Sell your car and use mass transit

[patientlywaiting]

The local government should do away with parking space requirements and let developers build high-rises next to transport hubs. That will spur higher housing density and the us of mass transit.

LOL, Mixxalot, if you met a girl in Del Mar and told her you had to take the bus home, she’ll drop you like an old shoe. But if you drive a Porsche you can be sure that you’ll get a second date. She might even ask you to drive her home the same evening. I’m afraid that SoCal girls don’t date guys who ride public transport or drive old cars.

[Peace]

Up here in North County you can forget public transit, believe me I’ve tried; I love public transportation having lived in NYC and San Francisco.

However my husband and I did manage to do just fine with one car and public transportation for five years up here in North County. I don’t work but use the car mostly to get the kids to school, etc.. I would either take my husband to/from work or he’d use public transportationif possible. Sometimes it was inconvenient but whenever I thought about getting a second car it didn’t seem worth it.

Now my husband works in east San Clemente and there’s not a workable public transit option so we got a second car.

The point is that maybe some of these 2+ car families could use public transportation but keep one car for those trips to Mira Mesa at night.

I do believe that in San Diego County it would be impossible to rely solely on public transportation, you do need a car to fall back on.

[Peace]

The planned solution to I-5 traffic is to add eight lanes – four going north and four going south.

I would prefer the money be invested in a public transportation plan.

How about a subway that runs under I-5?

How about free public transportation – this would get a lot of people to consider using it and help balance the inconvenience.

The bigger the demand on public transportation the better the possibilities.

The biggest obstacle is that not enough people have experienced good public transportation.

[sdrealtor]

The biggest obstacle is the lack of true employment centers that people could commuteto en masse.

[people_are_smart]

Mass transit in S.D. is a joke. I’m sure if you live downtown you can make it work. I know someone who lost their driver’s license for over a year and used mass transit. It takes all day to get anywhere if you start at the edges of the system. The trolley lines you need to use only seem to switch downtown and the times don’t make the transition seemless. The bus stops to get to the trolley and back are the real issue, especially in East County. The buses stop running early enough in the evening that mass transit really isn’t a solution.

I’d like to see public officials who recommend mass transit for all our woes actually try to use it from wherever they live, and then reconsider.

Bottom line up to 3 hours or more planning for each way. I am not kidding. It just doesn’t work if you have multiple stops/switches to make. 1 or 2 maybe. What we have in S.D. doesn’t really qualify as mass transit in my mind since it doesn’t work for the masses.

[citydweller]

Peace, I don’t think public transportation should be free, but I do think they should have a “Free week” at least once a year, just to give people who wouldn’t normally try it a chance to check it out.

If they can increase the ridership, and hopefully the revenue, they could also increase and improve the routes. I’m already quite happy with the current system, but if they put in a trolley to the beach and the airport I would be in heaven.

[citydweller]

Mixxalot, a possible solution to your date in Del Mar is FlexCar. I have not yet tried this, but they have cars that can be rented by the hour, scattered around town. According to their website there are about 80 of these cars in San Diego, they are concentrated south of the 8 and north of the 94 and west of the 15. There are 29 of them downtown, from pickup trucks to mini coopers, to 2-seat convertibles (that should work well in Del Mar). There are several in Hillcrest and the beach areas as well.
There is a $35 annual membership fee, then it starts at $7 per hour, or cheaper if you pay for a monthly plan.

[NotCranky]

Moral of the story …just don’t date girls from Southern California. Let them wait for the knight in shining white beamer or is it beemer?….I remember being a real loser with one girl because I wouldn’t go sufi dancing. See ya! One good point of living in a big city ..you have choices.The car thing is a big excuse. Everybody knows it is a tatoo that will make you irresistable.

[Peace]

sdrealtor –

I agree that the lack of employment centers is a problem but the first obstacle is the lack of demand. If more people wanted a subway than 8 more lanes on I-5, then we would get the subway. I still say that not enough people have experienced great public transit so don’t know what they’re missing.

The lack of employment centers is workable. Even in the best public transit cities people combine two or three modes to get where they are going (plus walking a block or more).

Riders need a system they can depend on at all hours of the day, a system that is reliable, flexable, and safe.

I think it also has to be good enough that people can get rid of the extra cars. The best incentive for that would be to make it free. Make the public an offer it can’t refuse.

[patientlywaiting]

Good idea Peace. Free public transport will begin a sea change. People would have a choice of spending a minimum of $700/mo on car payments, gas and insurance or free public transport. Guess what they’ll choose?

