In this episode, you'll meet Louis and Chris, two city-obsessed nerds who want to share their love of all things related to transit.
In this episode, you'll meet Louis and Chris, two city-obsessed nerds who want to share their love of all things related to transit.
Welcome to transit tangents, the podcast where we will dive into the world of urban mobility. Join us as we explore the systems that keep our cities moving, interview transit experts from across the US uncover the past events that got us where we are today, and discover the exciting future that lies ahead. All of this and more is coming up on transit tangents.
Louis:Hey, everybody, welcome to the first episode of transit tangents. My name is Luis, I'm Chris, I think we're both very excited to be releasing what we've been working on to the world at this point.
Chris Jones:It's been a couple of couple of weeks of hard work a lot of filming, and getting ready for this. This final release. Yeah, and just released the final, the very first verse and the final.
Louis:Well, and that's gonna be about it. The final release now. Yeah, so basically, we are putting this podcast together all things transit related, rather than us just explaining it to you. First, we put together a little supercut, if you will, of some of the first episodes that we put together. So without further ado, let's take a watch or listen to what we've done so far.
Chris Jones:So as you can see, we are going to dive into all types of topics on the podcast, where you're going to have some really fun and some crazy challenges coming up. As you can see, from the highlight reel, we are teaching a friend how to ride the bus. We're talking to longtime transit users in the city. And we're also talking about some upcoming projects in the Austin area. But don't worry, it's not going to be Austin all the time. We are going to check out some other cities as well. Totally
Louis:Yeah. And we had a lot of fun putting those first couple together. Try to get like a variety of opinions. The bus, one for me was really fun to put together in particular, just as someone who uses the bus a fairly decent amount going with someone who'd never done it before. It's like fun to see. See it from the perspective of someone who's never used it really before and like yeah, as it
Chris Jones:was good for you to put together it was me cringing the whole time saying like, Oh, why did I not think of how to use an app? Why did not think of this? I was like an idiot. Yeah,
Louis:but yeah, lots of lots of fun stuff to come though. So if you're seeing us for the first time you want to see that please make sure you subscribe or follow or whatever platform you're listening or watching on out to make sure you catch all of that good stuff. But enough about all of that. Let's get into why are we actually doing this? So Chris, why for you? What is it that's pushing you towards doing this? And I've got my own reasons. You've got your reasons, a lot of them overlap. But yeah,
Chris Jones:yeah, for me, when I when we first are talking about this idea, there's this question that came to mind that I run into this scenario all the time where someone says, I really love blank city, but I just wish that we had public transit. And that question kind of frustrates me because a lot of cities do have public transit. And we should be more active and figuring out how to use this the systems that exist in our city. So my idea from this is, or what I hope that we achieved with this is that we're teaching people how to use the transit in their city, educating people on what options are out there, talking about things that are coming up in the future. All of that really interests me and I want it to interest other people too. Totally.
Louis:Yeah. I mean, a lot of my reasons align there as well. But like, I also enjoy, you know, it's easy to be like hyper focused in your community or where you've lived and grown up or used public transit, but also to learn more about how other places Do it, you know, like, we're going to talk about places that we haven't been to before that we're going to travel to. And like taking lessons from other cities that are doing a good job, and seeing how you can apply them in your own place in your own city is, I think, really valuable. And you can learn quite a bit there. And and we're going to
Chris Jones:talk to people in those cities to decide if they actually are doing a good job. Yeah, the outside maybe it's great. But once you're there, who knows? Right?
