At 09:25 AM Tuesday 10/2/2007, Charlie Bell wrote: >On 30/09/2007, at 8:50 PM, Gary Nunn wrote: > > > > > > > Holy Cow!! > > > > I make a post and step away for a few weeks and find this topic ran > > rampant > > - and I missed it! > > >Yep. I'm still wondering what bits of London are 20 mins apart by car >and hours apart by public transport
I don't know about London, but most cities I have lived in in the U.S. are like that if the two points are both on the edge of the city proper, as the only bus routes or other public transportation available tends to run more or less radially from the downtown terminal, so to get from one point on the edge of the city (e.g., your house) to another relatively nearby on the edge of the city (e.g., your place of employment or in some cases the nearest shopping center), rather than going directly there which would be a 20-minute drive you must board the bus which comes closest to your house, ride all the way to the terminal downtown (taking the better part of an hour), wait perhaps the better part of another hour for the next bus on the route which passes closest to your destination, then when (sometimes "if") it finally arrives at the terminal ride it for the better part of another hour until you reach the stop closest to your destination. Total time one way from your house to your destination: 2 to 3 hours, compared with 20 minutes if you drove there directly, even with traffic. Then there are the places which you may need to go which are basically unreachable by bus or other public transportation since the nearest any bus route comes to that part of town is at least 3-4 miles or more from the place you need to go (probably an hour's walk or more in good weather for a person in good health who does not have anything to carry, in many cases perhaps at least in part along a busy road which has no sidewalks. Yes, hypothetically you could take along a bicycle but at least here according to the policies sometimes printed on bus schedules and posted at the terminal and inside buses bicycles must be loaded on to a rack on the outside of the bus and the rack has only room for one bicycle and the driver does not even have to stop for you if s/he sees that you have a bicycle and there is already another passenger's bicycle in the rack. I don't know if you are allowed to take a Segway onto the bus, but even if you are for $5K you can probably get a used car which in most cases would be a much better use of the money than getting a Segway to get to and from the bus stop). > (apart from at 3am, at which time >most of London is 20 mins by car and unreachable at all by public >transport...). In lots of the places I have lived many of the bus routes stop running around 6 pm (they are designed to get people who work 8 or 9 to 5 downtown to and from their homes in residential areas toward the edge of the city) and the rest have their last run between 9 and 10 pm, so if you work different hours you are out of luck. Apologies For The Repetition Maru -- Ronn! :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
