How's the public transportation where you live? Do you take public transportation often (including biking)?

I lived in suburban towns in Rhode Island and Connecticut before coming to NYC. The one in RI at least had an active bus service (the CT town just didn't care for non-car people), but still very much a hassle.

In NYC, it's much better in the sense I can get around to anywhere in boroughs by foot and the subways. But the infrastructure has deterioration problems, and I'm not too sure about the bike lanes and such. I feel if I went by bike in Manhattan, I would probably die. Cars don't seem to give a **** about bikes, and bikers don't give a **** about pedestrians.

It's usually quite great except for how trains get cancelled and delayed and whatnot if there are a bunch of leaves on the tracks. Delayed for hours if there's snow. Yeah.

I thought the public transportation in NYC was pretty swell (this was back in 2006 during the Nikumerica Tour) but from what I've read I wouldn't want to even be near those things in Los Angeles. Luckily I will never be! Huzzah!

Oh, and I don't have a car. Nor a driver's license. And I'm not planning to getting either of those.

Using public transportation (Buses) around here (Columbus) would be such a waste of time, other than that we have nothing and I drive everywhere.

None to speak of in my hometown, but I can take light rail into Dallas if I drive about 15 minutes from here. That's good for avoiding paying to park, etc., but convenience is a huge issue, and it's no wonder that ridership is critically low on DART, what with low housing density and whatnot.

City bus in Lawrence is dece. Got me from campus to downtown for quick lunches (although the walk is but 20 minutes).

KC is a cluster. The bus seems alright, but the city as a whole has the most freeway miles per capita of any in the US, which is a shame. Similarly to Dallas, the housing density to support light rail is just not there, although there's a psuedo-long-term plan to build some... step 1 is really to bring back the streetcars they had at the beginning of the 20th century.

I love having a car, but I'd also like to move somewhere where the only thing I legitimately need it for is the occasional long-range errand or driving for pleasure.

The bus system in Nashville is decent. The rapid transit system runs like clockwork. The routes are basically spokes on a wheel with downtown at the hub. So if you want to go somewhere a few miles over, you have to travel down one spoke and up the other, which is kind of a drag.

I just moved to a place where I *could* use the metro to get to work, but it would take longer, so I would have to wake up earlier. I'm going to give it a try anyway at some point, but not yet.

so trains in finland never run?

public transportation here is meh... within the city of evansville you have a bus service that runs from 5:45AM till 12:somethingAM and i believe it's every half hour... if you need to go to one of the neighboring towns... well for about a year there has been a bus service in one of them that runs monday-friday 6am - 6pm one bus every hour... once used the buses here took 2 hours to get to my destination which if i drove there myself it takes about 15 minutes of course half of that was because i had to transfer to the neighboring town's bus service and the destination was the last stop BEFORE the transfer

and plenty of places in evansville that are a long walk from a bus stop and all the taxi services are expensive

They tend to move on rails.

On a related note, most of the current trains are German (the new fresh ones are Swiss and man they're awesome) but they've began to bring back some of the 1960s Soviet trains lately. Huh.

are you talking about RIPTA? Cause RIPTA is pretty terrible in my area since they dont come down this far south (North Kingstown/Warwick Area)

I live in London. Practically everyone here is reliant on public transport, at the very least for commuting. We've got railways feeding out to the rest of the country, tube lines go everywhere for rapid transport and most people don't live more than 5 minutes walk from a bus stop. Also we have pretty decent night buses. The main complaint is that there's so much of this stuff that every weekend there's planned engineering works on half a dozen rail and tube lines and you can expect to have to take all sorts of detours to get around them. There's always a (slow) bus replacement service at the very least.

The bad side of this is that I don't own a car and don't have a driving license at the age of 25 as it's expensive to own a car here and most of the time it's really not necessary. Kinda screws things up when I want to go somewhere more remote or visit places outside of Europe.

I'm on the #5 bus right now! metro is pretty good. I can't afford a car in the city...$100 monthly parking...yea no thanks.My only complaint..40 minute ride to work. On at start of route, off at last. 20 min. Bike ride lol. Buy its 80 out now so I decided I'd rather not show up to work drenched in sweat.We just got a fleet of new buses too.

i live in a semi rural area, so the only public transit is by appointment only, and expensive.

i live in southern california, there is a good amount of public transit. and with the exception of metro link(train) it is all horrible.
honestly the busses themselves are not that bad. to be blunt, it is flat out the people who ride them.

We have busses in Nashville, but everything's so spread out that they're horribly impractical. Of course even if they were practical, I'd still never use them. I love cars way too much to take the bus.

You're in Nashville, too?!

