It’s fine if you live in the city, and can follow the schedule. If, like me, you live out of town, your only hope is to rely on churches and stuff.
It’s obvious that you would have an easier time figuring out other transit systems, because they are much smaller and therefore simpler. NYC’s subway system IS very complex. However, it’s about 10 times more comprehensive than any other system in the US. There are 468 stations in operation and 658 miles of operational track – not counting regional rail – more than 8 times the number of stations in DC (68) and double the stations in London (270). It’s more comprehensive than any other system I’ve used in the world, although I’m not familiar with Tokyo, Moscow, or Seoul, the only places in the world that beat it in ridership. Despite the fractional quantity of track compared to NYC, 9 of 13 subway fatalities in America in the past 5 years occured in DC. I understand DC Metro has been operating beyond capacity for some time now.
Because the system is extensively double-tracked (with alternate local and express lanes on the same line that the trains can switch freely between) maintenance can continue while the system is in operation. The reason London and DC have to shut down at night is because they are primarily single-tracked.
I have to give mad props to BART for surviving the Northridge earthquake with citizens uninjured inside the bay tunnel though.
Columbus, Ohio’s public transportation sucks nuts. We have a metro bus system, but it is not terribly convenient or useful for getting most places I would want to be in a timely fashion.
Previously I’ve lived in Seattle, which had a pretty decent bus system that I used on a regular basis, and before that I lived in Chicago, where I didn’t even have or feel the need for a car.
London… it’s pretty spectacular really, despite our moaning about all the engineering work being done in the run-up to the Olympics. World’s longest underground, huge bus network, various overground rail services serving both central and suburban reaches, ferry services, and you can get on a train and be in Paris in two hours.
It’s really pretty pointless, and inconvenient, most of the time owning a car, unless you need to pick up a heavy load from somewhere.
Chicago and Washington have already been discussed extensively, so I’ll pick another city where I lived/attended school in the late 90s and again in the mid 00s. The bus system in Gainesville, Florida became pretty decent. When I first started, it was pretty crappy, but they slowly added more routes and more-frequent service, and they also made it free for UF students, faculty, and staff.
I’m in Philly also, work in West Philly and live in the burbs. It is slightly faster for me to drive in to work, but parking is a major issue. There is some free parking, but you can never find it when you need it. Our university has it’s own lots for employees, but you end up paying over $100/month for that privilege.
I live 5 minutes from a trolley line, so I take that in to 69th Street and take the El from there. I have a five minute walk from the El to work. My monthly pass is $78, unlimited usage. I still have to drive to the trolley, but it is only 5 minutes. I only use Septa to go to work, if we are going into the city for something else, we usually drive.
We have a woman who works for us that lives relatively close by, as the crow flys, to the University. She ends up spending about an hour commuting because the bus system makes it that way. When her son drives her in, it is 15 minutes.
Philly could really do with a much better rail transit system, but the infrastructure isn’t in place and would be $$$ to try and achieve. The buses have good coverage, but are so slow. Our trolley line was out for the better part of 9 months being improved. They gave us shuttle buses for the trolley line. It added 20-30 minutes to the trip. There is no way in hell I would be using buses exclusively to go from home to work. My hour commute would easily turn into 2 hrs.
A few points, just for the fun of it:
1.) Yes, NYC has roughly eight times the number of stations that DC has. It also has roughly 8 times the population that lives within the DC Metrorail system (which extends beyond DC proper). I’m not sure that coverage in the outer boroughs is significantly better than in DC’s outlying neighborhoods and suburbs, nor that coverage in Manhattan is significantly better than in downtown DC. The NYC system is better, certainly - but only because it serves a bigger city, so it has to scale up. That doesn’t speak much to its quality.
2.) As for the DC Metro fatalities - yes, they were tragic. But let’s keep them in perspective - one freak accident really isn’t representative of the Metro system as a whole. For that matter, even if nine people died on DC Metro every single year, that system would still be almost absurdly safe compared to any other transit mode. The NYC and DC systems are both so safe that comparisons between them on safety grounds aren’t really meaningful.
