I’ll disagree with that. They do a very important job. You can’t reasonably run trains through every neighborhood. Especially in smaller areas.
If you’ve only had bad bus experiences though, I understand.
I’ve had a few. Cold strike caused almost all the city buses to break down while I was Christmas shopping and they had to send vans to pick us up, and those were all off-schedule, so you’d have to wait a bone-chillingly long time at the depot to catch the van for the next leg of your journey across town. Another time, another city, and a blizzard hit during peak Christmas shopping time. Traffic was so bad it took an hour to go the distance that would normally be a 10-15 minute drive. I got out of that one and walked home because it was quicker. And nights generally suck. The bus will drop you off at the bar, but they’re not running when the bar closes, so you have to walk home at 2am.
But, they serve a very valuable purpose. Especially to those of us who aren’t rich. I took the bus to and from work for years.
And some places do it really well. When I was in San Antonio, there was a bus stopping by roughly every 10 minutes. And their express buses went to places up to an hour outside the city. It was so easy and so nice. There was always a bus going where we wanted when we wanted.
One of my coworkers always takes the bus in when we have company meetups. It’s a couple hours away by driving, but a ridiculously long time by train or flying. Bus is by far the best way to get there from anywhere around here. Only reason I didn’t take it last time was that my family had wanted to go there anyway so why not ride with them?
Also, I’ve moved cross-country 3 times on Greyhound buses, and although 1 out of 3 of the experiences wasn’t totally smooth, but it was ok enough. Just a bit more delay than expected. Still got me where I was going in comfort.
Since there seems to be interest, I’m going to write down my experiences when I have been forced to use busses. These experiences will demonstrate why I think busses are what local governments do when they want to pretend they offer public transportation, rather than invest in actual infrastructure.
In short, why busses suck.
More anticipatory obedience. Or, more accurately, cowardice. If fucking institutions of higher learning refuse to support (checks notes) science, what the fuck are they for?
It’s been so long since someone asked me “Whats Your Name, What Y’Had, Where D’Ya Come Fae?”
MAGA make the worst remixes.
The poor guy didn’t have insurance. I wonder if it was because his insurance company canceled it?
We were in Santa Fe and the GM of the motel where we stayed told us that Farmers Insurance just canceled both the motel’s insurance and his own homeowners insurance policy for his own house that week. Farmers is pulling out of the area ahead of time because NM had a mild winter with no real snowpack.
This timeline sucks.
Amurica-- a land full of proud, swaggering cowards.
Like the last oped, which ran about two weeks ago, this one games out the possibilities. But where the last oped found a final solace in the financial markets—if nothing else, they would stop Trump from defying the Court—this one says, well, if public opinion doesn’t stop Trump, “perhaps, after 238 years, we will see the end of government under the rule of law.”
Four years ago, all of these people would have been crying “impeachment.” Well, for obvious reasons, that’s no longer on the table. So what are we left with? Eh, the end of democracy, what are you going to do?
I just can’t believe the combination of irresponsibility and learned helplessness that these people exude. They’re paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, even more, to think through these kinds of problems, and they can’t even get their minds around what completely unlettered and untutored people, across the globe, under far more authoritarian circumstances, have managed to do: organize themselves to break the law, declare mass strikes, even resort to revolutionary violence, to topple a regime gone rogue.
Forget Mao, forget Trotsky, forget Marx. These professors, I assume, have read an English philosopher by the name of John Locke. He sets out in fairly clear detail the justification for toppling such regimes, even if that breaks the law. (His argument is that there is, essentially, no government left when you have a ruler who won’t abide by the law.) Yet no one dares to even talk about or to imagine picking up the customary political tools that democrats across the centuries have traditionally have wielded against runaway rulers.
It’s like climate change: We’re all supposed to sit back and drown in the water or burn in the fire, telling ourselves, while we die, “couldn’t get it past Joe Manchin, couldn’t persuade Trump to listen to a Court order.”
Yeah, I wonder, for instance, if one didn’t pay federal taxes but instead paid that amount to the state, would one be justified? I mean, right now the federal government is being run unconstitutionally and illegally - why do they still get the taxpayer’s money?
I’d be interested in seeing your experiences and comparing to my own (mostly positive) bus experiences. I have a hard time believing your view to be valid generally, rather than perhaps just in your one specific area, but I’m interested in what you have to say.
Don’t most people pay their federal taxes by having them taken out if their paycheck? I can’t change that and at tax time the feds usually owe me a little.
It is possible to adjust withholding so they take the least amount possible in advance.
