The problem is that a lot of the responses are true and not mutually exclusive.

In theory, I love public transit, but it's fairly lame in Baltimore (even though it's better than in most of the country). The routes are limited, large segments of the public are completely disrespectful of the service, the buses are mostly awful (although they are getting better).

And while I don't mind completely relinquishing my privacy for an hour a day, I understand why many people do.

Things that would help:
- funding needs to be increased to address quality of life issues with public transit, like cleanliness and reliability
- PRT needs to be seriously considered
- Transit routes need to be expanded, and the NIMBYism commonly associated with new transit needs to be addressed (Virginia, actually, is doing this fairly well).

none of the above.

i use public transit to/from work on the weekdays, and generally if i'm going out at night (and having a few drinks).

i have a car in the city (chicago) and use it for runs to target and the grocery store and things, and to get out of the city occasionally!

Where is the "I take public transit (when possible) but still have the car"

Personally, I ride my bike whenever possible. If that does not work because of distance, timing... or because I need to wear a suit, then I usually take my hybrid out. Public transit is used whenever weather is an issue and I cant take the bike, or when I am out at the bars in the city :)

jwer's comment prompted me to check out my local transit for real information.

I live in one of the few suburbs of Atlanta that has transit. Atlanta proper has MARTA, but I'm outside the area for it.

I live five or six miles from work - an incredibly short commute for Atlanta metro. Traffic scares me too much to bike, and it's a bit far for me to walk without building up to it. It's a fifteen minute drive on a slow day.

To take transit, I'd need to take two buses. The first one is a forty-five minute trip that runs every fifteen minutes during rush hour and every half-hour at non-peak hours. That takes me to a transfer center where I'd get on a bus that runs once an hour(!). That second bus takes me to within a mile of my destination, and I'd have to walk the rest of the way. Walking the whole way is probably faster.

We're going on vacation soon, and my spouse thinks we'll be able to take transit to the airport. The first bus on Saturday morning leaves our area at 7AM. There simply isn't time to take the bus and make our flight.

I don't know if the transit in our area is icky or scary. I imagine it is within my comfort zone, but I've never been on it. It doesn't serve me well enough to even try it. The sad part is that this is pretty good transit for a non-metro town. It even connects to MARTA. My hometown has no transit whatsoever. You ride in a car or you walk.

My vote was "There's no decent transit where I live."

Governor Spitzer has promised to reform the MTA, a system desperately in need of reform. The poor performance of NYC Transit drastically contributes to poor air quality by adding cars to the roads, and costs the city billions each year in lost worker productivity due to lateness and artificially lowered real estate values. Neighborhoods that have the potential for growth fail to achieve it because they are ill-served by transit. In addition, we have for years failed to meet federal air quality standards and thereby have lost billions (billions!) in available federal mass transit aid.

The state of the subways in New York City actually encourages many to drive. Those who might use mass transit opt for cars because buses and subways run so poorly, and are quite unpleasant. I don’t specifically know what problems Governor Spitzer perceives, but, since I must ride NYC Transit an average of 3–4 hours daily*, (a ridiculous amount of time, and in horrible conditions, conditions that would be a violation of federal statute if I were a cow; cows are mandated to be transported with a minimum of 2 feet clear space on all sides), I have observed many serious problems on my own.

Unfortunately, as I work 8–10 hours per day and spend another 3–4 hours commuting, I’ve been unable to perform the rigorous research this subject deserves; nonetheless, I’ve tried to make this report as accurate and objective as is possible, from a passenger’s point of view. It’s passengers who use the system, and passengers and citizens who pay for it. Yet the order of priority among transit honchos seems to be executives first, union members second, rolling stock and infrastructure third, and last and least, passengers.

*To put this in perspective, my commute is 15.5 miles, and takes between 1 hour and twenty minutes and two hours. When I lived in Tarrytown, NY and commuted to Grand Central, a distance of twenty-seven miles, my commute was thirty-four minutes.

