Mass Transit. How is it in your city? Do you use it?

[OCGuy81]

I apologize in advance if this has been brought up before (a search of the forum doesn't get many hits) but I was curious how the mass transit is in your city, and whether or not you really use it?  I was watching a movie the other night that took place in Chicago and had some scenes shot on the El.  Reminded me of how I like going to Chicago for a nice mass transit system.  I generally don't have to rent a car when I go there.

Here in southern California, sprawl is so rampant a car is almost a necessity.  I don't think I've ever used any LA or OC mass transit.  But in cities that have a great system, I enjoy using it.

Portland, OR might be one of my favorites.  The MAX train picks up at the airport and I can take it right into town. I took my wife and daughter with me up there once, and they went off to the zoo and were able to ride the train from our hotel downtown right to the zoo.  And of course, NYC is great for it.

Any city where I don't have to rent a car is always a nice thing.

Do you have a good mass transit system in your city?  Do you use it often? Just on occasion?

[vdeane]

For a second I thought you were talking about transit in Massachusetts.

In Rochester we have bus service but it's not great.  It does feature the kind of logic only found in NY though - "we're not going to update the routes to reflect where people want to go because not enough people use it to justify the expense".  All the routes go to/from downtown, but everyone moves between suburbs these days.

[jwolfer]

When I worked in Downtown Jacksonville I parked at the convention center and took the Skyway (Monorail) to my office building about 6 blocks away.  Its cool but not very useful only a couple stops around Downtown.  Most of the mass transit here is Buses. I have never taken them and from what I understand not very useful.  I would love a good transit system

[lkjljlkj]

Here in southern California, sprawl is so rampant a car is almost a necessity.  I don't think I've ever used any LA or OC mass transit.  But in cities that have a great system, I enjoy using it.

Portland, OR might be one of my favorites. 

Atlanta is too low-density for it to be too effective, so you can't live here without a car.  I wish they had years ago implemented some zoning like they did in DC so that high-density development would occur around transit stations... I remember going up to Arlington as a kid to visit my grandfather.  The transformation of the entire area from mid-1970s to current day is just staggering, and I love the change.  I once spent two weeks there with no car & never even thought, "Wow, I could really use a car."

Agree with you on Portland too, their transit is great.  I like Boston a lot.  I think good transit & heavy use of it results in a lot more activity in city centers & makes places feel more like 'real cities' (a term my wife and I use) to me -- bustling, lots of activity.  Portland, despite being a metro less than half Atlanta's size, feels much more like a 'real city.'  Pioneer Square has more activity at 8am Sunday than downtown Atlanta has in the middle of a weekday.

[citrus]

In San Diego, I've taken public transportation 2-3 times: to get to the airport. For $2.50, you get what you pay for - it takes an hour and 30 minutes (including walking to the nearest stop and 1 transfer), when a cab (~$40 + tip) or driving (and paying for parking) takes 20-25 minutes or so, and a shared shuttle ($31 + tip) is somewhere in between. I take a ~20 min ride on private UCSD shuttles often. In general, SD public transit isn't efficient enough and doesn't run late enough for me to want to use it. Perhaps the trolley extension from UCSD to Old Town will change that somewhat, but I'm not going to still be there when that's completed.

In San Francisco over the summer, I took a ~1hr (each way) employee shuttle to work and back, and I took Muni once a week or so around the city. SF's public transit is passable, but it's only "good" when compared to other cities in California. SF really needs underground or grade-separated transit in a wider area of the city.

When I lived in NYC a few summers back, transit took me everywhere I wanted to go in the city. I stashed my car in a garage in Jersey City, using it only for weekend trips.

When I was a student in Ithaca, NY, the bus system was pretty good, but I had a car and didn't use it that often.

I've also successfully used public transit as a tourist in Portland, Las Vegas (on the strip), DC, Chicago, and even once in LA!

[nexus73]

In Coos County we have CCAT.  The agency has a small fleet of small transit buses.  Curry County, which is the county south of us, has a fleet of the same kind of rigs.  They don't run 24/7 by any stretch of the imagination and some non-local routes are only done once or twice a week.  I never use them but they're there at least, which is remarkable for a mostly rural county of 65K to be able to say.

