What's public transit like where you live?

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

Transit in my city is far more vehicle-friendly than pedestrian-friendly. My city is very typical of "urban spread", with much infrastructure designed with the car in mind. It takes quite a long time to get from one corner of the city to another, there are tons of huge parking lots in big box stores, a lot of roads have no sidewalks or ramps, and so on.

The light rail in my city was for the longest of times (and still is) primitive. Until very recently, it was a single line that went from point A (south central part of the city) to point B (northeast corner of the city). As of less than a year ago, a branching line was finally made that would take some of the trains to a university in the north central part of the city. The interior of the trains is also quite dated, with an ugly brownish-yellowish carpeting and seating, a color popular in the 70s (apparently that was a "golden" color back then but looks like barf to me). The speed of these trains is also super slow, like literally no more than 60 km/h. A car can easily drive faster. The stops are relatively close together however, so they're not spread far apart. Wait times between trains are like 10-20 minutes, which is pretty slow compared to other light rails around the world, where trains can come every 2 minutes.

The Edmonton transit system (ETS) has actually a pretty good army of buses that cover most of the city's roads. Wait times are rather long though (15-30 minutes).

To put everything into an overall perspective, I think your "alright" transit in Vancouver is probably a lot better (SkyTrain!), and Edmonton's probably sucks a lot more. It is gradually improving though. Edmonton being a newer city is behind in a lot of trends, and transit is no exception.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

I try to avoid taking public transport as much as possible! Haha. Although I didn't get my license til 21, so before that I caught a lot of busses and trains to get to where I wanted / needed to. For university, or to meet up a friend etc. I used to catch a bus to the train station, train to the city and then walk 10 mins to get to my bus stop to uni. It was a 3 hour trip in total a day. XD I used to get quite anxious in crowds, esp on a bus - so I didn't like it for that reason. The busses are also so unpredictable. We have a timetable, but it's hit and miss if they're on time. Also compared to places I've travelled (Europe, Asia) the trains are a million x faster.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

We have a few highways and sometimes a bus that is 45 minutes late will drive by and not pick you up.


If you can't drive yourself here then you're probably either homeless or have some beefy legs

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

If you want trains that skip stations, terminate before their intended destination, change from stopping-all-stations to express cause it's running 3 minutes late and the company doesn't want to get fined for poor performance, then come on down to Melbourne.

Let me tell you about our WONDERFUL ticket system. About 4-5 years ago, our PT switched ticketing systems from recyclable paper tickets, to these terrible plastic cards that were supposed to help save the environment by not cutting down trees (but replacing them with cheap plastic cards... go figure). I think the main reason was so the city could look somewhat techy, rather than old school paper tickets but I never saw a problem with these. Anyway, these Myki cards are an absolute joke (TheThong, you're going to 'love' our ticket system...).

There are so many faults with these cards, such as:
- They crack and bend very easily.
- The tiniest crack, which sometimes you cannot even see, will render your card useless.
- Sometimes you will get charged double for your trip so you gotta call customer support for a claim and we all know what big companies customer support is like...
- If the Myki reader isn't working at the station and you jump on the train/tram/bus anyway cause you gotta get to work, you're basically boned if ticket inspectors get on the train (gl trying to convince them the machine wasn't working).
- Sometimes the machines aren't fixed for days and conveniently, your station becomes the target of an invalid ticket crackdown.
- If you leave your Myki card at home, gotta buy a new one, regardless of how much money was left of your other one.
- Transferring money between cards is basically impossible.
- Every time you have to buy a new Myki, you have to pay $6 for it (with no travel money on it yet).
- Just to get to the city as a visitor in Melb, you have to pay $6 for the card, and then about another $8 bucks just for the ride in and out.
- If you forget to touch your card off when you complete your journey, it will charge you the amount of a full ticket the next time you touch your card on (mainly applies to students cause they get discounted travel costs).
- Visitors to the city have no idea how the ticket system works as there is very little signage/information on how to use it.
- Ticket Top Up machines are only at train stations, or you can top up your card at a Myki supported newsagent or 7/11. Can't do it on the actual transport itself.

Oh, Myki also cost $1b which I personally think is the biggest waste of money.

