I have a probably insulting question...

[conuly]

The other day, I was at the museum, and I commented (for no reason, actually, I don't know why I did that) that I can't abide strollers. Up the stairs, down the stairs, on the bus, off the bus....

The person I was talking to mentioned that she hadn't ever taken her Ana-sized kid on the bus yet. (Well, this *is* Staten Island....)

What she didn't know is that we'd actually detoured from our normal route, been incredibly late, and taken car service from the boat that day.

Seven dollars, pre-tip. Seven dollars for, what, a five minute car ride? Used to be four, only about a year ago.

If gas has gone up that much, I wonder that *anybody* can afford to drive! All you people living in places without public transportation ought to get on that.

So... how can people afford to drive? Are prices really that high? I'm out of the loop here, this being something I don't really care about in my day to day life.

(And, for your disinterested information, public transportation is much better for kids than cars. They can't snuggle with you in cars when they're upset, they can't stand up and hold the pole like a grownup in cars, they can't ring the bell in cars, they can't improve their social skills in cars (Ana's being taught right now not to stare. Better to teach her at three than to wait and teach her at seven. She's already learned how to say "excuse me" and "thank you bye thank you bye" and similar necessities) and all the money you save can go straight into college (if you live in a place without a decent educational system....) or other necessities. But I'm biased.)

Comments

[marveen.livejournal.com]

No, gas has not doubled in price since a year ago. Not even close. (Maybe licensing fees went up?)

I'm sorry, but for rural areas there simply is no alternative to owning a car. And even if I DID live in the city, I'm extremely leery of the many drawbacks of not owning a car--you're chained to the bus schedules; you can never transport anything that's bigger than you can carry in one load; you have to take extraordinary measures simply to go out to Mt. Rainier or the Peninsula, let alone to Portland or Seattle (the price of a rental car is STEEP, and don't even ask about train or airfare); you can't live in one town and work in another....

[conuly]

(Maybe licensing fees went up?)

Maybe, though I think most of the people at the boat are unlicensed. Though this certainly *is* good news :)

I'm sorry, but for rural areas there simply is no alternative to owning a car.

Bike? I don't know, not being rural.

You're chained to the bus schedules

...unless you decide to walk or take a bike.

And it's no worse than being chained to remembering to fill up the gas, perform basic maintenence, get your car cleaned.... If the bus system is used widely enough, they run pretty frequently.

you have to take extraordinary measures simply to go out to Mt. Rainier or the Peninsula, let alone to Portland or Seattle (the price of a rental car is STEEP, and don't even ask about train or airfare); you can't live in one town and work in another....

None of which applies in my experience, where plenty of people use the Metro-North or the PATH trains every day. This seems like a failure of the transit system in your area, not like a failure of the potential of the transit system.

you can never transport anything that's bigger than you can carry in one load

Well, it's the same in a car! Your load is just bigger, is all. That's one point to you, I think.

[rachelkachel]

My dad was reading some book about the energy crisis which pointed out that the cost of gas is less than 20% or something of the total cost of owning a car. So it's not as big a deal when the prices go up, and people are less likely to make an effort to get good mileage unless they've got some other reason to.

Make of that what you will, but it struck me as interesting.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

I think that whether it's expensive depends on your income, your location, and where you have to go. In my case, I spend about $25 per month on gas, living in an area with high gas prices ($2.75+ per gallon) and driving either around town or to other cities quite a bit.

It also depends on needs. Public transit is great for people that it is "friendly" towards, but it's not so good if you have needs that conflict regardless of age... The kind of trips I take here aren't the sort that would be particularly compatible with public transit, especially ones like tonight where I absolutely had to travel a considerable distance in a fairly short timespan. It also doesn't work for my allergies and asthma, because people do wear artificial scents or have smoke residue on their clothing; doesn't work for my PTSD because crowds drive me to meltdown; is totally incompatible with my sensory sensitivity as noise/movement (especially of little kids) drive me over the edge quickly.

Don't get me wrong... I wish that the local equivalent to the subway (here it is called BART) stretched up to my area, because I really like riding them and hate having to drive down to other parts of the Bay. It's just that I know that beyond little things like that, I'm a lot better off having a car to drive, even if I usually need to have somebody else drive for me if at all possible.

[conuly]

it's not so good if you have needs that conflict regardless of age...