What a coincidence. I had an incredibly stressful incident yesterday in which the driver yelled at me for inconveniencing him, and then left me in his bus for 10 minutes while he got a diet coke. If you're interested, the report I filed is here.

Edmonton public transit is pretty good, the buses go most anywhere and we have an LRT in the city core, but the city is so spread out that it takes a while to get anywhere.

There's not really any public transportation around here. There's a taxi service, but no buses or anything like that.

I wish bike lanes were better maintained. I really hate taking the subway if I dont have to. Also a word of advice for anyone that might take the subway: If a subway car is completely empty, chances are theres a smelly hobo in there. Steer clear!

mb is that smelly hobo.

Decent enough buses here, train station in the next village and they're attempting but failing to install a completely useless tram system in Edinburgh right now.

The ground here is unsuitable for subways, the bus system sucks, and there's on overpriced trolley that nobody rides. Welcome to Florida.

I've had a free bus pass for the last three years as a student, and I use it to get pretty much everywhere. Helps that I live close to several major bus lines.

We also have light rail, but it's stupid as hell.

Awesome letter, kirb. I love writting letters like that.

I just recently moved to Portland, Oregon and got my car stolen the first week here, so I've been forced to improvise. At the moment, I do a combination of 8 miles of biking plus 12 miles of train ride a day to get to work.

The public transportation system is incredible compared to what I'm used to (Arizona, lol) and has really been perfect filling in the gap until I buy a new car (hopefully this weekend). It's also pretty nice to take the light rail downtown so I can get smashed since I don't have to drive. This city loves its damn beerfests.

We have bus service in our city but it's pretty useless and slow and the only people who use it use it because they absolutely can't afford a car. I could drive to the other side of town in 15 minutes. Once I walked 10 minutes to the bus stop it would probably take me another 45 minutes to get anywhere I might need to go, assuming the remote possibility that my destination happens to be near a stop.

BART is our region-wide urban-suburban light rail. It's amazing. There are two stations in my town and it will take you right to SF in less time than driving, assuming there is the usual traffic. (Maybe not the case in the middle of the night.) If I need to go to the city (or anywhere close to a BART station) I almost always use it.

Nonetheless the car is still king and I don't mind it one bit.

I just woke up from a dream where I was on a train and an asian chick was attempting to get at my junk.

So, if that's any indication, I need to ride more trains.

Well I had a dream the other night that I was dating this royal french chick that got busted for amphetamines in a theatre, dumped her and then flew off into the sunset with half a six pack under my arm.

She was also busted by Jim Brass so either I need to take more jetpacks or watch less CSI.

I'm confused as to how you classify bikes as public transport, but eh...

Edinburgh's got a pretty good bus system, if a little pricey. But it's locally owned and to my knowledge provides a good employment system for its drivers, so I'm happy to support it. As mentioned, there's a ridiculous tram fiasco underway; we've had a few years of roadworks to move gas and water mains, then they cleared up all the works in time for the festival last year and nothing's happened since.

I try to cycle to work whenever it's dry and not too windy (not that often), there's a nice cycle path that goes from my house right in to town so I don't have to use the roads until the very end. I don't do this as often as I should though because it's really hard work, seeing as how Edinburgh is built on the side of a ****ing volcano.

I just moved close enough to walk to work and can count the times I have driven my car in the last month on one hand. I'm sure I'll do a bit less walking in the colder months as I am a baby, but Milwaukee has a decent enough bus system, if a bit expensive.

I really hope they just scrap the entire thing; They already ripped the old tram system out in the 60s because nobody used it.

Also I want the old clock put back in the middle of Haymarket.

Arriva is expensive as hell. A return ticket to Sheerness is about £5.80 from the middle of nowhere, and you physically can't get anywhere without wheels because there are only B-roads for about ten miles, and then you'll just get decapitated by a truck moving a static caravan. And if you have a bike, you'll just get killed by a tosser that doesn't know how bikes work on roundabouts.

But from there? Well, you can get pretty much anywhere decent in the country, eventually.

I thought you called buses 'coaches' over there.

No, a coach is a specific type of bus. The single decker kind with luggage storage things under the floor.

I rely on public transportation, no car or even a driver's license. I live in Helsinki, where public transportation is amazing overall, save for the trains which have trouble mostly in the winter (as FGR mentioned). The buses, trams, the underground and the ferries are all reliable and mostly dead on time. The trains are actually run by the state-owned national railway monopoly, and the city's public transit company buys the local train service from them. Whenever a train is late or gets cancelled, the railway company is charged by the city public transit company for compensation. This has added up to some hefty bills over the past couple of winters...

In Helsinki I have absolutely no need for a car.