Louis:Yeah. So lots to look forward to. And I mean, what's really like motivated me in the last year really, just to like, share some of my own story with this is almost two years ago, now, I guess, a year and a half ago, I actually sold a vehicle about two months after buying an E bike. And you'll hear me singing the praises of E bikes over and over and over again, throughout this podcast almost as much as gondolas. We'll get to the gondolas later. But yeah, I mean, frankly, that sounds dramatic, my ebike has changed my life. It has though, it's a I, again, I got it, I was basically stopped using my car for 90% of trips around the same time I moved in with my partner. So we have one car in our household that now mostly sits in the driveway, because I successfully converted my partner Jerry, onto the religion of E bikes. We
Chris Jones:Colt Aviva, we
Louis:use them all the time, though, and I joke often that like, like, we'll be riding home from a concert or something at night. And I'd be like, like, is this real, we're just like riding down like nice. For the most part, you know, we live in a part of town, that's pretty bikable. Just like it's really changed my life for the better. And it's made me think about different ways to get around and how, you know, over reliance on cars, while it may, you know, sound like freedom to some people having other options to me feels like more freedom. I'm not against cars, by any means we use a car, but looking at other whether it be public transit, whether it be bikes, whether you know all these different things. So for me, I've actually had like an awakening over the last couple of years, I
Chris Jones:like the way like the way you put that I'm not part of the ebike cold yet yet. But I am mostly a car user. As we've begun this project, I've been experimenting a little bit more with the public transit system in Austin. But most of my experience in public transit has been when I'm traveling to cities all over the country, or Europe, or wherever. And I do travel a lot. And, you know, it's really easy for me to jump on a train to go somewhere like from the airport or when I'm in downtown. But I've always been a little intimidated by buses and other forms of public transit. So I'm excited to get into this and learn more about those options. But being primarily a car user, I would like to use public transit more. Unfortunately, where I live in town, it's not super easy. For those who know, Austin, half the city is sort of very hilly, I live on that half. And we also discovered the other day, the closest bus stop, to me is a 35 minute walk, which I first did it. And it was very hot that day, despite it being winter, because it's Texas. Yeah. So I'm really excited to get into this. Yeah. Alright, so to get started, I'm just going to run through a few different types of transportation. And I really want to get your feedback on these different different types of transportation. So we can sort of show people all the things that we're going to talk about on the show totally. So first up easiest one buses, buses, right? I
Louis:mean, it's kind of like the bedrock of public transportation in so many cities, you're going to be hard pressed to find a place that doesn't have buses, unless you're talking very rural. I would say it's one of those things that as we'll talk about in the next couple episodes, actually, one of those things that a lot of people are weary to us for the first time. But they I would make the argument that in most cases we're going to be showcasing that maybe they shouldn't be so weary. There's obviously things we worry about with everything in this world. But on the list of those things buses is not near the top so Yeah, well I but I think it's crucial for so many cities. So many people here in Austin and in cities across the country rely on buses in a major way. And you know what, we'll definitely there's ways to improve it but it's a it's a bedrock fundamental piece of any good well rounded public transportation system.
Chris Jones:Very nice. aptly put. I'm becoming a believer in buses. Now after having some experience with the the other shoots that we've done and having the experience in Austin, it actually is pretty convenient, depending on where you are in town, so I'll leave it at that. So they don't spoil anything for the upcoming episodes. Yeah. This next one is pretty easy. But when you think of public transit, what's the first type that comes to mind?
Louis:Well, I think for most people, the answer is train. For me, it's gondola. We'll get into that now. How to train for sure. And there's just so many varieties of train obviously, you've got like, people think, you know, now, high speed rail is gets a lot of the conversation even though you know, we don't really have it in the United States. But in other parts of the world, we look at their systems you've got, you know, regional rail to go from city to city, but I think for most people, they think subway, you know, metro systems, light rail, that sort of stuff, you know, makes a pretty big impact. And I would say it's like, what most people probably put in their, like, top tier of public transit in the US is like New York City subways or something like that. Yeah,
Chris Jones:I agree that I think when most people make the statement, like I mentioned earlier about I love blank city, but I just wish we had public transit. They're really saying, I wish we had trains. Yes. I wish you had trains. I wish you had light rail, replacing the buses? Because again, people are wary about buses.
Louis:Yeah. buses aren't sexy. And there are there are people who won't. Who would would ride a train but won't ride a bus. I would say that. Yeah.
Chris Jones:I was I'm kind of I was kind of one of those people again before this. But it wasn't Yeah, I didn't have a prejudice against buses. It was just more. You'll see in the later video, I had a lot of anxiety. We called it cord anxiety. I didn't know when to how to make the bus stop. I didn't know how to make it. Stop for me.