Mayor Bloomberg seeks to reduce traffic congestion, a laudable goal that all but the most shortsighted must realize is necessary for our continued well being. The latest report from the American Lung Society shows that particulate pollution (soot) has dramatically increased in all 5 boroughs. This is a direct result of increased traffic, and a major threat to public health, as this type of pollution causes Asthma and COPD, and is more harmful to the lungs than most. Next, consider the unnecessary contribution to the atmosphere of greenhouse gases and the concomitant negative effect upon global warming. Unfortunately, any initiative aimed at decreasing auto use will be doomed to failure, unless there are massive improvements in public transit; motorists will not eschew auto use unless they can be transported with comparable comfort and convenience. The necessary infusion of cash will be unprecedented—and entirely necessary. New subway lines are required throughout the system; neighborhoods without subway access must have it, travel times need to be halved, and civility needs to be restored to a system where anarchy prevails. New York City is the capital of the world. It deserves a transit system befitting that status.

Treating riders badly
The number one problem I perceive is a total lack of regard for the passengers, by management and union alike. Some examples:

• NYC Transit built several new station entrances in Times Square. They could have been closed to the frigid winter air, but aren’t. Fans, at the very least, could have been installed for the sweltering summer months, but weren’t. PATH riders have the benefit of platform fans, turn of the nineteenth-century technology. Try waiting for an N train at 34th Street in August. The temperature in this station has topped 120°, and there’s not a fan in sight. But every token booth is air-conditioned,
and the heat discharged by those air conditioners isn’t even exhausted outside, but is directed at the paying riders, raising the temperatures of already sweltering stations.

• When a train is behind schedule, it is standard operating procedure to bypass stations full of waiting passengers to bring the train back on schedule. The stranded riders are aurally assaulted with an ear-damaging 120-decibel blast from the train’s horn, a signal to let the people know they’re being left behind. The stranded passengers fail to see a benefit, and rightly so. Transit honchos get to disingenuously claim near-perfect on-time performance.

• One of the more egregious abuses is that single-ride customers may not transfer from subway to bus or vice versa. Multiple ride customers can. So the poorest customers are made poorer, are treated as third-class citizens. I say third class because if you must ride with the MTA at all, you’re a second-class citizen, at best. All customers should receive equal benefits; they’ve all paid a fare, and the poorest customers have paid the highest fare. This niggardly treatment of the poorest riders further reduces the mobility and purchasing power of the working poor, and thereby hurts small businesses, too.

• The MetroCard is a great innovation; it’s unfortunate that it was so poorly implemented. Every day, people get stuck at turnstiles, attempting swipe after swipe. The card readers in other transit systems work smoothly; in the two years I lived in Miami, I never saw a card rejected, and you can be sure that their more reliable technology was purchased at a considerably lower cost. One can also pay for a bus ride with bills, card or change in Miami, and the bill readers accept wrinkled, old bills without protest while still reliably rejecting counterfeits.

• And what about the thirty-day MetroCard? Why thirty days and not thirty-one? Only five months have thirty or fewer days, which means that the average rider is forced to pay an extra $28/year to make up for the gap. It’s a small matter, but it clearly shows NYC Transit’s anti-passenger bias.

• Conductors are hired and deployed without regard to speaking ability. If the main requirement of a job is communicating effectively to the public, then clear, Standard English speech, free of impediments, should be the main qualification for obtaining that job. It isn’t.

• Buses run according to the whim of the driver; they are allowed to leapfrog each other without regard to schedule. In practice, this means that 3 buses, scheduled to arrive at ten-minute intervals, can all arrive at the terminal simultaneously, leaving passengers along the route with half-hour waits, a situation that can, and does, happen often. On minimally serviced routes at night, such as the B1, an early arrival and departure means that passengers arriving at the stop ahead of the scheduled time may have to wait over an hour for the next bus. Though traffic delays are inevitable, this leapfrogging has to stop. Buses must be made to run on schedule, or at least, never ahead of the schedule. If that requires waiting on the driver’s part, so be it. The most efficient method for maintaining bus schedules would be through the use of GPS tracking, informing drivers when to wait.

• Whether due to supervision, or operator’s whim, far too many connecting trains leave transferring passengers in the lurch, literally closing the doors in their faces. Often, allowing the passengers to transfer would account for a delay of no more than 30 seconds, yet they are left behind with an average 10-minute wait for the next train. Inexplicably, at other times, trains are held for up to 10 minutes for connections.

• Another part of the conductor’s job is to make sure that passengers have entered and/or exited the train safely. This requires looking both ways, and in stations where the view is blocked, cameras and monitors have been installed so that the conductor may perform this function. How to explain, then, the oft-occurring incidence of doors closing upon passengers attempting to enter? Could slovenly work habits perhaps provide an explanation?

