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[theinevitable]

true. I want to live somewhere with a subway, or El or whatever, that actually works. The one here is nice (in that it goes to where my grocery store is, where my girlfriend is, and to the airport) but I have to take a bus or drive to get to it.

[littlefallsmets]

Alls I know is I've lived in three places big enough for a bus system of any significance: Syracuse, Los Angeles and New York City.

The buses in Syracuse and Los Angeles were disgusting, unsafe, slow as fuck-all and completely unreliable.

The buses in New York City are merely disgusting, unsafe, slow as fuck-all and mostly unreliable.

This might be different in Canada but Canada basically gets every public sector thing better than we do.

Still, even in a Canadian metropolis, if they have trains, the trains are probably still 1000% better than the buses.

The Toronto subway is probably like being in the fuck*ng Jetsons if they have one.

[Nabubrush]

Ha-ha!

/Nelson

[wombat]

The Toronto subway is actually quite mild-mannered.

[miles]

Buses are the kind of horror that either disproves the concept of a higher power or, at least, proves there is a functional evil counterpoint to a higher power.

If I can never ride another bus again in my life, I will count myself as not having failed on that point.

My friend in Seattle posted this as her status last night:

Some dude just got kicked off this bus for smoking crack. Happy Friday, everyone!

I agree, buses suck. I may start taking the light rail to work (the light rail here is pretty good) but it's a pretty long walk to the closest stop. The stop does have a parking lot but some of the lots are notorious for break-ins (I've been a victim) so I might be taking a bus for a bit every morning.

Get yourself a 1982 boom box, blare some Berlin at the world for the day and film it.

This YouTube redesign is throwing me off. It took me too long to figure out which tab I needed to go to to hit replay on that shit!

[Nabubrush]

Buses suck if they don't let you smoke crack on them, that's for sure.

[side_show]

Having ridden all forms of Toronto's public transit, which includes an inter-linking series of subways, streetcars and buses, and having only my lowly home town to really compare to (I've been on other city's public transit, but not in any in depth way) I have to say Toronto's transit system is pretty fuck*ng awesome.  The last time I was on a subway in Toronto, I was on my way to my play's opening, wearing a gown and silver high heels, and I wasn't the only one that well dressed either.  It seemed the subway was full of non scary, non pee-smelling people, so just that makes it totally different from my local transit.    The thing that really pleased me about Toronto's buses is that unlike my local buses, which have two sets of two seaters with a tiny isle, the Toronto buses I've been on have one row of two seaters on one side of one seaters that allow the solo traveler to sit without having a stranger press against them.  And, oh, yeah - you walk up to a stop for a bus/subway car/street car, and during peak hours, one just shows up shortly there after to get  you efficiently where you need to go - no need to check a schedule or anything.  If you tried that in my city, you could end up waiting a half hour or more, or even be standing at a stop that for whatever scheduling reason, the buses skip for no logical reason. 

I guess part of the beauty of how it all runs so well in Toronto is that it's a city designed as a grid, so understanding where you need to go and how the transit system is designed is fairly simple.  After my first week in TO I was giving other people directions.  Seriously, a guy asked me directions and I could tell him where to go without a map.  Unlike my city, which is spread over two major rivers that seem to have caused city planners to go "oh well, fuck it, we'll just put streets wherever, to hell with logic."

When it comes to my local transit, the riders are overwhelmingly of the marginalized set, so things get interesting fairly regularly.

[theinevitable]

St Louis is on a grid, but... all the good roads are not part of the grid. Also, train tracks and highways and a big river distort/destroy the grid.

In the north part of the city, where my internship is, the street grid was planned when that area was several separate towns. So the grid shifts at bizarre angles to follow the shape of the river.

[Nabubrush]

My favorite non-grid section of Portland.

[robot_god]

the Toronto buses I've been on have one row of two seaters on one side of one seaters that allow the solo traveler to sit without having a stranger press against them.

NY has the same buses.  Only the lines with the heaviest volume of passengers have 2 x 2's.  The more common 1's + 2's tend to have a hossshoe of seating in the back of the bus behind the back door.  Very useful for communal conversation.  Five seats across the back, three seats along the doorside window, four seats opposite those, then three more opposite the back door which fold up for wheelchair seating.  These are the best seats, because you can put your legs up and lay across several seats.

The danger with the single seat is that if the bus becomes crowded and there are no seats left, the single seat passengers become more likely to have a standing stranger's junk next to their face.

However I too vowed to never take a bus again.  Since I received my license (a month away from ten years now, shit) I've taken one maybe twice.  On numerous instances I've taken a 45 minute plus walk in lieu of taking the bus.