Wednesday's Question of the Day: public transit

Good morning friends! 

Today's question is about getting around on public transit. Is there a bus / train / subway system in place where you live and if so, how often do you ride? Is the system great, terrible, or something in between? 

We have public buses here but they aren't very great, not very cheap either, costing $2.50 one way. They have weird times and routes and don't seem to put much thought into traffic or the riders' needs. For example...

There aren't many children living in the city anymore, so a lot of schools have been shut down. There are no school buses, either, so most school-age children have to travel a fair distance and take city buses to get to and from school. The problem is there are no designated buses to go from neighborhoods directly to pathway schools. There are some pretty little kids riding the buses from their neighborhoods, then waiting downtown to catch the second bus to school. (Downtown is a high drug area with meth addicts, panhandlers, and many homeless people and is not safe for young kids alone.) You'd think there would be at least one route to pick up neighborhood kids and take them directly to their school and back.

The large city bus that goes by our daughter's school whizzes by 4 minutes before school is out. The next bus is a 30-seater van, and there are about 150 kids trying to get on it when it arrives 20 minutes later. The next bus comes 40 minutes after the bell - not only does that make for a very long day for the kids, but in the winter they begin their trip home every day well after dark. 

Well...... I'm in the Philly, PA area and public trans is the life blood of the city and surrounding counties. It's pretty darn good. I live right down the road from a train station, only use it rarely, but have used it. I can get ANYWHERE using buses or trains, BUT.... I hate public trans and prefer to drive. My carbon footprint is going to be huge when I die.

I commute to work by train every day (we live 38 km/24 mi. from the city). In general, the system is good, with regional trains every half hour during rush hour, otherwise every hour. There are suburban trains running from a nearby town every 20 minutes, but parking there is a major problem, so the regional train is better for me. Commuting by car takes 2 - 3x as long due to traffic congestion.

At the moment things are a mess due to rails being replaced at the same time as some major road repairs, and the city I work in is in the process of building a new underground train station which will take a decade to complete.

There are also local buses.

I live in small crappy town that doesn't have any public transit.
When I lived in the city a few years ago I took the bus a few times a week and crazy **** always happened. Riding the bus made me feel more normal. Lol:nod:

There are buses around here, but I couldn't tell you where the closest bus stop even is. I've driven to the T station before to take the T into Boston.

we have public busses, that I've never been on. and we have the Long Island Rail Road, that I take to get to the city when I need to.. a handful of times a year.

I'm a bit of a townie and choose to live pretty close to a city centre. I'm really lucky as there are a quite a few different bus routes that run within 1/2 k 1/2 miles of my home, and if I walk a mile to the city centre I can get anywhere in the city. There's also either a small train station or main train station within 2 k / 2 miles.  I don't often use the buses though and if I'm going anywhere within a couple of miles I tend to walk.  Because I regularly need to use my car during the day at work and the walk to the buses that go from home to near the office are about 1 k / mile away I tend to use the car on work days.  Would love to work closer to home but that's not likely to happen.  

There are inter-city buses too and I use these for some places if they run regularly - like every 15 minutes. The times can be limiting for smaller towns so I don't use them for visiting my family - not much incentive either as calculated once and even with really high petrol prices it cost as much on the bus as it did for just me in the car!

I took one of my cats to the vet on the local bus once as my car was snowed in and that was great fun - she was frail and blind by then but real friendly.  Luckily non of the other passengers objected and I just opened the crate a little and stroked my cat to reassure her. One little girl was so interested I checked with the adult she was travelling with and then let her stroke my little fur-pensioner too.  It was real cute

We have train stations nearby, don't know about buses.  I haven't been on public transit in so many years, I can't even remember.
 

We have lots of buses her in Salt Lake City and a large train system as well, I just happen to live a 10 minutes drive from any stop or station so I never use public transit. We also have an abundance of bicycle lanes in this city.

Our bus system is horrid; buses typically only come once an hour IF that, and stops are really far apart.  They also don't go into the farther parts of town, even though they're still part of the city.  When I lived in France, the buses came every 10-20 minutes (depending on the bus).  I love taking public transport because I don't have to worry as much about things like parking and/or getting back to my car, not to mention traffic.  I also walk more when I use public transportation.  I hope to eventually move to a city with better public transportation.
 

I cannot feasibly access it from my house; but there is a bus line that runs through the area.  In the nearest towns I think there are just a few stops; mostly to get people from these towns to the bigger town nearby; which has more stops.  I used to have clients who relied on the buses.  It did take longer to get from place to place; but they get the job done.  We also have access to a bus line that runs to the beaches.

Since our car is still down we use our daughter's car when we can get it. But when we have an appointment and can't get her car that day,we have to use a service through the disabilities service .They come and get us and wait till the appointment is over and drive us all the way home from Columbus.I do appericate them so much.Without them I would never be able to get to the doctors.( PUBLIC TRANSIT)

And no there isn't a public bus like COTA in  our little town.

I virtually never use it and I think that's pretty slack of me as I usually take environmental issues pretty seriously, and private cars are right up there in terms of carbon emissions.

What I do try to do is cycle short journeys and a friend and I try to synchronise long journeys to save one trip.

No public transit within 50 miles of where I live. When I lived in Gainesville, FL, I took the bus all the time. I had a master schedule and map that I took with me everywhere when I rode the bus.

We have buses that run pretty close to house(1/3 mile or so) but no need to use them. I group my shopping and can pack an suv full of stuff so bus would not work/would be more expensive to divide my trips. I only go out when I have multiple stores to hit minus going 1 mile for milk or something. With all the cat litter/food alone, it gets tight in my truck:S

A taxi service is pretty much it around here. We have a USTA van service for disabled and retired people for helping getting to appointments, shopping, and things like that. 

I drive my car to and from work. I drive everywhere.....no choice. Things are too far away to walk.

(When I did my internship for college, I lived in Harrisburg, PA for the semester. I'd drive down on Sunday afternoon and come home on Friday night for the weekend. The only way I could get into the office was on the transit bus. It wasn't too bad and there were other interns who went to the same area as I. I could have walked, but the only way to get there walking was to walk through a pretty bad area of the city and they didn't want us walking through that area at all. So I rode the bus. It wasn't bad.

After my internship was finished, they asked me to stay on throughout the summer through a fellowship. I drove down four days a week and parked in the garage right off the building; they gave me a parking garage pass. I could have driven through the city to work during my internship, too, but honestly, it was cheaper just to get the transit bus pass.)