On the brighter side, the combination of trains, trams and buses will take you almost anywhere in Melb. Only thing is, the times never line up cause PT is almost ALWAYS late.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

It's trash here in Miami

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

Mostly just buses here, but they are usually poorly kept and tend to just not show up every once in a while.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

There are like 3 bus stops in my city but I've never seen any buses

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

I'd say it's ass, but that depends on where you live in the city or metro area. A lot of people are using Lyft/Uber as an alternative.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

i don't like pittsburgh's all that much. we have a subway system, but it's limited in its range and i have no reason to ever take it because there's no east spur of track. so one alternative, which is like philly's regional rails, are the busways - there's a whole set of buses which provide express service on restricted roads to particular neighborhoods, lots and garages. these don't serve me either. there is decent bus coverage, but they just don't run some routes often enough. the buses i take are typically 90% full by the time they get to me and that's still maybe 20 stops from the universities.

similar to melbourne above, pgh is trying to transition to a less-paper system. notably, they're raising the price for people who pay with cash and trying to do away with paper transfers. the price already incentivizes their cards, but that's supposed to be the new way you transfer too - so if you pay with cash, gg, you get to pay two full fares on a one-way trip :^) one thing that balances this out is them doing away with zone-based fares totally, because what even is a zone, but i've never seen those enforced in practice anyway. airport trips are supposed to automatically be 2 zones, for instance, but the drivers themselves reject that reality.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

Vancouver has also moved to a smartcard system (Compass Card). Sounds like it has similar issues to Myki and Connect Card. The main argument against it is that people have to pay twice if they buy a paper fare on the bus and transfer to SkyTrain. I believe this is also the case with Sound Transit's Link light rail.

My Compass Card is still in pristine condition, so it sounds like they're manufactured differently than Myki. Chips and dents shouldn't matter as long as the antenna and RFID chip isn't damaged. A crack, of course, could break the antenna (which goes around the edge of the card). I wonder why Myki doesn't have a way to register the cards though? Here lost/damaged cards can be replaced (for a fee) if they were registered.

Also with the advent of the Compass Card came the abolishing of the zone system for bus travel only. This was because the card readers on buses were taking upwards of 4 seconds to process each card when tapping out. SkyTrain isn't affected by this, so zones still exist there and on SeaBus.

Overall I'm neutral about Compass. I don't like the fare gates because it takes time to tap in and out. With the paper monthly pass (seen in my signature), which was discontinued in Dec 2015, you didn't even have to take it out when boarding SkyTrain, which was much more convenient.

Haha, I actually like Edmonton light rail because they have the button in the cars to open the doors (which makes sense because it's hella cold there). They tried that for a couple of years in Vancouver (when SkyTrain was first built), but it turned out no one could figure out how to open the doors, so they removed it. However, the button is still pressable on the outside of the Mark I cars.

Vancouver's suburbs are also built with the car in mind, at least where I live. Walking home from my bus stop is a little scary due to the lack of sidewalks and visibility.

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This thread has gotten great replies. It's tempting to compare Vancouver to somewhere like New York or Tokyo and think it's shit, but it could be much worse. I feel so lucky that I can go from my house to anywhere in Vancouver on my own whenever I want. When I first started taking the bus, I was amazed by that. I had always relied on cars until then, so it was like discovering a whole new world, something that had always been there but I'd never noticed.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

It's shit, no buses in or out of my town past 5pm. Utter shit.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

In Boston I thought it was pretty bad. I was especially mad when the scheduled last buses for every night went from 2:50 A.M. to 12:50 A.M.

But man, the MBTA is like riding the trains to heaven compared to the shitstain that is the Amherst bus system. I'd honestly rather just walk 2-4 miles most days instead of wait 45 minutes for a bus where the driver likes to TAKE A BREAK EVERY GODDAMN STOP TO CALL HIS WIFE.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

It's non existent. You need a car if you want to get around.

Re: What's public transit like where you live?

great because its germany.

i use it to & back for school daily, and except occasional 5 minute delays there are no complaints here. (note: not a school bus, public transit)

and its free for people who attend school here so no out-of-pocket expense either.