That certainly is true. I love the bus and train, and I think the vast majority of the world would be better for having decent public transportation and using it, but I certainly wouldn't push it on people who can't use it.

[wodhaund.livejournal.com]

Honestly, thanks to gas prices, I have a very difficult time affording driving. (I'm a poor college student, and recently without a job, which makes it doubly difficult.)

But, thanks to my area's lack of quality public transportation (it exists. ...I think.), I can't afford not to drive.

It's a catch-22, sometimes. x_____x

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I fill up my car with gas every 10 days, and it's about $22. I get 30-40 miles per gallon (just to get to work I have to drive 15 miles, and that doesn't include taking Kira to daycare, running errands, etc). When I lived in Fort Collins, CO, i took public transport and/or walked EVERYWHERE. In Tucson, it sucks. There isn't even a bus stop within 5 miles of my house. I am not sure the last time I saw a taxi. Probably last time I was picking someone up at the airport. The transport system in Tucson is awful, probably because most people don't take it anyway. When it's 110 degrees outside, no one will wait 15 minutes in the full sun for a bus. The sad thing is, though, that all winter, when it's a lovely 50 degrees, no one walks ANYWHERE. People walk way more in Portland in the rain then in Tucson on a cool sunny day. :( I walk to the grocery store with the stroller whenever I can (I would carry her in my arms or in a sling, but then I couldn't haul all the groceries home). It's only 3/4 of a mile away. Sadly, you can tell they rarely get walkers in the store. They're always surprised to see me, walking.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

Aaaahhh, it freaked me out when visiting my grandmother in Escondido, CA - NO ONE walked!!! My husband and I would walk down to the shopping center, and we were the ONLY ones. Once in a rare while we would see another walker, usually Mexican. Crossing the street was horrible! The lights were *clearly* not designed to allow walkers to cross. We (able-bodied young adults) had to sprint to get across the eight lanes, and even so the light would change before we were fully across. I couldn't imagine what one would do if you could't run - e.g. the elderly or disabled. Or anyone with children! What truly disturbed me was when my uncle wanted to *drive* to the 7-11, a mere two and a half blocks away. It's no wonder he is so heavy. :-(

[adiva_calandia]

Heh. I don't drive, yet, mostly because I'm terrified of getting behind a ton of metal and not killing anyone with it.

Whenever I do learn to drive, though, I'm in a somewhat unique situation. Gas up here in Alaska is slightly cheaper than in the Lower 48. Good thing, too, because it's very, very difficult to get around up here without a car. We have some limited public transport, and I suppose it serves well enough in the summertime -- at least in the big cities -- but when temperatures are below zero, waiting for even ten minutes or so can be a miserable experience. There's walking or biking, of course, but the same problem applies.

Personally, I look forward to living somewhere with decent public transit. I like taking subways and buses. It takes you a little extra time, but it's cheaper, you have some time to sit down and read or write or what have you, and there's always the possibility of free street theatre. (And the point about kids and public transport isn't one that had occurred to me, but I like it.)

[conuly]

Heh. I don't drive, yet, mostly because I'm terrified of getting behind a ton of metal and not killing anyone with it.

You're terrified of *not* killing people? :P

Yes, Alaska is a special case. Dear GOD, I can't imagine living in a place like that.

It takes you a little extra time

Not here it doesn't. Trains are *always* faster than driving.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Petrol here is about... $5.98 per US gallon. I think that's how yours is sold? Unfortunately you just have to suck it up and pay though, because for most people public transport simply isn't an option.

Not that any busses existed which did such a route, but I like to imagine my mother getting my brother and me to our childminder every morning, whilst carrying the two large (open) boxes of paper/files as well as her own bag that was all needed for work.

Or a colleague of mine who briefly tried commuting on the half-hourly trains into the city because it was marginally cheaper than driving, but gave up because she still had to keep paying for her car (insurance, road tax etc) because the money spent on commuting could *only* get her to work and back, whilst the car can take her wherever she wants.

