How to forbid a transit strike

Simple...block a few key highways.

That is my conclusion after an hour of roiling anger at the thought of one of BART's three unions threatening a strike this Monday, which would shut down the entire system. I first tried to figure out toward whom to direct my anger. Candidates include BART's board, the union, and Arnold and his engenious lawmakers, who have kicked BART in the shins with funding cuts after its best year ever.

My anger rests in my helplessness, with the thought of assisting my visiting relatives to my house from the San Francisco airport via an archaic network of buses (plus maybe a ferry) rather than the simple direct BART train from the airport to Oakland. When I started thinking about ideal solutions I realized that citizens need a way to counterstrike. If everyone refused to go to work during the strike they would pressure all partied to settle. But that's impossible, so how about one well-organized group shutting down our entire transit system, minus emergency vehicles. What if that group simply threatened to block a few key highways with several thousand protesters. The strike would have no chance of ever launching, because it would cripple the economy.

There's this idea that it's ok to shut down a train network that caries 345,000 riders a day, but it's unthinkable to shut down a highway without providing reasonable detours. I think the only way to defeat this double standard is to disallow highway use when the rails are threatened. The strike as is will clog the highways with the train travelers who resort to driving, though that it is nothing compared to the suffering of train riders that are forced to crowd onto unscalable bus systems and then left to sit in the traffic created by the extra drivers. And the idea that the buses that are by-in-large local can and stop every two blocks can make up for a suburban metro that goes 80mph and takes a typical passenger 20 miles is absurd.

What a mess our car culture has created, that our rail lines are considered expendable because there is always just enough highway throughput, even though it is choked to a crawling mass of pollutant and noise spewing vehicles that invade the neighborhoods where millions of people live every morning and evening. I for one am ready for some aggressive rebellion against our freeways, BART strike or not. My friend suggested I contact Critical Mass. I wonder what they'd think of my counterstrike idea.