Does your town have a decent public transportation system?

[maveric]

With gas prices going through the roof many of us will opt for alternative transportation such as biking, walking, buses, subways/trolleys... If your area has one thats worth a damn.
Luckily I live in San Diego. We have a great bus and trolley system here that is affordable and very efficient. My job is 1/2 block from a trolley station. I would have to drive about a mile and a half to the Old Town station/park & ride to catch it going in. Then its a straight shot to Chula Vista where I work. Still have to drive but not as far. Its a $4.50 round trip to work and back. Much less than what I would pay for the gas that I would burn.
Its not to the tipping point yet but when it hits $4.00 a gallon I'm taking the trolley.

How is the public transportation system in your town?
Do you have one?
Is it efficient?
Affordable?
Who you use it?

[taterguy]

1. I don't need a "decent" system to get around on a bike

I picked a place to live that was close to stores and places to work. The roads aren't designed for bikes but I manage to get by. I've been doing it over 15 years with no accidents.

[Ghost in the Machine]

2. LMAO! We don't even have sidewalks!!

I live in Hicktown, USA... 94 counties in Tennessee and only 3 smaller than this one....

[Clark2008]

34. I just posted regarding Knoxville...

I'd say our public transportation SUCKS everywhere in the state with the exception of maybe Memphis. Nashville's not much better than Knoxville from what I hear.

[Ghost in the Machine]

39. I'm right down the road from you in Meigs County

... they don't even know what a bus is, 'ceptin' fer dat big yaller thang whut picks the young'uns hup fer skoo.... :rofl:

:hi: Howdy Neighbor!

[Jamastiene]

49. We only have sidewalks in the downtown area, as tiny as that is.

I know what you mean. One hundred counties in NC and the one where I live is too small to support more than 5 vans that are too hard to contact if we can find the information on how to contact them, that is. I have yet to find their contact information.

[Ghost in the Machine]

55. My county only has 2 red lights... about 40 yards apart, at each end of

the courthouse square..... out where I live, the nearest corner store is 4 miles away, while the closest grocery store is 12 miles away.. in 3 different directions...

edited to add: Do you know where Ellenboro, NC is? I lived there for a while as a kid.. the post office was a 40 foot trailer like the use on construction sites for offices..

[DetroitProle]

3. bwahaha

Detroit? Please. This is the Motor City...no one ever thought we'd NEED one...
we have buses and a small elevated tram(the People Mover) around the Central Business district.
The buses can get you most anywhere in the city, but access to the suburbs is limited. Timing is unreliable. Many night routes were eliminated due to the city's financial woes.
I'd say most of the people on the bus are those without cars. I do make use of it as much as possible, though. If more people used what we have, it would encourage further development!
It isn't necessarily much more cost-effective for me to take the bus the few miles to the CBD, but Lord I hate driving. It's nice to sit back and have someone else do it.

[RL3AO]

4. I think we have 5 buses for a town of 16000. Thats our mass transportation.

[tandot]

5. I take the Amtrak to work

I walk to the train station, which is about 1/4 mile away from our house. Then I walk from the train station to work, about 1/2 mile. Then I walk around campus a lot each day. In all, I get about 3 miles walking in each day.

The monthly pass for the Amtrak is $148 for a 40 mile distance. My work pays $18 and the rest is taken out of my pay-check (pre-tax).

However, weekends, we use our car to buy groceries and go shopping. We have busses here, but we are just too lazy to figure them out and food would spoil by the time we get home.

[RedCappedBandit]

6. Short answer:

no.

long answer.
i'm not sure i'm familiar with this so called "public transportation" you speak of.

[WindRavenX]

7. Boston's T is ok, nothing compares to the MTA

NYC is a breeze.

[maveric]

10. I grew up in Boston.

Took the "T" everywhere when I lived in the city. Trains always ran on time too.

[WindRavenX]

11. you must be older than me (22) because the T NEVER is on time.

Will the next train be here in 5, 10, 0r 25 minutes? You never know! :rofl:

[maveric]

12. Well...I left Boston in 1976.

Has it gotten that bad in 31 years?

[WindRavenX]

16. Apparently. It's now 2.00 both inbound AND outbound.

:grr:

[napi21]

8. We dinb't have ANY at all! I only wish we did.

[Book Lover]

9. Inside SF it's somewhat decent, even if not 24/7.

Outside SF, it is laughable. Yes, I am somewhat spoiled having grown up in NYC, but c'mon. No buses after 6 pm from the BART station to where I live? Godless forbid I work late!

