Friday Photo Shoot Outs: Transportation

Clermont-Ferrand is not a very big place, plus I make it a point to live within walking distance (though possibly a long walk) from work, so my ideal number one choice of transportation is walking. Thus the collection of shoes I’m capable of walking home in. Not a heel among them.
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Let’s get real, though. I hate cold and I hate wet and in the cooler months I usually flake on exercise and take the bus. Some of the bus stops even have little shelters so you don’t get too wet. The drawback to busriding is the limited service. Weekdays until 8pm or so, there’s terrific service between my house and the center of town. But the last bus home from the big supermarket is at 7:30. And on Sundays/holidays they’re every half hour if there’s service at all. So you have to plan. Or be wearing walking shoes! The most annoying thing about the bus only happens to me every 3 months or so: the first bus of the morning next to my house gets me to the train station just in time to see the train to Paris pulling away. Thanks! Could we move that bus up just 5 minutes? Hmm?
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Clermont recently stepped up it’s public transportation offer with a tramway. They promise a second line some day, even. I like the tram. It’s big and roomy and runs pretty often. Except Sundays and holidays of course. So many people like the tram that it isn’t big enough at rush hour, but they can’t really put more trains on the line because they’d be catching up to each other. While bus riding has remained something of a stigma, so that for the most part only people who have no other means of getting around take it, the tram has a better reputation. It also serves several significant and well-placed parking lots around the edge of town, where you can park and get up to four free tram tickets with your parking, so people are starting to leave their cars there and take the tram into town. The last clever thing to force people out of their cars and onto the tram is that in the heart of town where roads are narrow and eternally congested, the twin tracks replaced driving space along a key artery, making the driving problem worse but walking, biking and tramming much, much better.
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To go farther afield, there are busses to surrounding towns and villages. Not terribly practical for tourism; they’re geared to commuters, with one or two busses coming to Clermont in the morning and then one or two heading back to the hinterlands in the early evening. Miss it and you’re screwed. The bus station on Sundays is turned into the flea market, where I like to go treasure hunting. Such Sunday busses as there are leave from the train station, where a goodly number of trains are plying the rails. There are shiny new trains going to small towns I haven’t been to yet. There are big trains heading to Paris or Bordeaux or Toulouse or Lyon and eventually all of Europe. For modest distances, the train is better than flying. OK, for price and for pollution it’s always better than flying. But take getting to Paris. Clermont to central Paris in 3 hours. Who cares if the flight is only 50 minutes, when you have to get to the distant airport, check in, wait around, then find transport to your real destination once you land? Not to mention nobody minds your knitting needles or bottle of water on a train. You can even keep your computer on.
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One thing I don’t do is bike, though lots of other people do. There aren’t many bike lanes in town. Those there are, are great, if they’re not filled with pedestrians. Elsewhere it’s bike in traffic at your own peril. Forget that!

So that's transportation around here. 14 years without a car, and I get around just fine. There are some places I can't get to on my own, and it's not always convenient, but it works.

Thanks for following me around town!

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