Or the journeys I used to take down to Milton Keynes. By train, it takes anything between 2.5 and 4 hours. You either have to go:
- Loughborough-Bedford (hourly) Bedford-Bletchly Bletchly-MK (one of those last two runs every 90 minutes)
- Loughborough-Birmingham Birmingham-MK (about four and a half hours now I would guess, as there's no longer a direct Loughborough-Birmingham train)
- Loughborough-Nuneaton Nuneaton-(Rugby?)-MK which, back when I was doing this route, gave a 6 minute change
- Loughborough-Derby (hourly, to a city 20 miles away) Derby-Coventry Coventry-MK (probably taking... 3.5 hours perhaps. I dunno - I used to us the direct Loughborough-Coventry train, but that no longer runs. Never did run on a Sunday)

Or you can jump in the car and take about an hour door to door - it's 80 miles straight down the M1.

And this doesn't begin to take into account the unpleasantness of travelling by public transport. I can only assume that New York has similar problems to the London Underground with overcrowding - we have 3 million people using the system a day. Although it's not much use if you're South of the river, there's little coverage there (the porous rock is unsuitable for tunnelling, so they have to make do with the overground trains, which are possibly the worst trains in the country.) Conditions on the tube in the summer are actually inhuman - you couldn't convey cattle in such conditions. I don't know about you, but standing body to body (at rush hour it's not uncommon to be able to be supported simply by all the bodies around you) in a carriage that's approaching 100F with no air-conditioning doesn't sound like my idea of fun (if you can work out how to air-condition a Victorian system, TFL would love to hear it!) That said, most people use it anyway because driving in London is such an arse.

Also, travelling by car the cost stays roughly the same whether you've just got the driver, or whether you have four passengers. By train, that would multiply the cost by 5.

I would dearly love for public transport to be more accessible - not least because I don't drive so I'm stuck having to use it! But it's a simple reality that no system designed to cater for the masses will ever replace the convenience of a car which goes where you want to, when you want it to.

[conuly]

The trains aren't air-conditioned? Or the stations aren't?

Should be easy to aircondition the trains, I think.

As for the stations, I'm going to start a minor, completely unsuccessful campaign to renovate all stations to have walls in 'em. Those things are *useful*.

[pne.livejournal.com]

All you people living in places without public transportation ought to get on that.

NB "public transportation" is not the same as "decent public transportation".

You're spoiled, since by all accounts, NYC is one of the few cities with decent public transportation in all of the States (and where it actually gets used by a significant number of residents).

I'm spoiled, too, since public transport in Germany also tends to be fairly good, especially in and around major urban areas (such as Hamburg, where I live). For example, I have three bus lines one minute's walk away, which run every five minutes between them on weekdays and every ten minutes on Sundays.

But other places have busses running over hour or so, on routes which aren't particularly convenient, etc.

I think there's a bit of a vicious circle in the States: everyone has a car, so nobody uses public transport, so the quality of public transport is abysmal (they can't justify funding improvements because there aren't enough users), so people need a car to get anywhere, to nobody uses public transport, etc. ad nauseam.

I don't have a car, either, and rarely miss it: sometimes taking a car would be quicker, but this way I can read on my way to work, I don't have to worry about parking, and it's cheaper. On the odd occasion where I do need a car (usually to transport things), I've managed to have a friend drive me.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

I think there's a bit of a vicious circle in the States:

So very true. In another comment above I mentioned that it is not only the number of riders, but the *expectations and demands* of all the residents, i.e., when the vast majority EXPECT a good public transportation sysytem to be in place, they will find it unacceptable not to have one and will *then* demand change. But most Americans are fine with the status quo, especially as their experience with limited public transportation has not been pleasant. But there is a big difference between a 3-bus daytime only every hour system and an all day all night 5 to 10 minute wait tops many lines and options system.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

People who live in cities and drive are insane. Especially if the public transit is good.

For me, because I'm in a small city where everything is 10 minutes away by car (or an hour by bus) it's more convenient AND cost effective to drive. It would cost me $5 round trip plus 2 hours of my day tot ake the bus but because I have a super fuel efficient car, it costs me a buck and 20 minutes. At most.

I do walk when I can and ride my bike when the weather is nice, though :)

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Sometimes public transit just doesn't work, even in, say, a city like Miami. It's a HUGE sprawl, and I can drive twenty miles from one destination to another, especially as I live in farmland. It's actually cheaper for me to drive than it is to take public transportation. I have to do that here in Philly, and I freaking HATE IT. Oh it's nice...

unless I need to shop. Which is usually my reason for hopping a train to go down to the stores. I'm limited by how much I can fit in my backpack and how much I can carry comfortably in my arms (roughly 15 to 20 pounds).

