America Loses on Public Transit — Seeing (the world) 2̶0̶2̶0̶ 2022!

Back home, we live in a rare small city that has decent public transportation options. Our family has taken the local bus downtown to the library or farmer's market countless times. It's also great for date nights, if both of us want to have a drink or two. We often opt to take the bus to the airport, too. And Sagan has been using the city bus to get to and from school since Day One of sixth grade. Now he's able to get all around town on the bus system. He'll have his driver's license soon, but we hope that he'll continue to opt for the bus most of the time anyway, since parking by his school is a nightmare and the bus is better for the planet.

With few exceptions, though, the rest of the U.S. is terrible. Embarrasingly bad. Very few places have any form of tram or subway, and some places don't even have any bus coverage. Those that do have buses are usually so inefficient that the only people who use them are those who are the most desperately poor and have no other choice. We wonder why so many folks struggle to escape poverty, but if you're riding a bus for over an hour each way just to get to a minimum wage job, how in the world are you ever supposed to move forward? And yes, you can argue that you should live somewhere else or take a different job, but there are plenty of factors that make that difficult for people (needing childcare, caring for elderly parents, etc.).

Anyway, traveling to other countries almost always reminds me how backwards we are about this particular subject in America.We're now on our 4th city of this trip, and we have consistently found mass transit to be easy and efficient. (We didn't use it in York because it's small enough that walking was more fun, but we did see plenty of buses all over the place.) In London, as I mentioned in a previous post, getting into a car was the worst possible way to get anywhere. The Tube was a thousand times easier and faster, not to mention cheaper. In Edinburgh we used the tram and the buses to go all over the place with no problem. And here in Copenhagen, we took the bus, the Metro, and a harbor bus (boat) all in the same day. We bought a 5-day CityPass, which gives you unlimited access to all of those forms of transit seamlessly.

Can we talk about how unbelievably clean the Copenhagen Metro stations are? Some are slightly worse, but for the most part, they look like this.

Where are all the ads, graffiti, and piles of human feces? What kind of subway car is this?

Mike would argue - and he’s not wrong - that oftentimes he’s been able to beat us to our destinations on foot. But he’s used to running 100 miles at a time, doesn’t have plantar fasciitis, and usually has the benefit of us carrying his changes of clothes and such while he runs. Regardless of time on the subway or bus, I still have no trouble getting well over 11k steps per day. Plus I really enjoy getting to know the various transit routes around town, and most importantly, the kids are learning huge navigation skills and independence with every ride we take.

I assume Sagan’s face is him thinking about how bad public transit is in the US.

I will add a note that after I began this post, some time passed before I could complete it and hit publish. A weekend fell in the middle of that, and Copenhagen filled with so many people (damn tourists) that the harbor buses (boats) were impossible to get onto due to overcrowding. Also, on Sundays the regular buses run far less frequently. So Mike wins the debate on weekends for sure.

I’ll also add in another note here while I’m at it. One night in Copenhagen, Mike and I were going to stay out for dinner with our grownup friends (date night!), but the kids were done for the day. They’d gotten so familiar with our metro-to-bus route home, we sent them home without us. Story was a tiny bit nervous, but Sagan and I both felt completely confident they’d make it there alive. My only brief (very American) concern was that they might get in trouble because Sagan technically had a “child’s” ticket, and Story was traveling for free with him. Would the metro folks be bothered that a “15 year old” (shut up, he’s 15 as far as ticket prices are concerned) was in charge of a 10 year old? But then I remembered that this is the country where parents leave their babies sleeping in strollers outside while they go into restaurants, so I figured this wasn’t a high risk.

Spoiler alert: They survived the ordeal.