Let me tell you about the [censored]-poor state of regional mass transit in the USA.

OK, first of all, I admit that I, like many others, have a crazy commute. You'd think that with the distance I go, I'd be sitting on a bus with 7 other people. That's not the case at all.

My bus commute starts in Clinton NJ and ends in New York City.

If I arrive at the bus stop at or before 6:07 AM, I am 97% certain to get a parking space. If I arrive after 6:17 AM, I am 100% certain NOT to get a parking space. If you have ever seen rally car racing, that's a fair approximation of what the parking lot is like in the magic 10 minutes when the whole damn lot fills up. After that - well there's nothing, there's no other choices, so if you miss that window of opportunity, you're driving in. The 6:00, 6:05, 6:20 and 6:30 busses are PACKED FULL every morning and even more people would take mass transit if they could park!


Ironically, there's a train station not too far from the bus stop and NJ Transit says it's "underutilized" - I wonder why?

Let's see - my 6:20 bus gets me to New York by about 7:40-ish.

Or I can take the train out of Annandale.
There's a 4:59, 5:55, 6:23 and 6:50 AM train.

Let's try the 6:23 AM train.
That gets me as far as Newark Penn Station by 8:12 AM. Newark Penn Station is NOT in New York City - so I have to transfer to a train from there to New York City - and that's at least a 30 minute time allocation - if I'm lucky and hit all the transfers. So now it's almost 8:45 and I'm just arriving in New York.

That no good.

All over the United States, it's the same story. There's AMPLE demand for mass transit, there's nowhere near the infrastructure to support the number of people who WOULD use mass transit if they COULD. The Long Island Rail Road is saturated, they need more tunnels under the East River. Even on the lightly utilized systems, more trains and buses overall are needed, and instead we talk about congestion pricing and the like without thinking where and how we'll get the cars off the roads when people go to work.

This is a sore spot for me, because for me, Driving in shaves at LEAST 45 minutes off my commute, which is no small potatoes, and I take the time hit to "do the right thing" - but I gotta tell ya, there's plenty of days where I don't really NEED to be in the office before 8AM, but I go in anyway because I won't get parking otherwise.