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Do you use public transportation often? I love it and think it's great but in a smaller town such as mine I don't get to use it much (despite the fact that we've got free buses and such.) The coolest kind is a monorail. I've been on the one in Seattle a couple of times and it's super neat. :jess:
I would love to ride a passenger train! Sadly we just get the freight ones coming through my town.
Besides like a school bus, I've never really been on public transportation much. Although, places I've lived in haven't had it too small/poor. I used some when I was in Europe? Trains are awesome! But never here in the states really. Like seriously, TRAINS ARE AWESOME.
I agree with Freya. Trains are quite simply the greatest form of public transportation ever. I love my three-and-a-half hour train journey to Glasgow whenever I visit my best mate. Not that I'm a posh knob, but I always pay extra for a first class ticket. It's only an extra £8 if you book in advance and it's well worth it.
Sat in a comfy seat with a few beers, Game of Thrones to read, PSP to play Final Fantasy and a nice lady bringing me biscuits... perfection.
This thread is aptly timed. I just ten minutes ago returned from my first major "all public, all the way" trip around soul. Me and a buddy, both of us having just gotten to Korea a couple weeks ago, finally decided to figure out the public transportation so we could actually go out and do stuff. We learned three major lessons.
One, Korean bus drivers are apparently convinced that they are driving extended rally cars through a closed course where traffic laws/signs/lights have no meaning to them. They are also oblivious and/or simply do not care that most of the passengers are standing. It is an experience.
Two, Go for the young folk when in a foreign land and trying to figure out the subway system for the first time. We got a very helpful older gentlemen with exceedingly poor english to help us, and after ten minutes a younger cat with far superior dialect managed to fix us up in about 30 seconds. It took another ten minutes to explain to the very helpful older gentlemen that we knew where we were going now, and he did not have to excitedly lead us to the track.
Three, public transpo is pretty awesome once you know what you're doing. It takes a little longer, but over here at least it's cheaper than dirt. It cost us less than $2.50 american to bounce all over Seoul via subway, and the hour train ride to seoul in a reserved seat (as opposed to standing) was only about $10 either way. We could have done the same trip entirely by subway from where we're at, but it came highly recommended that we take a train for the major jaunt first, as the subway results in standing for 2 hours and the train has a comfy seats and took 45 minutes less time due to less stops. I highly enjoyed myself, and am definitely looking forward to using the ever loving piss out of it over the next year.
We also learned that the local rock climbers are embarrassingly strong and will make you look like a total chump. They will laugh at your failures in a totally friendly, pleasant way. We shamed our entire country, sorry USA.
trains trains I like trains
If I so choose to wake up early, i can take a train into the city every day. it costs the same as a bus ride.
As for the tax subsidized TTC, it needs to go away.
In my area, short range public transportation is the most depressing thing in the world. I have never used a bus nor will I ever. I get up pretty early for work. Most of the year the sun is barley out or not even out when I wake up for work. Anyway, this allows me to see easily into buses and everyone looks like they are about to shoot themselves.
Other kinds of public transportation is tolerable. Flying or taking a short or long train trip is no problem, nor carries a depressing vibe to it.
There are buses running around here but, I've never used them. They don't come through my town a ton and it seems to be random times. they connect the entire area I live in called the Upper Valley. There's 3 cities and 5 or 6 town they run through so it's a pretty spread out area for like maybe a handful of buses to go.
This past quarter I've taken the bus from 7:20 to 9:00 in the mornings, and then again from 3:22 to 5:05 in the evenings. That's a lot of bus time! I'm definitely thankful for the system, but I wish it would come to my area more often. It's not really very convenient! My classes all got out at 12:05 this quarter. Waiting until 3:22 to take the bus got boring! :p
I have a (officially) 42 minute train journey to work every morning at 08:10. The trains are dirty, stuffy, full of screaming babies and drunks and are often late. And it costs me almost a tenner a day. Yet it is still a far better option to driving. Screw capital cities.
If California had public transportation like Japan, I would use it every day. It was heavenly.
The bus system in San Francisco was okay.
I looked into taking the bus to work out here. If I drive it takes me 30 minutes to get to work (20 minutes to get there and park, 10 minutes to take the shuttle from staff parking). If I ride my bike it takes me an hour, but there's a health benefit and work gives me $1. If I take the bus I have to take three different buses and it takes like an hour and a half. It would cost $5 but work would reimburse me. Screw that.
Edinburgh's local bus company is freaking awesome. I mean, I have a bus stop outside our block of flats and I have a link that tells me, using GPS systems, when the next bus is likely to arrive, and when the next three buses after that are likely to arrive. For each bus route. And wherever I'm going, it's likely there is a bus route that will take me to within a few minute's walk of that location and the bus will probably go down that route every ten or so minutes on a weekday, maybe 15-20 minutes on a Saturday and 15-30 minutes on a Sunday. I love Lothian Buses <3
Main site: Bus tracker - Edinburgh - Real-time bus information
My local bus stop: BusTracker - Edinburgh - Next departures from Restalrig
You can even get maps showing every bus stop on a route so you can find out when the next bus is going to arrive at a certain stop, or just get an area map so you can find a stop and then see what bus will get you there, etc. It's awesome. :D There are also live updates on the company website detailing things like diversions, not to mention they do the same thing on their Twitter account.
I once left a phone on a bus, and going by the schedule I was able to find out when the bus was going back the other way on it's return route and managed to get my phone from the driver as it came the other way. :)
Train, train, take us away
Take us away, far away
Into the future we will go
Where it leads, no one knows
I bike to work every day and avoid the trains if I can. But since I don't have a car, they ARE super useful, and you can go just about anywhere!http://www.kevinneal.com/blog/wp-con..._koiki_eng.gif
Well when I moved out of home (years ago) I had to leave my car (was a learner), so to fuel my addiction to cheeseburgers I required a bus/train into the city. I tend to only walk wilfully when drunk.