At what point...

My job would be very difficult to manage on public transport. I often need to go out to one or two group homes in the middle of the day. It would take forever.

Our PT system in SD is not great. The trolley needs to expand and develop better connections to bus routes.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BayouBulldog @ May 18 2006, 07:49 PM) [snapback]257834[/snapback]</div>

What they won't tell us is that the price gets higher when the dollar loses value.

 

I drive my prius to be a chauffeur to the masses on public transit!

 

Where I live in NW Ohio Now (Bowling Green) there is NO public transportation, we have a small taxi service (as in like 3 or 4 taxis) for a city of 30,000 with a 20,000 college student population. Metro Toledo has a Bus system with an entire fleet of empty busses (ive never seen more than 1 or 2 people on the TARTA busses and often they are empy other than the driver... Toledo is about 15 minutes north of here on I-75 (600,000 in the metro area) and Findlay (pop 41,000) which is my hometown is about 25 minutes south of here on I-75... again, no public transportation in Findlay, why bother when everyone has a car??? So for me, this question is not even an option... al least not at the moment... although Im planning to move to Anne Arundel County Maryland after graduation. They have busses and commuter trains and light rail and Amtrack there...



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I got into the mass trans habit while trying to keep the miles down on my previous vehicle, a leased Mercedes SL500, which also required premium fuel, a further gouging at the pump. The bus schedules in & around the St. Louis metro & county areas are suprisingly convenient for me, considering my work schedule (midnight shift) & direction of travel (toward downtown from the 'burbs), and while it adds significantly to my commute, I get plenty of reading done. I'm happily Benz-less the past 2 weeks now & still commuting on the bus, but once I get my new Prius (next week if all goes according to plan), I plan to go back to driving since it will cost less to buy gas for it than to pay bus fare. Besides, the extra hour-and-a-half added to my commute each direction really gets old after a couple of years.

 

When I worked in Philadelphia (approx. 60 mile commute), I drove about 5 miles and hopped a bus into the city. The bus was just about (but not quite) as fast as driving. Now it's a 15 minute interstate drive to work. If I tried public transportation (and I have checked), it would involve two transfers and nearly 2 hours each way.

So my Prius will have to do. And it does pretty well!

If gas prices got truly outrageous I'd probably opt to work from home more frequently. What's outrageous? It depends. If gas jumped to $6/gallon (basically doubled in price) tomorrow, it would be pretty outrageous. But if it inched it's way there over the next two or three years, it might not seem as crazy. I don't know.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher @ May 18 2006, 08:32 AM) [snapback]257440[/snapback]</div>

Me too! My wife takes the Prius to her work (about 10 miles) and I take our Acura MDX (yes, it's an SUV and I LOVE IT!) and park it at the train station (1 mile away) every day. About an hour and a half to downtown Chicago but I enjoy riding the train and it's MUCH cheaper than driving and paying for gas and parking (better for my sanity too).

 

It goes to show how if the Administration officials were REALLY serious about saving the nation and decreasing our addiction to gasoline, THEY would start supporting mass transit AND a NATIONAL RAILROAD. Instead of killing Amtrak. Look at Europe and Japan. They chose to build their railroads after the big wars, we chose neglect.
Of course it's not practical for everyone all the time but there are many areas where it could be helpful.

 

For me, as for many of the previous posters, it's not a question of the price of gas, but of the quality of public transportation.

Imagine electric trolly cars on rails, in their own lanes or corredors so they would not be slowed by rush-hour traffic, covering the entire city so you could get anywhere fast and never have to carry those bags of groceries more than a block or two. No more buying gas. No more stress from idiot drivers doing all the things other drivers do, like stradling lanes in SUVs they've never learned to drive properly, driving 20 in a 35 mph zone, daydreaming when the light turns green so you have to wait another cycle to get through, or just plain causing accidents by driving drunk or distracted.

We could probably have that in ten years if our politicians were not all a bunch of crooks and morons.

As it is, I'll probably keep driving my car until the economy and/or the fuel-delivery infrastructure collapses. Given my bad heart, that might not happen in my lifetime. But I don't envy you youngsters.