Posted on 08/08/2013 6:36:55 PM PDT by george76
I homeschooled my son. Once when he was about 10 years old he wanted to ride a bus. So, we drove to the Carlsbad Mall and caught the 302 bus from there to the Vista Transit station and back. Quite an eye opening experience for him. He never asked to ride the bus again.
Wow, It's been a few weeks since I heard that one.
But, God help you if you live in New York.
They don’t believe in God in New York.
6%???
That’s a damned lie and made up statistic...
I have never been on a city bus in my life. I can’t even imagine it.
Been on trains a few times, though, and even subways.
Public transit is fine if you live in places like NYC and Chicago. Even Washington DC is OK if you live near a subway stop and don’t need to come home past midnight. But for the most part, Americans live in pleasant suburbs where the spacing of housing makes mass transportation impractical. And Americans don’t want to be Europeans. We love our big cars and our independence.
The gas is about $4 today. A gallon of gas will buy you at least 30 miles of travel. A bus fare is $2 for a single ride. If you are traveling less than 15 miles, it is not cost-effective. If your trip is longer you need to pack your lunch, and on some routes you also should write a will.
74% use personal cars because cars are better. The 26% are either too young or too old to drive; some are too poor to own even a junk car, or have nowhere to go. A car is an attribute of a reasonably successful person. It's your personal space that protects you from other people who you may not want to interact with. Do you think Bernhard Goetz would see a car as a worthy investment, given all the troubles that he picked up on a subway train? Mass transit is a major crime area; things are always happening on buses, on trains, and near them.
Notice how they don’t ask questions about government subsidies to the airlines?
In 1971 i took a greyhound bus from Jacksonville to Tampa Florida.
The toilet overflowed, it was hours late.
Bunch of bums were either drinking or drunk.
And it smelled real bad.
My last experience at public transportation.
I can do it better my self
The only time I used mass transit(subway) was when my car was in the shop.
So was I, it was painted bright yellow.
The only time we use mass transit is when we go to Cleveland Browns football games.
We can park close to the stadium for 25 bucks or more and have to deal with bumper to bumper traffic that moves at a snails pace until we get far from the stadium OR we can park for free at Brook Park station and ride the train all day for 4 bucks each and avoid most of the traffic.
Its a no-brainer for us.
of course living in a town of 6000 we really don't have an opportunity to use mass transit much.
After living in NYC for 57 years and now rural WV for the past 12, it has been my experience that city people walk while country folk drive. That is not a knock on either, just what I've observed. Distances and terrain rule.
If it was 20 miles to the grocery store you would drive too but you would do it once a month like I do.
I took a 150 mile bus trip once. Sure it only cost me $17 but it took nearly 7 hours vs the 3 hours it would have taken me to drive for about the same cost. The bus also dropped me off nearly 20 miles from my final destination despite passing within a few hundred yards of where I was going.
On second thought, when going to my next door neighbor’s, I’ve tended to use the lawn tractor lately. lol
“He never asked to ride the bus again.”
That’s just it. Just like public school, the experience trains you to be aware of your surroundings. Not to have your guard down but to adapt to dangerous situations, idiot people and how to interact and communicate with stated personalities.
My cousin serves in South Korea near the DMZ. He was once told by a retired Green Beret that one of his “training” exercises was to take public transit from area A to area B. Area A to B were known dangerous black neighborhoods. If you are able to navigate through these areas he said, then you can navigate your way through the streets of Baghdad.
Disease vector morass.
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