transit It doesn't, not ever--even if the round trip there and back takes a full tank of gas (approx $27.00 or so right now), it's still a better choice to drive rather than wasting several hours using public transit.
In a bit of more detail...
A drive to the grocery store is trivial, let's say 5 minutes. By bus, using a local loop route, it could be 10 to 15 minutes travel time. No real problem, right (even though the bus has already doubled the travel time)? Only, I am limited to purchasing only the amount of groceries I can carry by hand (in case I have to stand on the bus), and I have to wait 30 minutes or so for the bus after I have completed my shopping trip just to get home. But when I drive to the store, I just load the groceries in my car (and note that I can also shop for more groceries too since I can load them in the car) and then just drive directly home. So, transit even loses consideration for a short trips.
Price of gas rising 13% a day 2307God forbid we should spend money to help Americans!! But lets spend $200 billion on Iraqis? That's fine right? A small fraction of that could rebuild...
Or, say I need to go to the mall. I can drive to a shopping mall that is about 10 minutes away from where I live, using side streets or using the freeway. The same trip requires two buses, one being a local loop route, which results in a minimum of 45 minutes travel time... not even counting the 30 minutes waiting time if I have to wait for the next bus at the transit center. So worst case scenario is 65 minutes of extra wasted time... but that's a lot of wasted time! That's not worth any giving public transit any consideration at all in my opinion
Or say I want to go to the beach. Again, two buses minimum and at least 1 hour travel time, again not even counting the 30 minutes wait time for the connecting bus. Well, except I could drive to the beach in about 20 minutes, plus I am not limited to what I can carry on the bus in the event I might have to stand. So again, the worst case scenario is 70 minutes wait time... again, that's not worth giving public transit any consideration at all in my opinion, because that's a lot of wasted time.
Also, I won't even try to use the buses to go to any amusement parks, because it would require 4 or more buses and 4 or more hours travel time just to get there, again, not even counting the waiting time for each connecting bus! For example, I wouldn't even attempt to try and use public transit to travel as far north as Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia, CA), and I'll gladly make the direct drive to the park instead of trying to get there via multiple transit agencies.
Oh yeah, and then there's the issue that what I've briefly discussed is just the ONE WAY trip! Once I'm at my destination using public transit, I have limited time before I have to start using the reverse routing to get back home. When I drive to the destination, I can stay as long as I want to if needed, since I just get right back into my car and drive home.
There are other places to go as well--the movies, video arcades, casinos, restaurants, special events (county fairs, horse races, concerts)... still, driving is the clear choice and transit isn't even worth consideration.
