early.

After our Light Rail system was completed, sometime in my junior or senior year of high school, the fastest way to get to school was to use it. This was possibly faster than using the school bus, since that had to wind it's way picking up kids. We could walk to the bus stop, catch the bus and ride a couple of minutes to the South Watt station, ride the light rail to the 65th Street station, then catch another bus and go a couple of minutes south to school. A lot of kids did it since it was more flexible and convenient if someone missed the school bus.

Once again, since it was operated by RT, you could use your monthly bus pass on the light rail. The light rail is interesting in that they don't check your ticket when you get on or off. There's just an occassional spot check by a ticket guy and if you don't have a ticket they make you get off at the next stop. The tickets are just simple time-based, lasting an hour and a half or so which is the same length as the regular bus transfer tickets. At least back when I used the system, I think it's a bit more restrictive now in how many transfers you can take on one pay.