This morning I rode the city bus to work. I've only ridden on 6 city buses since we've been in Raleigh, and had 2 break down on me. Hopefully I'm just unlucky and their failure rate isn't that bad.
It took 50 minutes to get to campus from my house. According to google maps new walking route feature (how cool is that) It's 3.3 miles and should take me 68 minutes. Which means they are assuming about a 20 minute mile. I'm pretty confident I can walk a mile in closer to 15 minutes, so it would be about even time-wise with riding the bus and I would get some exercise in.
So, I need a formula. I'm going to guess the breakpoint is somewhere around 3.5 miles at which point it might be worth it to ride. A few other factors to consider, number of bus transfers necessary, number of kids in tow, outside temperature (I don't want to be sweaty mess at work), time of day (=>road congestion), and time since last exercise.
As a side note, if I didn't have an enormous belly making it nearly impossible to bend over, I would have just ridden my bike this morning.
Anyway, it made me feel for people who daily ride the bus to and from work. What a pain. The thing breaks down and your screwed, nearly guaranteed to be late. This morning everyone got off and started walking. Fortunately I was relatively close to my building so it didn't cost me much, but I'm sure others had much further to go and were no doubt late as the bus was already running 15 minutes behind.
What a terrible system. There must be a better way!
3 comments:
I love this line, "So, I need a formula.". Loved this post for the fact that it was a math problem. :) I do appreciate that the BT is on-time and doesn't break down. I suppose it helps that it is subsidized by students and faculty.
Maybe during my next break, I'll make a spreadsheet that evaluates the ride versus walk decision. :)
glad you got to experience the *joys* of riding the bus. and amen to what about the people that have no choice.
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