I used to take the bus to my local community college sometimes. I would walk to my bus stop, and wait. Although there is a schedule, it is not a consistent one. Therefore, the bus would sometimes arrive 5-10 minutes early or late, and I would be waiting there for as long as 30-45 minutes for a bus if my luck isn't good that day. That's not all, though, because I had a transfer stop. Whenever I would finally get there, I would be on my first bus and see the next bus drive off as I arrive. That's another 30 minutes, at least, but it could be longer. It could also be shorter, and take 30-40 minutes. It made scheduling things a big pain. One good thing was that this was free, as my school gave out bus passes to all full-time students.
In all, it would take me 1-2 hours to get to school, one way. I was spending anywhere from 3-4 hours per day on the bus. Driving with a car, takes 15 minutes if I am being dropped off. Add 5 more if I'm parking and the lots are not nearly empty, and maybe 5 minutes for traffic jams if neither is exceptionally bad. Still, that's less than 30 minutes each way. Even if driving takes 30 minutes on a very bad day, that's still about an hour compared to around 4 hours on the worst days. Yeah, I'd rather get a car. Also, I transferred to a school that would take me 2 hours to get to on a good day. On a bad day, that would be 3-4 hours one way. I'm not going to spend 6-8 hours a day on public transit when a car gets me there and back in 1-2 hours assuming I am not traveling during rush hour.
Maybe if they properly funded public transportation and it ran reasonably fast enough (no bus every 30-45 minutes BS), included rail on my route sooner (working on it at my university), and most importantly, design cities to support it, maybe I would use public transportation. As it is, public transportation is a good way to get yourself late or way too early and pissed off, at least in Los Angeles.
However, I will admit that Boston and New York actually know how to do public transportation. I didn't use a car at all in either city, and I was still able to get around everywhere by subway and walking. I wish Los Angeles could be like that, although LA is working on rail.
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Zachnorn
Everything = overrated.