At what point...

I'm considering public transportation not for the cost (I could afford driving a H1 to/from work) but for personal beliefs that we should waste as little resources as possible.

My goal, once it stops raining here in N.E is to start pedaling my bike down to the commuter bus station and take the "express bus" to work.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(beezy @ May 18 2006, 04:15 AM) [snapback]257398[/snapback]</div>

Let's just say there would be a lot fewer cars on the road before that happened. 25+ miles one way and mass transit sucks in NJ. I'd find a job closer to home before I gave up driving to my current job.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SomervillePrius @ May 18 2006, 09:01 AM) [snapback]257423[/snapback]</div>

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(beezy @ May 18 2006, 04:15 AM) [snapback]257398[/snapback]</div>

Not from a financial standpoint, but from one of wanting to help conserve, I have stopped some of my driving for the sake of driving. It would take a lot for me to give up my 8 mile drive to work...since the Metro takes about twice as long and the bus to it stops running at 6pm. In my quest to pull off some pounds tho, I may be switching to Metro for the exercise.

 

Due only to the price of gas? $15 per gallon. But I already take the train, not the Prius, when going downtown.

 

I've made the commute from Woodbridge, VA to D.C. for 25 years now, and the most cost effective, fastest, and most convenient method is carpooling. Public transportation is available, but the least expensive is about $150 per month, and would more than double my commuting time each way. Any combination of commuter bus/train/Metro would be even more expensive and time consuming. With a Prius, the difference in monthly cost is even more striking.

The absolute cheapest way to get to work and back home is to join the "slug line", an informal arrangement that has evolved over the last several years in which people wait for other commuters to pick them up and give them a ride - to the Pentagon, or downtown, etc. The driver of the vehicle gains the extra body or two to qualify for the HOV-3 lanes of I-95, and the extra bodies gain in saving the cost of a bus ticket.

The job is where it is; home is where it is; and gas would have to cost WAY more than $3 a gallon for me to consider any means other than a carpool for commuting.

In terms of getting around to stores near home, there's a local bus, and that's a possibility. And walking to the nearby strip mall (grocery store, Subway, pizza, etc.) is slowly entering our routine, but more for health reasons than to save gas/money.

 

$25/gallon.

Let's say gas prices get to $8/gallon.

That would make commuting impossible for enough people that the entire country would collapse financially, so I probably wouldn't still have my job to go to anyhow... but let's say I did...

There would be enough people who don't make enough at their jobs to continue to go to their jobs at somewhere in that $8 price point. This would clear off the tollways for me and make my commute even better than it is now.

With the commute getting better for me, the cost of gas through that $8 level would only be starting to get me back to the commute cost I used to have with my F250 (prior to Prius).

My bottom line being... this whole thing gets a whole lot worse for just about everyone else before it breaks my back.

Even at $25/gallon, I'm not sure any other transportation is going to be any better. It would cost me about $300/week to drive to work for me. What would a train ticket cost if the Metra was paying $25/gallon for fuel... and how many people with tahoe's would be on the train.. there wouldn't be any room for me on the train.

The whole country breaks and goes into financial collapse somewhere before we get to $20/gallon gas..

 

Paying $3/gallon hurts everytime I fill up, even though it's less since I have a Prius.

I have to agree with Whitestar, the public transportation system in NJ leaves a lot to be desired.
If I could take public transportation to work, I would.

I already do a lot of walking for most of my day-to-day errands, i.e. dry-cleaners, bank, grocery store.

 

This is one of the things I miss about Europe (Stockholm). Living in downtown stockholm it as always faster to use public transportation then the car (due to congestion). The subway was running every 4 minutes (on each line) during rush hour and the bus almost as close. It took me 35 minutes by subway/bus to work and 55 minutes by car. Makes the decision easy. Top that with gas prices twice as high as here and you will use public transportation or VERY FE cars.

Here in Boston I will still increase my comute a lot if I don't take the car, and this is still a good US city for public transportation. the problem is that the "T" and the busses runs every 10+ minutes so you loose a lot when you have to transfer.

My solution, during the summer is to bike to the bus terminal (15 minutes?) and then take the bus. It makes it easier to make it to the bus in time.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(beezy @ May 18 2006, 01:15 AM) [snapback]257398[/snapback]</div>

Good post. Public transportation in LA suburbs is not practical for most; if I worked a straight 9-5 I could take a convenient bus, but (more than I would like) I need to work late. I look with envy at Bostonians who are dealing with 10 minute transfer times.


I suppose at a certain point gas prices could motivate me to figure something out, but considering I just reduced my gas expeditures by ~60% with the Prius, gas would have to go to ~$8/G just to get my costs to pre-Prius levels.

 

Lets see at $10.00 per gal. I could ride my bike to work without being road kill on someone,s front bumper. At 35 miles each way and suck-o mass transit in this area that would be the only way to get there. Well I could get a horse yeeeeehaaaaaa. (wonder how many mile per bail of hay?)

 

Public transit doesn't work in most of the US. There are a few major metro exceptions, NYC subways, The El, BART. But in general, if your locality relies heavily or mostly on busses for public transit, well that just isn't efficient or realistically functional.

So, no, public transit is not an option for me.

 

public transportation ?..LOL,,,no thanks !

