How To Get Around European Style While In Traveling In The USA
Whenever I travel anywhere outside of the USA, I marvel at the public transportation system in other cities and countries.
We simply don’t have that in much of America because America is a suburban car culture country. Therefore, Americans are not used to doing things that are typical in other countries, such as taking a train or bus to the store to buy groceries or other survival provisions. For starters, families would not be able to fill up their SUVs at Wallmart!
Personally, fed up with traffic after living in Los Angeles for so long, I welcome public transportation in my life. And there are places in the USA that have it; there are just not many of them.
With this in mind, here are five American cities with great public transportation. With one bonus city; hey, it has great craft beer!
1.) New York City
The subway is an everyday part of life for New Yorkers. It’s the one city in the USA where people don’t drive because most of them don’t have cars; it’s too expensive to park them, for starters. The subway, which goes to every borough, is just $2.75 a ride, a bargain in a city known for high prices.
Cabs are as much a part of the NYC landscape as skyscrapers but public transportation operates 24 hours a day.
New York also has CitiBike, a bike-sharing program with thousands of bikes at hundreds of stations, available 24/7 throughout the year.
Link: New York City Public Transportation
2.) Chicago
Any city that can get me from where I’m staying to a day game at Wrigley Field on an old-style elevated train gets my highest praise. The “L” is the way for PubClub-minded people to get around Chicago. Take the Red Line and you’re at this legendary ballpark, one of the best in the country.
A one-day pass is $10 and a three-day pass is $30. Water taxis are $3-8 and $11-29 for an all-day pass.
Link: Chicago Transit Authority
3.) Boston
Likewise, Boston has a train that takes you to it’s legendary ballpark, Fenway Park. What I really like about Boston’s public transportation is that the colors tell you where the train is going, such as green to the suburbs (get, it, green as in grass and trees), Red to Harvard, Blue to the water, etc. Here you “take the T.”
The fee is $2.75 and you must first get a CharlieTicket. If you’re going to be there for while, get the CharlieCard and the basic fare is $2.25.
Link: Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
4.) San Diego
Unlike it’s bigger neighbor to the north – and I’m pointing at you, Los Angeles, San Diego has a great public transportation system. It has a light rail cutely called a Trolley that goes from downtown to Little Italy, Old Town and even to the Mexican border (where you walk across the border and take a short taxi to Tijuana if you want to experience the wild side of life in this part of the world) and a sensational bus system. I use a combination of the trolley and the bus to go from the Gaslamp to the beach cities. The buses have a sign at the stops that, when you text a number, tells you when the next three buses are due to arrive.
And they arrive on time! Plus, they run until 1 a.m.! That’s almost as long as the bars stay open, which is 2 p.m.
All this for just 5 bucks a day. You do have to purchase a so-called Compass Card for $2 the first time you use the system.
Link: San Diego Metropolitan Transportation System
5.) San Francisco
‘San Franciscans love to criticize both BART (the trains) and MUNI (the buses) but it gets them where they need to go in a pretty efficient manner. Like New York City, parking is expensive and hard to find, so public transportation is a must for locals and is something tourists should really utilize, as well.
PubClub takes the street car to travel down the Embarcadero (this goes from the Ferry Building and downtown to Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf) and the cable cars to go up and over from there to Union Square.
A single cable car ride is seven bucks while a one-day Visitor Passport is $12. A three-day Visitor Passport is $29. This does not, however, work for taking BART from the airport to the city. There is also a Muni Mobile pass for $5 a day but it does not work for the cable cars.
If you have a CityPass ($94), you can ride all these as part of your package for three days, which includes entrance to lots of museums and attractions.
Link: San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Authority
BONUS: Portland, Oregon
The Pacific Northwest city with great craft beer has a train from the airport to downtown and to me, that qualifies it as worthy of making this list. Portland’s transportation system, which includes the train and buses, is called TriMet; the light rail is called MAX. It is primarily centered around downtown, which is where most of the activity in the city takes place, and also goes to the Rose Garden, home of the Trail Blazers.
It stops short of going to all the craft breweries, tho, as some are located in out-of-the-way places, like Produce Row and Kennedy School, which is in an old elementary school in a residential neighborhood.
Link: TriMet Portland
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