I took my Jeep to the shop because some totally selfish negative-vibe merchant crashed into it and left, which left me 25 miles from home without a vehicle. There’s a thrice-a-day bus that stops less than a mile from my house, so I hitched a ride with one of the shop guys to the bus station. Had to wait 45 minutes for the bus, and then there was an hour’s ride to get 2/3 mile from my house. The fare was a dollar.
A dollar. That’s not bad, at all. And if I’d called ahead, I could have been dropped off at my door. (I’ll call them to pick me up here when the Jeep is ready.)
Where I work in downtown Seattle is within the Ride Free zone. Just hop on a bus, and go anywhere within the zone fare-free. Though I don’t avail myself of that (walking is the norm), it’s nice to know it’s there.
The fare from and to the Park & Ride is $2.25 each way. I guess it’s about ten miles to get to downtown. Since I go to Seattle three days a week, that would be $54 or so a month. An ORCA card (transit card) costs $81/month for the $2.25 fare. But the company subsidises ORCA cards to the tune of $50, so it only costs me $31. That’s better than $9/day to park at the cheapest place (across the street from the office) – though I do end up driving all the way in quite a bit.
Mass transit up here is much better than where I lived in L.A.
Public transit is great if you can get it near your home, and it drops you near your final destination.
The problem I’ve found with it is that it’s at least 1/2 hour (From Southeastern NH) to the nearest public transit stop, and unless I’m headed into the city proper (Boston), it doesn’t take me where I want to go.
I used to work on the inner loop (rt 128/95) highway in MA, but in order to get to the office, I’d have had to go all the way into Boston (1/2 hr drive, 1 hr on train), then change to a different commuter rail line (and probably wait 30 minutes or more during the transfer), and spend another 30 minutes headed outbound. My normal schedule, it was a 60 minute drive each way, rather than the 2+ hours to do each way via public transit.
If I had worked anywhere else off of 128/95, it likely wouldn’t have worked at all. I’d have still needed a car to get from the station to my final destination.
Even when I lived at one end of the line, and worked in the city proper, it still took 2 extra hours a day to use public transit, due to the schedules. I could drive it in less time, and had the flexibility to go to a different place after work. I could be either an hour early for work, or an hour late. Same thing at night. Leave work 30 minutes early, or wait 1.5 hours at the station.
If it works for you, it’s a great choice, but anyone in suburbia that I’ve talked to hates the process.
Shortly after I moved to Denver I had a car accident and didn’t have the money to repair my car or buy a new one. So I learned to hop the RTA.
Along with the cost savings of no gas, parking fees, or car insurance, I got to read a lot. I loved that. And once I learned how to read the routing slips, I found it to be rather entertaining. I actually even wrote a series of poems about people/events that I encountered - something I would have never known in my own car.
I lived in L.A. just north of Culver City (405/10 junction). MetroRail and the various lines were much-vaunted – but they didn’t do me any good. I’d have to drive 20 minutes up to Hollywood and then find a place to park, or go down to Long Beach. Or I could drive down to Hawthorne or someplace to catch that one. And guess what? None of them went to where I wanted to go! (Orange County, near the 5 and the 22.) Sompletely useless to me.
On the occasions when I had to take my bike to the shop, I’d catch a bus on the non-motorcycle part of the trip. The buses were hot, noisy, and I’d wait forever for one to show up.
Seattle’s buses are often crowded, and they tend to be overheated in the Winter. But they’re quiet and clean and come often. The only complaint I have about the WCT bus between Bellingham and my little burgh is that thrice-daily is inconvenient. But I can’t complain about the price! A dollar is the higher price. A couple of years ago the ride was 55¢.
For me, travel to work by bus would be fine if I worked in downtown Columbus. The problem for me is that I live about 4 miles away from where I work in the suburbs. My choices:
(1) car – about 10 minutes each way
(2) walk – about an hour each way
(3) bus – about 2 hours each way, because the only way to do it is to go to downtown Columbus and back out again. So there’s no point at all in taking the bus.
Of course, if your place of work is serviced by public transportation, you generally have some input as to whether or not you live near the public transportation.
I live in Kansas City and the bus I use to get to work is great. I drive a couple of blocks to the Park-and-Ride, hop on the bus, it travels 90% of the path I’d have gone if I drove to work, and drops me off literally at the corner of my building.
All for $36 a month, or around a buck a ride.