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(beezy @ May 18 2006, 05:15 AM) [snapback]257398[/snapback]</div>

Along with the idea of using the least resources possible, I have used the public transportation and other sources quite a bit. The days that I just have to go to school, I used to just take the bus. It worked out pretty well, the bus came by every 10 minutes or so. I had it timed out so I would only wait a minute or two for the bus and took me about 15 minutes to get to my building. Pretty much the same time it would have taken to get to the building with the Prius and walking from where I parked. It is a straight shot, with no transfers, or I might not have bothered. It's nice to be able to catch up on reading and what not on the way, though, helps to be slightly more efficient with my time.

Now, for the most part, I ride my bicycle after getting a better one. At a little over three miles, it works out to take me just five to ten minutes more than driving and I get built in exercise a couple of days a week. The only bad thing is the bike lanes are pretty nonexistent, so I have to be pretty careful in crossing a couple of major intersections. It doesn't rain much, so I can ride it most days I go to school.

Since my wife is the primary breadwinner for now, I feel that she needs to be able to enjoy the new(er) car as well. Taking our gas guzzling Ford Taurus isn't that pleasurable of an idea. Plus, one of the things that I remember from an environmental class I took in undergraduate, was that public transportation was much more efficient than driving your own vehicle. I'm not sure how it compares to a SULEV though, it might be close. The buses seem to hover around 4.5-5mpg, and are often packed with 30-35+ people in the mornings.

 

I rode the LA Metro downtown to check in for the LA Marathon rather than pay the $10 to park and use my gas too. It cost $3 round trip, free parking. It also took three hours travel time, we had to share the trains with war protestors, and wierd people with various pierced and painted body parts. It was my first Metro ride of any length, though my wife uses it frequently. I could have probably made the round trip in half the time, for less than the $3 in the Prius, and may have found street metered parking (free with HOV sticker). The Metro was "different", but not an experience I look forward to repeating soon.

Also on my 45 mile work commute, the Metro stops about 10 miles from my office. Finding a bus to complete the trip would turn a pleasant 45 minute commute in the Prius listening to my favorite music or auto book into probably 2 hours plus (each way). I don't think that will happen, at least not for me.

 

Some of us don't have the choice. My commute to my office is about 25 feet, but I do a lot of driving to call on clients. Many of the rounds I make in a day would take 2 or 3 days by public transportation. Some of them I doubt you could do at all.

 

I second the post about Europe's excellent transportation system. After having lived in Germany for 6 months, I absolutely admire their public transit system.

As for here in the DC/Baltimore area, we have the third worst traffic in the country (after only LA and San Fran) and yet we still don't have a decent commuter train system for either major city - not even between them. I can't understand the post from the NJ resident who said NJ has a terrible system - at least you have trains that run more than once an hour during peak times and AT ALL on weekends. If we had a system even comparable to New Jersey's, we'd have a lot less cars on the road - certainly mine.

So in short, it's not at all a matter of cost, but of convenience. I'd rather relax on the train any day than get aggravated in traffic, even if the train took 30 minutes longer each way - I'd rather arrive relaxed. But if trains only run once an hour during peak times (and as a result are packed to the gills... which makes things even worse when there's even a slight delay), and not at all after 7 PM, it's just not feasible. :angry:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ May 18 2006, 08:56 AM) [snapback]257451[/snapback]</div>

If 60 Minutes can be believed, there is little chance in the next few chances that gas will ever go up to $8 to $10 per gallon and stay there in the long run. Not to say it couldn't happen for a year or so. But, according to the segment on 60 Minutes, and also reported in other media outlets, Canada has about 3 trillion barrels of oil in tar sand deposits located in Alberta. That's more than 10 times the reserves of Saudi Arabia, and probably more than all of the Mid East combined. Until fairly recently, it was not cost competitive to extract the oil from tar sands. The price of oil had to get up to about $ 65 for it to be competitive, which makes for gas at the pump for around $3.00 per gallon. Well, it's there now, and more, and probably not going to come back down and stay down. The Mid East oil producers may very well be shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to raise the price of oil.

According to the show, the US also has about 2 trillion barrels of oil, but in oil shale, which is more expensive to extract oil from than tar sands. Can't recall if they mentioned a price for it to be competitive, but I suspect it's a lot less than what the price of oil per barrel would have to reach in order to raise the price at the pump to $10 per barrel.

Thus, if the media can be believed, there may be a silver lining (though with more pollution) to the situation.

BTW, there was also an article in U.S. News & World Report about hydrogen cars. The article said one of the main problems is a chicken and egg situation, i.e., what comes first. The auto manufacturers don't want to build the cars because they think customers will not buy them due to the absence of hydrogen fuel pumps at filling stations. The oil companies don't want to produce hydrogen fuel because there are no cars that use them. Neither will take the first step on a large scale. But get this, the article said that the government could pay the cost of retrofitting every single filling station in America so that each would have a couple of hydrogen pumps. The cost would be $16 billion, approx. Sounds like a lot? The first Gulf War cost us about $200 billion. The current Iraq war has cost us about $400 billion so far, and rapidly increasing. For that $600 billion or so, the government could have built all those hydrogen pumps AND given every family in America a hydrogen car. Gotta love our politicians. Personally, I wish there was a law requiring every congressmen to leave office after his or her current term and personally go serve in a front line combat unit in Iraq, regardless of age. I bet our "oil problem" would have been solved by now if that law existed.

Gary