• Passengers are constantly berated by train operators and by ill-conceived MTA advertisements. All blame for late trains is assigned to the passengers. Perhaps running more than one train every 20 minutes at rush hour (in other words, adequate service), would keep passengers from holding doors. More trains need to be added during rush hours, which should rightly be defined as from 6AM till 10AM, and from 4PM till 8PM.

• At some bus depots, such as the Ulmer Park depot on the B64 line, drivers change shifts in mid-route, which is wholly for the drivers’ and management’s convenience. I’ve seen bus drivers turn off the engine and air-conditioning during the summer months, seal the doors, and leave the passengers waiting for a new driver without explanation—a new driver, who, at the very least, should have been waiting at the bus stop to relieve the departing driver. Driver changes should only happen at terminal stops, and drivers should punch-in to work remotely, at the terminal stop for their route. The technology has long existed to make this possible.

• In winter, drivers work in their shirtsleeves and heat the buses to levels intolerable to passengers wearing heavy winter clothes. The same goes for the subways. Drivers should be required to wear outerwear so that temperatures can be set for the average passenger’s comfort. Drivers should not have access to temperature controls. Temperature on public transportation should be maintained at a constant 70°, in summer, and at 60° in winter.

• Locked cars. Everyone except the NYPD and MTA realizes that in this age of terrorism, preventing or hindering the movement of people out of an enclosed space is insanity. Yet the MTA insists that the policy benefits passengers. Please, tell me how I benefit from being locked in a car with a madman, intent on inflicting harm. Or with a homeless person, covered in feces. I’ve faced both of these situations within the past year. Incredibly, I can be issued a summons for switching to another car to avoid said homeless person. However, the policy is also to leave doors open while being held in a station, even when the temperature is well below freezing. Conductors who are considerate and close the doors while waiting can be disciplined for doing so. The only reasonable explanation for both seems to be that the management wants to provide passengers with the most unpleasant and dangerous ride possible.

• There are many, many more examples of poor treatment of passengers, but we’ll move on now, to...

...wasting money, and lots of it
• One of the more blatant examples of waste is the installation of highly polished marble, granite or terrazzo tiles throughout the system. This has many drawbacks. The tiles are very slippery when wet. At the Union Square station, during the rain, I’ve seen a dozen passengers slip and fall in as many minutes. What brilliant management, to increase the number of possible lawsuits! Another big drawback is that the tiles are not very durable. At the Broadway-Lafayette stop, you can count hundreds of broken tiles. Colored, textured concrete would have been slip-proof, attractive, more durable, and less expensive to implement and maintain. Shredded used tires, embedded in a resin-based matrix might be another, environmentally sound, economical and longwearing flooring option. Instead, the worst possible material was purchased and installed. It looked good in the architect’s rendering.

• On many elevated platforms, the corrugated steel has been removed, and replaced with heavy-duty stainless-steel wire mesh. While the mesh does have decreased maintenance and longer life to recommend it, it costs at least 4 times what the corrugated metal did, and provides no shelter from the wind. Who advocated for the passengers? And why are there no shelters for passengers on exposed subway platforms? Nearly every Metro North and LIRR station has heated shelters on the platforms, and Metro North and LIRR passengers pay a lower-percentage cost per mile.* Could that be interpreted as preferential treatment for the more well to do?

* Metro North riders are the most-highly subsidized, followed by LIRR, and last, NYC Transit.

• Approximately 50% of the valuable advertising space available in stations and on trains and buses is unpaid, and much of this unpaid advertising is devoted to telling the passengers what stupid dolts they are. Other PSAs remain posted for many months, sometimes even years past their expiration, inviting riders to tour exhibitions or events that have long been gone. Getting this valuable media space out of the hands of the MTA altogether and leasing it as a concession to an advertising or display company could immediately double, or even triple the revenue stream from this neglected, but valuable resource.

• Let’s make an analogy. Your house needs a new roof; there are leaks when it rains. Your wife wants to remodel the kitchen. You prudently take your wife to dinner and explain that the roof must come first; the kitchen will come next year. Now, consider that many tracks and signals are in need of replacement, and that the transit system looks kind of shabby in places. You’d fix the tracks and signals first, wouldn’t you? Not if you’re NYC Transit. They decided to remodel stations first. With tiles that are now broken, less than ten years after being installed. And we still have outdated, inefficient signals.

