Originally Posted by
MMACH 5
I take the bus almost every morning. I live 26 miles from my office. That's two hours by bus and train. It's one hour, fifteen minutes by car. Most afternoons, it's about the same, but sometimes I opt to ride my bike the whole way. I keep all of my bus schedules on my phone, so that I know if I will catch my bus or train. Sometimes, I have to hoof it up the road and intercept them at a later stop.
But that's an excellent example of what I'm saying at almost twice as long for the bus and train. And I feel like you might have left off the additional time:
- Walking to the stop
- Waiting for the bus
- Driving to the bus station (maybe but it is in my case)
- Walking from the stop to work (may or may not apply as it depends on how far you'd walk if you came by car)
It's 10 minutes for me to get to the bus station, parked, and standing at the stop. I gotta get there another 5-10 minutes early as a buffer, so there's 15 minutes total. I have to drive 5 minutes the wrong way towards the nearest station so that's about 10 minutes of drive time so we're up to 25 extra minutes...not all of these apply to everyone but my bus at least goes straight downtown. The last place I worked wasn't downtown so it was like 20 minutes to drive vs 01:50 on a bus. (So I drove).
A friend of mine who lives in california thought he had it all setup to take the bus right from in front of the house he rented. It's about 5 blocks between the stop and his work. He thought it was no problem on the map..didn't realize how sketchy of a neighborhood it is and how hot it gets for that walk in the summer there. Some guy got in his face and tried to start a fight with him for no reason (he's minding his own business walking to work).
I mean I take the bus downtown but I've been considering renting a space in the parking garage instead. I'm really on the fence with downtown, there's a lot of issues taking the bus. But if you don't work downtown taking the bus is often completely out of the question for anyone who values their time. It doesn't sound like the OP's job is in a downtown office.