MovieChat Forums > In Time (2011) Discussion > why did the bus cost 2 hours

why did the bus cost 2 hours


why did the bus ride cost 2hours when a cup of coffee only costed 4minutes

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Seemed like the bus driver was making up prices to be a jerk

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The world of the movie is a centralized dictatorship in which wages and prices can be controlled and changed instantly.

Making bus fare more expensive helps to keep the poor isolated. The rulers don't want the poor to be organized. The rulers don't want the poor to threaten the system.

BB ;-)

it's just in my opinion - imo -

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[deleted]

Coffee is a luxury, meanwhile getting places takes time, so of course it will cost more.

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Seems legit.

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+1

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[deleted]

Probably less gas in the future so it'll cost more...

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[deleted]

Yes the bus industry was a public service, which means high prices and exploitation of the public, must like any tyrannical regime.

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Pretty much like how things are in real life. Keep wages low, cost of living high and you control the people.

--
R.I.P. America, 1776 - 2008.
Cause of death: Suicide.

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For that matter why would you go out with so little time?

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For that matter why would you go out with so little time?
Because that was all the time she had, and she had to go out to pay off the debt. In the opening scene you see her planning things with her son so that she can pay off the two hours, spend an hour on the bus ride and still have enough time to meet him so he can top her up. That's why she insists that he be there to meet her on time, because it's literally life and death.

A better question would be, why does she have to travel so far to reach the nearest loan office? Why couldn't she pay it over the phone with some kind of time-transfer app? Or why does nobody in this world seem to have a cellphone, by which she could call her son and tell him she's stranded? Though it's established that the rich have deliberately set up the system to keep the poor isolated, desperate and constantly on the brink of dying, so all these things fit.

However you explain it, it's always a tragedy when a girl that hot dies so pointlessly. ;)

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its probably done like that so the poor can stay poor, or the poor just didn't have easy luxuries like the rich

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The scriptwriters really goofed up the timing though: according to the dialog, it's a two hour walk to her destination. If it's a two hour walk, then if she just mixes walking and a bit of jogging (not sprinting), she can cover the distance in an hour or less. It turns out she doesn't even have to cover the whole distance, because Will is walking/running towards her, so she actually has plenty of time.

Yet she runs at full tilt, and she still can't make it.

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she can cover the distance in an hour or less.

I was just saying the same thing in another thread. However, that's going by my experiences of using running shoes. I don't know how I'd do running in heels or barefoot.



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Why anyone would pay 2 hours for a 30 min busride at all, when it's a 2 hour walk on foot? Meaning, if you travel by foot = 2 hours. If you travel by bus = 2 hours + 30 minutes. Something tells me the writers didn't really think that one through..


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I never really thought about it that way. It is really stupid how they did it like that

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From Ladya-T;

"Why anyone would pay 2 hours for a 30 min busride at all"

The mom did not want to pay the 2 hours. She wanted to pay one hour and at that rate it would have been cheaper to ride the bus compared to walking. From the movie;

DRIVER; Two hours.
MOM; It's always been an hour.
DRIVER; Well now it's two. The price went up.
MOM; Since when?
DRIVER; Since today...
MOM; It's a two hour walk. I have an hour and a half.
So, the question is, would it cost less for the mom to pay one hour and ride the bus for a two hour walk? Yes. We can show this by figuring out the cost of each mile (in terms of minutes).

* Walking;
- A person can walk 3 miles per hour. In two hours they can walk 6 miles.
Cost one mile = 20 minutes
Cost two miles = 40 minutes
Cost five miles = 100 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes)
Cost six miles = 120 minutes (2 hours) This is the distance the mom needed to walk.

* Bus;
- The movie was filmed in Los Angeles. The average speed of a city bus in Los Angeles is 12 miles per hour.
Cost one mile = 5 minutes + 1 hour payment or 65 minutes (45 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost two miles = 10 minutes + 1 hour payment or 70 minutes (30 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost five miles = 25 minutes + 1 hour payment or 85 minutes (15 minutes cheaper than walking)
Cost six miles = 30 minutes + 1 hour payment or 90 minutes (30 minutes cheaper than walking)

BB ;-)

PS. With the bus costing 2 hours, the rider would need to travel about 10 miles for the cost of the bus to be cheaper than walking.