• Lately, we’ve been hearing announcements such as, “There is a downtown express train now approaching West 4th Street”. These announcements are always made as the train is entering the station and is therefore clearly visible to riders on the platform. Do we really need to pay someone to give us useless information?

Bad management
And what better indication of bad management than the fact that trains run badly? Unfortunately, the system is Manhattan-centric—riders in Manhattan who take a train for a couple of stops are basically unaware of just how bad the system is. Sure, the Lexington Avenue lines are severely overcrowded, but overall, service in Manhattan is good. Manhattan has an abundance of stations with multiple lines, express and local trains on the same platform—effectively doubling the service for strictly Manhattan-based riders. That’s one of the keys to understanding how this system doesn’t serve the majority of riders. Manhattan riders are the ones with influence, the ones with the most money, so where they don’t see a problem, none exists.

You could argue that that’s efficient management—if you’re a cynic who believes that management’s job is merely to deflect criticism, rather than to serve the people of New York City.

And don’t forget that this MTA management has a forty-plus year history of capitulating to unreasonable—no, unconscionable union demands, so that the worst conductor, barely able to speak intelligible English, (stankleededoze— translation: stand clear of the doors) who is fond of yelling at the passengers, who doesn’t look both ways but simply tries to close the doors on passengers attempting to enter a car after waiting 20 minutes for a train that should have arrived after six minutes or so, who then blames those passengers for having the audacity to think that they should be admitted to this train because they’ve paid for service—cannot be fired for his poor performance, bad attitude, or for his inability to speak clearly. No, he can only be fired if he’s caught doing drugs, stealing, being insubordinate—he must commit a truly outrageous act to be dismissed. He has a job for life, benefits twice as good as anyone in private enterprise, excessive vacation time, free parking, free transportation for life—all of which are paid for by the taxpayer. Management could have bargained to get us our money’s worth, but they’ve deemed it not worth the effort, time and time again.

You may think I’m being harsh to the average TWU conductor, token booth clerk, bus driver or motorman (I’ve excluded mechanics, electricians, track workers, carpenters, etc., not only because I don’t know their average pay, but because many of them also have harder, more dangerous jobs requiring more skills). I’d ask you to consider the value of the salary and benefits they receive; the combined average pay of these workers, after five years is approximately $60,000/year—without including benefits or overtime. Now, let’s look at the average monthly cost of benefits; 4 weeks annual vacation, twelve paid holidays, medical insurance, and free parking. Here’s the breakdown:

$ 76 free unlimited MetroCard
417 vacation
230 holiday
600 medical (average cost of family medical insurance in NYC)
400 parking (average monthly parking cost in Manhattan)
______________________________________________________________
$1,723 average monthly cost of benefits per TWU employee*

$20,676/year

* Doesn’t include pension costs

That comes to a whopping $80,676/year cost to the taxpayers. To put that in perspective, my sister has two graduate degrees and manages a large department at one of the city’s public library systems, and, after working twenty years, her pay and benefits are just beginning to be comparable to that of a subway conductor with only five years’ experience. Can anyone argue, with a straight face, that we taxpayers are getting our money’s worth from the average TWU worker?

Here’s another idea for management to consider. Keep the trains running. Constantly. This isn’t the Lake Shore Limited, which needs to run on a schedule. This is the business of rapid transit, people moving on a grand scale. The faster trains run, and the greater the frequency, the better.

No behavioral standards
While there is a transit code of conduct, it is not enforced, for the most part. Take the new emergency exits, which can be activated by pressing a bar, which then sounds an alarm. Advertisements advising passengers that these exits are for emergency use ONLY have been posted in Spanish, English, Russian, Korean and Chinese (and those are just the languages of which I am aware), and passengers have been further advised that using these exits for convenience makes one liable for penalties. Yet passengers exiting at the Bay 50th Street stop use these emergency exits in front of police officers, who do nothing, they don’t even object!

