Give me some steal rail vehicles.  I took another bus ride out and about, as I’ve done hundreds of times before.  The biggest gruff I have with buses is they have to travel on the roadways.  The roadways in the US are absolutely falling apart – and if the roadways are as smooth as a runway, then the bus turns into a rickety rackety vibrating sardine can.  It makes it very hard to do anything on board, such as using a cell phone, txting, working on a laptop, watching a DVD, or otherwise.

Almost any type of flanged wheel vehicle; streetcar, tram, trolley, light rail, passenger rail, or otherwise has almost none of these issues.  Even on fairly rough track the issues are drastically reduced for maintaining a smooth ride.  Throw in the fact that rails last decades longer than roadways at a vastly higher ride quality and you have some real money savings!

I digress though, I’m really glad to have what services are available!  Seattle, Portland, Vancouver (BC), and San Francisco all have superb transit services (in spite of the locals, they always find reasons to bitch or become NIMBYs).  Oh well, I’m off to board a train and just wanted to rant about crappy, unmaintainable roads beating up buses (and by proxy, all of us riding the bus).