Wednesday, October 15, 2008

I really want to be good, but...

If I leave my house before 7:30 or after 9, I get to USC in 15-20 minutes. I used transit today--it took 70 minutes to get to work, and an hour to get home tonight.

In DC, the trade-off was a 40 minute drive against 50 minutes door-to-door with metro/walking. That was a good trade--the ten extra minutes were small price to pay for the exercise, the ability to read/listen to music on the train, and the opportunity to avoid DC drivers. But a 40-50 minute difference is a whole different story. And LA radio is good, and the drivers are better here.

3 comments:

Duatreb said...

Yes, this is the problem practically everywhere, and not only in the US. It is less true in dominantly monocentric cities for trips to the CBD. Anyone knows a good comparative study of trip times with transit and car for a number of cities?

Anonymous said...

Duatreb:

Check out the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Study from 2007. Here's the URL: http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/

Anonymous said...

Is it safe to say we had an automotive bubble that stifled saner forms of transportation?

And what the heck is going on in Los Angeles lately? I drove all over the city this week and it seemed like we had twice the normal congestion. A couple of days can be explained by the fires up north that pushed traffic south, but...