rockmom

The isthmus is narrow and they do not want any less space for cars.

Astrozombie

It'd be great if they extended a line to Santa Monica/Venice and then you pretty much have it all covered. But man those Red and Purple lines need new cars....or at least a power wash/air freshener.

Let's get a high speed rail to SF too

Dahon.Steve

Actually, I could reduce the cost of my public transit to about $100.00 dollars a month. However, the extra 75 dollars allows me to have a seat each day using the more costly express bus. As I said before, the cost is not important in public transit since I'm carfree and what is important is ability to sit down! I have a pretty quick commute into the city at 1 hour 10 minutes. Everyone I know who is commuting into Manhattan takes that much time or longer.

I've been doing this commute for 20 years. You get used to it.

duckbill

[QUOTE=Machka;16452625]Tell us about the public transportation options in your area. What do you like about it? What could be improved?]

I feel a little spoiled. When I'm not cycling, two buses with little or no waiting at the transfer station, takes me door to door in about 45 minutes. The bus stop is at the foot of my driveway. What could be improved? The price perhaps, $3.00 each way, $6.00 per day.

cooker

I live 1.2 km west of a subway station on a line that runs north/south. My office is 8 km south of me and 3 km west of the subway, so it is a three-leg commute.

I can walk to the station, or walk about half the distance and catch a bus into the station.

I then take the subway either 8 or 9 stops south. It's crowded and I have to stand the whole way.

If I go 9 subway stops, I then take a 20 minute streetcar ride across downtown right to my office. It's crowded and slow and I have to fight my way on to it and stand for half the route.

If I go 8 subway stops, I can take a less crowded, slightly faster streetcar, that misses my office by a few blocks so I then walk down to my office on the cross-street about 600m.

Alternatively, I can take the bus near my house in the westward direction, away from the subway, and take another bus south. It's slower than the subway, but I always get a seat and it's above ground so I can browse the internet or get a start on the day's emails. There's still a short east west section (5-10 minutes on a streetcar or 800 m walking) at the bottom.

Either way the trip take 60-75 minutes.

There's also a middle route that would be preferred, but it is currently blocked by a massive construction project tying up traffic.

I'm a big fan of our public transit system, but since my office moved to it's current location, it's just too far and complicated to commute like this. I so wish the ice and cold would abate and I could get back on my bike. I do not ride on ice.

Standalone 

New Haven's main train station, Union Station is 3.5 miles from us. I could catch a train there twice an hour to a train station 1.5 miles from my job. Made for a nice 10 mile/day bicycle commute. Round trip to work w/o train is 32 flattish miles.

Just opened on the same line is a brand new station half a mile from our home! Commuting is incredibly convenient now. Riding in this morning's snow was no big deal!



We can also hop on this and be in NYC in no time flat. Within walking distance! My wife works in uptown Manhattan, not conveniently reached by train. I'm working on her a bit to try a train ride in now and then.

gerv 

Why aren't there any people at this station?

Machka 

It's just slightly less expensive than that here, for close zones ... more for areas further afield. From one of the areas we're considering moving would be $3.36 per trip, for a 30-35 minute ride to work.

duckbill

A monthly pass is available for $72.00 which would be a savings if more than 12 trips were taken but I'm sure that if I purchased one the snow and ice would go away and cycling would take precedence.

Roody

You'd probably be safe to buy one for at least one or two more months.

Machka 

I expect there would be some who would appreciate your $72 contribution toward an early spring.

ironwood

There is a commuter rail station about 1/4 mile from me and a bus stop about the same distance. The train goes into Boston where it connects to the subway system, Amtrak, and to the Silver Line that goes to the airport. The bus connects to the Red Line, a light rail line. The commuter rail line only runs five days a week now. The bus runs from 6:30 AM to about 7M.

There is also another commuter rail line about three and a half miles away. This line runs every day including holidays.

Public transportation could be improved by more service at night and on the weekends.

The big weakness in the system is that the lines run into and out of Boston, so it is not easy to go to another place outside of Boston by public transport, unless you go into town, and then out again.

Roody

Maybe it's time to abandon the ubiquitous hub-and-spoke transit routes and move on to a grid pattern?

https://www.theatlanticcities.com/com...us-system/118/

https://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=194545

Jim from Boston

I noted that the thread containing this post from 2009 was recently bumped up:

I live one block from the Kenmore (T) Station, with access to virtually anywhere in the City and suburbs I would want to go, directly or by transfers to other subway lines. About 1.5 miles from home in Kenmore is the Back Bay Commuter Rail station, which is itself about 1/8th mile from the nearest subway stop (Copley Square), which is two subway stops from Kenmore.

