I feel like I need to defend DC against NYC snobbery here. Certainly, the NYC subway system is very good. But comparing subway service in Manhattan to any other city’s entire subway system isn’t quite cricket - Manhatten is more arguably more closely akin to the downtown core of any other city. (Even though it does, concededly, have quieter residential neighborhoods). And metro service in downtown DC is easily the equal of Manhattan’s in terms of accessibility.
I would also note that there are ways in which DC’s system probably trumps NYC’s:
1.) Cleanliness. Our system stops running at midnight on weeknights, 3AM on weekends - this puts a crimp in nightlife, but gives us a system that’s far more comfortable than the subway.
2.) Our hub-and-spoke system has its quirks - as mentioned earlier, transferring between lines can be tricky. But I don’t think we have anything as onerous as crossing between the East and West sides of Manhattan.
4.) Finally - our stations all have LED signs listing upcoming arrival times. Yours don’t - oh, some do, but most don’t. It’s a little thing, but it makes a real difference to useability.
I’m temporarily staying with my parents, in a suburb north of San Francisco. It’s pretty lousy. BART doesn’t go to the North Bay, so the only option is bus. There are commuter buses that go to San Francisco and Santa Rosa, but they stop downtown and I personally couldn’t get there without a car or a two-mile walk. Getting to one of the other towns in the area without a car would be impossible unless they’re on the commuter bus route. There are also a couple ferry landings, but I’m not sure I could get to them without a car. The whole system seems to be set up for people who have cars, but don’t want to actually park in San Francisco, which is pretty understandable.
I wanted to go to, say, the Trader Joe’s across town without a car? I have no idea if it’s even possible. There is a municipal bus system, but I’ve never taken it. I only rarely see the buses, so it’s hard to think it’s very fast or efficient.
Mr.Excellent, when I was in DC a couple months ago, I had to take a cab to the airport for my early Saturday flight because the Metro wasn’t running yet. To me, this disqualifies DC for having an excellent public transit system right there.
Ooh, been there. My parents lived in Healdsburg when I was at Berkeley. BART from Berkeley to Richmond, then a bus that made only three stops: Richmond, San Quentin Prison, and San Rafael. Then a bus to Santa Rosa & Points North. Guess which was the scariest leg?
On the other hand, Metro will get you from Reagan National to downtown in about twenty minutes - hard to match that in NYC. (JFK to downtown is, what, an hour?) And even though NYC’s trains notionally run 24hrs/day, the wait between trains in the off-hours can be formidible - I daresay many folks taking early-morning flights, even from JFK, find the subway impracticle).
Still, I’ll concede that the lack of a 24/hour service imposes some costs. The question is: Are they worth it? I think they are - in exchange for shutting down the system for relatively few hours at night, we get far cleaner, quieter, and more user-friendly mass transit.
In Detroit suburbs it is almost non existing. We have no subways. We have cabs, slow and expensive. We have a bus system that works sporadically. It used to be every 20 minutes but now they come when they come. If you can’t drive, you can not get there.
Calgary, Alberta - it is good and bad here. Going to and from downtown is good. Going anywhere else is bad, as in multiple buses/trains coming at long intervals if they run to the area/during that time at all. It takes me 15 minutes to drive to my temp job; it would take me two buses and (I assume) about an hour to bus there (with a 15 minute walk on the end because buses don’t go into the industrial area at all), plus I get to hang out on a crowded bus because I’d be going at rush hour. I drive.
In Wilmington, the bus service is pretty fair. Outside Wilmington, not so much. Taxi service bites. Train service is decent if you’re going into Philly or headed up / down the east coast. Otherwise, non-existant.
It doesn’t exist where I live. Buses don’t come within ten miles of my town, and trains are even farther away. No taxi service, either. I wouldn’t mind it being like Boston…
Fantastic public transport, subway trains every 5 minutes or so, and buses every 10 minutes or so. I scoot to work nowadays, but when I used to live further out (about 9 miles out) it took me about 45 minutes door to door (walk to the subway station, subway, walk to office).
I would say it’s on par with London’s public transport (of course, London is a LOT bigger, and more expensive), and Tokyo (again, Tokyo is a lot bigger, and has actual commuter trains).
When I worked in downtown Houston, I lived off a very good bus route and it took me almost everywhere I needed to go. It also was frequent enough where if I missed one, another came by fairly quickly.
