Would you take the bus to work if it meant a 1/2 mile walk at each end of the bus route?

I would probably do that (assuming you're young and physically able to walk). 2 miles is nothing, and it's good exercise anyway. Try it out and see how it goes. And besides, you have your car anyway, so you can use it when you need to. I'm in Southern California.

Well, I live about 1 minute walk from my nearest bus stop, but about 15 minutes walk from college. I have no car, so i'm forced to use the bus or the northern rail train. I use the bus to save me around £1 a week, but it also means no travelling the 1 1/2 miles to the train station - usually on foot, or £1 each way on the bus (thanks to Arriva's "great value" fares). I live on Teesside, in England - where public transport is much more frequent, and widespread, then in the USA

My husband does pretty much this except he makes it much more palatable by taking his bike. It's about 3 miles to the station on one end, only a few blocks on the other. He carries a laptop on his back about half the time. To be fair, we're in the SF Bay Area and the weather here makes it possible. He'll even ride on rainy days, though. He's pretty hardy, and he hates driving.

I have a similar dilemma in real life. I live 20 miles outside of downtown LA, where my office is. Normally, it takes between 45-70 minutes, door to door, to drive to work, with the average being right around 50 minutes. To take public transportation, my day would look like this: Drive to the train station - 10 minutes Park, walk to platform, wait for train - 5-10 minutes Train ride (blue line) - 50 minutes Walk across train station to transfer trains and wait for red line - 5-10 minutes From red line station to my office - 10 minute walk (1/4 mile outdoors) So, the BEST case if I take public transportation is 75 minutes, and more if I can't find a parking space or if I miss-time the trains. The other bad part is that my downtown station is in a bad area (within a mile of the "Skid Row" area), and I almost always leave the office after dark (usually betwen 7-9 pm). Believe me, if there was a way to avoid the two hours of driving I do every day, I would do it. But I can't stomach the idea of adding another 30-60 minutes onto my commute, even if someone else is driving.

It depends. If the weather really sucks that would put a bite in the idea. Walking half a hile through a thunderstorm or icy rain would definitely make me reconsider. Then again, most buses will let you take a bike on, or mount the bike in a rack on the bus. Even so, it's a tough way to get around sometimes. Good luck. I lived for 7 years in Chicago without a car and though the buses and trains are filthy, they come and go on time, and it's hard to sneeze on a randomly selected street in Chicago without hearing "bless you" from a bus driver (metaphorically speaking, anyway).