What is your opinion of Public Transportation?

[EnclosedOne]

on the few occasions that I have to ride the bus I highly dislike it because of the other potential passengers that can get on (homeless that smell and those with kids). not to mention that sometimes the buses smell bad and are dirty and you have to be careful where you sit. another problem is it could take an hour to get from one side of town to the other whereas in a car it takes like 10 mins. even with traffic you can still get across town faster in a car than if you ride the bus.

these days I have my honda pcx 150 scooter so I can zip around town even more easily than i can with a car plus i save a ton of gas with it. unfortunately i cant ride it when it rains and it gets too cold to ride when the temp drop below 50 but i most def prefer my scooter than the car usually

[Thelxi]

I've come to love it. Waiting in the cold wind for a train or barely being able to sit on a crowded train is not fun, but knowing I am cutting through the country at high speed much faster than I could in car is consolation enough, and I have come to enjoy the downtime on the train and I actually get some work done quite efficiently.

[Deleted]

It's horrible when you live in a small town.

[Witchblade77]

Bikes are not public transportation - they are environmentally conscious slower cheaper equivalents to personal cars.. that said, my feelings are mixed. i find it convenient for the most part when it applies. I can relax and read or nap or whatever else, because i don't have to concentrate on driving. and things like subway especially - when they work, bypass the traffic completely, so in large cities its much faster then driving. and no worries about where to park. on the other hand... there's other people. who are sometimes loud, sometimes stinky, sometimes both. and you are limited by someone else's schedule. its a tradeoff.

[zlygork]

I honestly think the world would be better off if we only had public transportations, but that would require for them to work far better than they do today (at least far better than where I live)

As a plus, I got most of my homework done on the bus during college

[Aoyi]

I used it a lot when I was in college. It was a 90 minute train ride, so i did a lot of reading while on the train. During the winter, I would also take the subway from class back to the train station since it was about a 25-30 minute walk from school back to the station.

[oplawlz]

Trash in the US. Amazing in other countries I’ve lived.

So, it depends.

That highly depends where you live in the U.S.

[qwerty123456]

You can't get public transportation where I live.

[melodramocracy]

as of very recently, i live in a metro area where I'm happy to not have a car, as the overall sentiment is "punishment for owning your own vehicle". Certainly, it's a perk to be able to walk or metro to / from anything you might need.

Back home, where public transportation is more or less non-existent, I'm happy to have my own car, and fortunate enough to live in an area that is low on traffic and high on twisty farm / mountain roads.

Of the two, I think I'd rather have my own car under the right circumstances.

[Rysthruun]

Its absolutely just a US issue. Sure there are weirdos no matter where you go, but the filthy cars, ridiculously spread out routes, and failure to keep a basic time schedule are much worse here than the rest of the world. Having efficient public transport would cut into corporate profits too much so any such project is heavily lobbied against.

I guess that's been your experience. My experience in other countries has been pretty terrible, seeing everything from human feces and urine, bed bugs, cockroachs, etc. From trains, bus's, taxis, you name it. I find it hard to believe I hit the jackpot rarity situations in every country I visited.

[Reyzzz]

A bike is public transportation? As a contractor its never a good option for me, I also see it as a thing only for poor people , the time to money ratio doesnt make sense like if a bus takes an hour and i can drive in 15 mins thats like 75$ in lost wages because i could have been working for those 45 min

There are rental bikes where I live, and they are usable with the public transit pass, and thus would count. However, if you own the bike you are riding with, I would count it out.

On topic though, I've recently graduated and got my own car, but when I still was a student, I used public transport (mostly bus and sometimes train) alot. Over the years I noticed how they reduced/changed the routes, many of the the transport companies I used went under, and I would have to switch more often to get where I was going, or even get my friends or family take me last 30-50 km of the way to reach them. Students do however get the 50% discount, but public transport suffers from the same weird "fate" as the healthy diet: It's too expensive.

A flight to spain (3500 km) is literally cheaper than to travel to my family and back (500 km). And that's fucked.

[Zelk]

where's the 'it's vital but needs more funding' option? Because I'm that one.

[Kokolums]

I honestly think the world would be better off if we only had public transportations, but that would require for them to work far better than they do today (at least far better than where I live)

As a plus, I got most of my homework done on the bus during college

A lot of women are very averse to public transportation because they don't feel safe.