* Walking;
- Again a person can walk 3 miles per hour. In two hours they can walk 6 miles.
Cost one mile = 20 minutes
Cost two miles = 40 minutes
Cost five miles = 100 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes)
Cost ten miles = 200 minutes (3 hours 20 minutes)
Cost 15 miles = 300 minutes (5 hours)
Cost 20 miles = 400 minutes (6 hours 40 minutes)

* Bus;
- The average speed again of a city bus in Los Angeles is 12 miles per hour.
Cost one mile = 5 minutes + 2 hours payment or 125 minutes (105 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost two miles = 10 minutes + 2 hours payment or 135 minutes (90 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost five miles = 25 minutes + 2 hours payment or 145 minutes (45 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost six miles = 30 minutes + 2 hours payment or 150 minutes (30 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost ten miles = 50 minutes + 2 hours payment or 170 minutes (30 minutes cheaper than walking)
Cost 15 miles = 75 minutes + 2 hours payment or 195 minutes (1 hour and 45 minutes cheaper than walking)
Cost 20 miles = 100 minutes + 2 hours payment or 220 minutes (3 hours cheaper than walking)

it's just in my opinion - imo -

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Whoa, that's a lot of numbers there, which I so happen to fail at. But I trust you are right!

And I realize that if the bus had cost an hour she would have saved time, and I know the mom didn't want to pay 2 hours, but it still felt as if that had more to do with the fact that she couldn't afford the bus ride and not because it would cost her more to ride it.

And I was more thinking about all the other passengers on the bus who actually paid 2 hours, then again I don't know how long they were going to ride the bus for so yeah.

Oh, and please excuse any spelling/grammar fail on my part ;)

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[deleted]

From takoma20;

"this is dystopian LA."

It is still LA. I lived there for a few years and I remember some of the neighborhoods filmed in the movie. I took the bus almost every day. The speed of the bus in the film would probably be about the same.

"it takes most healthy people 6 minutes to run a mile."

Who said that the mom in the film was healthy? She was poor. She could barely afford food. Her diet was probably terrible and she didn't have the time/money to exercise.

And we are talking about 6 miles not 1 mile. It is very possible that she could not walk/run 6 miles much quicker than 90 minutes. She did walk/run that distance in the movie. But she needed to get there by bus which would give her 30 minutes to meet her son so she could survive without any risk.
- I know some people who couldn't even walk 6 miles in one day. Not everybody is in good shape.

BB ;-)

it's just in my opinion - imo -

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A six minute mile is usually what someone in great shape runs. Most people who are just healthy are probably running it in more like 8 minutes or more.

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But she ran ... which is much faster than walking and she still didn't get there in time.

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We saw her running at some points.

She certainly couldn't keep running the entire distance - not without sports footwear and comfortable running clothing (which she didn't have).

Furthermore, this was after TWO days she spent running some errands, looking for work I think etc. - she must have been exhausted by all that.

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It's not about the time, ppl. Everyone is trying to buy time so they can earn their immortality. The more they charge, the longer they themselves live. Duhhhhh...

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All the numbers are very nice but you're missing the main issue here:

Will is waiting for her at the bus stop. The bus arrives without her in it and he realizes something is wrong and runs to try and find her. By that time, she only had between 9 and 21 minutes left (21 minutes in the scene right before the bus arrives to the stop, 9 minutes right after).
Which means that it took the bus between 1 hour 10 and 1 hour 20 minutes to cover a distance that is a 2 hour walk.

Not only is this quite unlikely (although I do know of some buses that take a long time because they take indirect routes) but it's completely absurd from the point of view of the movie.
If she had had the time to pay for the ride, she would have spent 2 hours for the fare + 1.10 at least for the bus ride : 3.1 hours.
Walking would only cost her 2 hours, and jogging roughly 1.30. Makes no sense, nobody would use the bus.

Let's not even talk about the fact that people here didn't seem to be aware of the existence of bicycles, rollers, tricycles and skates. Yes, man invented the wheel a couple million years ago, but these idiots forgot about it.... ;)

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Whose to say they didnt have bucycles and other forms of transportation. People have bikes and rollers and tricycles and that stuff now and we still take the bus when it costs us money. Just because we don't see these things, it doesnt mean they dont exist.

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Is this a stupid question on purpose?

