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Public transportation in your town

07:52 / 05.10.02

after havin' my car out for a week due to repairs on the engine i drove it a week then crashed it into a pole, since then i've become very interested in my city's public transportation

it has it's faults it only runs until 10pm and that's not on all the bus lines, the buses routinly are not too close to being on time thusly making transfers a problem, BUT they buses to run just about everywhere and the buses and bus lines are easy to read and it's cheap even w/o a bus pass (a $1 a ride)

but how's the public transportation in your neck of the woods? what can options do you have? is it easy to figure out? is it cheap? who knows if you give yours a good review i just may move there cuz i'm sick of this havin' a car business.

11:15 / 05.10.02

You can spend your entire life in London not needing a car. You will swear at buses and tubes and smelly people and people who try to get on before you've got off, but you'd be swearing a lot more if you were driving.

I haven't even got a licence.

The Apple-Picker

12:22 / 05.10.02

Columbus, OH--I'm sure we don't have the worst public transportation system in existence (especially since I can only compare it to the public transportation in my hometown, which was absolutely atrocious--unusable), but I think it's pretty bad. There are lots of lines that will take you most anywhere you want to go; the pamphlets of the routes are pretty easy to come by; the schedule, however, has been useless, in my experience. Transit is by bus. There are no trains or anything (though there is a returning push for an elevated train or something). Long-lasting construction projects make the bus rides even longer. You want to swear at many of the people and bus drivers.

I have a car, and I do use it in this town. It's much faster, much more dependable. I think I'm going to end up switching up to a bike, though, because it'll be faster than the bus, and parking spaces aren't as hard to come by as with a car.

Matthew Fluxington

12:27 / 05.10.02

I live in the Hudson Valley, NY. There isn't much public transportation around here, other than occasional bus services for senior citizens. Everyone drives here. Except me, I don't have a licence. I live in walking distance of the train station, and the train can bring me to NYC, where I don't need to drive. That's pretty cool. But it means that my job opportunities are limited to what I can walk to, and what I can commute to in the city. That's rough.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:27 / 05.10.02

I've just bought a car, but I don't think I'll be using it much... there're buses everywhere in London, and while they get kind of cramped and unpleasant, I like sitting down and having someone else doing all the work...

13:26 / 05.10.02

Public Transport in Brighton consists entirely of rickshaws being pulled by small golden clockwork children.

15:21 / 05.10.02

Public transportation in the Pioneer Valley part of Western MA. is pretty decent. Its a big college area (Smith, Mt. Holyoke, UMASS, Hampshire College, Amherst College) so there's regular bus service all over the place year round. Every 10-20 min. during the school year, and late on the weekends (like 'til 2am or something). Without it I'd be screwed, seeing as how I am without car. Actually though, if I did have a car, I wouldn't have anywhere to park it where I'm at. Certainly not near my building. I think I heard once that our area now handles about five times as much traffic as it was meant to, and parking out here can be a HUGE problem at times anyway.

Also have access to Greyhound/Peter Pan bus lines and Amtrak trains (Northeast corridor/to & from Montreal-DC). So all in all, yeah, good area for those with a travellin' jones.

23:32 / 05.10.02

I like sitting down and having someone else doing all the work...

Sounds like you just need a chauffer?

Toronto's transit is pretty good. Subways every 4-5min until 2am, and night buses along the route after that. A bunch of 24hr streetcar routes as well. When I lived in Hamilton, nearby, it was awful. Buses every 30-60min, ending at 12am-1230. Yech.

00:23 / 06.10.02

i have to agree Barry a chauffer would be nice... i think i'd be a full on bus boy if my job didn't go so late, 1am, therefore makin' takin' a bus home a prollem... and for some reason it'll cost me $8 to take a cab home, tho i've taken longer rides for less, i think they have a "late call" charge here and that sucks... if i could afford a chauffer i'd totaly get one!

