[PaulHoule]

I love the DC Metro system. Last year my wife and I were invited to a graduation party in the suburbs and we stayed in a hotel a few blocks from the furthest out station and rode into the city to enjoy the National Mall and the shops and restaurants around Union square.

I used to go to conferences in downtown SF a lot and I would wind up riding the BART from SFO, I would always meet Europeans doing the same thing but all the other Americans I met would take the SuperShuttle or an Uber. I thought the BART was great.

I ride the bus from rural Tompkins County to Cornell, the one problem is that you have to plan your schedule around just a few trips, but it drops me off right by the cafe on the way to work, if I drove I’d have to spend another 15-20 min finding a parking space and walking to my office and might need to move my car mid day or pay for parking.

The bus has been in bad shape lately, we used to get a full size bus (often electric) now often it is a mini-bus, sometimes a mini-bus where 1/3 of the seats have been replaced by a wheelchair elevator that gets used once a month. A few years back there was a utopian proposal to not charge fares, it seems to have become a reality because some vendor screwed up and now 90% of the fare boxes are busted. I think the service is great but it surprises me how few people use it because it stops at some very transit friendly development.