But still, $5 to go three stops down each way is enough to make me tear my hair out. In my car the round trip would be less than a gallon of gas. A round trip, which costs $10 via SEPTA, versus less than $2.50 for gas.

I wish I had my bike here. I might bring it up, now that I have a new storage deal.

[conuly]

It's not that public transit "just doesn't work". It's that you have a bad (and expensive, I might add) transit system.

[push-the-limits.livejournal.com]

Here in Boise, Idaho, "public transportation" is a joke. Really.

We have no train, no subway, no monorail...nothing but about a dozen busses.

Keep in mind, Boise is about 20 miles long by 10 miles wide, and has close to 200,000 people. The total population of the valley and surrounding towns to which people commute back and forth is about a half a million. Yet these busses do not transport back and forth between those towns.

Our busses only run from about 6am to 6:30pm Monday through Friday, and only half the routes on Saturdays, and they don't run at all on Sundays.

And to get a taxi? You have to call a cab company and wait at least 30 minutes for one to come.

It pisses me off...every Winter here, we have an inversion so badly you can't see the foothills, and they end up banning burning. At the same time, out lovely Republican Governor has a brilliant idea to repave and widen a bunch of roads in Idaho costing millions of dollars, and making more room for yet MORE cars to pollute the air. I think they ought to devise a decent public transportation system instead, but oh no...that would make too much sense.

The cost of driving here isn't too bad. For instance, I just bought a 2004 Nissan Sentra for $8,550, and my payments are $234/month. Full coverage insurance is $58/month, and I get close to 30 miles per gallon, so I use about half a tank a week just driving from work to back every day with few errands. Gas is $2.35/gallon here, and I spend about $15/week on gas.

So it costs me, with car payment, a total of $350/month to drive. Without the car payment and full coverage insurance (liability only instead), for me it would be $90/month. That's how much it was costing me before buying a newer car.

I think the cost of riding the bus to anywhere from anywhere is about 75¢. It's a pain in the ass, though. Busses only stop at any given place once every hour, so it takes almost 2 hours to get from one end of town to the other. The bus doesn't even come out to where I live.

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

My wife and I own an ancient GMC Suburban. Between gasoline and maintenance, it costs about a dollar a mile to run. Las Vegas has a municipal bus system that looks good on paper, but is unreliable in practice. We use it anyway, and we walk. We've been into hiking all our lives, so we're actually capable of walking long distances, even at our age. It costs forty dollars here for thirty days of bus rides — no limit on the number of rides within the thirty days. We use the truck minimally in town — mostly just to go out to the wilderness. When we want to go to a distant city and don't expect to need the four-wheel drive, we rent a car. It's cheaper. That may be hard to believe, but rental fees are much lower in Las Vegas than in the New York metropolitan area, and they're that low even if we drive the car all the way to New York, which we've done.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

No, gas has not doubled in price since a year ago. Not even close. (Maybe licensing fees went up?)

I'm sorry, but for rural areas there simply is no alternative to owning a car. And even if I DID live in the city, I'm extremely leery of the many drawbacks of not owning a car--you're chained to the bus schedules; you can never transport anything that's bigger than you can carry in one load; you have to take extraordinary measures simply to go out to Mt. Rainier or the Peninsula, let alone to Portland or Seattle (the price of a rental car is STEEP, and don't even ask about train or airfare); you can't live in one town and work in another....

[conuly]

(Maybe licensing fees went up?)

Maybe, though I think most of the people at the boat are unlicensed. Though this certainly *is* good news :)

I'm sorry, but for rural areas there simply is no alternative to owning a car.

Bike? I don't know, not being rural.

You're chained to the bus schedules

...unless you decide to walk or take a bike.

And it's no worse than being chained to remembering to fill up the gas, perform basic maintenence, get your car cleaned.... If the bus system is used widely enough, they run pretty frequently.

you have to take extraordinary measures simply to go out to Mt. Rainier or the Peninsula, let alone to Portland or Seattle (the price of a rental car is STEEP, and don't even ask about train or airfare); you can't live in one town and work in another....

None of which applies in my experience, where plenty of people use the Metro-North or the PATH trains every day. This seems like a failure of the transit system in your area, not like a failure of the potential of the transit system.

you can never transport anything that's bigger than you can carry in one load

Well, it's the same in a car! Your load is just bigger, is all. That's one point to you, I think.

