I am addicted to public transportation. Where I live, it is alot better then driving. I live outside of Washington DC, and there is so much traffic. The local busses are nice because the air conditioning is so cold that you feel like you are in a freezer. You can ride the bus for 75¢, or burn a few gallons of gas, and waste $10. If more people rode busses, then we would reduce the demand for oil, thus making it cheaper. I could honestly care less if people want to drive around in their big hummer. But, if you think gas is too expensive then ride the bus, or metro. I actually recently bought a RFID-embedded smart card for the metro. It is pretty cool, because I don't have to bother with putting the paper ticket in the machine. And, the RFID receiver is positioned in such a way that I can leave the smart card in my pocket, and just put my hip up to the receiver.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi ... gton_Cemetery_Station.jpg

Here is a random picture of the metro: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi ... 15/Vienna_fairfax_gmu.jpg

50 cents!? It costs $2.75 here!

It cost me £2.20 (about $5) to go 3 miles to the next town by bus...

Quote from MAGGOT :

50 cents!? It costs $2.75 here!

Whoops, it's 75 cents, I just made a typo. But It only costs me 50 cents because I am a student. The bus I am talking about in particular is the "Cue bus line", which only runs very local service. There are two other bus lines where I live, the Fairfax Connector and the Metrobus. I never ride Fairfax connector, so I don't know about the prices. They fare is so cheap because they are probally subsidised by the government.

EDIT: And I almost forgot about something. The Cue bus is free on days when the air quality is "code red"!

Bus cost here in Guadalajara is 4.5 Mexico Pesos= 0.40 USD
Cheap and dirty and bad and smelly and slow....... In 3 words "Don't Use It"

Our buses are relatively clean, and I'm not sure about the cost in my town (large town, 91 000 population) but In toronto which is just one town over from me, it's $2.75. Of course, that 2.75 can go a LOONG way depending on the services. For instance, when I go up to my college I take the train to Toronto; a 40 minute ride approximately. Winds up at Union Station in downtown. From there I take two subways (one North to St. George station, one west to Kipling for those who are interested :P) and then I hop on a bus to get from the Kipling subway station to my college. Both subways and the bus cost me $2.75; thats a good hour and a half of travelling. The way it's all setup you don't pay to get on the bus or the second subway, you just pay the $2.75 and get on all three. The train is only $6.20 I think, too, so my trip up to school is cheap. I don't make the trip often so I don't bother with getting a student card so I can save 5 cents.

With the travel I do on the public transit system $2.75 seems like a steal, but still... If you only pay 75 cents I'm outraged! :P

Atlanta's public transport is better than most American cities, but I miss the CTA from my Chicago days pretty badly.

24/7 service is hard to beat. First 6 months I lived there I never even rode in a car.

If I wanted to take the bus to work, I would have to drive 10 miles past work to catch the bus

BUSES FTW!!!11!!one!11!!!1!!eleventymillion!!11!!!

http://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/
http://www.tenball.co.uk/index ... log&op=home&idu=1

I actively avoid buses, they are never on time, often smell of piss, I am too tall to fit on them, theres no leg room, bus drivers are arseholes, they cost too much, and walking is just better for you.

Bus ride is 2,70€ here. Too expensive for me so I am a HC biker. Record is driving to work in -22 degrees celsius about 10 km, nose froze a little bit I actually ride faster to town in a bike than a bus.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

they are never on time,

We currently have a 97.4% 'On time' rating

Quote :

often smell of piss,

Yours might, ours don't!

Quote :

I am too tall to fit on them,

get your legs shortened!

Quote :

theres no leg room,

see above! (also, our fleet has fully modernised buses with LOADS of legroom!)

Quote :

bus drivers are arseholes,

He He...oops, my secret is out!...BUT..Ever wondered WHY bus drivers are arseholes? Might _JUST_ be something to do with the passengers!

Quote :

they cost too much,

Cost of petrol to drive from Kidlington to Oxford :approx £2.50 (each way!)
Cost of parking in Oxford: F***ing LOADS!!!
Cost of time spent sat in traffic and looking for a parking space.. £20.00 (at average £10.00/hour!)

Cost of return trip on bus, including Park & Ride = £2.00

Therefore...taking the CAR costs too much!

Quote :

and walking is just better for you.

If you LIKE walking 5 miles in gale force winds and monsoon type rains...then how is pneumonia good for you?


BUSES FTW!!!!!

In Haapsalu (the nearest town (don't know if the English call it a town, 15 000 people)) the ticket costs 60 US cents, but it did cost 40 cents a few years ago. And that's only the town bus, for that price you can go from one side of the town to another. (Not more than 5 kms).

But to get to Tallinn, it costs about 6-8 dollars I guess (100 kms).

