In my part of the country (a mid-sized city in the South) it sucks, as it does pretty much everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Unless you happen to live right on a bus line and that bus line happens to be headed to your workplace or wherever it is you need to go, it can take two hours to make a trip that might take 15 minutes by car.
I briefly thought about taking the bus to work when gas was hovering around $4 a gallon, but it seemed like too much of a hassle, and besides I often need my car at work anyway depending on what sorts of projects I’m working on.
If you live in the burbs and work downtown? It’s pretty awesome. The commuter trains (on regular train tracks) have good service and reliability, and it probably isn’t too tough for you to get to work from the main train stations. Your employer, if large enough, might even run a shuttle bus service for the train commuters. (I’ve been in this situation for over a decade.)
If you live in Chicago - depends on where you live. The L and buses used to run more often, to more areas. Still, it’s decent compared to many cities.
If you live and work in the suburbs - not so good. If you’re lucky, you live and work on the same train line, or the suburban bus routes will get you where you’re going; most are focused on getting people to the mall or train stations, it seems.
It’s pretty good here (Chicago), at least compared to where I grew up (suburb of Chicago) where there simply wasn’t any.
I’ve lived here for about 10 years, but just really started using it this year. Gas is too expensive, we’re on a super tight budget, and I have a free bus/train pass because I’m a full time student, so it makes sense to use public when I can.
I give myself about the time I’d need in a car for most of the trips I make, especially if parking would be difficult on the other end. So when I go to school, where there is very little parking anywhere near it and I spend more time looking for parking than driving there, I leave the same exact time for the bus or by car. If my SO drives me and there’s no need to park, I can leave half the time for the trip. If I’m going somewhere where parking is easy, then I allow double the time for the bus.
The worst part for me is that on the route I take to school, the buses don’t synch up well. I always have to wait about 20 minutes after I get off the first bus before the second arrives, and it’s COLD out there! But compared what I hear of other places’ public transportation, I feel ashamed for whining about that.
ETA: I still use the car for shopping or schlepping trips, or when I’ve got the little one with me. I feel so bad for the people who are struggling with a baby stroller, a baby, two preschoolers and 13 bags from Aldi on the bus.
I live in Brampton and work in Toronto. If I drive to work it takes about an hour each way. Using a combination of the TTC and Go Transit it takes me about 90 minutes each way. If I worked a little further north or south transit would actually take about the same time as driving. If my office was off the subway line transit would take so long that I might as well move into my office.
I’m still crossing all available appendages that this years work from home pilot generates an actual option for working from home 2-3 days per week. Heck I’d be willing to work an extra hour for free each day if I didn’t have to spend 2 on the road.
It’s consists of a couple cabs, and a senor citizen shuttle that goes to different stores multiple times a week. I think the stores pay for the shuttle.
We live in a suburb of Jackson, MS. Transit service in Jackson has been cut considerably over the years, and they are looking at making even more cuts: IIRC, three routes and Saturday service will be axed, and other routes will be spaced further apart. What transit service there is only serves Jackson, so our suburbs have nothing available.
Having lived there for 20 years, I can say that the transit in and around San Francisco can be excellent when it wants to be. In the region, there’s something like 30 different operators and agencies, so it’s not hard for someone to foul up the whole thing if you need to transfer.
Like Chicago, routes within SF work pretty well, and rail lines such as BART and CalTrain do a fine job of hauling people to and from the suburbs. Within the outlying cities depends on the particular county’s transit system, and between suburban counties can be really iffy.
Here in Charlotte, transit is crap. There is one light rail line that doesn’t really go anywhere, and bus service is horrid. I just plugged in my home and office addresses, and the routing actually starts with “Drive or taxi to…” as the closest bus stop is two miles away. From there, it’s two and a half hours and three transfers to get near the office. The transfers are absurd as well - get off the bus and walk about five minutes to the “connecting” line? Are they nuts? I’ll stick with the 25 minute drive, thanks.
I’m in the west end of Boston. It’s pretty decent overall, but the Green Line can be a bit of a hassle. The B line especially is slow as molasses and usually overcrowded.
The commuter rails out to the 'burbs and beyond are pretty fast and reliable, but I wouldn’t want that as my daily commute. Too expensive, for one thing.
Every now and then I make the aquaintence of a suburbanite who can’t wrap his or her head around me not having a car. I even had someone recently wonder if I’d had my license taken away from me because of DUI offenses. She couldn’t believe that I get along fine without a car.
The BART confused me a little. I dislike systems where you pay more to go farther. I did like the bus system, but going through Chinatown was an exercise in sardinery.
I live in Arlington, a large suburb right outside of Washington, DC. As with the Chicago, public transit is excellent if you’re going into the District, or travelling within it. Metro rail and bus services are quite good. There are caveats - Metro’s hub-and-spoke system make it hard to transfer between lines outside of downtown, so trips between stations on different lines can be relatively lengthy even if they aren’t actually that far apart from one another. If you’re doing a bar-crawl, for example, it can make a lot of sense to just walk between U Street (Green Line) and Adams Morgan (Red Line).
