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It sounds like you live in an area that can't support reasonable public transit. If missing a bus is a big deal, and if the bus may get replaced by a minibus, p
by jltsiren 3y ago
It sounds like you live in an area that can't support reasonable public transit. If missing a bus is a big deal, and if the bus may get replaced by a minibus, population density is probably too low.
When public transit works well, you see it more as a network of fixed routes than as catching individual vehicles. You show up at a stop, and the system takes you close to your destination. If you miss a bus/tram/train, the next one is probably not too far behind. If you miss a connection, the system may suggest you another route.
The US is full of medium-density cities that don't work well. Population density is high enough that traffic gets bad if most people drive, but it's simultaneously low enough that public transit is only viable on most popular routes.
- cvwright 3y agoI used to live in PDX, which is generally regarded as having very good public transit for the US. My experience was pretty close to what the poster describes.
- PaulHoule 3y agoCertainly if you have transit running every five minutes it is entirely different then if it isn’t. (In that case unreliability isn’t the killer that it is when a bus runs every hour) I had no problem with the reliability of the bus before the pandemic (got an electric bus instead of a minibus) but the bus company in Tompkins has never really recovered. For a while we had people advocating the Utopian idea of letting everybody ride the bus for free, it seems to have become a reality by accident because the fare collecting machines have broken and haven’t been fixed.