Louis:Yeah, and knowing the routes and all that sort of stuff is so much more obvious. The you know,
Chris Jones:retrain is gonna go right. It's not going to deviate off that hopefully, hopefully, it's not going to deviate off the tracks very far. But you know exactly where it's gonna go. The stations are fixed on a bus, it's a little more flexible. There's traffic, there's accidents, there's roadwork to bump so you know, there's a little more question to it. I also think that trains typically are a little more on time. So maybe I'm wrong about that. We'll find out. But yeah, so I think that's where most people think about public transit is definitely the train for sure. One that is really common in the world, but we don't have much experience here. But varies. Yeah,
Louis:I mean, I think given the right location, that can be very useful. And I would say probably affordable tool to do it. You don't need to build tracks. You don't need to build roads. You literally just need dogs and boats. Yeah, just add water. And you can. Yeah, I would say there's probably I haven't really thought about there's probably a lot of places in the United States that could majorly benefit from like good ferry lines and have it be a pretty low cost
Chris Jones:on investing fast ferries also think very, very travel. Anytime I've taken one. It's pretty slow. And I used to have a lot more experience because where I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, there is a ferry that takes you from dolphin Island, which is this barrier island, south of the city to Fort Morgan Peninsula. And it's only about a three mile gap. It's a 45 minute ferry.
Louis:Yeah, that's 45 minutes insanely slow, actually. Yeah. Wow.
Chris Jones:So I've always been turned off by using ferries. For when you see them, like, oh, it's gonna take so long. Yeah. But then I go to, you know, go to New York or you go to Boston, and they are ferries that are actually a part of the transportation network. And they're fairly quick,
Louis:fairly quick.
Chris Jones:But yeah, so I think we'll definitely talk more about those. And what's really interesting, and I've been reading up a lot more about communities like in Alaska, even and some in the Northeast that rely on ferries, you have to take a ferry to get from point A to point B. Otherwise, it is like a day's long car ride. Yeah. To get around. So really excited actually talking about those.
Louis:Yeah, the ferry episode. Stay tuned. Yeah.
Chris Jones:Another easy one. So airports and air travel? Yeah,
Louis:it's a it's an interesting one, too. I feel like the US is especially especially because we don't have high speed rail, like other parts of the country, or sorry, other parts of the world. It's, we take flights that are kind of laughable to other parts of the world, I would say in a lot of cases. Right? Yeah. If I'm Minister used to Yeah, and it's, uh, you know, those are places that high speed rail can make a big thing. So maybe that could be a fun episode talking about that. But But planes, obviously also have a gap, you're not going to have high speed rail from LA to Washington, DC will basically never make sense unless they invent like, crazy. I don't know, there'll be wild, a plane is going to have to fill those long gaps all the time. But yeah, I mean, probably most people listening to this have experienced taking a plane at one point or another. So whether your city has public transit or not. And yeah, no, I
Chris Jones:agree. I think, again, we're talking about all types of transit and air travel in the US were so heavily dependent on it, which I work with a lot of Europeans and their experience and traveling in mind are so different. Yeah, it's because of the train networks. So I'm really excited to talk about that as well. But also we have some really cool airport projects in the US happening right now. So that's going to fill up some content later. Yeah. Biking and I guess we can include e bikes in those if you want to. If you want to sing the praises of you'd like cold? Yeah,
Louis:I mean, I sing them a little bit already. So I'll hold back a little bit this time. But of course, bikes is like such an easy way to get around people, especially if you're in a city, a lot of cities who are like heavily investing in their kind of bike networks and whatnot. So whether that be like protected bike lanes, you know, urban trails, that sort of stuff. So I love to see all those sorts of different projects, I kind of like nerd out about them. When I was it's not in city skylines to yet, but when I was playing city skylines, I would have like, really great bike networks in my cities. And I would like take the time to do that. So but bikes can play a major roll, and especially e bikes, now. You know, they can, if your city is like Austin, where we're not the densest city, they can make the lack of density, so much easier to kind of make up for with an E bike. And also just like, cost effectiveness versus a car. Like you can, in a lot of cases actually replace a car with an E bike. And it's in a city even like Austin, and people are doing it. So I think that bikes are a major part of of all this right now. Yeah. And
Chris Jones:one thing that I'm really happy to see in more cities and Austin, especially in New York, you have things like the the city bike system in New York, any type of bike rental program, where you literally pick the bike up from a kiosk and then you get to ride it to the next kiosk. Oh, it's a great, it's a great way to fill that transit gap. Totally. So again, we'll talk a little bit more about that. I have a great experience from college where we tried to do free bikes on campus. It did not go well. I haven't heard that story. Oh, it's good. It's good. It's coming up. Alright, so this one's gonna be a little bit more controversial. Many cities have banned this type of transportation. But scooters?
