I live in Los Angeles. Driving to work takes 15 minutes. Taking the bus _home_ from work takes an hour. Taking the bus _to_ work would require extra time -- leaving early to make sure I don't miss the bus. And this is only a 3-5 mile ride, where the bus picks up half a block from my work and drops me off a block from home.
There's a shopping center with multiple markets and Walmart and Kohl's that the bus comes up along then turns away from on the way to work; I can use this as an example of shopping from home, as I can probably get 90% of my living supplies there. Ralphs, Target, Walmart, Kohls, Trader Joe's, etc are all here. The bus transfer here is not an easy one, though, as the bus timings overlap going in both directions, meaning you have to leave early and get back later (about 1 in 4 trips I can transfer without waiting. _Not_ good odds with an hourly bus).
0:00 5 minutes: walk to bus stop 1.
0:05 5 minutes: wait for the bus (best to be at the stop early in case your bus is early, though this bus is usually exactly on time)
0:10 10 minutes: take the bus to stop 2.
0:20 3 minutes: cross the street to get on the other bus
0:23 12 minutes: wait for the next bus 2, the previous one left while you were crossing (yes, seriously)
0:35 10 minutes: take bus 2 to stop 3 where the shopping center is
0:45 90 minutes: cross the parking lot to get to the store (5~10 minutes), then try and get all your shopping done in under 40 minutes so you can take the next bus back home. Nope, today you had to go to the supermarket pharmacy, which is a 20 minutes walk across the shopping center, wait for your meds, _and_ walk back to the cheaper market to do your shopping as well.
2:15 30 minutes: shopping is done a bit early. Yay. You have time to walk back to the bus stop and wait in the sun until the next bus 2 comes. Yay.
2:45 10 minutes: Bus 2 comes. Take it back to the transfer bus stop.
2:55 15 minutes: Cross the street again, and wait for bus 1 so you can get home
3:10 10 minutes: take bus 1 home.
3:20 15 minutes: Now you're a block away from home, carrying bags of groceries, _and you had to get off 2 stops early so you could use a crosswalk_, because there's no crosswalks on this street and people don't stop. Walk home.
3:35. Tadah. You're home. Just a bit over 3.5 hours!
Unfortunately, since you don't have a car, you're limited to buying what you can carry. I hope you're ready to go shopping again later this week! You have family? Oh, well then you'll be shopping again 3 times this week. Maybe even 4 times. I hope you like waiting in the sun/rain, LA Metro only puts up cover where they can make money off advertising, so all the bus stops we've used only have benches (except one, but that one's further away).
If all you needed was medication, you'll probably want to get your shopping done anyways, as this is otherwise a > 2hr trip just for that (remember, bus 2 is hourly, so you're spending an hour at the shopping center _minimum_, including walking to/from the bus stop).
There's five other stores across the street from the shopping center that you'd like to check out sometime, including a new grocery store, but it takes 20 minutes to cross the shopping center, then probably another 10 to cross the street and the parking lot in front of the other stores. Add the time spent in these stores, and you've just added another hour to your shopping trip. This is only _partially_ offset by crossing to the supermarket pharmacy, as that supermarket is nowhere near the corner, and keep on kind that anything you have to carry will slow you down more.
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Buses:
- Bus 1 goes EW near home, turns NS between home and the transfer point (about 10 minutes), then goes EW again.
- Bus 2 goes EW, turns NS between the shopping center and transfer point, and goes EW again.
- There _was_ a bus that went NS along the east side of the shopping center (which also would have dropped me off at home, cutting out the need for a second bus entirely), but this bus route was changed in 2019 to turn away from the shopping center once it gets to the NE corner.
- There's a bus that goes EW along the other side of the shopping center, but that's not helpful.
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You're forgetting about just how much convenience your car gives you _besides_ the ability to get to and from the store.
- You don't have to wait for transfers or make what is effectively two trips to get somewhere.
- You don't have to cross parking lots or go in and out of stores from the street (you can park up near the store, then drive to the other side of the shopping center).
- You can make a quick 5 minute stop on the way home without increasing your travel time by a full hour (because the bus only comes hourly).
- You don't have to wait outside.
- You don't have to hope that the bus was cancelled without notification (two weeks ago I was lucky to get a ride, as my once-an-hour bus was straight up cancelled without prior warning; if I didn't use the former-official Transit app to check times, I wouldn't have known, and would have been waiting at the stop for 80 minutes like one of my less fortunate coworkers did, or taking a different once-an-hour bus home with extra transfers and lots of waiting, to only get home ~10 minutes earlier)
- You don't have to only buy as much as you can carry on a single trip (I work in a grocery store, people can and do fill _multiple_ shopping carts to avoid having to go shopping a second time in a week. People can and do purchase groceries for elderly relatives they don't live with).
- if there's a detour, it only costs you the time it takes to make said detour. If the bus has to make a detour and you have tight timing, you might miss your transfer, adding 10-60 minutes to your commute.
- You're not dependent someone being willing to pick you up. When I was in college, a full bus would often just go right by without stopping, since there wasn't enough room.
- You're not dependent on your fellow passengers being rule-abiding or polite. Last year the bus driver stopped for an entire 50 minutes at a high school because the kids weren't being safe or quiet. Not that they're ever quiet, or that a full bus in general is quiet, but they were throwing condoms across an overcrowded bus and yelling, and the bus driver understandably didn't want to deal with it when _he couldn't close the door_, so he stopped and said those past the yellow line on the floor needed to get off and wait for the next bus. Instead, they made fun of him, continued talking loudly, and those near the door who shoved their way into a full bus refused to move. (The next month or so was _very_ quiet on the bus)
- general garbage is everywhere. The filth that people leave behind when they cram into a bus and then leave. The noise of competing music playing against each other. Having the choice to either get up and lose your seat, or sit with someone's butt in your face because another busy bus broke down and yours is the first/closest bus going in the same direction.
- All you want to do is go home and go to sleep, but you don't want to get the bus in your bed and this sweaty dude's been sitting here talking in your ear for 15 minutes now and you wish you hadn't offered him a seat, and as soon as he leaves you realize the person behind you is yelling on the phone and now you have a headache.