Reply #10: Your question requires little deep thought from me, as I don't have a car. [View All]

I live more easily than some people would think, but then again the vast majority of Americans can't seriously imagine being able to live without their cars. They have absolutely no idea how I survive.

Public transportation here isn't perfect, and does require planning, but could be better. One thing that bugs me is that because I live a bit of a ways out of the city, my route always seems to get the most broken-down buses. But there are a lot more options for going places here, and hours at which you can do it, and frequency with which you can do it, than in some places I've lived. Sheesh, one county over and it can take you two hours to travel five miles on a bus because of the poor service in that system.

Also, I've lived in smaller cities and towns, including one where sometimes the only option was taking a cab, and the cab might arrive any time from 20 minutes to two hours after you called. Also, it might already contain other passengers, or stop to pick up/drop off others along the way. On a weekend night, it was also highly likely to be crammed full of drinking college students, and one never knew when one of them might succumb to a touch of sickness enroute. (Local cab companies eventually instituted a $25 cleaning fee on top of the fare for anyone who puked in a cab.)

So, really, I don't think my life is so bad right now...but I do know what it's like to live with crazy systems where you can't go anyplace without going downtown first, and it takes you an extra hour or two, and you can't go anywhere Sundays at all because they just don't run...then again, I try to avoid cabs here, because they are hideously expensive.

Here's an irony for you. Keith Olbermann, who cannot drive because of a vision problem, said once that he had no problem living for a total of 10 years in Los Angeles, the one city considered utterly unlivable for anyone without their own personal vehicle. Why? Because anytime he wanted a cab, the cab companies were sitting there idle, ready to send him one in a second. Go figure. Maybe I could do great in Los Angeles.