3.) I agree, though, that NYC kicks our ass on the double-tracking thing. It was precisely the correct decision to make, and it’s a damn shame that the DC system doesn’t have it.
When I moved to Arlington in the summer of '88, MetroBus still operated on a zone system. As I recall, Zone 1 consisted of Crystal City; probably Pentagon City and Columbia Pike east of Rolfe as well. Zone 3 pretty much started at The Beltway.
ETA: country transit has a line that’s pretty much door-to-door service for my commute. They’ve come a long way since their first line in Crystal City, which has since been replaced by MetroBus 9S. MetroBus service usually gets replaced by a county line.
I live in Montreal. The service looks good but is not reliable. Don’t count on it for a medical appointment, for example. Far too often the scheduled bus simply doesn’t come. My wife had an appointment last August for a test at a hospital off our beaten trail. The weather was fine and we decided to take a couple buses. We checked the schedule and the bus at the nearest stop was scheduled to come at 11:19. We walked over at 11:09 and finally at 11:29 gave up and went to the center of our town and got a taxi. It would have been cheaper to walk home and get the car and pay for parking. The bus was scheduled to come every 35 minutes, approximately.
About ten years ago, I was using a certain bus to go from the Metro to an appointment about every 6 weeks. The bus was a 23 minute headway. Twice within a two year period, the bus I planned to take simply never came. I have had other experiences with omitted buses.
On the other hand, there is the Metro. Fast and generally reliable (but they will stop service for a couple hours if someone jumps). There are also commuter train lines, which unfortunately break down frequently or get very late in snow, which is what we have today. According to the radio, one of the trains was short cars and passengers were asked to congregate in the middle of the platform. At my local station, next-to-last on the way downtown, it wouldn’t have been worth even trying to board. It is sardine class in rush hour at the best of times. With fewer cars and more people deciding to leave their cars at home, it would have been hopeless. That line is also useless for coming home from concerts at night, since it runs only once an hour. On the other hand, my burb is serviced by an excellent bus that is on a five minute headway all day and evening and shorter during rush hour. Too bad most lines are not like that. The downside is that it is nearly impossible to get a seat on it most times.
Being 400 miles away probably helped.
(Yes, I know what you meant. I just thought it was funny as expressed.)
:smack:
Loma Prieta.
You know how certain Californians can’t keep the NYC subway lines straight? Apparently, I have that same problem, except with earthquakes. 
Yeah, pretty much. If you live in Albany or Troy, it’s gotten significantly better in the past several years. But anywhere outside of town, forget it.
This, exactly. I tried it a couple of times when I first moved here, and it ended with a 15 minute walk, in July, to get home. I very quickly bought a car!
Rural Illinois. There isn’t any. If you don’t have a car, you’d better have friends!
I can’t really disagree with anything you said, but I do have to mention that this is one of the reasons I’m happy my parents live where they do. They have a condo in Los Angeles that happens to be very close to the Universal City red line station. So they actually get quite a lot of use out of the subway, and so do I, when I visit them.
Okay then, we agree. It is a complicated subway system. I look forward to other New Yorkers agreeing with me instead of arguing when I say that they have a complex subway system that is not necessarily easy to understand if one has never used it before.
The NYC subway is pretty complicated, no doubt, but the Tokyo system is vastly more complicated. I managed to figure it out, but it took some doing.
Don’t feel badly about it. My dad has been an employee of NY Transit for 20+ years, and didn’t own a car at all for most of that, and he will be the first to tell you that!
We don’t have public transportation. If I want to get to the nearest city, I first have to drive about 20 minutes to pick up one of the WRTA buses bound for Worcester. If I want to get to Boston, I have to get to Worcester first to catch the T. To get around my own town, I can take a cab, drive, or use my feet. I don’t miss living in the city but I do miss a reliable bus system.
I don’t feel badly about it. I feel annoyed that whenever I’ve discussed this with New Yorkers (okay, this has happened at least twice, maybe three times, so it’s not exactly a big problem in my life), they’ve gone on about how easy it is. It’s hard not to infer that they think I’m dumb, and although I will freely admit that I suck at many things, figuring out how to use a subway system is usually not one of them. So it sticks in my craw a little.