If you don’t have a car and live in a city how do you get around? Do you walk, take the bus, bike, have a scooter, or what?
I don’t think i’ll get rid of my car anytime soon but i’d like to believe I could live comfortably without one.
Is the bus actually a good way to get around town? I know schedules and whatnot vary by city but in general will a bus get you to where you need to go?
I don’t have a car. It sucks in Columbus, OH. There is the bus which is a terrible service here. They’ve cut service frequently over the past few years. The bus service is funded by sales tax revenues which have been down during the Bush recession.
I live across the street from work, so I walk there. Usually, a coworker will stop and pick me up in rain or a major snow.
My local bar is also right across the street. That’s convenience. There was a Big bear grocery store nearby which went out of business a year ago. Kroger’s is taking over the site and it should be reopened in a month or so.
Thankfully most of the other services are reasonably close. However, I’d never recommend living in this city without a car. I’m hoping to move from here in the next year, so I haven’t bought one yet.
I don’t have a car. I use public transport (trains, buses, ferries) for most journeys. Or I simply walk - it’s only a 40 minute walk from my place to my office. If I’m in a hurry I’ll take a taxi. If a need a car for a couple of days then I’ll simply rent one.
I don’t own a car. My sister does, but I’ve only driven it twice. I did, however, have a car two weeks ago, when my father went to Frisco. Normally, I take the bus, and have the advantage of a payroll deduction bus pass.
No, I don’t miss the car at all, because on the first day I had the use of it, I burned 25CAD in gas, and another 10 in parking. The bus pass costs me 25CAD per pay.
Here in Ottawa, we have the Transitway, (cite link not working :smack: www.octranspo.com ) which is a bus only road.
I have a grocery store within 10 minutes walk of my house, the transitway is a 6 minute walk away, and if I get real lazy, I can walk for about one minute to the nearest connector bus stop.
There is also a bar right across the street, but I don’t go there (long story - ask scule, so I go to a place about a 5 minute walk away if I want a beer.
Otherwise, anywhere I go, I walk.
I live in London. Most people here don’t have cars. I take the train if I’m going to work, or the (notoriously unreliable) Tube if I’m going out. I probably spend 40 minutes a day walking between stations/work/home.
Ironically, I spend more on public transport here than I ever did on my car when I lived in Australia and drove everywhere.
I don’t have a car at present and it SUCKS. It has been said that Auckland is almost as car dependent as L.A.
Public transport is useless here and even with a car the traffic is terrible. Auckland needs every motorway pulled up and the whole thing needs to be re-planned by someone with a brain.
I sooooo hope to have a car soon because this is not somewhere you wan’t to be without one for long.
London though 10 times bigger is so much easier to get around. No one needs a car there.
I walk. I walk for shopping, banking or just for fun. 10 miles is about my limit. I enjoy being outdoors. I enjoy the fresh air. I enjoy getting time alone with my thoughts. I enjoy the exercise. I enjoy taking different routes and knowing my neighborhood better then almost anyone else. I enjoy having something better to do then to sit around and watch reruns. It is a little lonely and it does take a lot of time but I have lots of time to kill. Now when I go to the movies (very rarely) I take the bus or go with someone else out of courtesy to the people who happen to sit next to me in the theater.
I’ve been homebound alot recently but that’s all going to end soon and I’ll be out walking again. I can’t wait, I love walking. You just see so much.
I don’t have a car, and that’s completely out of choice. I can afford one, but I’d rather protect the earth. 
It’s all public transport, here it’s mostly reliable, by bus, train, ferry, citycat. And it’s a lot cheaper, my entire transport for a year, comes in at the same price as paying registration on a car for a year.
The reason why America has such a shitty public transport system is because no-one uses it because it’s shitty. It’s a never-ending cycle. I’m sure there are other factors, but that’s the one that seems evident.
Why do you want to destroy such a beautiful country as NZ? If you’re public transport system sucks, don’t buy a car, complain. They can’t just keep on making wider and wider roads to accompany everyone who wants to drive their car.
When will people realise that fossil fuels are running out?
Because I will grow cobwebs waiting for buses! Our local politicians need gelignite up their arses! Auckland (about 10 yrs ago) was in the top 5 biggest cities in the world, by area. You can’t keep spreading a city further and further out without thinking how people will get around it. Some dipshit needed to do something a long time ago.
I can’t just jump on a bus (or heaven forbid a train!) to get to the other side of the city. It takes frigging military type planning. The local govt does NOTHING to encourage public transport use.
I am sorry for the enviroment. I CARE about the enviroment but this cities public transport system is useless!
Then quit whining here, and write a sternly worder letter already! 
It ain’t gonna fix itself.
Ummmmmmmmm You think that hasn’t been done?
Our brilliant dipshit of a mayor just spent millions building a bus and train terminal in the middle of the city. It disrrupted traffic for a couple of years (the building) and now it is up and “running”. Hey Banks you TWAT why build a train terminal when much of the city has NO BLOODY TRAIN ACCESS! D’Oh.