I decided to ask one of the non-performing officers why he wasn’t giving out summonses, or at least warning these customers that their behavior was unacceptable. His response was to claim that most of the offenders are foreigners who don’t understand English! So, hey, if you don’t speak English, you get a free pass to disobey the law! If that’s the NYPD policy, then why is the MTA wasting money on printing the ads in foreign languages? Rules, and laws are meaningless without enforcement.

Spitting in public, and on the subways, has been a violation warranting a $500 fine since the late nineteenth century, when public health officials began to understand the causes of the spread of disease and epidemics. New York City, unfortunately, is home to countless migrants from countries with the highest rates of tuberculosis, such as China, Russia, and India, who, incidentally, have cultural predilections for spitting profusely. And spitting runs rampant in the subways. These wise transit chieftains have seemingly determined that it would be culturally insensitive to try to eradicate this disgusting and dangerous habit. When and if the H5N1 influenza epidemic strikes, subway riders will be doomed. But, hey, the police will give a summons for a lit cigarette at 500 paces, citing dangers from second-hand smoke, something that has never been clinically proven, even after a ten-year study by the World Health Organization. I’m not claiming that second-hand smoke is good, just that rampant spitting is a greater and more imminent threat to public health.

Once, while I was riding the D train home, the doors opened at the 55th Street stop, and a Chinese man sitting opposite me, next to the doors opening onto the platform, nonchalantly turned his head and copiously spit through the opened doors, at the feet of two police officers. The officers merely chuckled. Unbelievable. They’re under a misguided and ill-advised directive to be tolerant of other cultures. What’s next, allowing people to squat and defecate? Oh, right, the homeless already do that.

Then there’s the epidemic of leg spreading, most often seen in conjunction with feigned sleep. This is mainly the province of males, though some female riders have been seen engaging in this misbehavior. Adopting this behavior prevents anyone from sitting next to you, the subway riders’ equivalent of an upgrade from coach to first class. Young men sit, their legs spread as wide as possible. A bench intended for seven people commonly holds just four men, not because they are inherently larger (though that’s another incipient problem), but because they intentionally sit in a way that prevents others from sitting. Say, “excuse me”, and they won’t answer or move. If you can wedge yourself in, you can sit, but they’ll be pushing you with their legs. Once, I said something politely, “could you close your legs a bit so I can be comfortable, too?”. The response was, “...you better watch yourself. You’re in the street, now. I ain’t takin’ no shit”. When did showing consideration for others become “takin’ shit”?

Everyone is rude these days. I often ask people, nicely, to please take their shoes off of the seats or the poles in the subway car. Just about everyone loves children, so I try to appeal to that. I tell them that little children put their hands everywhere, and could pick up nasty germs from shoes. Usually, this embarrasses people into realizing that they are being selfish and inconsiderate, but not always. Once, a woman said that she taught 3rd grade, and that the “...children can die, for all I care”.

Why would anyone who can afford to drive a car willingly subject himself to such abuse? No one would, and that’s why we need drastic changes. And don’t forget, most people who can afford to drive into Manhattan on a regular basis are willing to pay almost anything to avoid mass transit. Since this is a fight we cannot afford to lose, that attitude needs to be priced out of reach.

Speaking of “inherently larger”, shouldn’t the morbidly obese be required to pay an extra fare? Of course they should. I mean really, if one needs a separate seat for each butt cheek, that person should pay more than a standard-issue human. If the airlines can measure bags, transit can measure people. This would increase revenues, and encourage the overweight to shed those pounds. We can’t afford to coddle the colossal.

Oh, and one more thing. The media love to talk about how awful transit was in the seventies. Well, it was dirty and crowded, with lots of outdated equipment. But at rush hour, number 1 trains ran every 4 minutes, and reliably, too. And the A or D could get you from 59th street to 125th street in four minutes, as well. Wouldn’t you like to see that level of service again?

Some recommendations
Changes are imperative. Personally, while I back Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing initiative, I feel that it doesn’t go far enough. I’d rather see all cars, except for those belonging to residents, taxis, buses, ambulances and trucks making deliveries, and vehicles necessary for construction and maintenance, banned from Manhattan entirely. Plates identifying residents can make this possible. Impose not congestion fees, but entry fees, to all drivers entering the other four boroughs (excepting for through traffic that does not exit an expressway). Those few who are able to prove genuine hardship would, of course, be exempt. As the plan stands now, pollution and congestion will increase in boroughs other than Manhattan.

