Shared in Fuck Cars@lemmy.world 17 days ago

My bus ride from home to college starts at 2:40 and ends at 4:00

I timed it. Most of that time is waiting for a transfer, yes, but getting there by car takes about 20 minutes…

There has been more than one time, where it has been raining when I got on the first bus, and then not raining anymore when I got off the second.

There’s no benches where you transfer buses and it’s supposed to be the bus center for the city. It’s an island of curb in the middle of a huge mall parking-lot. You stand there or sit on the curb for like forty minutes sometimes.

You can actually see the swirls of the wind in the plastic wrapper garbage that blows by. The area is like semi enclosed by big box stores so my theory is that it like accumulates the airborne garbage somehow.

Another reason why it takes so long is that the first stop which is by my neighborhood…

(For context my neighborhood is like an isolated suburb off of a four lane highway…)

(Except it’s a not really a highway and there are houses with driveways connected to it. I guess it’s more like an arterial road of the city or something, but if I’m remembering correctly, it doesn’t merge with a highway, it becomes one.)

You can’t get off on the first stop because it’s on the other side of the highway / street / road. It’s impossible to cross. There’s just no way.

What you have to do to not get stranded when you get off the second bus, is wait until the route cycles through all the stops in the outskirts of the city, and then get off at that stop when it’s coming the other way, on the other side of the road.

There is no bus sign, just an indent in the sidewalk wide enough and long enough for a vehicle to park. There are no benches.

Then I walk for around 2 minutes (that I’m not counting) through the suburbs to get to my house.

0/2000

moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 16 days ago

Live in the suburbs, win suburb prizes

RBWells@lemmy.world 16 days ago

I always took the bus to college even though buses are slow here, because on the bus I could read (the college was the last stop) and I didn’t have to pay for parking, and it got me closer to the school than the parking was, and was free because it’s free for college students. All that added up to make it well worth the time. I didn’t have to transfer though.

The time isn’t the only consideration.

darthsundhaft@piefed.social 16 days ago

I’ve always thought about this but if cars stopped being the primary way to get around, transports like this or ambulances could get by without all the traffic and constant forcing their way through traffic.

tacosanonymous@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 days ago

Same thing happens here, especially since were two cities that are connected (been here 20 years and gun to my head idk if I could accurately describe the border) and the transfers can be brutal.

Thankfully, my e-bike can get me there faster. There are even safe trails to use (with some crossings).

python@lemmy.world 17 days ago

Dang I feel you. Started a new job this month and my route to work is now Bus-Train-Bus. The train part is actually really nice and only takes 30min, but the busses are so annoying because the transfer windows just don’t really line up. Like the train arrives at :34 but the only bus line that goes reasonably close to my work leaves at :30 and :50. It’s not even far (like 2km from my home to the train station and 4km from the second train station to my work), just barely far enough that walking feels like a waste of time.

I have yet to find a set of connections that take less than 1h30m in total. By car the route would take 32mins. If I take my bike instead of the busses I can get the total time down to 50-ish mins but a ticket for taking a full-sized bike on the train costs 7,50€ per day. I have ordered a foldable bike though (those are free to take on trains) and I’m hoping that it will be a good solution.

motionofethre@piefed.social 17 days ago

I try to petition cities to fix it. It works sometimes

Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 days ago

You can actually see the swirls of the wind in the plastic wrapper garbage that blows by

New Jersey?! /hj

I have a similar commute time to my school, which is also about a 20 minute drive away by car. There’s an express bus that reduces the time to an hour but only runs every 30 minutes, I have to transfer once to get there, the bus to get to the transfer only runs every 20 minutes, and gets to the transfer stop with only a few minutes to spare. So if traffic is bad or several people have to take extra time getting on/off, I miss the transfer to the express and have to take the slower local bus.

I love public transit but it’s SO ANNOYING when there isn’t enough bus frequency. Missing a bus by 1 minute because someone in a wheelchair got on shouldn’t mean I lose 30 minutes of travel time.

psycholocomotor@lemmy.world 16 days ago

It’s a place in Canada, I’ll reveal that much. It’s probably worse than New Jersey.

meat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 days ago

It’s pathetic that buses take 2-3x longer than driving, I have the same situation for most destinations. It’s especially grueling in the darkness of winter.

moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 16 days ago

That’s bad design.

We need to make roads and highways have fewer car lanes (covert existing lanes to bus-only or bicycle-only lanes. Or build light rail). Ideally Max 1 car lane in every direction.

Then busses and trains will be faster than cars.

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 16 days ago

a lot of the time it’s not even the fault of the road design, it’s that bus routes are stupid. Especially america seems to suffer a lot from bus routes that make no fucking sense whatsoever, it’s like they’re actively designed to be as circuitous and slow as possible.
And even if they’re not that horrendous it’s very very common worldwide to just have way too many stops along the way, like 200 meters between bus stops is not uncommon and that shit slows them way the fuck down.

The most charitable interpretation of this is that public transport organizations know that disabled/elderly people need the buses to get around, and thus they prioritize minimal walking distance to the bus stops over having the buses go fast.

motionofethre@piefed.social 17 days ago

I measure the quality of public transport / bike in a city by the average factor vs drive times. Some cities have <=1.1 like Helsinki, Den Haag, Berlin. Others are like 3-5x

Sergio@piefed.social 17 days ago

You can actually see the swirls of the wind in the plastic wrapper garbage that blows by. The area is like semi enclosed by big box stores so my theory is that it like accumulates the airborne garbage somehow.

It’s like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for big box stores. The Great Big Box Trash Tornado?

psycholocomotor@lemmy.world 17 days ago

I have a video of like a baby dust devil made of plastic wrappers I filmed in that place, but I don’t want people to pinpoint the city I live.

psycholocomotor@lemmy.world 17 days ago

And the tickets they give you for the transfers don’t correspond to the number you see on the bus, it’s not even on there, that’s some other system, so you just have to memorize which one is what route. First time I had to ask each of the drivers nervously if this bus went to [place I live] or not.

psycholocomotor@lemmy.world 17 days ago

There’s not even a corner store where I live, and you can’t walk to one because the only connection to the city is that stretch of road. It’s almost exclusively populated with middle aged middle class white people. You don’t even see anyone living in most of the houses. And like fifty percent of them have plastic turf instead of grass (which is better for the environment probably with how you don’t have to fertilize it, but still, it’s like fucking Thneedville.)

SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 17 days ago

It’s almost exclusively populated with middle aged middle class white people.

Designing everything for cars, and providing only terrible bus service, is a deliberate policy choice. Not to call anybody who lives there now racist, but historically speaking, this outcome wasn’t by accident.