04:38 / 06.10.02

San Francisco's transit is pretty damn good, in spite of how much I bitch about it... (beats the hell out of public transport where I grew up!) I can get from pretty much any point A to Point B with a transfer or two. Normal bus service runs from about 6 am to midnight, and there are at least half a dozen lines that cover the city pretty thoroughly from midnight to morning. And, yes, I use Muni pretty regularly - most days riding the bus is faster than finding a parking space. And I can read on hte bus!

17:12 / 07.10.02

The commuter trains here link West Palm to Miami, but only run once an hour.

Once.

An Hour.

And the buses are not terribly comprehensible.

Murray Hamhandler

20:17 / 07.10.02

My (Bloomington, IN) public transport is pretty decent. Given my current situation, it's awesome. Since I'm a student, I get to ride all buses for free. The main bus that goes through campus runs every 10-15 minutes on average during the day and goes pretty far away from campus (a few blocks away from my home on the outskirts of town). I can ride my bike the few blocks to the bus stop, toss it on the convenient bike rack on the front of the bus (which is usually waiting at the stop by the time I get there), ride for free to campus, and then ride my bike between classes. It rocks.

However, if you're a townie, things are a bit less convenient. Buses run every 30-45 minutes and are rarely where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there, so you have to plan ahead. Also, bus fare isn't expensive necessarily, but I got to thinking that it was a bit of a rip-off when I found out that monthly public transport passes are about as expensive here as they are in San Francisco (San Fran transport rocks, iszabelle! Trust me!). And, with the exception of one specific campus shuttle, the buses don't run very late at all (some stop as early as 6 or 7 PM). Not terrible, but nothing spectacular. But Bloomington's pretty damned nice, anyway.

The Return Of Rothkoid

20:25 / 07.10.02

Sydney public transport is OK when it's running properly. So I'm told. I live somewhere that's about 30 minutes out of the city by train, so you get a train roughly every 15 minutes - waiting less in rush hours, more in off hours/weekends. Unfortunately, they stop at about 12 and turn into NightBuses that run ever hour, and are fucking grim death. There's also a LOT of trackwork on trains - usually when I'm wearing ill-advised shoes and have been out at the pub. (It's about a 20-40 minute walk home from the station, depending on sobriety.)

I did hear that during the Olympics, it was FANTASTIC. However, they ended and the powers-that-be thought "Hey! Transport! Who needs that now?" and the time of the any-transport-anytime vision of beauty was kyboshed.

Buses, however, I don't really know about. I'd like to get into the inner city to live, so hopefully they're not too terrible. I've caught buses up to the Uni from work pretty clockwork-like for years, but I feel that if you stray too far off the main roads, you're fucked.

20:57 / 07.10.02

I live in Manchester, England. The bus service here is damn cheap, it costs 7.20 for a weekly pass, and most of the times pretty bearable.

My sympathy goes out to bus drivers though. Racist abuse, attempts at physical violence, arguing over the price of the fare. Somewhat bleak. Once I saw a man completely lose it because the driver had missed his stop. He ended up punching with full force the clear plastic partition protecting the driver. Lovely. Then there are the strange smells and the loud obnoxious people.

All in all I don't actually enjoy public transport. Better than driving but I avoid it if possible. I prefer walking most places. Not always practical though.

The Apple-Picker

22:33 / 07.10.02

(which is usually waiting at the stop by the time I get there)

Hold on here... you're bus actually waits at the bus stop? You must live in some quaint never never land.

00:08 / 08.10.02

izabelle wrote:

San Francisco's transit is pretty damn good, in spite of how much I bitch about it...

Riding on the side of the streetcars there is probably the most fun I've ever had on public transit. Mmm!

Murray Hamhandler

02:31 / 08.10.02

You must live in some quaint never never land.

I know. It's weird and yet...so cool. It's just the one route (the only one I ever need, usually), as far as I know, and only in the morning. At night, I've raced right alongside the fucker on my bike all the way through campus and had the driver strangely fail to see me the entire time...