OCGuy, glad you enjoyed PDX's MAX line.  My friend and I have used it on our overnight spring season trips to PDX.  It's a pretty sweet setup to small towners like us!  A new line to Milwaukie is being built at this time.  It will be open in 2014.  One of the highlights of the new line will be a new Willamette River bridge for the MAX train and other alternative transportation choices.  It's the first new Willamette crossing to be built since the Fremont (I-405) Bridge was completed in the early 1970's.

Rick

[J N Winkler]

Wichita has several bus routes, which interchange in the downtown business district.  The last time I took a bus in Wichita, however, was in 1984.

In the other places I have lived, I have often used transit but it really depends on what is available.  I don't really see transit use as a lifestyle choice--I would not, for example, consider moving to Portland just because I believe in transit as a boon to the community, nor would I consider moving to Los Angeles or Atlanta (or any other stereotypically car-dependent metropolitan area) because I disliked collective transport in general.  What I want is mobility; I want a reasonably efficient way of getting from Point A to Point B whatever the mode, and I don't want to feel that there are whole neighborhoods near me which are impermeable due to poor availability of transportation.

I have been in the DC vicinity both as a visitor and as a temporary employee.  As a visitor I generally stayed in DC itself, so Metro was the ideal way of getting around, and I loved it.  As an employee I stayed in the Maryland suburbs and reverse-commuted by car to my place of work--in theory buses were available as an alternative but the time penalties were severe (a 10-minute journey would have taken at least an hour by bus).  One summer I roomed with someone who took one of our colleagues shopping on the weekend in his van because the nearest mall was fifteen minutes away by car but two and a half hours away by bus.

When I lived in Oxford I regarded buses as a distress purchase and tried to use a bicycle as much as possible.

The travelling I have done in Europe has tended to focus on large cities since I have done much of it in a "citybreak" rather than "cross-country" format, so I generally depend on rail both within cities and for interurban journeys.  I have never actually rented a car in continental Europe and I have done relatively little auto touring except for a three-week car trip in Ireland and several car trips within Britain (generally as daytrips though some trips have spanned multiple days).  In smaller cities I tend to walk, although I use buses when I have luggage or only a limited amount of time to catch a connecting service.  I also use buses when rail connections are poor--e.g. Málaga to Ronda, Poggibonsi-San Gimignano railway station to San Gimignano itself, Cáceres to Seville, etc.  The last trip I took which depended more or less exclusively on coaches for interurban travel (supplemented only by a ferry between Istanbul and Bandirma and by the occasional taxi or dolmus, which is a type of jitney) was a two-week tour of Turkey in 2000.

Large cities, particularly in Europe, are increasingly starting to offer cycle-rental services.  Paris has a well-publicized vélib program, and Seville also has a municipally run cycle-rental program.  I have been tempted (particularly in Seville, where local transport is still largely bus-borne--the Seville metro has just one line, which opened in 2008-ish, with two others in the anteproyecto stage as of 2010 and unlikely to open until late in this decade), but have not taken the plunge.  In Seville, for example, you are required to accept a charge on your credit card which serves as a deposit and is designed to remove the incentive to steal the bicycle.  I have never felt confident enough about my ability to secure a bicycle or find a convenient stand for returning it to take a chance on losing that much money.  Spain also has strict equipment laws for cyclists, so I worry about being harassed by the police for not wearing a helmet and retroreflectorized vest.  The kind of cycling people are encouraged to do in Seville (slowish moseying-along on wide promenades shared with pedestrians) is also incompatible with my own cycling style, which is oriented at going from A to B, at speed, sharing the road with vehicles, generally while wearing a helmet.  The cycles are also sized for accessibility to small people, and I need a 23" frame to cycle comfortably (I have tried 21" frames, which are much easier to find "off the rack" at cycle shops, and they don't work).