Louis:Yeah. Austin is not one of those cities. No, it's there. There are pros and cons to the scooters. Don't get me wrong. I am generally pro scooter. And we're talking like the rental scooters like bird or lime or Lyft. Yeah, there's a million different versions of them. I generally like them because they help fill that gap for a lot of people have like, you know, getting the last mile or whatever, from wherever they're going. I would say that a lot. I think it eliminates some car trips, I would say. And frankly in a city like Austin and even a lot of cities though, like you can't get to the final destination super easy. There's a lot of places that have like, you know, getting that final mile. It's good for I will say though that there's a lot of downsides of like just like down scooters all over the place all over the sidewalks strewn about the grass and like, it runs into issues for people who are trying to like navigate on a wheelchair or something you get to a sidewalk that's like clogged with a bunch of scooters that are just parked in weird places. And that's a problem. But yeah,
Chris Jones:I agree. That is definitely a problem. And we see that in Austin. We see it in other cities. I don't know how many scooters are in town, like at this point. Enough Enough. That it's more of an environmental hazard. Yeah. So definitely controversial. I will say I, I have been guilty of being a scooter advocate. Because I used to work in downtown Austin and being able to take the scooter from my office to you know, across downtown to have lunch with somebody and five minutes versus getting in my car or taking 20 minutes to walk. Yeah. It was nice. It was nice to have it now when I see scooters that are really far removed from downtown in residential neighborhoods. I don't know how they got there. They don't kind of like maybe they don't need to be there. It's kind of weird. Yeah. But for the downtown more urban cores of their of our cities. I do think that they can some motorbikes fill that transportation gap.
Louis:Totally. Yeah, I would say though, given and maybe we should talk about this in detail at some point, but like the pros and cons of like the scooter model versus the like, kind of dockable bike model.
Chris Jones:I do wish that scooters had dogs, like I think that would solve a lot of the problems is that can be a fun episode in the future to like dockable scooters dockable scooters, yeah, yeah. The motion for scooters. Alright, so it kind of on that same topic of these companies that have sort of disrupted this transit scene. rideshare so we're talking Uber Lyft in Austin, we have a company called wings and a few others. There's the Fetty buses that are like the rideshare Sprinter vans where you can take like 568 people. Yeah, what are your thoughts on rideshare?
Louis:I mean, again, I think it kind of fills a fills a gap that needs to be filled at the moment. I mean, again, public transit isn't gonna get you everywhere. Unfortunate as it stands right now at least and it also you know, once you get a bigger group of people, it starts to make financial sense to do that sort of thing. And I would also say that it can in some cases help people get rid of a car if it's like okay, I need you know, someone like me, I need a car for like a couple trips a month, rather than spending a couple $100 A month or for some people the average car payments insane is six $700 A month or whatever add on insurance, all that other stuff for me it was lower but Um, you know, if I have to get four Ubers a month, that's still, you know, so gonna be
Chris Jones:totally Yeah, I like I like rideshare, especially when I keep saying this, but fills the gap it when, say you're out late at night and the buses aren't running their full schedule or the train has stopped at midnight, for whatever reason, the night, it's really hard to get back to your place rideshares the option, though I think that, you know, it stops people from driving drunk, they do serve a purpose in the transit network. And so I'm in support now. We'll get into to the rideshare companies and some of the tactics that they've used to secure their places in the cities, especially against like the taxi industry. That's,
Louis:that's a lot of really interesting discussion that we can have there. And I would also say that they're necessary. Yeah, and I would say that cities shouldn't use it as an excuse to like, not have their transit run past midnight on a Saturday, which is like a thing that many, many cities across the US are guilty of, or at least having the service deplete like tremendously after 11 or whatever it may be. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Jones:100%. Yeah. These are also some some other options that are, some people may not think of immediately as transit day, they're not gonna be forthcoming their mind, but sidewalks, an integral part of the transportation network. You have to have good sidewalks to be able to get from the bus stop to your destination. For anybody who has any type of mobility assistance needed. If you're a wheelchair user, you rely on good sidewalks to get you around. If you're in a really dense area, and there's no bike lane, it's sometimes safer. And depending on depending on if it's legal in your right, yeah, not every city is illegal. But in some cases, if there's a roadway where you don't feel safe on your bicycle, the sidewalk is an option. So I think sidewalks are part of transit. Totally,
Louis:totally. Totally. And I think at one point, we're talking about this, like, arguably, sidewalks probably move more people in a lot of cities than any other form of transit, including roads. In New York. Yeah. Yeah. The end. Like it's funny because like, you're having to use your on legs on it, but like, it is like a mode of transit that yeah, it's getting around and kind of if we're gonna talk about roads, which we are, then sidewalks are very similar that totally Yeah, vein
Chris Jones:PRTs.