The finance experts who recommend minimal withholding is to prevent federal/state agencies from holding your money all year, and then paying it back as an interest-free “refund.” A little isn’t a big deal, but there are people who get hundreds or thousands of their own money back - money that could’ve been in a savings account or low-risk investment.
My “problem” is that my wonderful company has profit sharing so i usually get an giant check near the end of the year. It makes it impossible to predict what i should be paying.
There are probably going to be 4 or 5 of these.
Here is the first installment, which I know everyone is longing to read. Apparently everyone on Earth loves busses except for I. So, to be fair, I will start off with something nice.
Part 1 - A Positive Experience
The most positive bus riding experience I have had is taking the Q70-SBS between Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street station and LaGuardia Airport. It is a what is known as a Special Bus Service, hence the “SBS.” It is a bus reserved for a special purpose. It goes from point A to point B in as short a time as possible.
There are many ways of getting to LaGuardia. But of all the ways, the Q70 is by the far the easiest and cheapest.
But that doesn’t mean it is without problems.
In order to take this bus, you have to:
- Exit the subway station with your luggage.
- Buy a special over-priced bus ticket.
- Wait outside for the next bus, in all kinds of weather.
- Cram yourself inside the bus with everyone else and all their luggage.
- Try to keep yourself and your luggage upright as the bus starts and stops, and weaves through traffic.
The bus has to:
- Fight its way out of the boarding area and onto the city streets.
- Fight its way slowly through surface streets to get onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway.
- Slow down for inevitable traffic jams.
- Fight its way through surface streets and into LaGuardia Airport.
This process is reversed if you are leaving the airport.
None of the above process would be necessary if the airport connected directly with the subway system. You see, the existence of this bus is evidence of serious laziness on the part of local and state government. It is just like Union Station in Chicago not connecting directly to the “L.”
Despite the airport existing since the 1930s, and despite numerous ideas how this could be done, nothing has been done. This situation is partially due to Robert Moses, who for decades did everything he could to promote personal automobiles. After his fall from grace, nothing has been done due to political infighting — politicians trying to out-do each other to prove their ideas are better. Meanwhile costs keep increasing. Most recently, Andrew Cuomo had his own idea for a rail link to LaGuardia, but he fell from grace too. In any event, I can guarantee you his idea wouldn’t have been implemented either.
So the city bought a bus, painted it light blue and said “here you are, have fun spending an extra half-hour getting to the airport.”
More to read can be found here.
Edited to remove a redundant sentence.
Ugh, I’m sorry that your situation is so unpredictable. On the plus side, if it’s just at the end of the year, at least they’re not withholding from that for very long.
When it comes to trips involving luggage not handled by the driver (stored in the compartment between the wheels), I share your opinion about the bus. Give me the train or a subway over that any day (assuming there are no stairs involved/lack of a platform to enter and exit). Having to manage that on top of a route full of delays sounds really bad. Without luggage, my only complaint about buses used to be rainy days and fabric-covered seats. That odor was terrible, making an uncomfortable ride even worse.
Precisely. If you drop your withholding (as @PsiPhiGrrrl wrote), you reduce what you are paying to the current federal government. What you withheld from your paycheck in 2024 went to the government under the Biden admin.
Similarly, I am a fan of the Q60 SBS to/from LaGuardia, which connects to the 1/2/3/4/5/6 subway lines, and agree that the inability to take a simple subway line directly to/from any of the airports in and around NYC is very frustrating (and expensive, and usually time-consuming). One of the biggest issues is that whenever there is traffic — in other words, nearly 24/7 — neither taxis, ride-shares, nor buses have any speed advantage, and to make matters worse, become even more expensive.
In Chicago, the vast majority of people arrive by plane rather than train, because the distances in the Midwest are much larger between major cities. Both O’Hare and Midway airports have el stops (subway/elevated depending on location) connecting them to the center of town, which is definitely faster during rush hour than ground transportation.
On the East Coast, coaches and trains are definitely the way to go between cities. Just doesn’t make as much sense where the distances spread out.
I avoid busses because of motion sickness. I prefer trams, metro and trains. But when I use busses I usually use 510 to go to elite areas of Helsinki to go to some art galleries. I don’t like walking around there because I look like a criminal especially during winter as I usually wear hood and all black clothing.
Bigger version of that map;
More maps:
https://www.hsl.fi/en/travelling/route_and_station_maps
I don’t own a car I had one before I moved to Helsinki and I don’t miss owning one. If I need a car I can usually borrow one.