I want to link here to this OP because it reminded me of something I have wanted to ask:
Does anyone voluntarily not have a car in places with little or no public transit?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1167252I live about 5 miles from where I work. If I were to take a bus there I would have to walk 3/4 mile, wait on a bus, and the total travel time goes from 1 hour and 38 minutes to 1 hour and 58 minutes (based on the start/destination I plugged into the website for COTA)
Riding a bike would also take a good deal of time since I could not take the freeway, not to mention winter weather, storms, etc and so on.
I can be to work in 10 minutes by driving. I can sleep in until 8:50, get up, shower, get in the car, and be there early enough that I have time to relax before the 9:30 shift.
More time to sleep, to spend time with baby girl, etc and so on.
When I was in Chicago on business some years back I took a train to our data center, and then on another trip I decided to just drive there (from the same hotel). Much faster to just drive.
Outside of some of the big cities - why would I take public transportation when I could spend much less time driving myself? Sure, a bus pass might be cheaper than gas - but in places like central Ohio if I got a job on the west side (I live on the east side) I could spend hours just getting to work after walking through the weather just to get to the closest bus stop. An 8 hour and 20 or so minute day would turn into 11-12 hours.
They have talked about light rail here - but it keeps getting shot down because the jobs here are so spread out, and getting to the rail line, waiting to get on it, multiple stops, and you would spend less time per day driving then on public transport.
If you take public transportation how long does it take you to get to where you are picked up and how long does it take to get there?