Reply #31: Well, I was spoiled by living in Portland for ten years: [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Four light rail lines, a downtown streetcar, and bus service that runs seven days a week, including to the suburbs. The only places that I couldn't go to were borderline rural. Here, the suburban buses are designed entirely for commuters, and they don't go close enough to ANY of my relatives to be useful. (In Portland, I could use the bus to visit friends who lived in the suburbs.)

Connections between Minneapolis and St. Paul are also inadequate. Yeah, it's fine to go to downtown St. Paul, but many getting to many locations in St. Paul from Minneapolis require going first to downtown St. Paul and then out from there, because there are no more direct connections.

Tri-Met is working on running buses at least every 15 minutes or more often, seven days a week, on all the major routes. I lived on two different routes that ran on this schedule (more are added every year), and knowing that if you miss a bus, another will be along in 10 to 15 minutes is a great incentive to ride.

Here, if I miss a bus, it's 20-30 minutes till the next one on my route.

Also, the fares were by distance instead of time, so that the transit system didn't penalize its most frequent riders by charging them more. Last time I bought a monthly pass (summer 2003), it was $55 to ride the entire system at any time. (Oh, and I'm irked that I can't use my Super Saver to ride the light rail but have to buy a separate ticket with cash.)

Tri-Met also publishes a master schedule for the whole system and sells it to anyone for three dollars. This made it so easy to plan trips, since you didn't have to go on line or phone the bus company to talk to some clueless person.

I'm totally unafraid to ride or even wait for a bus or train at night, but in comparison to Portland's system, the one here is noticeably inadequate. If you only go to the U., downtown, uptown, and St. Paul, yes, the bus system is adequate, but if my gold standard for transit, Tokyo, gets an A+, then Portland is a solid B and Minneapolis-St. Paul is a C.