Due to some very un-frugal mistakes in my youth, I had to go car free for 2.5 years in the DC suburbs, and I learned a whole lot about the bus system. I congratulate you for demystifying the bus for yourself, and promoting it to others on here.
In fact, I’d actually like to thank you for it, because to people who don’t take the bus (or even mass transit for that matter), there’s a huge stigma. Some simply don’t understand it, and others, well they think the bus is beneath them (and that even goes for subway riders). Good for you, bad for most of the rest of us, but Portland is an anomaly of an American city where public transit is good, and it’s acceptable to bike or take mass transit. Most people aren’t in that situation.
Washington DC itself, and even some inner suburbs have great transit options[0]. Hell, on some lines, it’s not even a stigma to take the bus to work. That said, like most other cities. . . traveling inside suburbs, or from one to another is utterly and totally useless. It’s not designed that way, and the only people who use transit to do such seem to be people who really don’t have a choice. I wish it weren’t so, but that’s the case. Those couple years without a car in the suburbs was a huge challenge, and I clearly made it, but a 10-15 minute drive literally was 45 minutes and up on the bus due to crappy suburban systems[1]. It’s just the reality of life, and is kind of a vicious cycle where the people who can change things don’t ever take the bus.
So yeah, thank you for promoting bus lines. If even a few people who read this blog are more open to using it as an option, it will help. I don’t expect Euro style transit overnight, but it would be nice to see a few more people taking the bus here and there, getting the whole system more money and flexibility. Once the stigma washes off, we can see about making transit useful to more people.
~EEE~
[0] Metro management isn’t all that, and funding sucks, but it succeeds in spite of itself.
[1] Yes, I’m aware I could have commuted by bike. . . for about 3 months of the year when weather works for it. We have no showers at work, and the sidewalks don’t get cleaned when it snows.
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