Public transportation costs us money, not time that can mean the subtle difference between alive or dead. Every week these people are going to lose a full day of life on bus fare. A full day they rarely actually have.

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RAIN MAN or what ?

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His mom said that the time to get to where she wanted will take 2 hours on foot... and the bus ride's price was also 2 hours.... but she had less than that.

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Why anyone would pay 2 hours for a 30 min busride at all, when it's a 2 hour walk on foot? Meaning, if you travel by foot = 2 hours. If you travel by bus = 2 hours + 30 minutes. Something tells me the writers didn't really think that one through..
Because it will get them there quicker. Seems you're the one who hasn't thought it through. Ordinarily someone might not take the bus but you're forgetting that she only had 90 minutes remaining, she had no choice. Yes if she takes the bus it will cost her two hours on the fare plus a half hour chronological time but it will get her to her son, who will replenish her with more time, within half an hour as opposed to the two hours walking that she didn't have.

She was still cutting it fine leaving herself 90 minutes of time when the bus


Your's sincerely, General Joseph Liebgott

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Wrong. At 2 hours for a bus ticket it wouldn't make any sense for anyone.


If she were to walk it would cost her 2 hours (because she wouldn't pay anything so all she would lose is the time spent).

If she were to take the bus she would have to spend 2 hours for the fare plus however long the bus ride took Some people here came up with 30 minutes, I don't know where they get that idea. We see in the movie that when Will sees the bus where she was supposed to be it's already been over an hour.

But regardless, I think you're the one who hasn't thought it through. At that price, walking is cheaper (i.e., spends less time) than taking the bus.

In the particular case of her situation, the only way it would have worked was if the driver had allowed her to pay the remainder of the fee upon destination. She would lose time but she wouldn't have a choice. But still it doesn't explain why would anyone else pay 2 hours for a 1.15 bus ride that covers a distance that can be easily walked in 2 hours. People wouldn't take the bus.

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Maybe she's just lazy. Now quit yer bitchin!

Your's sincerely, General Joseph Liebgott

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ROFL, with one sentence you reveal the the movie to be crap and the writer a hack.

"If you hate it when people post signatures they are 100% proud of and try to get others to join them, and are 100% proud of it, copy this and make it your signature"

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Good point.

I completely missed that one.

Next time I get stumped on a homework assignment, I'm calling you.

Thanks Ladya

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That's my only beef with the movie. You have to work to make time but you spend time at work to do it. Perhaps its not a real beef but the point is Will's people are always struggle just to keep a few minutes on the clock

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Now that you mention it...it is ridiculous!!! LoL

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Comfort. Why do people own cars when driving in a bus is much cheaper and often faster? because they are more comfortable in cars. people are willing to pay A LOT for comfort.

---------------------------------------------
Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

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In the future people will still be too lazy to walk...

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Where people too lazy to hunt before they learned how to farm? Where nomad tribes people too lazy to follow the food?

Someday in the future we will all be on welfare and someone will say "Even if we had jobs everyone would be too lazy to go to them".

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Well, there's another problem.

The mother has 90 minutes of time, and the walk takes 120. Since she can't pay for the bus, she starts running, as instructed by the driver.
Will starts running as well when he notices his mother is not on the bus. Since the bus takes 30 minutes, he starts running when there's still an hour left.
Let's assume for a moment that the speed of a walk is 5km/s and long-distance running is 10km/s
(rough and low estimates, of course).

That would mean mother has to run ten kilometers. So technically it would take her an hour, still leaving the half. Seeing as Will starts running after half an hour, that would mean a total of 150 minutes of running, which should technically allow them to cross the distance of 25 kilometers (not possible for two hours of walking).

Will ran towards his mother for an hour. Mother ran towards Will for an hour and a half. And they couldn't cross the distance that was said to be a "two hour walk".

Yup. Running for a total of 150 minutes they couldn't pass the distance it would take 120 minutes to walk. The scene is absurd.

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I think it's just economy.
So why would you take the bus in the real life at all, as you will have to pay the fare?
From your point of view, it would always be better to walk for 2 hours instead?
That's the economy!

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"Why anyone would pay 2 hours for a 30 min busride at all, when it's a 2 hour walk on foot? Meaning, if you travel by foot = 2 hours. If you travel by bus = 2 hours + 30 minutes. Something tells me the writers didn't really think that one through."

