[email protected] wrote:
> > In the cities where PT is not so good, it's generally pretty damn awful.
> > Many acquaintances of mine in such cities complain about hub-and-spoke
> > arrangements that make it much, much easier to go in and out that to go
> > around, so that a 10 minute drive to the next neighbourhood entails taking
> > the bus to city centre and another one out, for a time of an hour or two
> > (which is not entirely unknown here).
>
> I remember a public transport trip in Chicago in the summer of 1990. I
> wanted to attend a party on Saturday evening. Trip started about 4 PM
> Saturday afternoon. I lived in Evanston, north of Chicago. 10 minute
> walk to the L station (elecvated train/subway). 30 minutes or so ride
> downtown to catch another train. 30 minutes or so waiting for the
> train heading to the western suburb. 30 or so minutes riding through
> the ghettos of housing projects on the western side of Chicago. Saw a
> kid throw a rock at the L train. Then another 20 minutes or so waiting
> for the bus to take me close to where I needed to go. Then a 10 minute
> or so bus ride. Then a few minutes of walking to the house. I think
> in total it took me 2.5 hours to go from a northern Chicago suburb to a
> western Chicago suburb. Maybe 15 miles driving distance. I remember
> thinking if I had a car, I could have made the trip easily with so much
> less wasted time. On a bike it would have taken me an hour but I was
> new to town and did not know the safe way to ride to the destination.
>
> Chicago has one of the more extensive public transport systems in the
> US. But it can still be very inconvenient if you try to do anything
> other than simple go to and from work in downtown Chicago during
> business hours Monday-Friday.
>
> One more public transport story. I attended an Oak Ridge Boys
> concert/show in St. Charles. A town about 40 miles to the west of
> Chicago. L train to get downtown to the regular train station. I then
> took the regular train out to the concert. Maybe 2 hours total
> involved getting to the concert. BUT, there were no regular trains
> running late at night to get me back home after the concert ended. So
> I slept in the building/golf country club putting the concert on and
> took the regular train back the next morning. Then back on the L to
> get home.
And I remember waking up one Sunday and discovering that we were out of
coffee. Oh, not a problem I'm on the Danforth in Toronto. I walk a
block to the subway, catch a train to down 3 stops, nip upstairs and
get my freshly roasted and ground coffee and am back home is about 15
minutes. Faster than I could have gotten the car out of the garage,
driven there, found a parking place, driven back, put car in garage and
gotten back into the house.
Much of the time I find myself trying to resist getting rides with
friends. They don't realise that traveling by car is much more of a
hassle for me than is the bike and public tranist. Oh , there are times
when a car is more convenient but most of the time the bike is better
and combined with decent public tranist (bikes on buses is a great
idea) a car rapidly loses much of it's allure.
When I lived in the Ottawa-Hull area it was usually much quicker and
about as comfortable to cycle or use the bus Transitway and the bike to
get places than it was to ride with someone. Spending 20 minutes stuck
on the Queensway is boring and getting stopped at a bridge for half a
hour while Ariel Sharon ( or was it Shimon Peres?) goes by gets
annoying. When on a bike one could ususally slip through traffic jams
and dodge road closures very easily. The police would wave one through
until the last moment. I did get held up (delayed I mean) by the Queen
once by only for about 5 minutes.
John Kane, Kingston ON Canada