The Commuter Rail extends from Downtown up to about 30 - 40 miles out of town. As a reverse-direction commuter cyclist, I can bring my bike on the train during off-peak hours. A Rail Station is about two blocks from my work place, so for the return trip home, I take my bike on the train back to Copley Square, about a five-minute ride to Kenmore.

The Commuter Rail also is great to get out of town for some excellent road cycling, and extends my range and bypasses some gritty city-riding. My gripes are few, mostly with late trains. My circumstance are such that:


PS: I just noted these two preceding posts on this thread:

NOOOOoooo...!!!...

Machka 

I'm trying to envision how a grid pattern system would work.

Roody

^^^
Basically, buses (or trains) run straight up and down streets, north-and-south or east-and-west, in a grid pattern as mapped out. To go from northwest from southeast: take your nearest bus as far east as you want to go. Then make a street side transfer to the bus that will take you straight south to your destination.

In contrast, most transit systems currently use a hub-and-spoke pattern. You take the nearest bus downtown to the station, where you transfer to a second spoke bus that takes you to your destination.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each pattern.

Machka 

Winnipeg used a hub-and-spoke pattern with several hubs, of course ... and that worked quite well. There was enough overlap that you could go partway toward the hub, then catch a bus heading out a different direction.

Because of the way Winnipeg is laid out, and the rivers, I'm not sure a grid system would work.

Same with Hobart. It doesn't really lend itself well to a grid.

wahoonc

Twelve miles from my house to the nearest bus stop... I live in suburgatory.

Aaron

Ekdog

Buses: About €0.70, including transfer. Elderly ride free. They run every 10 or 15 minutes. Most run on natural gas. Packed to the gills at rush hour.

Tram: Same price as bus. Just one line, which covers a 1.3 mile route. This needs to be extended and more lines built.

Underground: Just one line. Connects certain outlying areas. More expensive than the subways in other Spanish cities.

Local trains: Good, efficient service. Bikes allowed. I pay €42 a month for my 16-mile daily commute.

Middle and Long Distance trains: Almost anywhere you might want to go. High-speed rail service to Madrid (about 290 miles) takes two hours and 20 minutes. From there, there is high-speed service to Barcelona and Paris. There are restrictions on bikes. I think they have to be boxed. My bagged Brompton raises no eyebrows.

lasauge 

My city's bus system isn't much to speak of: it uses a hub-and-spoke pattern that makes journeys very lengthy unless you can stick to a single line, 30 minutes between stops, service is very limited (none on Sundays, no routes anywhere near the entire eastern third of the city, limited service on Saturdays and after 6:00 on weekdays). As you can guess, not many people use something so inconvenient (I haven't personally since I was in highschool a decade ago), the people I know who do ride the bus are those who have 'temporary problems of liquidity' but aren't aware of or interested in bicycles or have some condition that makes walking or riding impractical.

Actually, it's remarkable that we have a functioning bus service of any kind considering that much of the city is suburban sprawl. Density is low, giant parking lots are attached to every business, and going most anywhere requires navigating 6-8 lane roads - it's a pattern that's meant to serve automobile drivers exclusively.

Roody

As ironwood and Jim from Boston implied, the hub-and-spoke pattern works well if a lot of travel is headed to a downtown or other central location. A grid pattern is nice when a lot of popular destinations are outside of the center.

I guess geography might enter into it as well, although I don't really understand that.

Roody

The contrast couldn't be clearer!

lasauge 

And that's before I mention the cost! 1 bus fare with transfer here costs $1.75.

I'll save you the trouble of looking up the exchange rate, for comparison that would be €1.28 at the current rate.

Machka 

Many cities are not built on a grid system.

If you take Winnipeg, for example, you can travel from the far west into the centre of the city, and there is a bus that does that, but then you run into the Red River. Portage Avenue does not go across the river. The way Winnipeg is laid out, there are a lot of spoke streets that all end in the centre of the city hub.

Hobart is built on the sides of hills and Mt Wellington. There's very little that is "grid" about it. And it make sense to have the centre of town as the hub.

Of course in both cases, there are several hubs. In Winnipeg if you want to start in the far west and go to the college which is sort of north-west-ish, you don't have to go all the way downtown and then catch a bus back, you go to one of the other hubs (at Polo Park, the shopping centre) and then catch a bus northward to the college.

Artkansas 

You were in San Diego for a while. It has grids where it can, but the canyon and mesa terrain tell San Diego where to put the roads.