You pay 2 hours to save 1.5 hours of time because during that 1.5 hours you don't spend walking,you can earn more than 1.5 hours of time. Think of it in a money world. Suppose you have a job that pays $20/hr. You can pay $5 to get to work in 30 minutes or you can walk in 2 hours. Most people will pay the $5 because in the 1.5 hours they save by not having to walk then earn $30 working.

Econ 101.

But judging from the comments here, 90% of posters don't have the slightest idea of how an economy works. Which is why they also believe in the 1% class warfare BS.
__________________________________________________
Why work when you can vote Democrat instead.

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opportunity cost. people that paid 2 hr bioclock and 30 minutes real times are assuming they can make more than 2 hr 30 minutes bioclock time at their destination. if they walked it's 2 hours unproductive time and they will be too tired to do *beep* if they take 30 minute bus, they get to the destination relaxed and have 1h30m real time (compared to 2hr walk) to earn more bioclock time. assuming their real time work can earn them at least twice on the bioclock, if they earn bioclock and realtime at 1:1 ratio then everything's a wash and there's no point in taking the bus or going to work. the prices and wages of course are manipulated so that the workers will earn slightly higher than real time clock just enough to let the worker stay alive for an extra day so they will keep working day to day just to stay alive for a bit longer, but never save enough to actually enjoy their time/life.

lol didn't see the post right above me saying essentially the same thing.

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Wow... some people really didn't understand the basic premise... The rich people that controlled the market not only needed to steal people's time so they could try to live forever, they needed to make sure that the population remained powerless to do anything about it (as in revolution). One of the ways they did that was by raising the cost of living without notice.

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That premise is great and I was looking forward to the exploration of that idea, but the movie writers failed hard. You can't raise the cost beyond what it costs to do it yourself.

For instance, the bus route taking 30 minutes and costing 2 hours, total cost = 2.5 hours... walking took 2 hours... and yet the bus was full? Doesn't make sense. They're just giving up 1/2 hour of their lives for nothing.

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stdragon is exactly right. Who in the hell would pay 2.5 for something they could pay 2 for? Maybe the odd eccentric person or two might, but an entire bus full of poor people? Ridiculous.

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People paying 2 hours of living time for a bustrip, is the same as in the real world where we pay way too much for a taxi from the airport. Everybody knows taxis are expensive, but we use them anyway because we need to get to our destination quickly.

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Not quite the same.If you were to pay a taxi to get you to a job that would give you less than the fare,it would be a better analogy.And while some people would do that,most are not depending on such jobs to survive.But,if you would make the analogy a bit moot,and have someone pay for a taxi to get them to a job that they think can maybe cover the fare,youd get much closer to the situation in the movie.

The key thing in that scene that many are disregarding,is that she was using a guestimate.It easily couldve been off by a whole hour,or more.

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Here is a real example. I recently had to drop off a rental car for work at the Sacramento airport, which was 20 miles from where I had to get back to, and the cab ride back was $70 plus tip, but it would prob take me at least 7 hours to walk it if it were even possible. So I had to get my employer to pay for the cab ride

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NO. Its perfectly fine! You people are so out of your minds. When have you EVER IN YOUR LIFE walked 2 hours instead of paying a few dollars for transport?

Why would people pay 2.5 hours total time for a distance that takes 2 hours to walk? Why waste 30mins of time currency?

1) ITS FASTER! People will get to the destination faster VIA Bus than Walking.

2) ITS SAFER! You could get "mass murdered in the ghetto every day".

3) SAVES ENERGY! You walk for 2 hours, you WILL BE EXHAUSTED.
3.1) You work, you get paid, you spend your currency on transport, even though it could be cheaper to walk/bike ride.
3.2) You will be so exhausted after a 2 hour walk, you'd be screwed for work the next day.
3.3) I will KILL MYSELF if anyone here walks 2 hours to work everyday instead of taking any sort of transport, whether it be car/bus/train etc.

4) SPENDING MORE TIME WITH KIDS! She could've walked for 2 hours, and had maybe 1 hour left to spend with her son before being tired and having to sleep. Or she could take the bus, sure the time-cost is greater, but she would've had 90 minutes extra to spend, so thats 2.5 hours of time to spend with your kid celebrating before sleep.