Where I live know, there is none. If there was a good route, I’d ride my bicycle. Who knows, if gas keeps rising, maybe they’ll finally do something so people can get around without having to always use a car.
Cincinnati’s, as near as I can tell, leaves much to be desired. It’s nice as an adjunct to a car, but I’d hate to have to truly rely on it.
I was only in St. Petersburg, Russia, for a few months, but I got the impression that, if I’d ever been able to figure out the surface part of the “public” transit system, it would’ve been something fairly close to perfection. There were loads of buses and trams, and more than enough mashrutki to fill in any gaps. And there was a perfectly credible subway system to handle longer hauls. The only problem was that I never did figure it out–the little “All Transport” pamphlet I bought had much in common with a bowl of spaghetti spiced with occasional route numbers. So I made like a Russian and walked most places.
It’d be interesting to see something like the mashrutki–which are basically privately owned/operated public transit–in the states, but I’m sure there’d be essentially insurmountable regulatory hurdles even if there were sufficient demand.
I’ve taken it a few times, and it’s really not bad if you only have to take one metro line (and if that line is the red line it’s particularly helpful), but if you have to change lines the trip is much longer than driving, and if you have to take a bus, forget it. Even just taking the trains can take forever if you are on the gold line (14 minutes between trains) or the blue line (20 minutes). Add that to the fact that I don’t feel particularly safe waiting for a train out in the open in LA, and I end up in my car for almost every trip. I used to live 10 miles from my job, and I tried taking the metro and the bus and it took 2 hours. I tried replacing the bus with biking - fastest time was 1.5 hours. Fastest time driving? 30 minutes. Slowest time driving? 1.5 hours.
I’m really bummed about it because I’m super enthusiastic about public transport, AND my company pays for a fantastic monthly pass for almost all forms of transport in the area (excluding, of course, the only connection from the suburb I’m temporarily in to LA). I studied abroad in London for a semester and I LOVED the Tube. Most days I biked the paltry 2.5 miles to and from class (having the trip pass through Hyde Park was a fantastic perk), but on nearly every day I took the Tube the trains were on time, clean, and everyone was respectful. The buses were great too. Loved it.
Some lines of the Chicago el run 24/7 (including the Blue Line to O’Hare) and I would say that they are comparable in cleanliness and pleasantness to the DC Metro.
I’ve only ridden the subways in New York a couple times (I was there very briefly) and I would agree that it is dirtier and dingier than either Chicago’s or DC’s subway system. My friends and I had to ride an elevator in one of the stations and there was a large pool of what appeared to be blood on the elevator floor! :eek: (Also, the NYC subway system is completely baffling because some lines have letters and some have numbers. Whenever I’ve mentioned this on the SDMB, some New Yorker comes in and says “what are you talking about? It’s totally simple!” and then they go into a long and rambling explanation of why this is that would only make sense if you’re actually really familiar with the NYC subway system. I swear, I’ve had an easier time of figuring out what I’m doing on the subway in countries where I didn’t speak the language.)
I live in the boonies of St. Mary’s County in Maryland and work in the boonies of King George County in Virginia. St. Mary’s has a bus system of sorts that circles the county and goes to a few commercial areas, but the closest it comes to my house is maybe 3 miles. King George has a shuttle bus based in Fredericksburg but I’m not sure where it goes. I do know one of its stops is the Food Lion in Dahlgren, but I have no idea where else it goes.
So, essentially, nothing where I live. Even gas stations are rather widely spread in my corner of the county.
In Philly, getting into Center City, and then around Center City are both pretty good. I live on a train line, so my commute is 30 minutes door to door; driving would not be significantly faster, and if you throw in parking and traffic it could sometimes be slower, and definitely more aggravating.
Getting from one part of the city to another might involve transferring from one bus to another, but it’s quite doable.
Getting around in the 'burbs – not so great, depending on where you live. Since I’m in the city, though, I’m currently car-free and it’s working out fine.
Certainly, the NYC subway system is very good. But comparing subway service in Manhattan to any other city’s entire subway system isn’t quite cricket - Manhatten is more arguably more closely akin to the downtown core of any other city. (Even though it does, concededly, have quieter residential neighborhoods). And metro service in downtown DC is easily the equal of Manhattan’s in terms of accessibility.
