u/TheCaffinatedAdmin

I'm aware I'm not the first person to post about this, but it's genuinely insane how unreliable the MTA is. I have had decent luck with my line out in the county, the 76 (though I've definitely gotten stranded by it [systems seems to go to crap on game days for some reason]), but the 32, 37, CityLink Red, and Purple Circulator have stranded me several times, and every time, the bus is not marked as cancelled and there's no alerts in the app, it's just a complete no-show. I can put up with slow, I can put up with a few minutes late, I can put up with the crappy ass headways the MTA runs, but the non-tracking and no-show buses are a genuine problem. The circulator is no better and there's no trust because the circulator has very unreliable tracking. Just sucks, especially in this hot ass weather. The Light Rail and Metro have much of the same problems too fwiw.

I really hope the fifth bus division helps but I believe the MTA has a serious dispatching problem, seeing as it seems to not know where its busses are or whether they're running. I've also heard inklings of a staffing problem and a very flimsy NCNS policy, so, that doesn't help. A medium-large city like Baltimore should have good headways on trunk routes like the Red (even on weekends), and a system that people can trust when Google Maps or the transit app says a bus will show. This has genuinely been forcing me to evaluate getting a better ebike or at least an extra battery (I can't make it crosstown and back on a charge), which is money I don't really got.

Edit: Part of my reasoning for suggesting the MTA has a dispatching problem is the sheer amount of bunching I see on buses as well as the amount of times I've seen buses leave terminals (like Patapsco LR) atrociously late (there little displays show they're late but they sometimes try to make up time). I also know in at least one instance, the bus is delayed frequently due to the driver whom operates that route, not receiving an appropriate amount of time for a bathroom break given her injury and the distance from the stop to the restroom.

Short post because I'm on a bus and Baltimore roads and buses combined are not conducive to typing. Obviously some of the key issues in psychiatry survivors movement are in fact direct coercion and lack of informed consent, but there is also a strong cultural issue. In many circles, if people treat you as "needing" psychiatric medication, they will pass moral judgement on you if you elect to skip your meds (even if they are safe to skip), often acting as if you are somehow causing harm to others rather than making your own choices about how to manage something afflicting you. The same applies if you elect to not take meds at all. While certainly I understand the impetus to try to help others, the culture of psychiatric hegemony leads to a hyperpaternalism surrounding meds being undertaken not just with state violence but via the sentiments of general public.

TL;DR: Fix our cities, but I haven't taken my ADHD meds yet, so long rambling rant it is.

For driving to be fast and efficient, you need very clear delineation of cars and VRUs, slip lanes at high traffic intersections (or in the case of freeways, space intensive interchange like a stack interchange) protected left turns, sometimes passing lanes, long distances between intersections, and most importantly a lack of density. A lack of density can make surface streets incredibly efficient (Ocean Gateway [US-50 from Bay Bridge to OCMD] is incredibly fast in the winter). These conditions don't exist in linear/main street suburbs or in most cities. There are exceptions: my local city of Baltimore has MLK Blvd (a street I hope to never bike on again, for genuine fear for my life due to cars) and a handful of other surface streets that destroy the urban fabric by LARPing as highways.

The obvious question here is why do people drive then? In Baltimore at least: the MTA is a shit show, because we only have one underground transit line and the surface transit fundamentally\* succumbs to the exact same issues as cars, aside from occasionally getting to skip congestion when the city has *so graciously* (/s) decided to grant the buses a lane. They still have little to no light priority and need to merge with surface transit to turn left or avoid cars (because rules against parking/driving in bus/bike lanes is almost entirely unenforced here).

Ebiking is faster than all but the best surface transit in any urbanized area and acoustic biking is on par with most surface transit assuming cooperative topography. Ebiking is also faster than driving in some conditions, especially considering the need to park or wait for a ride-share vehicle, and when it's not, it's because the urban fabric was compromised by cars. People don't e-bike much here because bikes are an afterthought and good bike infrastructure (a gutter lane or sharrows is not infrastructure\*\*). When biking is unsafe, the only time people will bike is if they don't have a car and transit is inadequate or if they're very confident cyclists.

Conclusion/Rant End: invest in grade separated transit, fight against attempts to destroy the urban fabric with two way streets, build suburbs around main streets rather than endless sprawl, build complete streets, do signal priority, and be honest about where surface transit is going to be appropriate. Coverage based surface transit is fundamentally a subsidy to people who cannot afford cars because it's rarely faster than driving, but that subsidy can be justified: it just shouldn't define all of our transit systems\*\*\*. In some particularly low density areas, microtransit is very helpful, it just fails to be a replacement for good transit. Within the urban fabric, however, we need solid transit and that transit usually needs grade separation to avoid the same folly that cars fall to.

\* Baltimore has failed to do substantial signal prioritization, not just for buses but also for the light rail, so is substantially slowed by that, however surface transit is still a slow mode in dense areas (see the M15+ in comparison to the Second Avenue Subway).
\*\*The exception to this is slow but congested thoroughfares with no large shoulder where using the bike lane allows you to pass slow traffic without lane filtering.
\*\*\* RideOn and Metrobus are both good systems but Metrobus focuses on high ridership urban corridors in MoCo (among other places) whereas RideOn focuses more on coverage.

I (18) am going to be working in an education-adjacent role for a Baltimore City Public Schools contractor this fall and am worried that my age will pose a barrier for classroom management (the fact that I'm visibly queer probably not helping matters): what has worked for you in these situations?