5) ITS THEIR TIME! If you work for the time, you can spend it however you like. If it was me, and I earned 10 hours that day lets say. Id spend 2.5 of those hours on the bus ride because I cbf walking another 2 hours home. SIMPLE.

6) SAME IN REAL LIFE! Where I live parking in the central city can cost $60 a day. If you divide this by a $20 an hour salary lets say, you are paying 3 hours of your job to PARKING ALONE! IF you can walk/run to work within 3 hours, YOU ARE ALREADY RICHER. How many of you would walk/run for 3 hours EVERY DAY to get to work to save the $60 on parking? Well? Edit: PS. These $60 parking are packed and full every single day of the year.

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Right on!

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1) "ITS FASTER": Measured by your own clock (the one your life depends on), riding the bus takes you half an hour longer, so it's actually slower.

2) "ITS SAFER": People in the ghetto walked up everyday with just a few hours, so saving half an hour would be worth every risk.

3) "SAVES ENERGY": Most slim 25 year olds can walk 2 hours without getting exhausted. Exhausting or not, if the price is ridiculously high people would walk anyway. I definitively wouldn't take the bus if it costed me, say, 2 hours of my salary.

4) "SPENDING MORE TIME...": Taking the hilariously expensive bus leaves you with less time since you are paying it with time.

5) "ITS THEIR TIME": Only the rich would waste time like that. The bus would be a super luxury.

6) "SAME IN REAL LIFE": Is the parking lot really packed with people who earn $20 an hour? It's probably the people in the office buildings who earn a lot more. The barista in the coffee shop probably takes the bus rather than pay 40% of his salary just to get to work. I don't live in a ghetto but I know plenty of people who take a 3 hour commute because they can't afford a car.


Maybe the bus was full of rich jerks who could throw away it half an hour just to save themselves some walking but couldn't spare a few minutes to save someone's life.

Incidentally, unless Olivia Wilde's character had some disease we didn't know about, she should have been able to run 6 or 7 miles in way less than 90 minutes, specially if her life depended on it.

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You will be so exhausted after a 2 hour walk, you'd be screwed for work the next day.


You made a few references to how tiring it is to walk 2 hours. Have you ever walked two hours before?? If you have and you're seriously so exhausted that you "only have on hour left to spend with your son before being tired and having to sleep" then you must be exceedingly unfit. Seriously? You'd be screwed for the next day as well?

I suggest you get out and start walking more. Two hours of walking really isn't that much.

Also, if you're live in the central city shouldn't there be some kind of public transport? I live in Raleigh, NC which is very suburban with no trains running through it or anything, but there are buses which people can get to with a twenty minute walk or less - and that's not in the "central city".

Lastly, anyone that pays three hours worth of wages for parking for one day is a complete fool. What happened to carpooling? Even if you live twenty miles away from each other it's still more beneficial to ride together than to pay $60/day.

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Walking for 2 hours inst a problem.Walking for 2 hours after 10-12 hours of hard manual labour is a big problem,no matter how fit you are.

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Except that the bus was going further on,so many people on that bus payed 2 hours for a 3 or 4 hours walk.Plus,that "2 hours walk" was just a poor guestimate,since she ran afterwards,and her son also ran when he saw the bus,and she still ran out of time.

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[deleted]

True. The bus truly should have cost something trivial like 5 minutes or something.


But if the premise of the movie is that the system is set up to keep poor people poor, then making the price of a bus ride fairly cheap doesn't make sense. I mean you can stop drinking coffee if the price of coffee becomes too outrageous. But if you need to take the bus to get to work on time or at least get to work without having to walk half the day, then you have no choice but to pay the price of the bus. That's why the high price of commodities like food, housing, and transportation tends to keep poor people poor. You can live without little extras like coffee, but you can't live without food and a place to live. If you want to work to make a living, you need to have a way to get there. So like in the movie, they can suppress wages and increase the price of necessities like food and transportation and that keeps the poor on the perpetual treadmill trying to make ends meet instead of thinking about how screwed the system is.

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[deleted]

With the bus costing 2 hours, the rider would need to travel about 10 miles for the cost of the bus to be cheaper than walking.