Trams are a big thing in continental Europe as a way to bridge the usability gap between buses and heavy-rail metro systems.  I fell in love with the tram systems in Vienna and Dresden.  The tram in Bratislava got me to the rail station from a point near the Danube River in time to catch an interurban train back to Vienna, though I was far from impressed when a sloppily dressed person on the tram, whom I had written off as a lazy yahoo, pulled out an official-looking ID and started checking tickets.  In Prague the tram was far and away the easiest route between Pavlov Square and the castle, but it was also annoying to use downtown (in the vicinity of the Tyn Church) because the tram line on the east bank of the Vltava River is shared by multiple tram routes, so you could walk across Charles Bridge and then have to wait a long time for the correct tram to turn up.

[english si]

When I lived in Oxford I regarded buses as a distress purchase and tried to use a bicycle as much as possible.

Ditto me in Southampton (with the addition of walking), other than my first year, where I was given a bus pass, and so used the bus, which - unlike Oxford - aren't slower than bikes outside of rush hour.

London's tube serves my purposes very well, in the main, though journeys that aren't radial are a bit of a pain. Here to Northfields is 75minutes by tube, including 3 changes, or 35mins by car. But the £1.40 price for a single journey is rather good. Any off-peak single journey is less than £3.50 for me, so I can get about the London Met Area rather easily and cheaply, though with a car for places near the M25 or A40/M4/M1 would often be quicker, so I'd take a car option if it presents itself.

I think, in my life, I've done about 6 London bus journeys (other than rail replacement buses) - half of them on the Tube Challenge (to get between terminal stations within the rules and not having to run) and the other half in Inner South London to do orbital journeys that aren't the best. In Central London I walk between places - once there I'm not going to go on the tube, other than to leave Central London.

[Michael in Philly]

The first transit system I used extensively was Washington's, when I was a student at Georgetown from 1982 to 1986.  The good citizens of Georgetown (the town as opposed to the university), in their wisdom, opposed a Metro station when the system was being built, so buses were an option, particularly when one didn't want to walk across Key Bridge to the nearest station (Rosslyn) for whatever reason.  But I was a big fan of Metrorail, and became a bit of a transit buff.  When they opened a new segment and offered free rides the first day, I'd do that; I went up to Baltimore a few weeks after the first piece of its Metro opened to ride that line....

I lived without a car, in Philadelphia, from 1994 to about 2008 (joined Flexcar, now Zipcar, in 2007, and would occasionally borrow a parent's car if I wanted to do any non-urban exploring).  Used local trains or Amtrak for travel to New York, Baltimore, Washington or north Jersey.  SEPTA, although everyone complains about it, is better than most cities have.  A "Regional Rail" - commuter rail analogous to the Long Island Railroad - system reaches 20 or 30 miles out into the suburbs, there are two heavy-rail (subway/elevated) lines in the city and one (run by another agency) to south Jersey, also buses.  My favorite is the so-called Subway-Surface.  Like Boston's Green Line.  These are five streetcar lines serving various areas of West Philadelphia and the near suburbs, which (from the point of view of someone heading inbound) come together on the University of Pennsylvania campus and morph into a subway, which loops around (under) City Hall and starts back out.  (to be continued...)

[Michael in Philly]

...Because there are five different routes running on the same infrastructure between Penn and City Hall, if you're not trying to go to or from a point west of Penn, the wait for a trolley during the day is rarely longer than two minutes (the last time I looked at a timetable, I believe there were about seven cars every ten minutes in rush hours).

I use buses less often, and the Broad Street Subway to and from ballgames.