Apologies in advance for the fact that this post is probably going to be long and meandering as well as for the fact that I write very weirdly/densely (blame it on me being autistic). TL;DR at bottom.

I am a 18 year old trans woman living in the mid-Atlantic, separately from my parents (roughly a 45 minute drive but separate nonetheless). Up until recently, I've been maintaining roughly the status quo albeit being relatively low contact with my mom and very low contact with my dad, largely driven by the financial pressures of university. Recently, I've had to take a step back from university, possibly permanently dropping out due to personal challenges as well as my university's administration being deeply problematic, and I've secured a job offer; for context, I moved out at 17 with parental permission, to go to university, following a 4th year waiver because I needed out.

My mother had known I was trans since I was a tween when I had told her, and has generally tolerated the knowledge of this but refused to permit any sort of transition, even socially, and has been very hostile to any suggestion thereof. More recently, she seems to be focused on convincing me that I will never pass, this will only hurt my life, and I still won't be happy post transition, as well as refusing to call me my preferred name and pronouns. When I was put in a Partial Hospitalization Program (as I managed to lie my way out of inpatient, thank goodness) following a severe bout of mental health challenges, several healthcare staff tried to get across the importance of being supportive/affirming, which led to her storming out of my discharge meeting. My father has found out in two instances prior to me going to university (once due to police intervention and again due to the USPS) and both times was hostile and threatening about it.

Once I turned 18 and filed my legal name change/gender declaration, especially in conjunction with the fact that I am going to be self-sufficient, I drew a line in the sand that she needs to make efforts to use my actual (preferred) name and pronouns, as well as at least tolerating other decisions she opposes (such as dropping out). Since attending university, my father seems to have adopted more of a Don't Ask, Don't Tell, type stance, given his lack of reaction when my mother had disclosed the fact that I'm trans to him. My mother seems to recognize that the ball is in her court on whether to have any relationship with me, as she expressed a willingness to abide by my boundary of using my name/pronouns and tolerating my life choices, possibly in hopes of trying to reduce the distance between me and her; this has been caveated by the fact that she will not let me use family insurance for GAHC (this will be moot once my job starts but is still problematic) and that she's trying to balance supporting me with keeping her marriage together. I also feel like she isn't trying in good faith but this line in the sand was drawn very recently so, time will tell. She has also expressed resentment at the amount of distance that has grown between me and her.

Separately, I feel like I have lost most of the emotional connection for my parents that I had had. When I was younger, I talked with my mother endlessly about a lot of niche stuff, and to a lesser extent, my father; that diminished as time went on, but my parents were thrown off by the fact that I rarely contacted them, never went home for breaks or weekends (my university is a bit of a suitcase school), etc., but I slowly lost any trust or connection I had in them. Not all of this was because of transphobia, some of it was over issues like their lack of trust in me (I felt like they treated me like a child and the more they told me what to do, the stronger their info diet got), hostile behavior towards me as a kid (I don't know if it's outright abuse and I don't want to minimize the experiences of those who have real childhood trauma by comparing my childhood to it but it was definitely fucked up in some ways and I've been told their physical behavior and implied/stated threats is enough to count so IDK), their sentiment towards my mental health (specifically using psychiatry as a vector of control as well as intentionally trying to cause sensory overload via repeatedly and intentionally engaging in known sensory triggers after being asked to stop, intentionally provoking conflicts by taking my personal property, intentionally being ambiguous or using sarcasm/humor they know I wouldn't understand, many other things), and a lot of other stuff that's possibly outside the scope of this post. Suffice it to say, these factors all complicate my relationship with them.

In summary, I am no longer bound by desperation and loneliness, nor circumstances/living situation, nor by finances, nor emotionally bound, to have a relationship with my parents, but my mother does seem to be trying to do better, both in general and in regards to not deadnaming/misgendering me, though efforts have been half-measures and complicated by her feeling like she is in a rock and hard place with trying to maintain her marriage and relationship with me. I also have a lot of broader challenges with both my parents and feel like I no longer have a substantial emotional bond with them (I'm okay with this, but I don't know if I should be okay with this). How do I navigate her feeling like she's in a rock and a hard place between my transphobic father and me (her trans daughter)? How do I navigate this relationship moving forward; I'm open to anything between/including actively repairing it without compromising certain boundaries (name, pronouns, tolerance [both avoiding transphobia and in a broader sense]) to ending the relationship? How should I navigate this moving forward?

Errata:
- I was able to secure the apartment because I am moving in with a friend and her mom is fine with me and was willing to cosign the lease
- There is still some monetary support, albeit de minimus/sporadic, things I could otherwise cover
- I have adopted a habit of being very indirect while talking about the fact that I'm trans, often referring to that fact as "it" or other indirect language, this is mainly to move discussions along, make of it what you will.
- Please do not lecture me on somehow owing a relationship to my mother or parents more broadly
- When I say something is intentional, I mean that they have admitted to intentionally do something (in the case of them provoking via my autism (sensory overload, etc.), they cited their motives as trying to "toughen me up", even after I had asked them to stop outside the context of their behavior with clear reasons)

TL;DR: How do I manage my mother's feeling of being stuck choosing between accepting me and maintaining her marriage and how do I decide how to navigate my relationship with my parents moving forward now that I'm not dependent on them, in light of both gender-related and non-gender-related conflicts and a lack of emotional connection to them?

I can't get flights anywhere unless I fly weird dates eons from now; a big part of why I got the damn pass is to have the flexibility to fly next day but noooo, can barely fly at all because F9 changed it in on a whim. Fuck Frontier, never flying with y'all again after my pass expires.

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