The buses here are ok, except the size of them, there are 2 buses - a very small one and a normalsized. The normalsized one is usually almost empty (~5). But the small one is allways over capacity. When someone complained about it in the local paper, that the bus is FULL when the schoolday ends, the leader of the bus company answered that he checked and the bus was not even half-full at the beginning and end of the WORKDAY.. what an idiot.

ok, public transport in Dublin

Heroin addicts, busses in Dublin are used mainly(off-peak times) by these junkies, they get on the bus in town after collecting their foy and sit upstairs at the rear of the bus and go up and down the same route all day long. It's discusting...the smell and noise of these idiots is why I'd rather walk. just last week I saw a bus driver get out of his cab and punch a guy in teh face as he tried to attack the bus driver for not letting hi on free to meet with the rest of his junkie mates upstairs....****ing discusting.

Wait half a day and bus may come, however it does wrong direction every each day and it costs more than driving a car, something like that...

I was about to post a photo I took of a tram I saw in Prague this summer.. then I thought "one of the forum members from Prague will probably do that", so I didn't

I agree buses ftw!!! City centre from my house is ~6.5 miles, bus stop is about 100m away. Bus is £1.40 each way, so £.280 a day, parking a car along at the cheapest is £3.00 with any parking close closer to about £5 - £6 a day.

So yes, buses FTW!

P.s. I do agree about leg room.

I've been using buses and trains since I was a nipper. Bus services always seem to be improving, whereas the trains have got steadily worse since British Rail was privatised in the early '90s.

I hate getting the train now, partly because they're often standing room only, but mostly because I don't like giving money to private companies where the shareholders cream off all the profits for a decade and then go cap-in-hand to the government and say "Er, sorry, we've basically run this company into the ground and we need £80bn to keep your trains running - can you get your taxpayers to bail us out?" :mad:

My previous job was in the city centre, which is horrible to get to by car. And there's almost no free parking anywhere, only payed parking. The first few months I worked there I took the bus (busstop is right outside my door) but it took sooooo damn long to get to work it got really frustrating. There's no special lanes for buses on the way to the city so the bus is just stuck in the morning rush hour just like all the cars. It sometimes took me 45 minutes to get to work, which was about 7 km away. I got a motorcycle which got me to work in less than 15 minutes. No more buses for me.

The place where I currently work doesn't have a bus connection

Until I get a new bike, I have to ride the bus... OK two buses and a light rail in the mornings and two buses home in the evening.
I have no problem with the buses being late or drivers being jerks.
In fact I like the bus drivers I meet. But the passengers? One day this drunk old man gets on the bus and asks if it goes to downtown. He was told yes, so he gets on the bus and sits down - and then promptly pisses all over himself I had to sit thru that nasty smell for about 30 minutes....yuck.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Bus services always seem to be improving, ...

Bikes rule. Pedals or pistons, I don't mind, but biking through town means my journey is always more fun as well as being considerably quicker.

However, here in London, it is almost invariably quicker to walk than to take a bus.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

I am addicted to public transportation. Where I live, it is alot better then driving. I live outside of Washington DC, and there is so much traffic.

I am sure that it works great for that area, but not everyone want to either live in a large city where public transportation has it's merits. And I actually had to reread your first sentence, stunned as I am that anyone could think anything implemented by the government is praiseworthy.

Quote :

The local buses are nice because the air conditioning is so cold that you feel like you are in a freezer. You can ride the bus for 75¢, or burn a few gallons of gas, and waste $10.

Again, not everyone works in a central location; public transportation only goes so far, and even in my gas guzzling WRX, I can drive 2 weeks before I fill it up, my commute being 22 miles round trip.

Quote :

If more people rode buses, then we would reduce the demand for oil, thus making it cheaper.

Hardly. If everyone rode on public transportation, the consumption of fuel would probably equal itself out. Plus, you have to be transported by the buses schedule, not your own, thus negating your personal freedoms and putting the government in control of your life.

Quote :

I could honestly care less if people want to drive around in their big hummer. But, if you think gas is too expensive then ride the bus, or metro.

Thank you for that comment, as I believe that reliance on government is a form of slavery. Over the past century, personal vehicles have made humans live longer, richer, and live on their terms, and giving us more freedoms than any society in the past 5,000 years. How can you argue against that?

Getting the bus is way too expensive, costs £4 to go from Worcester to Malvern, trains better, cleaner, quicker and generally nicer @ £3.60 but given the fact it's a 15 minute but generally traffic free drive it's cheaper to do it in the car, especially if you share lifts with people, which makes me rather sad about how pathetic our public transport system is

over here its 1.20 for me ( adult fare cause everyone thinks im 18+ :S ) but it costs about 2 euro in petrol , not a great saving besides thats in an old bmw m5 , the irish bus's where i am are 7.8 v12 volvos so i think my dads car getting 30 mpg is better then that bus getting about 20


but still on my bike i can get around faster then any car/bike/bus you can name ( god i love knowing all the streets in dublin ) and it only costs me like 1 euro cuase i need a drink after pushing myself hard to get from ringsend to the spire ( the spire = big waste of money that points into the sky in the middle of europes widest street )

takes about 20 mins by car/bus but i can do it in 5/7 mins

Public transport in the UK is shit and hugely over priced.

Trains especially, last week a trip to London from Portsmouth cost me £30 by train...