My only complaint is that there isn’t more available. This particular bus comes 5 times in the morning and 5 times in the afternoon within a 1.5 hour window. If your work doesn’t fit within that, you either make it fit, drive to work, or…well, get trapped at work, I suppose.
And these underfunded buses that keep raising rates and cutting services are the ONLY public transit option KC has. No light rail. No commuter rail. No trolleys or subways. Every time something’s come up on the ballot for the past 15 years it’s been shot down. Bleh.
my beef with the Seattle transit system is that while I live within walking distance of a transit center it takes over an hour to get to my work which is also within walking distance of a transit center. keep in mind its a 15 minute drive, 20 under the worst traffic conditions I face outside of a collision or something unusual.
the problem? there are no buses that run between these 2 centers. what the hell? they are both on the 405 north south corridor (well sort of, one in Renton and the other in Eastgate) but to get between them I have to travel quite aways out of my way. screw that, I think saving 1.5-2 hours per DAY validates owning a car. I would love to be able to use the bus system but for me its on crack.
The problem with mass transit is that it’s too late. The car has caused people to spread out from the cities so that it’s difficult to create mass transit that is cost effective.
Within a city, of course, or in a planned area like Disney World, it all works fine, though.
I do love mass transit, but it would take me at least two hours to get to work and two hours back, a ride I can do in a half-hour in my car. If I had my choice, though, I’d move to a city and use nothing but mass transit.
The bus system in my town is free, which is awesome. It doesn’t run late at night or on Sundays, which is annoying, but since it’s free, I can’t complain too much. I don’t have a car, so I use it every day to get to and from campus, which is pretty much the only place I ever go aside from the grocery store, which I walk to. Its limitations would be more of a problem if I had a life outside school, but I don’t, so.
I’ve owned my home for just about 10 years. In that time, I’ve had several jobs, and it would be simply impractical to try to move, based on my work location… Buy a home, sell it a couple of years later, take a 7% hit to the real estate agent, more for closing costs, and movers… Or limit yourself to jobs in a very small area. (Downtown Boston in my case. The suburbs are unserved, or at least very underserved by public transit)
It might be a fine answer to those that rent, but for home ownership, it’s simply not practical.
I saw Michael Gambon being interviewed a few years ago. He said that he was walking in Hollywood and was disgusted (possibly he didn’t use that particular word) at the people gridlocked in their cars. He wondered why they had to drive. Why don’t they just move closer to where they need to be? Gee, I don’t know, Mike. Maybe it’s because, unlike you, most people don’t have millions of dollars and are collecting millions more? Moving close to work is simply not an option for many people.
I like my house. It would be nice if it were sitting on the shore of Lake Union, but it isn’t. My mortgage, property taxes, homeowners insurance, and $100 extra to the principal come to about $700/month. Or I could rent a studio apartment a few blocks from the office for $1,200/month. A smaller house in Seattle would cost up to ten times what I owe on my current home. For me, it’s better to make the long drive and take the bus downtown than it is to rent a place in Seattle.
I could take the bus from in front of my house for my 12 mile commute, but it would take almost an hour and a half considering the many transfers, and the drive takes all of 20-25 minutes. Not feasible.
I think he also has the benefit of no kids to move, if he decides to change his domicile… My daughter isn’t old enough for this to make much difference yet, as she’s not in elementary school yet, but once she is, that would certainly make a move even harder, with the school change, and trying to time it to coincide with school year start/end times.
Not if you change jobs either after you have bought your residence or signed a lease on your residence…with the job market as it is, people are getting laid off after years of dedicated employment ad being forced to take whatever jobs they can get, no matter where the job is in relation to their residence and not everybody is on month to month leases.
Also, it’s better to play ice hockey on ice than on dead grass.
Seriously, though, if Seattle impresses you, wait til you live somewhere with a good light rail or subway network.
Not that it’s necessarily any more practical, but moving closer to transit is the thing to do. If I had to leave SF for some reason, I’d sooner move to Chicago than somewhere in the Bay Area without BART (regional rail) or Muni Metro (SF proper) access.
I have little sympathy for people who freely choose to rent or own in the middle of Marin County (no rail access) and spend the rest of their working lives bitching about how they have to spend 5 hours a day in traffic. Yeah, it sucks, but increasing traffic congestion around a major city is one of the most predictable things on Earth.
