Transit: Getting Around

How do you take transit in a new place?

• How do you buy a ticket?
• Can you use an app?
• How do you find where the bus goes?
• How do you get on?
• Is this the same everywhere?

We’re exploring the quirks of getting around without a car. These little research excursions show our successes and failures, likes and dislikes, victories and surprises.

From this, we hope to assemble a quick-start guide, to help you navigate a new, unfamiliar place successfully on transit and on foot.

We start by looking at a city’s transit website. Then we actually visit the place and try using it. Sometimes something that sounds easy ends up tricky; other times it’s easier than expected. Sometimes there are surprises that make a trip inconvenient or even impossible.

Our goal isn’t to describe everything about a city’s transit; it’s to show the essentials you need to ride it well enough. If you showed up and stepped off a plane or Amtrak, how do you get to your hotel?