Back in the 90s - so it may no longer be true - I read somewhere that more people (not a larger percentage but more actual individuals) walked to work in Philadelphia than in any other city in the country.  The yuppie and student neighborhoods are right alongside, and to some degree commingled with, the business district, so the sort of person who, in New York, would be using a subway for his or her three-mile commute from the Upper West Side to Grand Central or seven-mile commute from the Upper East Side to Wall Street is walking a few blocks here.  For several years, I had, at ten blocks, the longest commute in my department of five people.  I've since moved closer to work:  five blocks.  Officially, I walk to work.  If I'm running late - I'm not a morning person - I'll take a bus (there's one that covers all but a block of the route) if the timing's right or a cab ($5.00) if it's not.  I always walk home.  Most of what I do in the city, I walk to.  For errands that are a bit farther, or when I'm too pressed for time to walk, I'll drive, now that I'm no longer carless.  Parking's not as bad as it's made out to be:  "loading zones" can be used for 20- or 30-minute stops, free.  (to be continued...site's doing the bounce-up-and-down-and-don't-let-you-see-the-line-you're-on thing.  Sorry, I'm more thorough than concise.  )
Post Merge: October 10, 2011, 06:16:44 PM
Other than Washington and Philadelphia, I've used rail in Boston; Amtrak between Providence and Boston; subways and buses in New York; North Jersey's rail system (and PATH); rail in Baltimore, Atlanta and the Bay Area (BART); buses in Los Angeles and some other random places.  Subways in Montreal and Toronto as well.  And been to nine countries in Europe, using trains (and cross-Channel ferries - pre-Chunnel) between cities and transit in cities.

Since I became a car owner again in 2008, I haven't traveled outside the Philadelphia area by anything other than a car (and the only time I went beyond Center City Philadelphia by anything other than a car was an occasion last winter when I needed to go to Bryn Mawr for a work thing on a Sunday and my car was so snowed in - a plow had created a mountain behind me - it was easier to walk to 30th Street, catch the train and then walk about half a mile to where I needed to be than to dig myself out).  As much as I approve of transit in theory, if I'm going to (for example) Washington, the choice between spending well over $100.00 round trip to travel on Amtrak's schedule between 30th Street and Union Station, and spending the cost of a tank of gas and a couple of tolls to get exactly where I want (or as close to it as I can park) on my own time is a no-brainer.  And there are so many places where transit does nothing.  Including just random exploration even in suburban areas with good transit.  (A train won't let you stop on impulse every few minutes and wait for you.)

[triplemultiplex]

In Milwaukee, it's the bus or else you're driving yourself.  We have no fixed rail transit despite getting money to build something of that nature back in 1991.  We're supposed to be getting this street car route but various idiocies have been delaying the project for most of a decade.

The bus system in my neighborhood is pretty good.  I live in the densely populated east side so if I have any business downtown, for example, I definitely hop a bus.  Way more convenient.  Plus I can get drunk if I want to.
I did a trip to/from the airport recently that worked out alright.  I was more than willing to take the extra time to avoid paying to park at the airport for a couple days.

Still it would be way cooler to have some rail transit in this city.  The little street car line they're trying to put in is too small to really matter.  They should invest the money to make it more extensive right away lest it become nothing more than a curiosity due to exceptionally poor foresight.

[barcncpt44]

In Birmingham; what mass transit.  There are buses that run but they often break down and are unreliable.  The mass transit is in debt and could be cutting routes soon.  Birmingham has one of the most single car drivers in the country.

In my local area of Anniston/Gadsden; there are small buses (20 seats) that go around town during the day and Jacksonville has a small bus network because of the university.

[J N Winkler]

As much as I approve of transit in theory, if I'm going to (for example) Washington, the choice between spending well over $100.00 round trip to travel on Amtrak's schedule between 30th Street and Union Station, and spending the cost of a tank of gas and a couple of tolls to get exactly where I want (or as close to it as I can park) on my own time is a no-brainer.

Washington to Philadelphia is 130 miles.  In comparison, Oxford to London is 56 miles and costs about £20 return (including a day Travelcard for London) if purchased immediately before departure; with advance booking and no Travelcard privileges the cost drops to about £12.  Rail journeys in Britain are overpriced by continental European standards and, at current exchange rates, the cost of going between Philadelphia and DC by rail is twice as much per mile as going between Oxford and London.  Punctuality is also much poorer in the US generally though, I would expect, significantly better than the national average in the Northeast because rail has greater modal share.

If this disparity did not exist and I could get between Philadelphia and DC by rail (departures at least hourly, total travel time of two hours or less) for about $60 with local transit on the DC end thrown in at no additional charge, I would definitely take the train between the two cities, especially if I planned to do tourist stuff around the Mall and didn't want to worry about car parking.  The car journey has so many negatives--parking in downtown DC is tricky, traffic on I-95 between Baltimore and Philadelphia is soupy at best on weekends, I can't read if I'm driving, the Interstate is not located or landscaped to provide scenic views, etc.