Of course, I won’t get my wish, but this could be done, and local businesses would not suffer—quite the contrary, they would thrive. The same complaints were heard when streets downtown were permanently closed to traffic many years ago, and businesses there saw an increase in sales. This IS the capital of the world, and people WILL come.

Other, perhaps more practical changes are:
• Double the number of trains, on all lines and at all times.

• Immediately stop all cosmetic improvements and concentrate on upgrading signals and infrastructure.

• Build new lines to serve the vast stretches of NYC that have no service.

• Raise the tax on gasoline an additional $2.00/gallon and dedicate the funds to mass transit. Sure, drivers will howl like stuck pigs, but worldwide, the vast majority of people have been paying these high gasoline prices for decades. Do it, it needs to be done; let’s not engourage delusions and fantasies. Let’s resurrect the notion that driving is a privelege, not a right.

• Raise all bridge and tunnel tolls to $15.00. Of course, those who can prove genuine hardship will get an exemption.

• Construct flyovers in Brooklyn for the BMT lines, to eliminate congestion. These have worked very well on the IND line in Manhattan.

• Lease the right to place and maintain advertising to an independent, private company. The lease terms must include provisions for a percentage of the profits, as well as a flat rate. This one step has the possibility of holding off fare increases for many years—add improved service, and it could become a real cash cow.

• Place a police officer on every train, and on every platform of each station; strictly enforce the laws regarding seat usage, spitting and all other items in the MTA “code of conduct”. This would pay for itself through increased revenues from issued summonses. If you feel that’s a draconian tax, you have the option of obeying the rules. If the NYPD can’t or won’t spare the manpower, hire an independent contractor such as Wackenhut. The transit system in Miami uses Wackenhut in this capacity, and it has worked very well.

• Limit diesel train use to only when power has been cut. Particulate matter in diesel smoke is extremely harmful to health, more so than automobile pollution, and seriously contributes to NYC’s high asthma rates.

• Make the MetroCard more equitable; allow single ride customers to transfer, etc. Allow token booth clerks to issue refunds for up to $20.00. Who has the time to travel to Schermerhorn street to get a refund? No one, so NYC Transit gets to keep the money.

• Remove all locked doors from subway cars.

• Require anyone making announcements to have a clear, easily understandable speaking voice; train announcers in microphone/PA use.

• Require contractors to continuously work on projects until said projects have been completed. The standard contractor practice now is to, say, close off a stairwell, go work on other jobs around the city, return to the stairwell when the other work is scarce, etc., etc. So replacing a prefab stairwell can, and has, taken up to nine months.

• Speaking of prefab materials, utilize them wherever possible to reduce labor. Almost everything you see underground now is custom made.

• Find a way to get rid of the token booth clerks whose jobs have been eliminated—stop the practice of having them do work that benefits no one. A buyout would be preferable.

• End bus leapfrogging, incorporate GPS in all buses to maintain schedules.

• Above ground, strictly enforce the traffic laws and speed limits. Police could easily triple the number of traffic summonses issued. Every day, I see stop signs and red lights run, pedestrians threatened, speed limits broken, corners cut, turn signals unused. New York City drivers have an outsized sense of entitlement that extends to breaking laws. In New York City papers, the phrase that appears most often in accounts of traffic fatalities is, “No charges were filed”.

• In the seventies, licensed livery drivers were allowed to accept street hails above 96th street in Manhattan, and in the other boroughs. Resume this practice; yellow cabs are mostly not to be found in these areas.

• Do whatever is necessary to reform the bloated TWU. The previous governor missed two golden opportunities to act as Reagan did against PATCO. Don’t let another opportunity be wasted.

• Seriously, you could also get rid of every other person in management with no ill effects.

• Replace all incandescent bulbs with CFLs.

• Replace bulbs in signals with LEDs.

• Make all workers and management pay for their parking.

• Eliminate free MetroCards for worker’s families, and for retirees.

• Require all NYC Transit executives and administrative staff to use mass transit to get to their jobs.

I'll agree with the above comments about the difficulty of using public transit compared to a car. I waited on getting a license until I was 23 because I wanted to try doing bike/public transit/carpool.

