2 miles in their shoes

I just got back from the store. I bought a few things for the Center, some discounted pastries and fresh fruit for our coffee club today.

Typically, I would have ridden my bike, since our trusty old Volvo is getting her voice back. (muffler trouble) However, my bike chain broke yesterday, and as a result I had to walk. It was a nice walk and my bones needed to get moving anyway.

I thought about yesterday's conversation at the Center about the rising costs of cab fare. It is now $12.00 round trip in town and when you don't have a car, or a friend with one.....

While that price might seem an inconvenience to some, and a pittance to others, it is a monumental price tag to the folks I work with each day.

I took a minute or two to map out some incidental costs in St. Stephen:

Coffee/Pop: $1.50
Doughnut: $1.00
Hot dog or Fries: $2.00
Cab fare: $12.00
Medium Pizza: $20.00

Since everything we buy is just a small part of what we have to spend. I used those numbers to make some percentages, relative to their total monthly income of about $600. Then I went to Stats Canada and took the average total income for unattached individuals from 2004, and watched the numbers.

What follows is what the Center's member's see when they look at the "everyday" costs we barely regard:

Coffee/Pop: $7.13
Doughnut: $4.76
Hot dog or Fries: $9.52
Cab fare: $57.00
Medium Pizza: $95.02

Wow.

The walk back to the Center was all downhill. Five minutes into the trip the few items I had bought became leaden and the bags began to dig into my fingers. Two hundred meters down, one thousand five hundred to go.

How come you can never find a cab when you need one?