New Jersey smells funny because I am not there.

I have no experience with our public transit system though. It takes me 4 minutes to get to work, and we live close to downtown. There are just a few advantages of living in corn country.

I don't totally understand why the MTA will put a car from a different line on a track, but give it the same name- i.e. "This B train will be running on the N line"- Ok, great- so why not call it an N train? Yea, I suppose that for most of these trains, at some point they move back to the B line, which would make changing the name silly, but still...

I don't know why they do that either, except because it only runs on the X track part way. Or maybe because the train still says B on the outside? I do know I used to love it when the G was running extra slow during rush hour & they'd steal and F and give it to the G. Since the G is short, having a funn train meant seats *and* ottamen for everyone!

an F . . . full

Our public transport system has integrated ticketing (one ticket will get you anywhere by any combination of bus, train, or ferry) and integrated timetables. The bus can sometimes be a little early or a little late. The trains are almost always spot on. The ferries, well who cares? Once you're on the water, you can't help but chill and they get you where you're going pretty much when you planned.

I like the sound of tr33hggr's commute though.

The ferries do have stupid signs though. "Do NOT throw yourself over the side of this ferry". "Do NOT stick your head in the gate and repeatedly bash it shut". That kind of thing. I blame lawyers.

Edmonton Transit is currently running a pervasive ad campaign—TV, radio, billboards, and ads on every single bus and train—exhorting passengers not to stiff them: "Fare is Fair."

Ridership has gone up every year since 1998. So have fares. The fine for fare evasion is somewhere above $150. A man was beaten to death on the bus about a month ago (link). I have ridden next to passed-out drunks, screaming drunks, drunks sexually harassing pregnant women, kids toking up marijuana; I witness a drug deal every six months or so.

But the biggest problem ETS faces is fare evasion, and you can't go an hour without suffering their unconscionably obnoxious ad campaign reminding you of that.

≡ Click to see image ≡

Rant over. (For now.)

They do that on the Docklands Light Railway too, put duct tape over the button you press to open the doors and a sign saying 'door not working'.

ThePinkSuperhero: I've always wondered that too. I think it's because even when they run on different lines, they start and finish on their own line?

*often ends up on the 5 express via the 7th avenue line*

An El train partially derailed this morning. No one was hurt.

Supposedly the buses have a schedule but they don't seem to follow it. The 121, which is the express bus I take between work and Union Station, is especially spotty in the evening. (We'll see three 120 buses, which go to Ogilvie Station, come and go before a 121 does!)

You can practically set your watches by the Metra trains, on the other hand. With very, very few exceptions, they are always exactly on time.

Oh, essexjan, the weirdness or European trains, where you must push a button to open the door. (Though I really like the old Paris Metro trains where you actually have to unlatch the door. The Paris Metro also makes me feel like a wuss because people there get off before the train is actually stopped. And the New Yorker in me wants to be the first off, but part of me, is like, IT ISN'T STOPPED YET. Only in French.)

Also, the subway *has* a train schedule, but they won't tell you what it is. Once you live somewhere for a while, you generally learn, but yeah.

This whole conversation is soooo urban. You guys are cool, it's like you speak a language I don't. My commute, prior to the daycare dropoffs, was about 3 minutes (hah! beat tr33hggr!) and I could barely get a whole song to finish.

hi dame! eh? eh?

This page loads annoying audio automatically, so turn your speakers off first. But if you can get past that, it has some wave files of London Underground announcements (scroll down a bit, on the right).

Thanks, Gecko. We clearly need the "Let the customers off the train, please one." And they are all so polite. New York is like: "[screech][feedback][screech] This train [static] express [static] to [unintelligible station]," and "Last stop. Everybody off."

Yeah, but how's the Thai where you live, my Canadian friend?

I like the recorded voice announcement I heard on the 4/5 one day- "Please do NOT hold onto the doors and ride on the outside of the train". Does that happen so often they needed to make a *recorded* announcement about it?

When I first saw the Paris train doors you unlatched yourself I was fucking FLABBERGASTED, I stood there gaping like a campesino for at least 45 seconds. Wow.

I felt like a little baby, but then I was on a Paris metro train on Bastille day and some teenagers just threw a bag of fireworks into a car that I just exited and within seconds it was all red smoke and banging and flashes and whistles and french screams. So that was awesome.

The craziest person I've ever seen on the train was on the F line late at night. This guy got on the train in seriously homemade leather clothes, including this very shiny leather apron with masonic and astrological symbols on it and he had these really tight oiled pig tails and he stalked up and down the car breathing really loudly through his nose for about three stops and then got off. He was like some alternate future Viking that was getting psyched to play in some future Viking version of a football game and he fell through a crack in the universe.

dame - the thing I like best about London Underground trains is that they have buttons, but the buttons don't do anything - all the doors open, regardless of people pushing (or not) the buttons. Come to London and remember that, and you'll be embraced as a native (not really, Londoners don't do embracing strangers). Of course, that's not true of the national rail network, where there are buttons and they (mostly) work.

I wish we had any kind of local public transport (other than RTA buses, which aren't useful for commuting or such.)

One of the local bus drivers folds paper cranes at stoplights and gives them to exiting passengers.

nonane, that's exceptionally cool.

dame, what's thai? heh heh...it's pretty lame up here.

The relatively small zone of Northern New jersey immediately surrounding New York City smells funny because basically it's an industrial support system for all the chemical needs of the nation's most densely populated region (the entire Northeast).

Despite what I think about our fossil fuel dependence, the Port of Elizabeth is in present reality an actual lifeline for the Northeastern Uited States -- OK, so maybe it's more of a 'mainlining junk' analogy than a 'lifeline' analogy-- but the existence of the port, and the chemical/fossil fuel refining that goes on at the plants nearby, allow our nation to keep existing day after day, providing the manufacturing/consumption lifestyle we have come to expect. Cut it off, and the air will be cleaner, but we'd be facing major lifestyle change. Look at those giant stacks of cargo containers, look at the fuel ships, as you drive by. It's all stuff we want; imported clothing and home furnishings, or propane, crude oil, and other extracted raw materials that go into making the stuff we buy, fuel our trains, cars, and buses with, flavor our food with, make plastics from, and so on.

This is my defensive rant when people complain about "New Jersey" --it's only that one section that's like that, and that's only because everyone on this side of the continental divide and north of the major Gulf ports is dependent on the facilities that exist there. It has to be somewhere.

That does not explain why the PATH tunnels smell like crap.