Louis:Yeah. So this is one I didn't know this. At one point, when we discussed this, you were like, What do you think about PRTs? And I was like, What the hell's BRT?
Chris Jones:If you had to guess what it stood for at that time? What do you think?
Louis:I would try to think of what I think I said, public rapid transit or something or personal rep. Oh, it is. That's what I didn't get there. On the first one, but yeah, personnel rapid transit. These are kind of like, well, there's some conversations about these kind of making a comeback. But there's one system that you've pointed out in West Virginia, yeah,
Chris Jones:Morgantown, West Virginia has the probably the most successful, successfully run PRT system in the US, US history. There's a bunch of West Virginia campuses and the PRT sort of very students back and forth, not not with a very, but very students back and forth between the campuses. And so it's a really interesting one, I think, definitely warrants a visit from us. Yeah. But when I think of PRTs I also think of the the Tesla tunnel in Vegas. Yeah, very similar concept.
Louis:And I believe the Las Vegas City Council like earlier this year, in 2023, they passed some sort of funding to actually like expand that pretty extensively, to have like stations that all sorts of casinos and like people will literally be moving around in Tesla's in the tunnels which feels funny and inefficient to have them in Tesla's just for the sake of having them in Tesla's but that's a whole other conversation, but
Chris Jones:you haven't been at the Tesla total.
Louis:I have not. Have you been in it? No, I haven't. Okay, I need to check. That could be cool. Yeah. Yeah. So
Chris Jones:we come Vegas. Yeah. Coming up coming your way. Yep. And then the last one, so you're gonna notice, this is going to be a running theme through the whole show. You've probably seen it on the logo already. Literally plastered with it. But gondolas.
Louis:Yeah, Chris and I both have just a we once went and met for drinks. And I think we talked for probably 45 minutes about how like, even in a city like Austin, where a lot of people probably don't think it would make sense, although there was a push here at one point for gondolas, but yeah, but there's still I gondolas just seemed to make so much sense for so many different reasons. And you'll hear all sorts of them obviously, like we're talking Gumball is like you might see at a ski resort or something like that, but you also do see them in real application and cities around the world. I have had the absolute honor and privilege of visiting one city in the world that uses them seamlessly with their metro system, and that's in Medellin in Colombia. It literally you you get your day pass on a train, and you can like transfer by getting off of a train and literally walk Looking straight onto a gondola, and when I say walking straight onto a gondola I mean it because there's no wait for a gondola ever. There's always one coming and if you miss that one guess what, there's another one to literally right behind it. So that's
Chris Jones:who any skier or snowboarder. There's always a wait for a gondola. Well, nonimaging That's,
Louis:that's fair. That's fair in that context, I guess. Yes. Wow. Okay, wow, you're really bringing me down right now.
Chris Jones:We're highly pro gondola. We understand not everybody is pro gondola. There's a reason why Austin didn't move forward with its plan. They didn't feel like it was smart. They didn't feel like it moves enough people or like it was going to that it was going to be as efficient as a train or bus. So there's arguments.
Louis:I actually don't know how you can make the argument that it's worse than a bus. It's not the point of this.
Chris Jones:But it is something that that we both really enjoy. And it's kind of a goofier version of public transit. Like I like the idea of this city where you just see gondolas moving in multiple directions. And that's kind of why we chose the logo because we both nerd out about them. And we have this secret desire for gondolas. I
Louis:lately mentioned city skylines earlier, but my last city skylines, one city had had some decent gondola coverage, I will say, I think we
Chris Jones:should start a city skylines it'd be like transit town, or tangent town. And we'll just try different modes of public transportation.
Louis:There'll be like heavily focused on just one thing, that will be cool. We might have to do it in city skylines one, which will be a thing because it because you only have gondolas in city skylines when you don't have it into yet. So I didn't realize it. Yeah, it's a major, no bikes, and no gombos How am I playing that game? Right now? I just those are two things near and dear to my heart. So yeah, yeah.
