kickaha | Who rides the bus? I do! I do!

Well, due to an amazing bit of stupidity on my part, I don't have a parking permit for campus for next year. (Done missed the signup deadline, I did.)

So, I'm looking into alternate forms of transportation. Like the bus. Yay.

Unfortunately, the Triangle area of NC doesn't exactly have what I'd call 'mass transportation'. They try. They really, really do. They try everything, a little bit here, a little bit there, and nothing cohesive or organized into a whole.

After searching online for the various bus systems' schedules and routes, however, I found that I can grab a bus in Raleigh near NC State campus, and end up on UNC campus in Chapel Hill about 75 minutes later. It's a 45 minute drive, and I have to walk across campus from my current parking spot for about 15 minutes anyway, so it's not *horrendously* long. Besides, now I can read while I commute... haven't been able to have that luxury since using the Metro in Seattle. (*sigh* Now that's a bus system... second only to perhaps NY subways in terms of getting people from here to there pretty darned efficiently. To those of you living there thinking I'm nuts, move elsewhere. Anywhere. Then move back, and appreciate that while Metro ain't perfect, it's really rather nice in comparison to just about everything else out there. I'd *kill* to have a Metro system here.)

So this will be interesting... I'll feel like an honest to god student again. :)

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But then, I've never lived anywhere else. I mean, the bus system I rode on in Hawaii was really cheap, but I only took the bus a handful of times. I've been on Bart and Max, and they were okay. The buses I rode in San Francisco were a tad scary.

I've also taken Community Transit up here and man, it bites in a way that Metro just doesn't. A bus failing to run on a Metro route has never left me stranded, but Community Transit has. The buses are clean, the seats are comfortable, and the drivers are friendly, but that's probably at least in part because they don't have to work the sucky shifts that are so convenient for everyone else. C.T. seems to assume that people work an 8 - 6 schedule, for the most part, and don't really commute much otherwise.

I keeping hearing excellent things about the London Underground and the New York subways, but I've never been on them. I don't think I'll ever really be able to compare systems until I've spent at least a month -- if not a season -- trying to regularly get around on some other one.

Ayup. The NY subways are phenomenally useful for a city that never sleeps, the London tube is likewise excellent at distribution of people over the central London area (although I would have preferred that they run more consistently late at night), and to add one more: the Paris Metro. I'd rank it up with the London tube most days, but the rather regular strikes make it less than reliable in the summer. :P

But for a bus system, Metro is hard to beat.

The London tube is very good for consistently being able to get you where you're going. In many cases, if you miss your train, there's another one coming in <10 minutes (during the day). Clean trains, too. And you will never, ever, ever be able to forget to "Mind the gap". The tube system is well integrated with teh busses, as well. Although, from the time I was there, if you're going anywhere inside London proper in daylight hours, take the tube. Surface streets are a nightmare :).
Chicago's El system is also pretty good. Although, being spoiled by Metro, I was most disturbed when I discovered you can't call them and ask "What trains/busses do I take to get from here to there by this time?". The lady I spoke to was very nice about it, but explained that she didn't normally try this, so she wasn't sure that she was giving me correct information.

Who rides the bus? I do! I do!

Metro's fine, as far as I can tell.

Re: Metro's fine, as far as I can tell.

Re: Metro's fine, as far as I can tell.