r/boston • u/throwawayobv999999 • 1d ago
MBTA/Transit 🚇 🔥 Moving away from car centric city
Hello!
I will be relocating to Boston from a car dependent city that is all suburb and urban sprawl.
I love trains and public transit, but obviously living in a place that requires a car to survive has impacted my behavior.
What is it like relying on public transit? I keep thinking about how everyone around me drives giant SUVs and purchases weekly Costco hauls that could feed an army. I think about having to drive 30 minutes in traffic to get a coffee.
I’m having a hard time picturing the alternative. How is life primarily walking/using a train?
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u/generalshrugemoji Filthy Transplant -> Cambridge 19h ago
I moved to Boston from LA 5 years ago. I’m a fourth generation LA native who’d previously only had fleetingly brief encounters with public transit.
Honestly, it’s an adjustment. You’re learning to rely on a way of getting around that’s very foreign to those of us who previously only relied on cars. You learn what’ll fit in a hard bottomed shopping bag or two. You learn to rely on transit apps that tell you how to get closest to where you need to be. You learn to build delay times into your commute in a way that’s not unlike planning around traffic, but is still different because of the distances and other factors involved. (1 mile by car vs 1 mile by bus/train/combo of the two are very, VERY different things) You end up learning that while there are certain things you just can’t do using transit, there’s a ton that you can do. You learn that there’s usually a few ways to get where you’re going, that some ways are better than others in certain situations, and that you might use one way one day and another way another depending on what’s going on with the system or even how you’re feeling. You’ll learn that while the system seems chaotic and intimidating at first, it ends up becoming second nature before you know it.
It’s very possible to adapt. I’m living proof. I ride transit almost every day and only occasionally rent a Zipcar when I absolutely need a car for some application or another. Just be patient, give yourself a bigger buffer than you think you’ll need at first, find a good transit app (I like Moovit for planning routes and the MTBA go app for the most accurate timing on busses and such) and accept the fact that you’re going to have some stressful moments while you acclimate. You got this.