Chris Jones:And then, of course, we're also gonna be talking about highway expansions. There's a big one in Austin. And there's an upcoming episode of transit tangents, where we talk about the expansion of i 35, which is looming over us in 2024. But we'll also talk about some cool highway projects, toll roads and everything in between, throughout the the episodes, right,
Louis:like them or not, they're a major reality for like, transit in the US, you know, highways between cities, to me make a whole lot of sense. But highways running through the middle of cities, we get into that in a future episode, where we'll kind of discuss that. So yeah. Yeah, that's, I mean, we're gonna be talking about all sorts of things like that. But before we kind of wrap things up for our first episode here, I'm just curious. Do you have any favorite transit memory or story or anything like that?
Chris Jones:I have. It's hard to pick a favorite story, I can tell you what my favorite experience was on transit. And this is somewhat recent, and I got to be a big train nerd about it. But my husband and I, Brent, we were celebrating, celebrating an anniversary and we were in Germany. And I had originally planned this trip to be nothing but like a train centric travel experience. I was planning on trains from Amsterdam to Cologne and Cologne to Stuttgart and we're going to do the whole thing with public transit. And two or three days before the trip, I got a text from her that said, Hey, I rented a car. Like, who goes to Europe and rents a car anyway. So we ended up there and to make up for us using a car for the entire trip. He took me to this little town outside of Cologne called Cooper tall. And in Hooper tall and I cannot pronounce the name of what it's actually called. But is the old the world's oldest monorail. And what's amazing about this is that it is a suspended train. It's two cars. It's suspended on one monorail. So it's not like what you think of when you think about Disney monorail and the Maglev it's not that it's literally just a train suspended from the air. And it follows this beautiful river through this valley town. And they have big glass windows on either end, and it is the most scenic and beautiful and interesting piece of transit I've ever seen. And that's that's so far has been my absolute favorite experience ever was getting to ride this train and super tall. And then we were just in New York and we went to the MoMA and at the MoMA, we were walking through one of the exhibits, and they had a video of the original trains of the super tall back in the I think the video is from the 20s Wow, that's pretty cool. It was amazing. Yeah, I got to like pull up my video and look at this video and be like, Hey, I just did this. Yeah, to everyone in the room and nobody was interested.
Louis:Just that's that is pretty cool. I've seen the videos of it, too. I hadn't seen I wasn't aware of that being where it was when you were there. I forget the name of the town you said already but super tall. Yeah, it was pretty cool. When you sent me that you were like check this thing out. I was like, Wow, is
Chris Jones:it? Yeah. What about you what's been one of your favorite or maybe even funniest experiences that you've had. So
Louis:this isn't even all like, I mean, actually, it follows the thing on the list here that you're kind of talking about. I had the A privilege my my partner Jerry was at a conference in Europe this summer. So he had like, kind of all expenses, flights and stuff taken care of for him. And I was like, okay, like I can I can make this happen. Like I had never been to Europe before. So we were in Italy for the summer now for the summer for two weeks. I wish. I wish I was in Italy for the summer, though, maybe someday. But on our way back, we went from our Airbnb in Florence, in downtown Florence, all the way to our apartment in Austin, Texas, without being in a private vehicle, which is pretty wild. So we went, we went from a, we walked to the tram line in downtown Florence. And it's this cute little tram that has, I think they have a couple lines in Florence. And we took it from downtown and it goes all the way out to the airport. And Florence got on the airport. Unfortunately, we had three flights on the way home because of just like the cost difference of doing it. So we flew from Florence to Paris, Paris to New York City. And then in New York City, wild actually, I forgot about this is an extra step that was dumb. In New York City, JFK is under construction. And we actually had to physically go outside of the airport to transfer to a different terminal, as in like walk outside of security. And then we had to wait for a bus outside of security, get on a bus to go to another terminal, and then get the last flight to Austin. And then at my old apartment in Austin, I lived right off of the 20, which is the one bus that runs to the airport in Austin. And we were getting off and I was like, you know, Jerry's just like ready to just get go to the Uber lot or whatever and go get it get an Uber and I was like, Jerry, it says the bus is gonna leave in five minutes, we might as well just go and the bus literally dropped like two and a half minutes from my old apartment. So we after traveling for like, 12 hours went and we got on the bus. And we got dropped off at our apartment at like, almost 11 o'clock at night after being influenced that
Chris Jones:morning. Yeah, that's amazing. And there's about it was about 12 hours door to door, do you think? Yeah, roughly? Yeah, I had an experience once where I was sitting in DC waiting for the red line, and the red line was delayed. I'm looking at my phone and I just I get the idea. Like, could I get home with just public transit from here. And so I did that. And for me to like, take the red line to Union Station to the Amtrak Amtrak to Chicago, Chicago to Austin, the 20 to downtown another bus to my place. It would have taken me about a week. So yeah, the fact that you can do that in 12 hours of Florence is amazing. Yeah, I can do it in a
Louis:week. It was kind of like a challenge. Because we also almost like we had a little bit of a walk to get to that tram and Florence even like we arguably should have taken a taxi or an Uber to the airport. But I was just kind of like had it in my head like No, no, no, no, we're not gonna because we like took the train all through Italy and everything. And yeah, I mean, I But otherwise, the
Chris Jones:mindset, it's so easy to kind of continue in that mindset. We're gonna find another way to do
Louis:this totally. And it's like, yeah, it was, I don't know, it was pretty funny to be able to say that, that we that we had done that, but I mean, I've got a lot of other funny, funny experiences. But I think that one kind of like, stands out that it's just like, it was kind of so ridiculous that, like so much time, exhausted at the end of it to just like so tired wanting to be home. And what was funny and like classic like pros and cons of the bus style. The bus was supposed to leave in five minutes, we ended up sitting there for like, 15 Because like the driver had to go to the bathroom. And like, Did you
Chris Jones:get any shift from Jerry where he was like, we could already be in Dubai.
