Public transportation is a huge challenge in Huron, the city of about 7,000 people in California’s Central Valley where I grew up. If you need to make the 110-mile round trip bus trip to Fresno to go to the doctor’s office, courthouse, pharmacy, or grocery store, prepare for a long and time-consuming journey. The rural bus system is slow, infrequent, and all but useless. My cousin, a farmworker, was in a car accident when I was a kid. To visit him on his deathbed at the nearest hospital, my mother and I got on the bus in Huron. Three hours—and 13 or 14 stops later—we arrived in Fresno. In that time, we could have driven to Los Angeles, 192 miles away, with a pit stop at a burger place. Decades later, that bus ride still takes more than five hours round trip. There is only one bus to Fresno per day; it leaves Huron at 8:30 a.m. and arrives at … Continue reading The Central Valley Was Ride-Sharing Long Before Uber