This week’s column is more of a tangent, but since the mayoral race is heating up and politics are seemingly coming from all sides, I figured this would be a good time to bring some attention to this article.

The mayor of Berekely, 71-year-old Tom Bates, has recently given up his car in favor of a transit pass.

“I figure, if I really want to go someplace I can just rent a car.”

How awesome is that?  Wouldn’t it be cool to see Luke and other prominent members of city government to give this a shot.  Seems like the mayor and city council are very concerned, and rightly so, about transit during contract negotiations.  But what if they actually used it?

I don’t follow the city politics that much since I’m not a resident of the city, so there may be some higher-ups that do use transit as their primary mode of transportation.  But I do have to wonder what their reaction would be if this was asked of them, maybe at the next debate?

And as promised, here’s today’s unsubstantiated, unsolicited, wild speculation about the upcoming changes to PAT: The call center will reduce its hours and the system will finally change over to the text messaging service.  And free Twinkies with ever transfer.