Public Transportation- You Use It?

[Jack Scorpion]

About a month ago, my 89' Camry was stolen off a residential street. A misfortune indeed (I had a fedora inside at the time, too!), but it wasn't altogether a negative experience.

Since then, I've been using Los Angeles's bus system for my daily commute to work and, honestly, it is a more effective mode of travel in certain situations. By car, the commute took 30 minutes. By bus it takes 40. With gas prices, the bus is cheaper, and on a bus, I am free to read. I gladly traded those 10 minutes of sleep in the morning for 40 minutes of reading I wouldn't normally have done.

However, I am currently moving about 5 miles farther east and my pleasant 40 minute bus ride is going to turn into a not-so-pleasant hour and a half. Alas, this week I'm car-shopping. Los Angeles's public transportation system ain't bad if you live by the right streets -- but if you don't, God help you.

Anyone have a car for sale??

---
I miss Moscow's Metro.

I even miss Bay Area's BART.

 

[Cobden]

Travel nearly everywhere in the UK by train; never found I've needed a car, really. Even managed to travel from a small town in southern England to Istanbul by train on one memorable occaision!

 

[Elaina]

I'm a car driver all the way. The PT in N. Texas isn't that great, and I've used it. A 15 min trip to my son's school takes 49 minutes, and I suppose I have no patience.

I do use it on occasion, especially going to downtown Dallas, or Ft Worth, but most often then not, I get in and drive.

Elaina

 

[carebear]

Travel nearly everywhere in the UK by train; never found I've needed a car, really. Even managed to travel from a small town in southern England to Istanbul by train on one memorable occaision!

The Orient Express?

Or has it gone the way of the QM?

 

[Cobden]

The Orient Express?

Or has it gone the way of the QM?

I did it on normal bog standard railways; the Orient Express does exist, but it only goes to Venice and not all the way to Istanbul anymore; I'm not sure if it is related to original Orient Express or whether it is just using the name.

 

[Warden]

I take the train every morning to work, I have driven, but it is like doing the Paris Dakar Rally to get to sunny Bedford (UK). Sooner or later I know I would be in a crash, so for me, this is the age of the train.

I do hope to live one day on the Isle of Wight, they use orginal 1930 tube trains (subway trains for our American friends).

Been on them a couple of times, How relaxed would I be if I could commute on a 1930s Bakerloo line train every day!

Link to the The Island Line

Warden D (Harry)

 

[Quigley Brown]

Frankly, both riding and driving commutes have their ups and downs. I'm master of my domain in the car (and I hear some great music on WFUV, WBGO, WKCR, WQXR, etc.), but I only manage a teeny fraction of the reading I used to get in on the trains or buses five days a week...

'Master of their domain' is a popular excuse for not taking public transportation (around here anyway). The HOV lanes are nearly empty because cars contain only thier drivers. I took the train down to my job in DC (I now work just four blocks from my new job). The trip took about 90 minutes, but I got to meet a lot of people. There were birthdays and holidays celebrated on that train. The conductor was a real stand-up comedian. I would have missed all that had I driven all alone everyday.

 

[SGB]

No

Never have and never will. My career was in Silicon Valley and there is no PT to get you to your company. Plus, I lived on a ranch in the country, no PT out there. I was about 10 miles from the closest highway, nice twisty roads that were lots of fun to drive, that's why I always had cars that handled good or I made to handle better. I love to drive, especially a good performance car.
Now that I'm retired it's a moot point.

SGB

 

[Doctor Strange]

Quigley - Sounds like a DC thing. In all the years I took trains into Manhattan (both MetroNorth from the burbs and the subway within NYC), I don't think I ever spoke to a soul. Everybody was always way too stressed and/or plugged into their books, music players, etc. And the few times I've ridden MetroNorth recently, it seems even worse - with MP3 players and cell phones in the hands of a huge majority of the passengers. Despite being in a train car together, everyone exists in their own little cone of silence. No sign of comraderie!

There are no HOV lanes in my part of the world either...

 

[Haversack]

I've noticed over the years that people on train, (both commuter and Amtrak), tend to be more gregarious than people in airliners or buses, (both municipal and long-distance).

