Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Spaceopoly Kill This Thread X: The Sixth 24-Hour Thread

I like the horizontal setup more. Vertical lights seem so weird to me.

Belo Horizonte is a city in Brazil.

BraJa, when I moved to Houston 16 years ago, it took me the longest time to get used to horizontal traffic lights.

But then, I've never gotten used to people calling a shopping cart a "basket", when, of course, I naturally (thanks to growing up near Boston) call it a "carriage".

Having lived in Houston my whole life, Atlanta's vertical lights took me by surprise!

Having lived in the Philippines my whole life,, I got used to traffic lights merely being a suggestion.

That might get you into trouble in some places, Ibby.

One thing I really miss about living in Boston is the public transit. You can get almost anywhere there by it. In Houston, getting by without a car is very difficult. I lived here without a car for over two years. It wasn't easy.

I also always thought that public transport was very well developed in most big cities in the USA. Certainly far better than the underdeveloped mass transport system here.

Public transit is well developed in cities in the Northeast, the West Coast and the Midwest (with the exception of Detroit). Most of the South (with the exception of Atlanta, which has great transit, and, to a lesser extent, Dallas) has public transit that is good for getting in and out of central business districts, but little else. Houston is working on improving it. We do have the METRORail light rail n line, which will soon be expanding to three lines, but there is a strong car culture here. Getting people to leave their cars at home (or at a transit station) is difficult. Just before I moved here, someone joked to me that Texans would drive to the bathroom if they could figure out how.

Thanks for the insight, Rocky! I love learning more about the diverse USA. I have only spent about 2 weeks on the Northeast and about 2 months in Los Angeles so I have very little in the way of actual observations.

Incidentally, I didn't really notice buses or trains in LA. Taxis were plentiful though. We had to drive a borrowed can to get around. As traffic rules are much more strictly enforced in LA, I remember being very tense and nervous

I've never been to L.A., but conventional wisdom is that it's a town in which you have to have a car.

Atlanta's transit system, MARTA, is very useful.

I live in the second largest metropolitan area of my state, about 20 minutes from downtown by car. Public bus routes stop about halfway. Without a car, there's no way I could get downtown...or to work, which is just 7 miles away.

That DOES make me feel a little bit better about the limited coverage of the train systems here in the Philippine capital.

Most Americans live in places where owning a car makes life easier. The few places where it doesn't are in places where public transit never went out of style, such as New York or Boston. In parts of those cities, car ownership can actually be a problem.

I've heard, too, that it can be very impractical to own a car in New York. Traffic can be quite bad and parking can be very expensive.

I live in a town that received a big influx of people around 30 years ago. As part of that, they spent quite a bit on some pretty good roads. These days, any changes are done as cheaply as possible.

Sadly, lack of foresight has meant that the roads and infrastructure over here have badly needed updating for years. Our train system is a dangerously crowded can of sardines. I'm glad Blaze doesn't take it anymore.

Of course it's impossible to predict how cities will grow and what people's reactions will be. At one time, Boston (a city with great transit, by the way) had planned a large system of urban freeways. The people who would have been displaced by them, as well as those who wanted to preserve Boston's historic character. Ultimately, it was stopped.

Unfortunately, the Central Artery, which had already been built as an elevated freeway through the city, now did not have the bypasses it was originally designed to have. This brought more traffic snarls to an already congested city. The solution was to rebuild the artery underground. It was called "The Big Dig". Now, signed as Interstate 93, it runs under Central Boston.

That's a very interesting history lesson, Rocky. Thanks.

Development of train systems here is slowed down because of incompetence, red tape, allegations of corruption, and what some call the violence and disdain of the ruling classes towards everybody else.

I still haven't registered to vote. I'm a terrible American citizen.

A lot of people here don't bother to vote because they believe their vote won't make a difference. But I still vote anyway.

It's commendable that you still exercise your civic duty.

Why, thank you. It's very tempting to just spend Election Day sleeping. But I guess I'm still hopeful things will get better.

In 2004, the morning after Dubya Bush was re-elected, I was driving to work, feeling miserable, and then the radio played Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over." That made me feel better.

Sometimes when I'm feeling bad, I will belt out "Don't Stop Believin" in the car. The Glee Regionals version.