[rachelkachel]

My dad was reading some book about the energy crisis which pointed out that the cost of gas is less than 20% or something of the total cost of owning a car. So it's not as big a deal when the prices go up, and people are less likely to make an effort to get good mileage unless they've got some other reason to.

Make of that what you will, but it struck me as interesting.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

I think that whether it's expensive depends on your income, your location, and where you have to go. In my case, I spend about $25 per month on gas, living in an area with high gas prices ($2.75+ per gallon) and driving either around town or to other cities quite a bit.

It also depends on needs. Public transit is great for people that it is "friendly" towards, but it's not so good if you have needs that conflict regardless of age... The kind of trips I take here aren't the sort that would be particularly compatible with public transit, especially ones like tonight where I absolutely had to travel a considerable distance in a fairly short timespan. It also doesn't work for my allergies and asthma, because people do wear artificial scents or have smoke residue on their clothing; doesn't work for my PTSD because crowds drive me to meltdown; is totally incompatible with my sensory sensitivity as noise/movement (especially of little kids) drive me over the edge quickly.

Don't get me wrong... I wish that the local equivalent to the subway (here it is called BART) stretched up to my area, because I really like riding them and hate having to drive down to other parts of the Bay. It's just that I know that beyond little things like that, I'm a lot better off having a car to drive, even if I usually need to have somebody else drive for me if at all possible.

[conuly]

it's not so good if you have needs that conflict regardless of age...

That certainly is true. I love the bus and train, and I think the vast majority of the world would be better for having decent public transportation and using it, but I certainly wouldn't push it on people who can't use it.

[wodhaund.livejournal.com]

Honestly, thanks to gas prices, I have a very difficult time affording driving. (I'm a poor college student, and recently without a job, which makes it doubly difficult.)

But, thanks to my area's lack of quality public transportation (it exists. ...I think.), I can't afford not to drive.

It's a catch-22, sometimes. x_____x

[sayga.livejournal.com]

I fill up my car with gas every 10 days, and it's about $22. I get 30-40 miles per gallon (just to get to work I have to drive 15 miles, and that doesn't include taking Kira to daycare, running errands, etc). When I lived in Fort Collins, CO, i took public transport and/or walked EVERYWHERE. In Tucson, it sucks. There isn't even a bus stop within 5 miles of my house. I am not sure the last time I saw a taxi. Probably last time I was picking someone up at the airport. The transport system in Tucson is awful, probably because most people don't take it anyway. When it's 110 degrees outside, no one will wait 15 minutes in the full sun for a bus. The sad thing is, though, that all winter, when it's a lovely 50 degrees, no one walks ANYWHERE. People walk way more in Portland in the rain then in Tucson on a cool sunny day. :( I walk to the grocery store with the stroller whenever I can (I would carry her in my arms or in a sling, but then I couldn't haul all the groceries home). It's only 3/4 of a mile away. Sadly, you can tell they rarely get walkers in the store. They're always surprised to see me, walking.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

Aaaahhh, it freaked me out when visiting my grandmother in Escondido, CA - NO ONE walked!!! My husband and I would walk down to the shopping center, and we were the ONLY ones. Once in a rare while we would see another walker, usually Mexican. Crossing the street was horrible! The lights were *clearly* not designed to allow walkers to cross. We (able-bodied young adults) had to sprint to get across the eight lanes, and even so the light would change before we were fully across. I couldn't imagine what one would do if you could't run - e.g. the elderly or disabled. Or anyone with children! What truly disturbed me was when my uncle wanted to *drive* to the 7-11, a mere two and a half blocks away. It's no wonder he is so heavy. :-(

[adiva_calandia]

Heh. I don't drive, yet, mostly because I'm terrified of getting behind a ton of metal and not killing anyone with it.

Whenever I do learn to drive, though, I'm in a somewhat unique situation. Gas up here in Alaska is slightly cheaper than in the Lower 48. Good thing, too, because it's very, very difficult to get around up here without a car. We have some limited public transport, and I suppose it serves well enough in the summertime -- at least in the big cities -- but when temperatures are below zero, waiting for even ten minutes or so can be a miserable experience. There's walking or biking, of course, but the same problem applies.