Louis:I mean, I could feel the like eyes looking at me, but I didn't we I was just like, too tired to just like, No, I'm just gonna sit here. I can't imagine
Chris Jones:Jerry ever being angry though. Or like, or be like, we should have done this. I can't just can't imagine it. He's so sweet.
Louis:Well, it happens. Not Not very often. Not very
Chris Jones:often. At this point. Yeah. So I think it's a good recap of everything that we're going to talk about, again, multiple types of transit, everything from buses, to gondolas to sidewalks to scooters to highway. Yeah, everything in between, I guess to finish this up, what is the summary? What are you hoping to get out of this experience?
Louis:Yeah, I mean, I hope that it allows both me to, like, Look harder at some of these things and like, evaluate, you know, things that can be done in you know, my own local community that can make a difference. I mean, I think it didn't really strike me until the last year, year and a half or so that things as simple as like, you know, improving the sidewalks in your city or like the bike lanes or like a new trail or things like that could make such a difference. And like you saying something about it can make such a difference, you know, and yeah, I hope that it like number one, I learned more about all these things, but number two, maybe help encourage more folks to like, hey, reach out to your local city council person or your mayor or whatever it may be in your town, or city. And like, you know, join some local group that's trying to do something like pause sort of in your city, you know, we one of the episodes coming up, we go to this rethink 35 event. And there's this great community of folks who are really passionate about that issue. There are great communities of folks who are really passionate about biking and really passionate about, you know, running or whatever it may be. And just to try to like, encourage more folks to get out and find those groups. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Other Other Other thoughts to
Chris Jones:build out that? I'm glad you I'm glad you touched on, you know, talk to your local representatives. Because as we go through these, we start talking about transit options. This is an opportunity for you to look at your city and say, What are we missing? Why isn't there a bus stop at this local hospital? I have a whole rant about that. Why isn't? You know, why don't we have a train, talk to you local officials about it. Because all of these decisions, all of these, these transit options that we're talking about really do start at the local level. So we hope that we can empower more people to consider their surroundings and reach out. Also, I just wanted the ability to talk about these things in a way that is fun and engaging and connects with other transit nerds.
Louis:And it won't be just you and I sitting there ranting about it. over drinks after rock climbing or something. Yeah, comment below if you're part of the gondola game, and yes, hashtag Gumball, again, we just started something. Unintentional? Yeah, awesome. I think that's a good place to end it. Again, we've got a lot of fun episodes coming up that we put a lot of time and effort into. So we'd really appreciate it if you could share it with more of your friends who are into this sort of thing. It goes a long way. Subscribe, Like the video, whatever you know, like the podcast or share it, whatever, whatever platform you're watching or listening on. Please do the things there to help us out. We'll also make sure that links to all of our kind of social media pages for this stuff are all in the description. So please definitely check those out. But yeah, stay tuned. Lots of fun stuff coming. The next episode you'll see is featuring our friend Michelle and her journey to using the bus along with Chris using the bus seat here in Austin.
Chris Jones:Yeah, Michelle's first time learning how to use the bus in Austin. So it's exciting stuff.
Louis:Awesome. Thanks, everybody.