How much planning does it generally require? How long does it take? Do you have to book a hotel? etc. I guess things may vary a lot according to where you live exactly, curious to know how things may differ between states. Where I live (Western Europe), this is often a logistical nightmare, I was wondering if things were similar in the US. Thanks.
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I can’t use public transportation the whole way, I’d have to drive 45 minutes to a train station then the train ride is about 3 hours for me to get to Boston. I’d also have to stay overnight because there wouldn’t be a train available to take me back until morning.
To drive to Boston from my house would take 2 hours with no traffic so probably 3 hours in reality.
BIG NOPE. Public transport to a city from the ‘countryside’ is basically nonexistent. But I guess you have to define countryside. Where I am, getting to downtown Nashville by car from a decent sized farm is about an hour’s drive.
To get to the nearest bus station would take walking about 100 km, so it’s not realistic.
For me it is very easy to take the Amtrak or a bus to Boston.
It’s just a matter of driving a short distance to the station and then taking the Downeaster to Boston North Station or the bus to Logan or North Station.
Countryside means no public transit most of the time.
If you live in the “countryside,” you drive. You don’t have public transport.
Public transportation is only in the city; there is nothing to link countryside to cities. (At least, not where I live). You drive your own vehicle.
Even the outer suburbs don’t often have any easy access to public transit. It’s completely unavailable in most rural areas.
There is absolutely no convenience to go from the countryside to a big city.
For myself it’s 45 minutes to a smallish/midsize city, 2 1/2 hours to the right to a major metropolitan area, 2 hours in the other direction to a college city, and 3 1/2 hours if I want to hit the other major metropolitan area on the other side of the college city. It takes planning days ahead, and lots of money for gas or for whatever I’m going there for if it’s not a doctor appointment.
Impossible. There are no buses that come thru my town. I’m going to drive the most part of an hour to see a concert. But, it’s the same drive I make every day going to work, so I think nothing of it.
Not an option unless I wish to walk about 15 miles back and forth.
There is no public transport available for moving around inside of North Carolina.
My home town is served by Amtrak’s Silver Star. I could walk a few blocks, board a train, and get off in Washington, New York etc. to my North, or all the way down to Orlando in the South. Mind you, ONE train makes a daily run down and up the Eastern seaboard, it comes through twice a day, early in the morning and late at night. This isn’t typical; I just happen to live in a town with a functioning Amtrak station, and I’ve never once been able to take Amtrak to where I actually needed to go. So it’s pretty much a non-starter.
Some cities themselves lack reliable public transit themselves; just as you said, it can be a logistical nightmare or downright impossible. People are very car-dependent when traveling from rural to urban areas, either to get to a far off train/bus station or just driving directly to their destination. There was a period of time I lived about 2 hours outside of a city in the Midwest and I would just drive home after concerts, as it was just not quite far enough for me to justify getting a hotel.
Suburban areas often have a bus or train stop somewhere, but rural areas almost never do. I don’t think it would be reasonable to run a bus to a town of less than a thousand people or an area where the houses are half a km apart anyway. Keep in mind that there are places in this country where the nearest grocery store is 15km or more away. The USA is less populous but geographically larger than Europe. A lot of our states are the size of a European nation but some of them still have less than a million people. Even if we didn’t have very weak public transit, there would still be areas where it doesn’t make sense.
I live in Texas. No public transportation from rural areas to urban. And by urban we are mostly talking about a city of 1 million having public transportation. The population is heavily resistant to any talk of public transportation beyond building more highways, which they don’t like either.
I live about 40 miles outside Chicago. As long as the event is over by 12:40 (or at leas I can get to union station by 12:40) I can get a train that’s an 1:10 ride and about a 10 dollar Uber ride. Be in bed by 2:10 or so
We all own cars
The train tracks that run through my small countryside town used to carry passengers to/from the nearby city. It stopped carrying passengers (and no longer stops here at all) once it became common for everyone to own a car.
Generally, what little public transit is available will be confined to the urban center of a city and won’t even connect outlying suburbs. The primary exception being trains but they only connect urban centers together and don’t usually have stops outside of central terminals
Essentially impossible. You’d have to walk 10 miles to get to the nearest bus stop.
Most towns of 10,000 people will have at least some kind of bus service to somewhere. The issue is getting to that town.
America is the size of Europe, and most of it is lightly populated. Putting a bus line in to Worms, Nebraska with a population of 4 people, isn’t justifiable.
You drive, or get a ride to a bigger city with a bus.
I’m in the suburbs and about a 25 minute drive to the big sports arena downtown of the very large city near me.
It would take me about 12 mins in good weather to walk to the nearest bus stop which is really just a spot on the side of the road with no benches or anyplace to even park a bike. Then about an hour on 2 different bus routes if they are on time. So at least 1 hour and 15 mins to get there. There is no train I could take. So guess what ? I’m driving.
So, I can kind of do this from my small town (village of 3,000 people within a larger town of maybe 10,000).
There is a free public bus that stops near my home that I can take to the college that’s across the river and two towns over.
From there, there is a charter bus that runs daily to Boston, about 5 hours away.
But while city people might call my home the “countryside,” it’s really not. We’re on town water and town sewage. Folks in the real country have no access to the bus, and would need a car to get to the bus stop.
Usually suburban and always rural parts of the US have no public transportation. In the rare occasion they do, it will always take longer and cost more than driving, even with traffic.
I spent half a year in the Allgäu in Germany (rural) and what was immediately apparent there was the layout of rural Europe was way different from the US.
In particular, rural areas still had town centers/villages of some type, albeit very small. The ferienwohnung I rented was in a small town at the base of a 6000 ft mountain at the foothill of the Alps. I could easily walk a few blocks to the main street, catch a bus over to the next towns train station, then off to Kempten->Munich->Anywhere in Europe. Still two transfers but reasonable without much walking.
In the US rural areas are not laid out as such, often there is no central village or area, and even if there is there isn’t a network of transit between smaller towns to larger towns that lets you transfer to progressively larger forms of transit. It’s very segmented.
*Only* using public transport?
**Impossible.**
100% completely impossible. Out of the question. Not happening.
Public transportation in the US doesn’t go out into the countryside (or small towns), it’s strictly and urban thing. It’s specific to cities, and unless you’re in a large city it’s often pretty limited in routes and available times.
You could stand outside of a house in the countryside or a small town for years or decades, but no public transportation bus is coming by, there aren’t passenger commuter trains to walk to that will take you into the cities.
If you live in the countryside, you *de facto* require an automobile of some kind or you’re stranded wherever you’re at.
You can’t. There is literally no public transport where I live.
Literally impossible
I’m only twelve miles away from the nearest city and there’s still no public transportation. The best I can do is a $40 (one-way) Uber ride.
Yeah that’s not a thing here.
When I lived in Mississippi, it was literally impossible. There was *no* public transportation at all in the town I lived in. There were two “taxis” (and I literally mean two physical cars) that you had to call beforehand to use, and people usually only used them when they were drunk. I was not able to leave that town if I wanted to without a car. The closest cities to me that hosted concerts were either two or two and a half hours away, both in different states. The closest city with public transport was an hour away, and that transport was very limited because it was a college town and the public transport was largely for college students. So yeah, impossible.
There is no public transport to get to the closest big city
just no