More than twice as long as walking is impressive.
In my city at least, this happens because a lot of the bus routes are one way in the morning / afternoon (into or out of the city) so if you want to take a bus out of the city/downtown in the morning, it ends up being a mess.
Could also easily happen in a system that’s entirely hub and spoke without any lines that meaningfully cross each other, particularly if buses come 30+ minutes apart. So, going to a neighborhood that’s not between your location and city center can take forever speaking from experience.
My guess is because it doesn’t have a direct line to the destination, so you need to go all the way down to a station and make a bus swap to come back.
Like imagine you need to go two blocks south, from First Street to Third Street. But there’s no bus that goes north/south. So you go fifteen blocks east on First Street to the station, wait for your next bus, then come back another fifteen blocks west on Third Street in a new bus. Or you could just walk the two blocks south.
First World:
Not quite comparable, because long distance, but for someone usually bouncing around Germany, the TGV network is kinda crazy. A bit envious after returning.
Like, the ICE is usually faster than driving, and I don’t have a car anyways, since I don’t really need one, but having a separate network for high speed rail means the French are just on another level.
Two hours and forty-four minutes of transfers between buses instead of eight minutes of driving like Automobile Jesus intended? Blasphemy, I say.
This is my daily commute:
There’s literally no option for public transit, because I live near one rail system, and my work is near an entirely separate rail system. The two aren’t connected at all, so there’s no way for me to transition in between the two. Making a transfer between the two literally takes longer than simply walking to work, because the two closest stations are farther apart than where I live compared to my job.
What surprises me the most in yours and the OP is how much longer the walking and biking are comparatively. I picked a random spot 11min drive away from my house for comparison:
And I’m in the “countryside” of the Netherlands, no trains, trams or anything like this here and bus station is already like 10/15min walk.
I expect the public transit craziness but why is walking/biking that much more?
Mine assumes you’ll take an uber to the nearest train station, which takes 1:10 and $23. Without the uber your only alternative is to walk for 2-3 hours (or cycle if you’re feeling brave).
Oh, and this is Texas so it’ll be boiling hot at least 7 months out of the year.
Driving was one of the first scamcriptions. I thought I had escaped by bike. I lasted 4 years of full time commuting before the horror film level infrastructure disabled me crossing paths with a third grade equivalent competency person.
