> Out of curiosity, how often do you ride the bus?

Not as often as I should, but more often than most.  It depends on
how convenient the bus is to where I want to go:  I live at the
confluence of three major bus routes, so I can get most places by
bus quite easily.  I ride at least two or three times a week.

> I find that in most places, public transportation is vastly inferior to
> traveling by car. For example, here in Phoenix it takes about fifteen
> minutes to reach a certain destination by car, and approximately an hour to
> get there by bus. Not counting the walking time to/from the bus stations.

I agree.  But it's a chicken-and-egg problem:  public transportation sucks
because it isn't used heavily enough to be cost-effective to expand it, and
no one uses it because it isn't thorough enough.  Ultimately, the market may
demand public transportation be used because the cost of personal
transport becomes excessive for daily use (i.e., commuting, grocery
getting, etc.).

I'd ride the bus to work, but for me it goes beyond inconvenient to almost
impossible.  I live IN town, and work just outside of town.  All the buses
run basically from my office to my home in the morning, and vice versa in
the afternoon.  Of course, my commute is short (~5 miles), so cost-wise,
as long as I'm going to own a car anyway, it's cheaper for me to drive than
to ride the bus.  Driving only saves me about 30 to 45 minutes over the bus,
but the convenience is hard to beat.

> This may be counterintuitive, but fluorescent lights are about twice as
> energy efficient as LEDs.

They have their drawbacks- many people find fluorescent lights to be
unpleasant to work under.  If it were simply a matter of efficiency, the
incandescent bulb would be long gone.

Mike H.
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