This summer has seen record ridership on public transportation: up 5.2% over the same period last year, as sky-high fuel prices force commuters to ditch their cars in favor of the bus or the train.

And yet, it's not enough to drive profits to our public transit systems. According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), only about 1/3 of the costs are covered by fares, and the rest come from public funds such as sales taxes -- which aren't exactly thriving now as consumers are tightening their purse strings.

So at a time when we're facing a fuel crisis on top of heightened concern for the environment, we want to encourage more people to take public transportation. But at the same time, public transit systems are being forced to cut routes and raise fares just to keep operating. For people just looking to save money on their way to work, this may be a rude awakening.

It's a hard enough transition to decide to park your car (permanently, that is) -- what will you do next if the bus stops coming to your neighborhood? Maybe the next step is to organize a carpool... to the nearest bus stop?

As we have been fans of the drive through and the new "to go" services many restaurants are now offering we have found that the service is often lower than if we sat down in the restaurant. After brushing of the poor service and quality of food we received in the past at two restaurants, this last time I decided to fire off a quick email to the company expressing my displeasure.

My first email was to a local sit down establishment who had been shorting me on fries with each order, but avoiding them was out of the question as they provide one of my wife's favorite salads. Rather than live with the shortage I email a quick, concise and slightly humorous email to the restaurant's corporate offices, who responded with a $10 gift certificate.

More recently when I stopped at a local Subway to pick up a quick dinner my gift card was refused and then after they decided they could take it, the machine wouldn't process the gift card nor would it take any credit card I had. Since I didn't have enough cash to cover the transaction the employees pitched my food and I had to go up the road to another store in order to get dinner. Again, I wrote a level headed and short email to Subway and a week later I received an apology as well as an explanation of the problem. The manager even sent along a $10 gift card to make up for the problem, which seems to be the token we screwed up amount.

I'm not advocating you to go complaining about every little mix up you encounter, often times these issues can be fixed by the manager on duty. In the event that they can't fix it right then, there's no reason to go spouting off to the Consumerist every time someone making minimum wage at Arby's gives you a made out of roast beef confetti rather than sliced meat. Spend those three minutes writing the company via their corporate website, and almost every time you'll get a great return on your time.When it comes to customer service from corporations the fast food industry is usually quick to make amends as soon as you go above the store level.