Driving to work is 9 miles, biking is 12. Biking takes about an hour and I generally have a headwind on the longest leg of the trip. Public transit is one bus that leaves every 15 minutes, then a train, then an hourly bus. The second bus gets me there just in time to jaywalk across the street and make it to work. Missing the bus? Well, it's a four mile ride at that point.

Bus or bike end up taking an hour to get to work and get home and make it much harder to pick up decent food on the way home, etc.

If the delta between driving and transit wasn't one hour forty minutes I'd be a lot more inclined to use it…it's a lot nicer to sit on a train and listen to my iPod.

No public transportation where I live. I ride a bicycle when I can and am purchasing a small motorcycle or scooter this summer that I can ride. Some get 70+ MPG. Plus they make you look cool as hell :)

You can get an older motorcycle (I'm looking for a 250cc Honda Nighthawk) for less than $2000 usually. Older scooters are harder to find, for obvious reasons.

There's no option here for walking. I walk to work everyday where I live, of course I am lucky because I am only a half mile from work, but that isn't the case for most people in my area.
I live in Santa Monica and while it is fairly easy to get around via bike or on foot, most people drive everywhere. We all know that Los Angeles is notorious for having one person per car and that the city was built around the automobile, but if you live near the city public transportation isn't too bad. If you live on the westside where I am at then public transportation really sucks. Sure, we have busses, but thanks to the NIMBY's and lack of leadership there are no real viable options or plans that I know of to incorporate a train or underground system out this way anytime soon.
I personally love public transportation and would like to see Los Angeles step up their efforts to improve the situation. I believe that if we had a more accessable public transportation system(especially underground) they would see a significant rise in ridership. The other problem compounding the situation is the obvious vastness of LA County, and when you add San Bernardino and Orange County to that the task of incorporating an all encompassing public trasportation system seems unattainable. We definatley have our hands full down here, but as traffic and population continue to increase hopefully the people in charge can come up with some better alternatives to driving. Until then, I suggest people try to do what I have done and find a place to live that is closer to your job. Yeah, my place is really small and I had to sacrifice a few things to live this close, but I am healthier for it and so is the environment. Now I just laugh at the people in my office who complain about traffic and come in everyday in a bad mood.

Woa... Long post

Lots of things to dispute, too little time...

The biggest being, if you going to pick an example of a train that stays to schedule, actually pick one that does. The Lakeshore Limited probably has a worst OTP than most MTA ones.

Your description of the subway makes it sound like hell. Its bad, but not that bad.

I doubt your sister has to break up drunken fights, know engineering, risk 750V electrocution, or risk being shot on a daily basis? When was the last stabbing in a library?

Of course the LIRR is cheaper on a per mile basis. Supply and demand, in a way. If the LIRR charged the same price per mile to take someone 50 miles the subway did to take you 5, nobody could ride it. A lot of people, with a lot of stops. If you compared the cost per stop served, who would be vastly overcharged?

Police officer on every train. One of your biggest complaints was cost, right? Nuf' said.

Eliminating free metrocards for employees- Any transit system that didn't give free transit to its employees would probably have a strike on its hands. You just don't do that.

Upping taxes by $2- even with bridge/tunnel tolls at $15, it could still be cheaper to drive to NJ. Doesn't that work against what you want?

If they did concentrate only on infrastructure, you would complain about how filthy, broken, and old everything was.

Some points debunked, not enough time to do all of them...

I walk everywhere, and my husband bikes everywhere (unless he's walking with me). We take public transport only when the weather sucks. All this with a toddler. Hooray for us!

"There is no decent public transit where I live, I have no choice but to drive."
Have you consider moving ? :)

Just teasing everybody.

I am personnally moving to get closer to public transit and be able to use it to go to work everyday. This has the double benefit of getting me at walking distance from downtown so no need to drive either when having a night out.
However, my wife is a horserider and that's were it gets complicated, there's no public transit to the ranch. Which means driving there... and it's dirt road so it means 4WD... And the horse has to be riden almost everyday. We're buying an 4WD escape hybrid 2008, but there's not much more we can do I think.
Just a reminder that sometime a car is unfortunately a necessity, as hard as you try. Or maybe we are not trying hard enough ? or we should divorce, each of living his own life, me in the city her in the country side ? :D

No "I bike to work" option?

LA: I was trying to focus on the use of transit or not, and did not want to get into all of the options, hence no bike.