> My travel time in the car is generally half of the bus time. I consider that time lost.
I consider it time gained :) I bus to work every day, takes just over an hour each direction. By car, it takes 20-30 minutes each direction. That's about 2 hours I spend catching up on news and reading books every day, as opposed to an hour staring at someone else's bumper. It's definitely a different judgment for every person.
I'm in Minneapolis/St Paul. Can't wait for our new East-West light rail line to open next year. It was a major factor in choosing where I purchased my house.
For the longest time I considered it time-gained as well. When I was working in NYC I had a forty-five minute commute in the morning, and an hour plus in the evening. For the first few weeks that was cool, and then I just wanted to get the fuck home.
In the morning I enjoyed the commute much more than I did in the evening. Now that I live in the D.C. metro area I drive into work. It takes about half as long but definitely costs me a hell of a lot more. I don't mind public transportation, but in D.C. it is horribly unreliable. If it was free I'd probably actually forgive the problems that D.C. has, but its not, and I have a feeling there would many more problems if the transit system was free. Maybe there are other areas of the country/world that could afford this without sacrificing a reliable schedule, but definitely not the U.S. capital.
I consider it time gained :) I bus to work every day, takes just over an hour each direction. By car, it takes 20-30 minutes each direction. That's about 2 hours I spend catching up on news and reading books every day, as opposed to an hour staring at someone else's bumper. It's definitely a different judgment for every person.
I'm in Minneapolis/St Paul. Can't wait for our new East-West light rail line to open next year. It was a major factor in choosing where I purchased my house.