Get the masses addicted to public transport and raise the prices later.

Another idea might be, buy one ticket, get two free.

[sdrealtor]

Peace,
Not me! I rode the Amtrak NE corridor to the PATH to the World Trade Center for a couple years. I fully understand good public transportation. It’s just not feasible in city that wasnt built over 200 years ago as an employment center.

[LostCat]

Sdrealtor,

you’re right. It’s not that transit is bad in San Diego, it’s the land-use and where people chose to live. it’s not walkable so it’s not transit friendly. Yeah, transit doesn’t work if you live in Mc4S Ranch, because that area is designed around the car. I am so tired of hearing people say that transit sucks in San Diego. It’s not transi, its the land use. I don’t see one dedicated lane or priority set aside for transit in areas outside of downtown. Land use dictates everything. Transit can only do one thing. Go from A to B. If the city’s don’t buy into transit a 100%, it will never work like people want it to. Even if there were priorities, it wouldn’t work in a land where everyone has a yard, picked fence, $6,000 a month reversible arm mortgage and two leased GMC Avalanches.

[stockstradr]

I’m up in Silicon Valley, San Jose.

This is another city run by idiotic managers who thought “Light Rail” was a realistic mass transit system.

Imagine buses on rails that move at about 20 miles/hour because they travel mainly on (not below or above) city streets.

The monthly pass is $65
*ouch*

It takes me 15 minutes to DRIVE the same route the Light Rail takes an HOUR to complete. “Gosh, let’s see, should I rise an HOUR earlier each morning to ride Snail Rail and save the environment, OR should I sleep in another 45 min and drive my SUV to work?” Tough choice.

An hour for “Snail Rail” to travel 13 miles!
What a joke.

Oh, user studies show the actual total system cost translates into about $100 PER RIDE. What a money saver for the city 🙂 Of course Snail Rail also completely screws up traffic as trains lock up all stop lights for miles ahead as they come lumbering through each intersection.

I grew up in Minneapolis, another city with an underutilized “Snail Rail” that takes over an hour to get people to the city center from the airport (about a 20-min car ride)

Face it, most major cities in the United States are decades behind Europe and Asia on mass transit. Americans will discover this when oil reaches $200/bbl and our economy (and transportation system) collapses.

What should G. Bush be focused on intead of his hobby of starting expensive wars his competing in the competition for World’s Biggest (sanctioned) Terrorist? How about our government going city-by-city and ripping in new highly efficient rapid subway systems AND creating HIGH-speed city-to-city supertrains.

(Those will be systems that almost nobody will use in the next few years, but 10 or 15 years from now it will be standing room only on those subways and high-speed trains.)

[Eugene]

I live in RB and work in UTC. I can get from my house to my job using public transportation (one bus connection, 20->31, if i remember correctly). There are bus stops next to my house and next to the office where I work.

There’s just one problem. The same trip that takes me 20 min with my car (25 in rush hour) takes 1 hour 50 min with the bus. That includes 20 min wait on a bus stop somewhere in Mira Mesa.

Oh and the bus ticket ($2.25 last i checked) costs more than gasoline burned by my relatively fuel inefficient car during 15-mile trip.

Any wonder why i prefer to drive?

[Navydoc]

It truly makes me crazy when I hear people discuss public transportation in cities in Southern Ca. It’s not the lack of demand, it’s not that people won’t use them, it’s just that it’s virtually IMPOSSIBLE to build an efficient system in a city where people are spead out so far. Ever look at a map of LA county? It’s HUGE! How many people live there? Maybe 5-6 million? The population density simple won’t support it and the city planners are well aware of that fact.

I used to live in Japan. In a 30 Km radius of the center of Tokyo (much smaller than LA or SD counties)are the homes of more than 30 million people, approximately 25% of the total population of Japan. The trains are fantastic. I could get fom my home in Yokosuka, about 50 km from Tokyo Station, to anywhere in the city in 45 minutes. During rush hour he trains are so full there is a person on the platform whose job it is to smash as many human beings onto the train as possible. You seriously have to suspend your sense of personal space or you would go insane. There is no way that system could work here. Stop dreaming, and realize that life in this area requires you provide your own transportation.

Personally I prefer to commute by bicycle, but I realize that may not work when I return to San Diego. the wife really has her heart set on the North County, and that’s a bitch of a bike ride to Balboa.

[Author]

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