So. Public transit. Bus, subway, light rail. Do taxis count as public transportation? What’s it like where you live? Do you take it?
I lived for a while in central Toronto, where in my day transit was admirable. The subway was clean, seldom broke down, and a blessing in winter. On the surface were buses and streetcars that for the most part went straight up and down their own streets. It was cheap, but then, to my mind it’s got to be a very expensive public transit system to come close to costing as much as running a car. Never mind the grief of fighting traffic and finding parking. Downtown Toronto is laid out on pretty much of a grid, which helps public transit no end. Windy twisty streets must drive transit planners berserk.
Then I lived a long time in Ottawa, where the buses – no subway – were pretty good. If you were taking a straight run from one central part of town to another, along major streets, it was a great way to get to work. If you lived off the beaten, you’d end up taking a very circuitous route to get to where you could transfer to a straight-through bus. They ran bravely through the very worst of winter weather, although waiting for them then was evil.
Now I live in a small town in southern California. I haven’t taken a bus since I got here. As far as I can tell the public transit is awful – you almost never see a bus, even on Pacific Coast Highway, a main thoroughfare a couple of blocks away, and one that I walk all the time. There are busstops, but you’d stand there a long time waiting unless you knew the schedule.
I spent some time in Saigon, a suburb called Binh Duong. Public transit was a fairly regular service of fairly dire-looking buses. Many, many locals ride their own mopeds, maybe 100ccs. These seem to take the place of public transit as a cheap way to get around. Next step up was clean, air-conditioned taxis, almost always a small van. A lot of locals use these as kind of a delivery truck. Bringing home a new table and chairs? Call a taxi, and they’ll get your stuff in somehow. Although a lot of people could have got the table and chairs home on their mopeds, they are masters of getting a large, awkward thing onto a moped. I expect their weight-limit is the point at which the rear tire gets too flattened to drive on. We never once saw one of these precarious loads come loose.
In Siem Reap, the service-town for the temple-complex of Angkor Wat, a few people have small cars, but mostly they get around via tuk tuk, a small motorcycle pulling a sort of surrey. $3 will get you anywhere in town.
I confess: when we were in Shanghai, I never took their famous subway. It was the end of a long trip and I was tired out. Just didn’t have the psychic energy to fight the crowds, the complicated map, the payment, even though I had researched them all thoroughly before we left, and had been looking forward to it as an adventure. Now I’m home, and rested up, I know I really missed something. Rats.
I also wanted to take the subway to the Shanghai train station, reputedly the biggest in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people wanting to take the train to thousands of destinations, it must be a miracle of organisation. I just wanted to stand quietly out of everyone’s way and watch it all happen.
I could’ve taken a cab, since I wasn’t up for the subway. But I didn’t. Again with the tired out. With the cabs there, you can’t count on being able to explain to the cabbie where you wanted to go. If you’re just leaving your hotel, fine, the kind concierge will explain to the driver. But what if you’re already out somewhere, and want a cab? Were you clever and wrote your destination down, and even have it written in Chinese? Well, maybe he’s just in from the countryside and can’t read. One guy, I showed him the map, but still couldn’t get across to him where I wanted to go. Maybe it’s true about the Communist government discouraging maps.
When I was younger I was a big public transit user. Now I’m older, have my own car, live in a town where the useful stores are miles away from my house. My own town has few useful stores, they’re all oriented for the Richistanis and the tourists. And, even without all those reasons/excuses, I no longer have the patience to stand and wait, even if there were decent bus service available. How about you?