One case in point, since the dot-com boom, mid-1990s, there has been a party car on one of the north-bound Caltrain runs every Friday afternoon. It developed on the bike car among the bike-commuters who developed a sense of cameraderie through the shared adversity of trying to fit more bikes onto the racks. Individuals would bring a six-pack and share it out. Gradually, more people did this. Food appeared. It spread into the other half of the car and has become a regular feature of the week's cycle.

Similarly, I understand that on the commuter rail lines on Long Island, there are poker games which have been going on for years among the regular commuters.

Haversack.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

In Santiago, Chile, municipal buses are not run by the city. They're owned and operated by companies which are (supposedly) regulated, but the truth is less than savory: those bus companies are one step up from the Mafia. Lots of dirty money, lots of bribes, lots of dangerous buses, lots of accidents and deaths.

There are sometimes as many as as 4 different bus companies working the same routes. Furthermore, there are more buses than potential passengers, so the many bus companies compete like mad for them: passengers are picked up from (and dropped off at) any place on the street, including the middle of intersections. Buses will cut each other off in order to pick up passengers. Schoolchildren, however, are ignored: they pay much lower fares, so bus companies don't bother picking them up at rush hour.

The fun side: on Friday and Saturday nights, many municipal buses turn into impromptu parties on wheels. Some have black lights, glow-in-the-dark designs on the ceilings, and decent stereo speakers: the drivers crank on the dance music, flip on the black lights, and passengers boogie in their seats and in the aisles.

Dangerous? You bet. But on Friday and Saturday nights, passengers seem to prefer the "disco buses" to those with no frills.

.

 

[Paisley]

Bus Stop Comraderie

Bus stop, wet day, she's there I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stop, bus go, she stays love grows
Under my umbrella
All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella we employed it
By August she was mine

{Refrain}
Every morning I would see her waiting at the stop
Sometimes she'd shop and she would show me what she bought
All the people stared as if we were both quite insane
Someday my name and hers are going to be the same


That's the way the whole thing started
Silly, but it's true
Thinking of a sweet romance
Beginning in a queue
Came the sun, the ice was melting
No more sheltering, now
Nice to think that that umbrella
Led me to a vow

 

[Girl Friday]

Yep, Dallas/Ft. Worth is really spread out, and PT is not effiecent AT ALL. Kind of wish it was, car payments are NO fun. Oh well it'll be paid off in 2 years.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

Me on the right wearing the Moscow Metro Map -- I'm a fan.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Astounded by that Stalinist roccoco style! Amazing chandeliers!

.

 

[DronesDodz]

Before I have moved to the US in 2001 I had no car or driver's licence. I never needed it in Germany, because we had such a good public transportation system. I have saved tones of money plus got everywhere I wanted. If I really had to go out of town I used the train or hitched a ride with my older brother or a friend. Sorry, but why do americans don't like public transportation? Also,why do people not car pool and parnets send their kids to school with the school bus anymore? There are way too many cars on the road where I live.
I have a car now and with the gas prices and the road rage I would trade my licence in any day for a year's ticket for trains and buses.
Christoph

 

[Cobden]

I take the train every morning to work, I have driven, but it is like doing the Paris Dakar Rally to get to sunny Bedford (UK). Sooner or later I know I would be in a crash, so for me, this is the age of the train.

I do hope to live one day on the Isle of Wight, they use orginal 1930 tube trains (subway trains for our American friends).

Been on them a couple of times, How relaxed would I be if I could commute on a 1930s Bakerloo line train every day!

Link to the The Island Line

Warden D (Harry)

Not all the lines on the Isle of Wight use the old Bakerloo EMU's...


...the other line runs on steamm

 

[scotrace]

Sorry

There ain't no public transport out here in the Ahia cornfields.


I walk to work 'cause it's 4 blocks. Then I walk to the bank, Post Office, wherever. Then I walk home for lunch, then back, then home again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.


When I stayed with a friend in Boston, we rode the trains a lot and one day we got back to his flat and I sat down and he said "Hey! Get yer subway schmutz behind offa my couch!"