Public transit solely within Arlington itself is almost, but not quite, as good as in the District proper. Metro’s Orange Line serves the northern part of the county, while the Blue and Yellow lines serve the south. The hub-and-spoke system really punishes Arlington here - it means that if I want to go from Ballston (north) to Crystal City (south), I must first head east and transfer at Rosslyn. Further, much of the counter isn’t served by Metro rail at all. That said, MetroBus and the county’s own bus system make up a lot of the difference.
I would say that public transit in DC is good enough to go carfree - I lived in the city for years, and never wanted a car. (Though some areas are sufficiently inaccessible that “Screw it, let’s get a cab” will occasionally be the best bet - the H Street nightlife corridor is a prime example.) Arlington’s public transit is good enough to go carfree provided that you either work in DC, work near another Arlington metro stop, or are on the same bus line as your work. And, of course, provided that you live near a metro station yourself. This isn’t a terribly onerous set of conditions, though - I’ve lived in Arlington for a year and a half now, happily carfree.
I live in the Schenectady/Albany/Troy area of New York. Public transportation is good if you live on the right bus line, and terrible if you don’t. For me to get to work from my house I would have to make two transfers and take an hour and three-quarters for a half-hour drive. That’s assuming no delays.
San Diego: not very good. Takes forever, but does pretty much get you there. If you’re on a Trolley line, brilliant, but not so much the buses.
Los Angeles: horrible. Large swathes of town with no transit, buses & trains poorly integrated, fleet not very clean or safe. (Again, exceptions if you’re near a main bus / train line.) Going across town (say, downtown to UCLA) takes forever.
Vancouver BC: total awesomeness. 100% accessible for those who care, buses / trains / seabus are well integrated, clean & friendly, goes everywhere, doesn’t take too long, cheaper and easier than driving + parking for much of the city. We hardly ever use the car. ETA: There are also little bathtub-shaped ferries for foot traffic, too. Not integrated with the rest but still fun.
Portland has a wonderful public transit system. We have four light rail lines, and the buses run on time. All the stops have a Stop ID and a phone number to call if you want to look up when the next bus/train arrives. The transit centers and most Max stops have TV screens showing which train is arriving soon and which way they’re going. They even have smartphone apps so you can look up the closest stops and what time the bus should be there. Their website also has a trip planning map that rivals google maps in its ease of use. My work pays for my mass transit pass so I ride the Max in to work fairly often. I’m now down to buying gas around once a month, sometimes longer. Downtown is free, and there’s multizone passes.
That’s where I first encountered it. What I really disliked was that it was free to get into a station, but I had to pay to get out. Good thing I had (barely) enough cash on me.
While I’m not nuts about Charley Cards in Boston, I like that it’s one price to go anywhere.
Pittsburgh it ranges from fantastic to sucks. The closer you are to city-center the better it is. North Side, South Side, Squirrel Hill and cars are really optional. I can walk out my door two blocks one direction and get a bus every 7 minutes - the other direction three blocks and one every 10 minutes. Say every 30 minutes on Sunday.
Get some place like Glassport or Liberty Boro and not so much so. Some places like that have basically one bus every hour or so and almost nothing weekends.
I live and work in Manhattan, so uh, it’s the best in the country. The subways run 24/7 and reach most places, and compared to other cities, a monthly pass is cheap(er).
I’ll add to what kopek said - if you’re going from one place to another that would typically need a bridge, it can be iffy, and Pittsburgh has tons of bridges. If you want to get to the Northside and you live in the city, there’s a bus or two for that. If you live in the South Hills and work Downtown or somewhere in between the two, there’s a quick, cheap T for that, with ample park n rides. If you live in any of the generally well-off East End city neighborhoods (I do myself, sounds like kopek does too) you have a wide range of options that will get you there just as fast, sometimes faster and sometimes slower. I always ride the bus when I go downtown; it’s cheap and fast. One exception would be if I’m going to the theater or am parking after 5-6pm only; then parking’s maybe $3 for the whole night.
But getting from Oakland (99% renter occupancy, home to most hospitals/technology/etc) to the suburban South Hills, there’s just one bus every hour or so, usually packed.
I have no idea how the situation is in the North Hills or Cranberry. The further you live from the city, the worse it is generally. We had a 7% poured alcohol drink tax initiated two years ago so that they wouldn’t make transit cuts. Good thing the tax brought in more than they expected - and we still face 35% in cuts. At least we have some sense - the county exec who initiated the tax lost in the governor’s race.
DFW denizen here. We have DART buses and rail lines - and they’re slowing adding more rail - but it still mostly sucks, in no small part because of the sprawl. The powerful summer heat is an additional disincentive - who wants to stand around sweating into their work clothes waiting for their bus?
Fun fact: the parking lots at the rail stations fill to capacity every day.
Ah, Dallas. A city so car-centric that you still need a car to get to the public transportation.