And there are so many places where transit does nothing.  Including just random exploration even in suburban areas with good transit.  (A train won't let you stop on impulse every few minutes and wait for you.)

Not necessarily true if there is a dense tram network--in Vienna, for example, I combined trams, S-Bahn (which in Vienna is basically a type of commuter rail and is run by ÖBB), and U-Bahn to explore the areas around Döbling, the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, Rosauer Kaserne down to the Donaukanal, the cable-stayed bridge over the Schnellstrasse leading to Klosterneuburg, the working-class residential districts in Brigittenau (including the infamous lodging house) en route to the Floridsdorf bridge, etc.

A key element of the kind of urban exploration you describe is the ability to take foot tours.  If you have a car, then any foot tour you take has to begin and end in the same place so that you can collect your car.  If you use transit, then you can exit and re-enter the network at different points.  Seating arrangements are also a factor.  One reason I dislike local buses is that seating tends to face toward the front or the back, so that you have to turn your head to see the streetscape and your view is often restricted by other seats and the passengers in them.  Many trams, however, provide en banc seating so that you get full-on views of the buildings as you go by--this is especially true of newer trams in Lisbon, Vienna, and Dresden.  (With the exception of Dresden, trams in the former Soviet bloc have row seating almost exclusively, so they are not as useful for sightseeing.  Sawn-off tram cars with row seating are also used in the Alfama district of Lisbon, apparently because more modern tramcars have a form factor inappropriate for the steep hill up to the Sé Patriarcal.  The drivers are lunatics.)  Cars are scarcely better than local buses in this respect, especially if you are driving--in the front seat you get a better view through the windshield but you also have the heavy task load of urban driving.

[Michael in Philly]

As much as I approve of transit in theory, if I'm going to (for example) Washington, the choice between spending well over $100.00 round trip to travel on Amtrak's schedule between 30th Street and Union Station, and spending the cost of a tank of gas and a couple of tolls to get exactly where I want (or as close to it as I can park) on my own time is a no-brainer.

Washington to Philadelphia is 130 miles.  In comparison, Oxford to London is 56 miles and costs about £20 return (including a day Travelcard for London) if purchased immediately before departure; with advance booking and no Travelcard privileges the cost drops to about £12.  Rail journeys in Britain are overpriced by continental European standards and, at current exchange rates, the cost of going between Philadelphia and DC by rail is twice as much per mile as going between Oxford and London.  Punctuality is also much poorer in the US generally though, I would expect, significantly better than the national average in the Northeast because rail has greater modal share.

If this disparity did not exist and I could get between Philadelphia and DC by rail (departures at least hourly, total travel time of two hours or less) for about $60 with local transit on the DC end thrown in at no additional charge, I would definitely take the train between the two cities, especially if I planned to do tourist stuff around the Mall and didn't want to worry about car parking.  The car journey has so many negatives--parking in downtown DC is tricky, traffic on I-95 between Baltimore and Philadelphia is soupy at best on weekends, I can't read if I'm driving, the Interstate is not located or landscaped to provide scenic views, etc.

And there are so many places where transit does nothing.  Including just random exploration even in suburban areas with good transit.  (A train won't let you stop on impulse every few minutes and wait for you.)

Not necessarily true if there is a dense tram network--in Vienna, for example, I combined trams, S-Bahn (which in Vienna is basically a type of commuter rail and is run by ÖBB), and U-Bahn to explore the areas around Döbling, the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, Rosauer Kaserne down to the Donaukanal, the cable-stayed bridge over the Schnellstrasse leading to Klosterneuburg, the working-class residential districts in Brigittenau (including the infamous lodging house) en route to the Floridsdorf bridge, etc.

