I timed it. Most of that time is waiting for a transfer, yes, but getting there by car takes about 20 minutes…

There has been more than one time, where it has been raining when I got on the first bus, and then not raining anymore when I got off the second.

There’s no benches where you transfer buses and it’s supposed to be the bus center for the city. It’s an island of curb in the middle of a huge mall parking-lot. You stand there or sit on the curb for like forty minutes sometimes.

You can actually see the swirls of the wind in the plastic wrapper garbage that blows by. The area is like semi enclosed by big box stores so my theory is that it like accumulates the airborne garbage somehow.

Another reason why it takes so long is that the first stop which is by my neighborhood…

(For context my neighborhood is like an isolated suburb off of a four lane highway…)

(Except it’s a not really a highway and there are houses with driveways connected to it. I guess it’s more like an arterial road of the city or something, but if I’m remembering correctly, it doesn’t merge with a highway, it becomes one.)

You can’t get off on the first stop because it’s on the other side of the highway / street / road. It’s impossible to cross. There’s just no way.

What you have to do to not get stranded when you get off the second bus, is wait until the route cycles through all the stops in the outskirts of the city, and then get off at that stop when it’s coming the other way, on the other side of the road.

There is no bus sign, just an indent in the sidewalk wide enough and long enough for a vehicle to park. There are no benches.

Then I walk for around 2 minutes (that I’m not counting) through the suburbs to get to my house.

  • python@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Dang I feel you. Started a new job this month and my route to work is now Bus-Train-Bus. The train part is actually really nice and only takes 30min, but the busses are so annoying because the transfer windows just don’t really line up. Like the train arrives at :34 but the only bus line that goes reasonably close to my work leaves at :30 and :50. It’s not even far (like 2km from my home to the train station and 4km from the second train station to my work), just barely far enough that walking feels like a waste of time.

    I have yet to find a set of connections that take less than 1h30m in total. By car the route would take 32mins. If I take my bike instead of the busses I can get the total time down to 50-ish mins but a ticket for taking a full-sized bike on the train costs 7,50€ per day. I have ordered a foldable bike though (those are free to take on trains) and I’m hoping that it will be a good solution.

    • motionofethre@piefed.social
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      8 hours ago

      I try to petition cities to fix it. It works sometimes. Slow public transport seems to almost always be transfer times