On Saturday 03 March 2007 04.13:48 s. keeling wrote: > Have you actually used public/mass transit lately, during rush hour, > to get from one side of a city to the other, day after day, leaving and > arriving _reliably_ within predictable time frames? Yep, my wife and me both do that on a daily basis. Yes, you have to take into account delays of perhaps up to 10 minutes if you miss a connection when you have to change from one line to another, but since buses and trams here go every 6 minutes in rush hour, that's not much of a problem. > For extra spice, add in winter. Main problem is that the vehicles are overheated, so you sweat when you wear a winter coat. Or you undress and dress all the time. You really, really don't want to go in your own car within the cities here: you take longer to look for a parking space than you'd have to walk the 3 minutes to the next bus or tram station and wait the 5 or 6 minutes for the next bus. Not to speak of the cost (if I'd own a car and wanted my own parking space, I'd pay up to €200 per month. And I'd have to rent a parking space at the office, and pay the fees for parking in the city.) And buses and especially trams have their own lanes. Granted, by international standard, cities here are somewhat smallish, but for an agglomeration of ca. 1 to 1.5 million people, public transport works reliably, all round the year. I do rent a car when I * need to transport big things * know I'll be away longer than midnight cheers -- vbi -- featured link: http://fortytwo.ch/smtp
Attachment:
pgpBYtmVeqcQR.pgp
Description: PGP signature