Thank you Mr Banks for the flash new place for the buses to stop…are there any more buses then there were before? Why did the bus fares just go up if you want us to use buses?
Go You Big Red Fire Engine I am not whinging here. I answered the question asked. I totaly agree with you though. We shouldn’t have to rely on cars. If cities like London and New York don’t have to, then there is no excuse for Auckland to.
Practicality takes over though. Until things change, you need a car here.
“America” doesn’t have a shitty public transport system. Some cities in America have reliable public transport, some don’t. America is a vast country with very disparate conditions between cities and states. That’s why some cities in America (like LA, referenced above) are by-words for a car-dependent culture. Others simply aren’t.
Boston, the city I live in, is pretty good. We have a car at the moment but we only use it on weekends, and then only if we want to go somewhere where it would be inconvenient to haul goods home on foot from. (Like, picking up more bookcases at Target. Can be done by bus, isn’t too much fun.)
We survived 4 years here without a car. Lots of people do. There’s subway and buses, and downtown is pedestrian friendly, as are a lot of the inner suburban neighbourhoods.
A measure of a city I’d choose to live in is the availability of public transport, there are quite a few cities in the US that meet my standards. Boston’s transport is easily as good as Sydney’s, in fact if everything I hear about CityRail of late is true, it’s better.
I don’t even know how to drive. After 15 years of marriage, my husband finally got a car 2 years ago. I gotta tell you, here in NYC it’s more of a liability than an asset. Our mass transit system is great. You hear people complain but you can get anywhere you need to in the city for just 2 bucks (or less, taking into account the discount).
I think there are very few cities in the United States in which you can easily get around without a car. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking: Boston, New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, Portland OR, and San Francisco. Some smaller college towns such as Boulder CO and Madison WI might also be included.
This does not apply to the suburban parts of any of these metro areas, of course.
I’m a bus, bike and walk guy. Getting to work is the tricky bit. That’s a taxi, four flights, taxi, hotel, taxi, flight, bus ride, boat ride kind of thing. :eek:
My daughter doesn’t drive and she’s thirty. (Not my fault or the school’s- we got her to pass Driver’s Ed, but she refused to take the test. She was “opposed to wasting fuel on private transportation.” She always lives in a city with public transportation and will accept rides offered by friends, but really prefers to bike or walk.
I’ve never driven in my life.
I walk a lot–for fun, for exercise and for transportation. The grocery is exactly one mile from my house, and my office is about 1/2 mile. I’m also two blocks from NJ Highway Route 4, where little tiny vans go up and down all the time. There’s groceries right off Route 4 West (where all the malls are) and east (where Borders is).
I can get to NYC via Route 4, and everybody there walks all the time.
Add Honolulu. With all these tourists it had better be. The bus is fast, reliable, not as cheap as it was a few years ago but still pretty nice. $2 for a few hour window with one transfer allowed. Some people outside the city limits complain that the buses don’t run as often or everywhere but if you live in the city it’s real nice. I walk to save money and avoid the crowds though. And because I like it.
I’ve never driven or wanted to. I come from a place where the public transit was so abundant, you didn’t need to drive. Now I live in a place where somebody needs to tell the local bozos how a transit system is supposed to be run. I have to ride my bike to the end of the bus line and take the bus to work, but it is late almost every day. So I’ve had to arrange for a friend at work to pick me up when the bus gets to a major intersection close to downtown, usually at the time when it should be at the terminal, connecting with the other buses. The first year I had to take the bus, it cost me $300 in taxi fares to get from the empty bus terminal to work. It was either hail a cab, or be an hour and a half late (there’s one bus an hour, except for the extra half an hour at noon when you have to wait for the bus drivers to have their freakin’ lunch!)
My wife drives the car. She comes from car culture, and we just got her a new Neon. Our previous one cost us so much in repairs, that we could have bought a new one with that money instead. $800 here, $1400 there…without warning… that’s why I’ve never had a car.
You can add Santa Barbara to the list of cities where you really don’t need a car. The nice thing about SB is that it’s basically linear, sandwiched between the mountains and the ocean. Also, the weather is pretty much nice for 10 or 11 months out of the year. I bike pretty much everywhere, but also use the bus system. Conveniently, the buses have bike racks on the front, so you can change your mind in the middle of your odyssey.
Generally, I ride downtown (~8 miles, mostly flat, all with bike lanes) and take the bus back home if I’m feeling lazy. Unless it’s after 11pm, because the last freaking bus leaves at 11. Which, if I may break into a mini-rant here, is fucking ridiculous because the bars don’t close until 2. So the MTD is basically asking people to drive home drunk. Add to this the fact that the bars in Isla Vista (the town next to the University where the majority of the students live) close at midnight, so if you want to go out late, you have to drive.
Ok, now that I’ve got that out of my system: I bike.