A key element of the kind of urban exploration you describe is the ability to take foot tours.  If you have a car, then any foot tour you take has to begin and end in the same place so that you can collect your car.  If you use transit, then you can exit and re-enter the network at different points.  Seating arrangements are also a factor.  One reason I dislike local buses is that seating tends to face toward the front or the back, so that you have to turn your head to see the streetscape and your view is often restricted by other seats and the passengers in them.  Many trams, however, provide en banc seating so that you get full-on views of the buildings as you go by--this is especially true of newer trams in Lisbon, Vienna, and Dresden.  (With the exception of Dresden, trams in the former Soviet bloc have row seating almost exclusively, so they are not as useful for sightseeing.  Sawn-off tram cars with row seating are also used in the Alfama district of Lisbon, apparently because more modern tramcars have a form factor inappropriate for the steep hill up to the Sé Patriarcal.  The drivers are lunatics.)  Cars are scarcely better than local buses in this respect, especially if you are driving--in the front seat you get a better view through the windshield but you also have the heavy task load of urban driving.

I don't know that I'd describe the Northeast Corridor as more scenic than 95, actually.  And there are other routes than 95.  I like driving anyway.  If I'm going to the Dupont Circle area, rather than the Mall, being able to park in the neighborhood is significantly more convenient than having to get across town from and then back to Union Station.  Parking in downtown DC's really not that bad on weekends, in balance.  And I'm not in a position to overlook the difference between a $100+ train fare and a $35 tank of gas.

The type of exploration I was thinking of was less urban than suburban.  If I, say, wanted to go to a few bookstores on the Main Line (perhaps I was looking for something in particular) - past tense because Borders is out of business now - even though every one of them was close to a train station, it still took a hell of a lot longer to catch the train to Wynnewood, spend 20 minutes in Borders, wait for the next train to Bryn Mawr... and so on, than to drive point to point.  And there's also the matter of carrying stuff (I have neck issues).

[ctsignguy]

I dont use COTA (Central Ohio Transit) where i live for three reasons

1.  No route runs anywhere close to where i live....so walking to the bus stop is out of the question. Ditto for my workplace....

2.  Most all routes go Downtown first, then transfer...i think it silly to take two hours for a trip i can do by car in less than 5 minutes...

3.  The hours they operate outside the Downtown area are NOT conducive to my work schedule...i work to midnight two nights a week, and frankly, any bus still operating at that hour will end downtown then go home...leaving me downtown with no way home short of hailing a cab....

[J N Winkler]

Parking in downtown DC's really not that bad on weekends, in balance.  And I'm not in a position to overlook the difference between a $100+ train fare and a $35 tank of gas.

No disagreement from me there--when I lived in DC I occasionally drove into town (even if it involved parking in the Mall) rather than using Metro because it was actually not all that straightforward to do park & ride from a Metro station near where I was living.

The type of exploration I was thinking of was less urban than suburban.  If I, say, wanted to go to a few bookstores on the Main Line (perhaps I was looking for something in particular) - past tense because Borders is out of business now - even though every one of them was close to a train station, it still took a hell of a lot longer to catch the train to Wynnewood, spend 20 minutes in Borders, wait for the next train to Bryn Mawr... and so on, than to drive point to point.  And there's also the matter of carrying stuff (I have neck issues).

I'd say that is more errand-chaining (for which cars make good sense) than exploration (where the goal is to take in sensory impressions of novel places).  Also, if you don't mind me saying it, your specific example sounds pre-Bookfinder.com.

[1995hoo]

As much as I approve of transit in theory, if I'm going to (for example) Washington, the choice between spending well over $100.00 round trip to travel on Amtrak's schedule between 30th Street and Union Station, and spending the cost of a tank of gas and a couple of tolls to get exactly where I want (or as close to it as I can park) on my own time is a no-brainer.

Washington to Philadelphia is 130 miles.  In comparison, Oxford to London is 56 miles and costs about £20 return (including a day Travelcard for London) if purchased immediately before departure; with advance booking and no Travelcard privileges the cost drops to about £12.  Rail journeys in Britain are overpriced by continental European standards and, at current exchange rates, the cost of going between Philadelphia and DC by rail is twice as much per mile as going between Oxford and London.  Punctuality is also much poorer in the US generally though, I would expect, significantly better than the national average in the Northeast because rail has greater modal share.

