As it turns out it doesn’t actually cost that much on regular transit, there’s an AIRPORT SURCHARGE because it’s an “airport train”.
No wonder Americans don’t use public transit, even when the system exists it’s ridiculously difficult and expensive to use.
Here is my daily commute to work:
The Public Transit option is literally greyed out, and Google goes “lmao get a fucking car, peasant.”
If I were going to minimize my car usage and strictly use public transit, it would be a ~20 minute bike ride (in the opposite direction of where I work) to the nearest bus station, to get to a public transit service that doesn’t even cover where I work. Then I’d take a bus to a train station, and ride it south through two cities. Then I’d make a transfer to a northern line, and ride it back north through those same two cities (and a third additional city) in order to get near another rail line. Then it would be another ~20 minute bike ride to transfer from one rail system to another, because the public transit in the southern cities doesn’t service the city where I work. Once I’m transferred to the service that covers where I work, it’s another ~20 minute rail ride, followed by a ~10 minute bike ride after getting off the train.
All in all, it would be about 2.5 hours of public transit riding, (and about an hour of riding my bike in +100°F/38°C weather), just to avoid driving 10 minutes. It would also require maintaining two separate transit passes, because the southern and northern transit systems don’t work with one another. Yeah, it’s no wonder I take my car to work.
10 minutes by car but 53 minutes by bike?? Do you live literally on the autobahn?
A lot of roads arent bike legal in America
I thought that was just most freeways?
I’m guessing the trains are in kind of a hub/spoke design and they live and work on different spokes which the transit system isn’t designed to accommodate
That’s why I said bike, not trains 😅
I can read! Honest!
I feel your pain.
May I ask how car is 10 minutes and bike 53? And walk over 2 hours? I ride the electric bike to work and it’s about 10 minutes ride, vs 4 minutes by car, so roughly double. 20 minute walk, not brisk. It’s hot here too, that’s part of why I got the electronic bike, walking was making me arrive sweaty.
American roads rarely have sidewalks. You have to have a different route entirely.
Depending on state, you may need to defeat varying regional wildlife (at least one full game with multiple generous DLCs, spanning the US) in order to complete the journey, and this does accrue XP as one might expect.
It does also produce players attached to min-maxed builds to adhere to one or another strategy, so play the meta-game carefully.
70 MPH via car, vs… What, like 15 MPH on a bike? Also, there’s no way I’m riding my bike on a 70 MPH highway; I’d have to take a different (much longer) route entirely, just to avoid getting killed by a truck.
You drive 70mph to work? Your home and work are both right off a highway? Then car seems efficient as heck, I would drive too.
That map is just so weird. There is no road next to the highway? Like, why does that transit loop exist if there’s nothing in the middle of that circle, or around the outside of it?
Correct, there’s no side road, sidewalk, bike path, or shoulder on the highway. It’s just a two-lane highway that cuts through an otherwise barren area. There’s a gas station near me, and a gas station near my work. Aside from that, there’s just a few warehouses. That openness also means there’s zero shade if I wanted to ride my bike.
so you live next to a highway ramp and your work is also next to a highway ramp? also what the fuck 112 km/h is extremely fast, i don’t think any road in sweden goes that fast.
This is actually an extremely common design. Businesses will consider where most of their employees live, and try to consider the commute when moving, so placing themselves just off a highway or major road theoretically makes it easy for their employees to get there. Nevermind the fact that said major road/highway chokes up from every employee commuting to their convenient exit to get to/from work 5 days a week
70 MPH is the standard highway speed limit around here. And functionally, the traffic tends to flow ~10% higher than whatever the posted speed limit is. So a 70 MPH highway will tend to flow anywhere from 75-80 MPH instead. Cops won’t even bother pulling you over unless you’re well into the low 80’s.
We even have an 85 MPH highway. Since it’s mostly through a rural area and has an extremely fast limit, people 100% treat it like the autobahn.
The only time people actually respect highway speed limits are when it drops to 55 MPH. Lots of small towns will drop to 55 MPH, and the rural cops tend to set up speed traps for anyone doing over 55. They’re brutal, (and fighting them usually requires showing up to court in the middle of fucking nowhere,) so speed trap towns are basically the only time that drivers will actually go slightly below the limit.
(another user) I live in Spain, in a city where most of the region come to work. We have the vet in a nearby town, so we usually go there by car. Getting out of the city into the town takes around 15 minutes, of which around 10 are spent on a 120KMH highway. Bikes can’t go on that road, completely banned, so they would need to go through another, way longer route. Yeah, it would take over an hour to go on a bike.