[Gormy Cuss]

13. East Bay? That sounds like the smart scheduling of the itty bitty transit companies out here.

When I lived in Boston when of the biggest complaints about the T was that it covered too big an area. I wish there was a T equivalent here in SF. Excluding the train only systems like BART and Caltrain, the rest of the transit systems should probably be consolidated into one or two regional companies and there should be buses out to the hinterlands until at least 9 PM on weeknights.

[Book Lover]

15. Nope, Peninsula

Part of the problem, IMHO, is that transit here in county-based, not regional. SamTrans runs a bus from where I live to downtown SF that is actually handy. If only it ran later than 7:45 in the morning into the city and 5:30 at night out. Frankly, useless to me. So I hold to a BART schedule and *still* have to drive my car to get to the station.

[Gormy Cuss]

47. Absolutely agree about the county-based problem.

Try going from San Mateo or Contra Costa to San Jose without a bag of quarters and a stack of schedules. It's a giant Rube Goldberg design all based on the foolish premise that people don't travel between counties except to go to the city. That may have worked in the 1950s, but not now.

[depakid]

14. Portland, OR -decent but could be much better

Light rail and the bus system need more routes and more bike storage capacity.

Even so, it's a WHOLE LOT better than the vast majority of cities and towns in the US.

[Parche]

25. Portland

Do you live in Portland too????

[MissB]

32. Portland's trimet system rocks

in comparison to other cities. :)

[swag]

45. No kidding. I can take the 8, 9, 10, and 33 from downtown and

they all get me within spitting distance of my house. In the morning I can take the very reliable 8 down to work with very little hassle.

An excellent system.

[Parche]

17. Bus

Its the best in the country, next to DC
Portland Oregon, I take the light rail everyday to work!!!!

[maveric]

19. We've got a good one down here too.

The light rail (Trolley), has been expanding over the past 25 years. The hub is downtown and lines go to the border, east county, Mission Valley and SDSU. Its always on time too.
Now if they could get a line along the beach route it would be great and help the parking horrors in those areas.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

52. Yes, Portland, the city where it's easy to live without a car

I miss that. I hate driving.

[Monk06]

18. Vancouver Sky Train. Award winning. Service increased from 12 am closing

to 3am for the benefit of janitorial workers
who leave work at midnight. Also cuts down
on DUI's. Schedule restarts at 6 am.

[Breeze54]

20. decent public transportation?

We don't have ANY public transportation and that includes taxi's! :(

That's why I'm relocating soon!

[etherealtruth]

21. NO

I live in metro Detroit ... need I say more?

[terrya]

22. The CTA has its problems. But overall it's good.

I'm hoping the new leadership at the Chicago Transit Authority may make a difference. I'm hopeful, anyway.

[NYC Liberal]

23. NYC - I always take the subway

There's almost no place I can't get to taking it. Some of the lines are crappier than others, but on the whole, it's great.

$2 fare, but I have a monthly card which I use enough that it costs less than paying $2 every ride.

[AndyTiedye]

24. Like Most Small Communities in the US, We Have No Public Transportation At All

[tech3149]

26. We used to back in the 50's

It was an electric trolley system that served all the small rural communities in the county. You could ride from anywhere to anywhere for 10 cents. It got bought up by an oil company (Sinclair) and was dead within a year. They started a bus service in the 90's, but it doesn't come close to providing the service and price that the trolley system did. Back when the trolley service was working, most communities had local vendors that sold the basic food items you might need. The trolley trip into "town" was usually once a week or month to buy the things you couldn't get at the local store.

When I moved back to the area, I chose my apartment partially because I can get anything I need in a two mile radius. Because of the hills and the road configuration, walking and biking aren't reasonable options. I can still go for a month or two without having to fill up my 10 gal tank.

As much as I'd like to see public transportation more widely available, I think the real answer is to work towards more self-sufficient communities. Walking to the corner store beats riding a few tons of steel to get what you need.

[kath]

54. When I tell people that oil companies bought out tons of local trolley systems just to put them out

of business, people look at me like I'm crazy. But it really did happen.
Northeastern Ohio used to to have a similar network, connecting small towns all around the Cleveland area.

[Jim Lane]

27. I'm enough of a New York City chauvinist as it is, don't tempt me to boast (n/t)

[pitohui]

28. what is this public transportation system you speak of? you interest me strangely EOM

.