....

The main reason the trains tend to be more on time in the Northeast Corridor is that Amtrak own their own tracks between DC and Boston, so they can give their trains priority and a clear path. Elsewhere they operate on tracks owned by the freight operators, and so of course the railroad version of air traffic control (I don't know what the correct term for that is) gives the freight trains priority. I've heard many times that if you're riding Amtrak outside the Northeast Corridor and you want to be on time, you should try to ride on a weekend because there are fewer freight trains gumming up the tracks. My experiences with several trips on the Auto Train, which uses CSX tracks, seem to confirm this.

[Zmapper]

The local bus system for Fort Collins, Transfort, is terrible if you want to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. The routes are mostly hourly, with some 30 and 20 minute headways. While the grid system of Fort Collins helps to reduce the out of direction travel somewhat, there are still a few cases where the routes take circuitous paths. Look at Route 7: http://www.fcgov.com/transfort/pdf/rt7.pdf This route is trying to serve both CSU-Mall and Drake Road at the same time, but fails at both.

Part of the problem is that Transfort is cash strapped. They are planing on wasting $82 million + 2.5 million a year on the Mason Corridor, a busway along the east side of the BNSF railroad tracks. The project is justified with faulty numbers and claims that College Avenue is "congested". Interestingly enough, other city reports find that congestion along College Ave is within reasonable limits, and has been in fact declining since 2006! And to add to that Darin Atteberry, the city manager, once said that federal dollars could be considered "free money"! Uh hello, our taxes go to the federal government.

From my experiences riding along the 1-College, the biggest delays in order are:
1. The nearly 2 mile detour off of College to serve the South Transfer Point
2. Barely missing traffic signals
3. The diagonal on-street parking north of Laurel

Example 1 showcases a key problem with Transfort mismanagement. The transfer point used to be at the Square, with the buses incurring minimal diversion to serve it. Well their lease ran out and they wanted to get out of a parking lot so the transfer point moved to the Southbound side of Stanford at Monroe. Ok, fair enough. Then the dying Foothills mall suddenly decided that they don't want the buses coming down their streets anymore. Now the transfer point had to move 1/4 mile up the road to Stanford and Swallow. What was once a slight diversion for the buses now is now a much larger detour, exacerbating the delay problems especially on the 1 and 6.

The location thought the years: http://g.co/maps/hy9rr

I saw earlier this week a 6 bus delayed by 25 minutes on an hourly route! This is unacceptable if they expect people to use the system. I fear that if the Mason Corridor is built, the local buses could see cuts as Transfort scrambles to find money to cover the sacred cow. Federal Dollars only cover capital expenses, not operating expenses.

(The breakdown is 10% local, 10% state, 80% federal BTW.)

Instead, the Mason Corridor should be halted and money diverted towards the fixed route system. Even if we only get the local funds totaling 10% or 8.2 million in the beginning, that would go a long way towards fixing up the system. The first priorities should be improving the 1 to every 10-15 minutes and the other routes to at least every 30 minutes.

[andytom]

Washington to Philadelphia is 130 miles.  In comparison, Oxford to London is 56 miles and costs about £20 return (including a day Travelcard for London) if purchased immediately before departure; with advance booking and no Travelcard privileges the cost drops to about £12.  Rail journeys in Britain are overpriced by continental European standards and, at current exchange rates, the cost of going between Philadelphia and DC by rail is twice as much per mile as going between Oxford and London.  Punctuality is also much poorer in the US generally though, I would expect, significantly better than the national average in the Northeast because rail has greater modal share.

....

The main reason the trains tend to be more on time in the Northeast Corridor is that Amtrak own their own tracks between DC and Boston, so they can give their trains priority and a clear path. Elsewhere they operate on tracks owned by the freight operators, and so of course the railroad version of air traffic control (I don't know what the correct term for that is) gives the freight trains priority. I've heard many times that if you're riding Amtrak outside the Northeast Corridor and you want to be on time, you should try to ride on a weekend because there are fewer freight trains gumming up the tracks. My experiences with several trips on the Auto Train, which uses CSX tracks, seem to confirm this.