Personally, I look forward to living somewhere with decent public transit. I like taking subways and buses. It takes you a little extra time, but it's cheaper, you have some time to sit down and read or write or what have you, and there's always the possibility of free street theatre. (And the point about kids and public transport isn't one that had occurred to me, but I like it.)

[conuly]

Heh. I don't drive, yet, mostly because I'm terrified of getting behind a ton of metal and not killing anyone with it.

You're terrified of *not* killing people? :P

Yes, Alaska is a special case. Dear GOD, I can't imagine living in a place like that.

It takes you a little extra time

Not here it doesn't. Trains are *always* faster than driving.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Petrol here is about... $5.98 per US gallon. I think that's how yours is sold? Unfortunately you just have to suck it up and pay though, because for most people public transport simply isn't an option.

Not that any busses existed which did such a route, but I like to imagine my mother getting my brother and me to our childminder every morning, whilst carrying the two large (open) boxes of paper/files as well as her own bag that was all needed for work.

Or a colleague of mine who briefly tried commuting on the half-hourly trains into the city because it was marginally cheaper than driving, but gave up because she still had to keep paying for her car (insurance, road tax etc) because the money spent on commuting could *only* get her to work and back, whilst the car can take her wherever she wants.

Or the journeys I used to take down to Milton Keynes. By train, it takes anything between 2.5 and 4 hours. You either have to go:
- Loughborough-Bedford (hourly) Bedford-Bletchly Bletchly-MK (one of those last two runs every 90 minutes)
- Loughborough-Birmingham Birmingham-MK (about four and a half hours now I would guess, as there's no longer a direct Loughborough-Birmingham train)
- Loughborough-Nuneaton Nuneaton-(Rugby?)-MK which, back when I was doing this route, gave a 6 minute change
- Loughborough-Derby (hourly, to a city 20 miles away) Derby-Coventry Coventry-MK (probably taking... 3.5 hours perhaps. I dunno - I used to us the direct Loughborough-Coventry train, but that no longer runs. Never did run on a Sunday)

Or you can jump in the car and take about an hour door to door - it's 80 miles straight down the M1.

And this doesn't begin to take into account the unpleasantness of travelling by public transport. I can only assume that New York has similar problems to the London Underground with overcrowding - we have 3 million people using the system a day. Although it's not much use if you're South of the river, there's little coverage there (the porous rock is unsuitable for tunnelling, so they have to make do with the overground trains, which are possibly the worst trains in the country.) Conditions on the tube in the summer are actually inhuman - you couldn't convey cattle in such conditions. I don't know about you, but standing body to body (at rush hour it's not uncommon to be able to be supported simply by all the bodies around you) in a carriage that's approaching 100F with no air-conditioning doesn't sound like my idea of fun (if you can work out how to air-condition a Victorian system, TFL would love to hear it!) That said, most people use it anyway because driving in London is such an arse.

Also, travelling by car the cost stays roughly the same whether you've just got the driver, or whether you have four passengers. By train, that would multiply the cost by 5.

I would dearly love for public transport to be more accessible - not least because I don't drive so I'm stuck having to use it! But it's a simple reality that no system designed to cater for the masses will ever replace the convenience of a car which goes where you want to, when you want it to.

[conuly]

The trains aren't air-conditioned? Or the stations aren't?

Should be easy to aircondition the trains, I think.

As for the stations, I'm going to start a minor, completely unsuccessful campaign to renovate all stations to have walls in 'em. Those things are *useful*.

[pne.livejournal.com]

All you people living in places without public transportation ought to get on that.

NB "public transportation" is not the same as "decent public transportation".

You're spoiled, since by all accounts, NYC is one of the few cities with decent public transportation in all of the States (and where it actually gets used by a significant number of residents).

I'm spoiled, too, since public transport in Germany also tends to be fairly good, especially in and around major urban areas (such as Hamburg, where I live). For example, I have three bus lines one minute's walk away, which run every five minutes between them on weekdays and every ten minutes on Sundays.

But other places have busses running over hour or so, on routes which aren't particularly convenient, etc.

I think there's a bit of a vicious circle in the States: everyone has a car, so nobody uses public transport, so the quality of public transport is abysmal (they can't justify funding improvements because there aren't enough users), so people need a car to get anywhere, to nobody uses public transport, etc. ad nauseam.