The people that live in that town that come to my city to work basically need a car, and it’s not like they can’t do their living in walking distance for every necessity but work. It is what it is.
120KMH is the max here, but it’s pretty common for highways to have that cap. Same for france iirc (130?) and germany, besides their funny uncapped road. In fact, sweden has very similar limits, where “motorways” go around 110 to 120. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_Sweden
I’m surprised you don’t know this, do you have a license?
The routes are usually different for biking, walking, and driving. The speeds on the highway are also often several times the rate of speed you’ll be able to achieve on an e-bike and certainly much higher than you’ll be able to achieve on a manual bike.
This is genuinely sufficient reason to not live there.
As a counterpoint here is mine
Except way off peak it’s faster to take bart than drive (north berkeley to downtown SF). I usually take a trans bay bus when going to office (closer to my house) which is $6 one way. BART is like $8. (So round trip under $20). Vs driving is $8 for the bay bridge and then somewhere between $20 and $60 to park for the day (no free parking at my office).
Might be better getting a moped/motorcycle and taking the car route. It’s more environmentally friendly than the car, anyway, but it doesn’t take your entire day away from you.
That car route is likely on an interstate that mopeds can’t ride on. Motorcycle is ok, but again, safety is a concern for a lot of people on an interstate.
Likely an alternative side road route but depending on the place that could literally be twice as long with all the red lights you hit on the stroads.
i mean if you’re driving then clearly safety isn’t a concern, since it’s one of the largest causes of death in the US…
I think you underestimate how hostile the infrastructure can be to anything other than individually owned cars for much of the country. Some folks are lucky enough to have the option of standing next to a sign that’s desperately trying to blow away in the wind on a small patch of pavement next to a drainage ditch for the 50MPH speedlimit 100+ foot (30 meters or more) wide road to wait for a bus which comes once an hour give or take 30 minutes
Is Rockford a fair example to pick from? Maybe. Its the 5th largest city in Illinois, with 300k people living in the metro area, but also every person I know who grew up there moved away as soon as they could and generally agrees the place is a shithole, but also I live about 2 hours drive away from Rockford so its a pretty biased pool of people to poll
This is SOOOO much more bike friendly than anything near my home. We don’t have sidewalks, no shoulder on the road. Just two narrow lanes, high speed limits and lots of big trucks, with a rocky ditch on the side.
it’s great that it is more environmentally friendly but it is not worth the risk to your life
Seems to be more of a problem of your city or township having just crappy public transit systems. A problem that most cities, and nearly all townships, in America share.
How many minutes would it be to cycle to work?
It’s written on their gmaps screenshot: 53 mins.
Also worth noting that the listed bike route requires riding on a 70MPH highway, which doesn’t have a shoulder, sidewalk, side street, or bike path. If I were going to avoid that highway, (because let’s be real, I’d be dead on day 1 after being hit by a car,) then it would be about two hours of cycling.
I live within a very reasonable distance of work. But there is literally no safe route to get there. Not even a longer alternate route, just no way to get there without a significantly hazardous stretch of road. Riding that as a one-off would be one thing, but riding it 240 (give or take) round trips per year for years on end are not odds that I am interested in taking.
I would love to cycle to work, which would both help the environment and improve my physical health with some much needed exercise.
I do intentionally only live within a short distance of the bus, always, and am lucky my work moved really close to where I live. Couple reasons biking to work for me is not much longer than driving - traffic is heavy so car travel can be slow. The sidewalk that stretches from near my house to work has few intersections so is reasonably safe, if there are not many pedestrians I take that, if there are, I go a block off the main road down the side road.
On the sidewalk I’m often riding past stationary cars, my coworkers see me pass them.
That’s inside the city though. The suburbs here are dire, house farms ringed by stroads.
There ARE times I have to walk the bike across a 6 lane road, going anywhere to the north of me I have to do that, it’s not like all the roads are reasonable. That 6 lane road has a bike lane but I wouldn’t dare. But the paths to work, grocery, yoga, my daily routes are ok.
When I was in college, it was a 2mile bike ride to campus from my office campus housing, conversely it was a 6h Transit ride on buses metros and all sorts of stuff. The lack of lockers ment carrying several bags to and from school on a bike, which sucked. I ended up driving cuz it was easier.
2 miles? I almost biked that far to my primary school.
If you need to transport stuff, just get bags, that fit on the side if your bike.