[porphyrian]

29. Tallahassee, Florida, and it's shit.

First of all, the city is at least twenty years behind its population growth, and the majority of it outside of the oldest parts was "planned" by developers who were clever enough to circumvent our staunch environmentalists. So, you pretty much have to drive everywhere to do anything. There's a biking movement that enjoys some success, but you take your life into your own hands in half of the area, and the distances are still long (and we've got hills that are a bitch). There is a bus system, but it costs twice as much as Chicago's and is way less reliable. Basically, you're fucked if you don't own your own vehicle.

[tammywammy]

30. No public transportation where I live

The Dart bus runs where I work, but not where I live. Regardless, I only live 12 miles away from work, and drive a vehicle that gets between 42 and 46 mpg.

[tabasco]

31. Yeah, here's our public transportation in West Virginia:

[Clark2008]

33. Nope.

It's better than it used to be, but it's still piss poor for a city this size (there are more than 400,000 people here).

[Squatch]

35. That's one thing the Washington DC megalopolis does well!

I drive a total of 2 miles on my 30-mile commute.

[Odin2005]

36. The Fargo-Moorhead Metro (around 150,000 people) has around 20 city buses, that's it.

n/t

[MountainLaurel]

37. Portland, ME: negative

Theoretically, there is a bus service, but I can't make heads or tails of how the different lines connect by looking at the maps. Also, they don't go very far out of town, and they run fairly far apart from what I can tell.

After living in DC for 15 years, it's a bit of a letdown.

[Richard Steele]

38. Yes. I have nothing but good things to say about Mass Transit here in Durham. nm

[Telly Savalas]

40. Kansas City's is weak in most places.

The routes give pretty good coverage of the city proper, the buses are clean and well-kept, and the staff is friendly. It's cheap too: $1.25 single fare, $3 day pass, $40 month pass. However most routes run way too infrequently, making it extremely awkward to get around unless you've planned your trip to be timed with the bus schedules. (And I won't even talk about the burbs.)

I use it to commute to work. For spontaneous trips and running errands, the sparse scheduling makes it too much of a pain in the ass since it can frequently take 3 or 4 times longer to get somewhere.

Like many places in America, the problem is that the city is designed with cars in mind.

[unc70]

41. YES, and it is FREE - No Fares - Chapel Hill, NC

Chapel Hill and Carrboro have one of the best public transportation systems found in small/medium-sized communities. A few years ago, we voted to remove almost all fares for riders of the Chapel Hill Transit buses and to increase our property taxes to fund the entire system. The buses are free and they are for everyone. Ridership has increased dramatically since the removal of fares. Because we have this system, we have been able to avoid considerable spending on new roads and parking decks. Eliminating the collection of fares makes the routes slightly quicker.

We still need a lot of improvement in our larger community including Raleigh, Durham, the Research Triangle, and nearby towns. The bus systems of the various towns and the Triangle Transit Authority interconnect fairly well, but these other systems have limited political support and continue to increase fares, inhibiting ridership.

CH Transit does charge for special shuttles to some UNC campus events and games and for late night/weekend "shared ride" service (almost like having a shared taxi).

[Solly Mack]

42. Sure does!

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

[Matsubara]

43. Lots of great reliable subways, trains and buses here...

But I live in Japan - all cities here have great transit, so I guess that's cheating...

[GreenPartyVoter]

44. There are 600 odd ppl here so no, but I do ride the school bus into town

a fair amount during cheering season. (I don't have a a license.)

[MLFerrell]

46. Best public transportation of anywhere I've lived...

Here in Morgantown, WV. A whole fleet of buses, and the venerable WVU PRT.

http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/Morgantown/

There's a good WVU "offical page" on the PRT also... But I'm entirely too lazy to look it up. :)

[mnhtnbb]

48. The bus system in Chapel Hill, NC is FREE to all riders.

The University kicked in several years ago to make it a free ride for all, since
parking is so limited on campus.

Although the bus system stops running by 10 pm, it's possible to get around
town quite easily. There is also service for those with disabilities
who require door to door service.

http://www.townofchapelhill.org/index.asp?NID=72

[Starbucks Anarchist]

50. Yes -- I live in NYC.

:D

[TZ]

51. Here in the metro DC suburbs there is an extensive system but...

Its starting to age (Metro subway) and has had lots and lots of techincal problems in the last year or so. Its also getting overloaded because the area is growing exponentially.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

53. Minneapolis-St. Paul's system isn't as bad as some, but it's pathetic

compared to Portland.

There aren't enough lines between the two cities, the buses don't run often enough or to the right places, and the area is behind metropolitan areas of comparable size in building light rail.

Sad to say, the Twin Cities once had a wonderful and comprehensive streetcar system, which was dismantled in 1954.