On Public Transit

Sucks.

I honestly think I should just leave it with one five letter word. Lets face it, surface transit in North America is appallingly awful. I remember I once wrote a long winded email to a columnist at the Globe and Mail because she made a similar tirade against public transit. Now that I ride so far to work every morning I understand exactly where she is coming from.

I mean when I drive the Bus or the Street Car is no big deal, you get ahead of it and you are good to go until you catch up with the next one. But on the saddle, well I'm still going to pass every bus or street car given enough mileage, it just takes a little longer. The fact is the sorry sods who drive these things seem to forget no matter the colour of the light, they have to stop to load and unload, I don't, unless the light is red of course. I've lost count, honest to goodness, of bus drivers who seem to think I'm racing them (or are they racing me?).

With respect guys, yes, you can go faster than me in absolute terms, I max out at around 60km/h depending on conditions, buses are probably governed to, I'd have to guess 100km/h or so. (In fairness bus drivers are probably used to cyclists who max at around 30km/h - but then they don't even start to close the gap after the light changes until... well typically I've passed the their next stop.)

The thing that really annoys me about buses though, diesel exhaust. Yes I drive a diesel car, but its a small car, buses spew tons of black filth into the air that I am running a 150 to 180bpm heart rate in. (My car also spews the diesel exhaust about one foot -30cm- above grade, the bus exhaust is about 10 feet -3m- up.)

I realise public transit is a good thing, if more people took the bus, or rode their bike, there would be few of those pesky cars to deal with. The civil war among car drivers might finally end if more people took the bus. But it just seems to me that in North America the way we designed our cities, it's like we thought the word BUS was spelled without vowels. I guess what is needed really is something like the truly great cities, like Copenhagen, have, physically separate roads for bikes, transit and regular vehicles.

One final thought, if we consider almost any suburban road, going from one side to the other, there is a property line, typically marked by a fence, then some grass, then a totally unused sidewalk, then yet more grass, then the curb, then the road, then the other curb and grass, another unused sidewalk and finally more grass. Would it not be possible to turn some of that grass or perhaps an unused sidewalk in a road level bike lane, physically separated from the cars and the buses yet not requiring massive infrastructure changes?