I lived in Long Beach in an apartment across the street from Long Beach City College. My full-time job was in San Pedro. Traffic made that commute about an hour each way. Then, the transmission blew up and I didn't have the money to fix it. So I got bus schedules. I took a Long Beach bus to downtown Long Beach where I made the the free transfer to LA's bus system to complete the journey to work. When I got off of work, I repeated the process backwards. Total trip time was less than 30 minutes longer than "driving" and I was saving about $6.00 per day on gas alone (which back then was real money). In short order I'd saved enough to fix the transmission, but chose not to until just before I left California for good. Why? Because I'd purchased a Sunday Only LA Times subscription which I read cover-to-cover during my commute to work (the paper back then was thick). Without a car, I was able to educate myself during the commute instead of wasting my young life behind the wheel of a car most often sitting almost parked on the freeway.