As long as Amtrak can stay in its scheduled time window, it usually has priority over freights, including ones that they may be overtaking in the same direction.  Once Amtrak gets out of its window, forget it.  And it's all to easy for a train to get out of its scheduled slot.

[NE2]

Orlando's not great, but there are some decent semi-express routes like a half-hourly Disney-downtown with a few stops along the way. I use this one if I'm going downtown (the closest stop is a few miles away, which isn't far by bike). Construction has begun on SunRail, a commuter rail line along ex-CSX trackage. The biggest destination with no express service is probably the University of Central Florida.

[Michael in Philly]

Washington to Philadelphia is 130 miles.  In comparison, Oxford to London is 56 miles and costs about £20 return (including a day Travelcard for London) if purchased immediately before departure; with advance booking and no Travelcard privileges the cost drops to about £12.  Rail journeys in Britain are overpriced by continental European standards and, at current exchange rates, the cost of going between Philadelphia and DC by rail is twice as much per mile as going between Oxford and London.  Punctuality is also much poorer in the US generally though, I would expect, significantly better than the national average in the Northeast because rail has greater modal share.

....

The main reason the trains tend to be more on time in the Northeast Corridor is that Amtrak own their own tracks between DC and Boston, so they can give their trains priority and a clear path. Elsewhere they operate on tracks owned by the freight operators, and so of course the railroad version of air traffic control (I don't know what the correct term for that is) gives the freight trains priority. I've heard many times that if you're riding Amtrak outside the Northeast Corridor and you want to be on time, you should try to ride on a weekend because there are fewer freight trains gumming up the tracks. My experiences with several trips on the Auto Train, which uses CSX tracks, seem to confirm this.

As long as Amtrak can stay in its scheduled time window, it usually has priority over freights, including ones that they may be overtaking in the same direction.  Once Amtrak gets out of its window, forget it.  And it's all to easy for a train to get out of its scheduled slot.

Indeed.  I was once on a train from Washington that got here three hours after it was scheduled, and that was the explanation (from a fellow passenger, not officialdom).

[Dr Frankenstein]

Mass transit inside Montreal is okay. The Metro subway works well enough, despite covering only the downtown area. The buses work well too, although it seems many drivers lack the ability to deal with customers. I've seen my share of rather creepy riders on buses, too.

Immediate suburban areas are generally well served, but mass transit becomes impractical as soon as you go any further.

For example, you could live in Châteauguay, you'll have one bus every hour or hour and a half. And generally none after midnight. Although you are a 15 minute drive from the closest bridge into the city, you have to take a shuttle bus to get to the closest suburban rail station, but the last train back home is at 6:15 PM anyway. And your bus to anywhere further than the immediate surrounding cities may very well get stuck in traffic, and your ride will take forever even with no one else on the roads, because the local transit authorities often try to minimize the amount of bus lines by making them detour in every possible place in the city.

On most lines, you can forget about commuter rail service on nights, weekends or holidays.

Travel from one suburb to another is either impossible or extremely slow and possibly expensive, involving many transfers.

Getting from Valleyfield to the Convention Centre involves a 1.5 hour bus ride, and half an hour in the subway. Probably double of what it would have taken me with my car. Going from Valleyfield to Longueuil is impossible without going through downtown Montreal, and we're probably talking about more than double the car ride time.

[Brandon]

Chicago's isn't bad, IMHO, for going into and out of the city.  It beats the hell out of the parking price in the Loop.  As for suburb-to-suburb, it sucks majorly.

[Zmapper]

One system that is of note to suburban transit is Tallahassee's StarMetro. They redid every last route in the system, with routes now in a grid pattern and not necessarily going downtown.

http://www.talgov.com/starmetro/index.cfm

http://www.talgov.com/starmetro/pdf/systemmap.pdf

This seems like an interesting way to run a bus system in a suburban area.

[Duke87]

I use a train as part of my daily commute and will probably be doing so for quite some time. You just can't drive to work in Manhattan.