I don't have a car, either, and rarely miss it: sometimes taking a car would be quicker, but this way I can read on my way to work, I don't have to worry about parking, and it's cheaper. On the odd occasion where I do need a car (usually to transport things), I've managed to have a friend drive me.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

I think there's a bit of a vicious circle in the States:

So very true. In another comment above I mentioned that it is not only the number of riders, but the *expectations and demands* of all the residents, i.e., when the vast majority EXPECT a good public transportation sysytem to be in place, they will find it unacceptable not to have one and will *then* demand change. But most Americans are fine with the status quo, especially as their experience with limited public transportation has not been pleasant. But there is a big difference between a 3-bus daytime only every hour system and an all day all night 5 to 10 minute wait tops many lines and options system.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

People who live in cities and drive are insane. Especially if the public transit is good.

For me, because I'm in a small city where everything is 10 minutes away by car (or an hour by bus) it's more convenient AND cost effective to drive. It would cost me $5 round trip plus 2 hours of my day tot ake the bus but because I have a super fuel efficient car, it costs me a buck and 20 minutes. At most.

I do walk when I can and ride my bike when the weather is nice, though :)

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Sometimes public transit just doesn't work, even in, say, a city like Miami. It's a HUGE sprawl, and I can drive twenty miles from one destination to another, especially as I live in farmland. It's actually cheaper for me to drive than it is to take public transportation. I have to do that here in Philly, and I freaking HATE IT. Oh it's nice...

unless I need to shop. Which is usually my reason for hopping a train to go down to the stores. I'm limited by how much I can fit in my backpack and how much I can carry comfortably in my arms (roughly 15 to 20 pounds).

But still, $5 to go three stops down each way is enough to make me tear my hair out. In my car the round trip would be less than a gallon of gas. A round trip, which costs $10 via SEPTA, versus less than $2.50 for gas.

I wish I had my bike here. I might bring it up, now that I have a new storage deal.

[conuly]

It's not that public transit "just doesn't work". It's that you have a bad (and expensive, I might add) transit system.

[push-the-limits.livejournal.com]

Here in Boise, Idaho, "public transportation" is a joke. Really.

We have no train, no subway, no monorail...nothing but about a dozen busses.

Keep in mind, Boise is about 20 miles long by 10 miles wide, and has close to 200,000 people. The total population of the valley and surrounding towns to which people commute back and forth is about a half a million. Yet these busses do not transport back and forth between those towns.

Our busses only run from about 6am to 6:30pm Monday through Friday, and only half the routes on Saturdays, and they don't run at all on Sundays.

And to get a taxi? You have to call a cab company and wait at least 30 minutes for one to come.

It pisses me off...every Winter here, we have an inversion so badly you can't see the foothills, and they end up banning burning. At the same time, out lovely Republican Governor has a brilliant idea to repave and widen a bunch of roads in Idaho costing millions of dollars, and making more room for yet MORE cars to pollute the air. I think they ought to devise a decent public transportation system instead, but oh no...that would make too much sense.

The cost of driving here isn't too bad. For instance, I just bought a 2004 Nissan Sentra for $8,550, and my payments are $234/month. Full coverage insurance is $58/month, and I get close to 30 miles per gallon, so I use about half a tank a week just driving from work to back every day with few errands. Gas is $2.35/gallon here, and I spend about $15/week on gas.

So it costs me, with car payment, a total of $350/month to drive. Without the car payment and full coverage insurance (liability only instead), for me it would be $90/month. That's how much it was costing me before buying a newer car.

I think the cost of riding the bus to anywhere from anywhere is about 75¢. It's a pain in the ass, though. Busses only stop at any given place once every hour, so it takes almost 2 hours to get from one end of town to the other. The bus doesn't even come out to where I live.

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

My wife and I own an ancient GMC Suburban. Between gasoline and maintenance, it costs about a dollar a mile to run. Las Vegas has a municipal bus system that looks good on paper, but is unreliable in practice. We use it anyway, and we walk. We've been into hiking all our lives, so we're actually capable of walking long distances, even at our age. It costs forty dollars here for thirty days of bus rides — no limit on the number of rides within the thirty days. We use the truck minimally in town — mostly just to go out to the wilderness. When we want to go to a distant city and don't expect to need the four-wheel drive, we rent a car. It's cheaper. That may be hard to believe, but rental fees are much lower in Las Vegas than in the New York metropolitan area, and they're that low even if we drive the car all the way to New York, which we've done.