* Walking;
- A person can walk 3 miles per hour. In two hours they can walk 6 miles.
Cost one mile = 20 minutes
Cost two miles = 40 minutes
Cost five miles = 100 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes)
Cost six miles = 120 minutes (2 hours)
Cost ten miles = 200 minutes (3 hours 20 minutes)
Cost 15 miles = 300 minutes (5 hours)
Cost 20 miles = 400 minutes (6 hours 40 minutes)

* Bus;
- The movie was filmed in Los Angeles. The average speed of a city bus in Los Angeles is 12 miles per hour.
Cost one mile = 5 minutes + 2 hours payment or 125 minutes (105 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost two miles = 10 minutes + 2 hours payment or 135 minutes (90 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost five miles = 25 minutes + 2 hours payment or 145 minutes (45 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost six miles = 30 minutes + 2 hours payment or 150 minutes (30 minutes more expensive than walking)
Cost ten miles = 50 minutes + 2 hours payment or 170 minutes (30 minutes cheaper than walking)
Cost 15 miles = 75 minutes + 2 hours payment or 195 minutes (1 hour and 45 minutes cheaper than walking)
Cost 20 miles = 100 minutes + 2 hours payment or 220 minutes (3 hours cheaper than walking)

BB ;-)

it's just in my opinion - imo -

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I was of the understanding it only takes that long on foot if your realling running fast, I mena like your life literaly depend on it

So maybe the bus for people who dont trust their running speed. Not to mention your walking on some pretty dangerous streets in a world people have every reason to murder each other.

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The answer is, of course, so she has to walk and therefore times out. But why? What, no coms in the future? Poor and even HOMELESS people can have cell phones, and that's been true for a number of years. We see the timekeepers being wired some time, what, you can't wire time? You have been able to wire money for over 100 years.

I still like this movie, for all its flaws.

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Because Andrew Niccol needed the mother to die as the macguffin in the movie.

Macguffin in film and theater - device giving impetus to plot: in a movie, play, or book, something that starts or drives the action of the plot

It was sad seeing her time out in her sons arms, but like the whole film it was a contrived plot device. I loved Gattaca, it's practically perfect in my eyes, but In Time stumbles along as a film.

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True, other than as a plot device, the bus fare made no sense.
A 100% increase overnight? And still the bus was full.

A coffee cost 4 minutes, say that's $2. A 1 hour bus fare would be $30! Doubled to $60?
A week would be worth... $5040 (breakfast)
And 59 (plus tax!) years for the car... $15,462,720 (without tax)
The one year "fees" for the casino and toolbooth? $262,080

idk, just saying that it's a fine idea, but the writers should have paid a bit more attention to detail.

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Yeah I remember the coffee being about 4 minutes and then bus fare was hiked to 2 hours which is 120 minutes.

I did some quick math in my head (I'm rusty) but the jump from coffee to the bus fare was a 2900% increase. Even at one hour, it was still 1400% more.

My math could be off, I really don't feel like double checking it, but it was a ridiculous discrepancy.

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I don't think you can convert time to dollars. I mean, who's to say that five minutes is equal to two dollars? I would say that five minutes would be more like fifty cents. They live in the poor time zone. What do poor people usually earn? Minimum wage or so. Say eight bucks an hour. That would make a cup of coffee about 53 cents. That "two hour-thirty minute" bus ride would be equal to sixteen dollars.
Now say you live in the rich time zone. For simplicity we'll say you earn about 80 dollars an hour. So to that rich person the same cup of coffee would equal about $5.33.

The conversion varies based on each individual person and how much they make.
That's why you can't convert time to money. They're different units. It's like converting length to joules.
Please, if you think I am wrong then tell me why.

Anyways, we're over-thinking this. It's a movie. The part that pissed me off the most was Justin Timberlake being exactly one second late to save his mother, and his stupid mother giving two days to pay the rent and leaving her own clock with ninety minutes. Dumb bitch deserved to die.

--
*beep* You, that's my name.

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The conversion varies based on each individual person and how much they make.
That's why you can't convert time to money. They're different units. It's like converting length to joules.


We can convert between time a dollars because in the movie they use time as currency, so we just have to look at the price in time and in dollars of the same goods. By that method, either coffee was essentially free or bus rides were prohibitively expensive. The point made by many on this thread is not that public transportation was expensive, but that it was so fantastically expensive that it made no sense to use it, and the prices of other things in the movie were also rather random.



Anyways, we're over-thinking this. It's a movie. The part that pissed me off the most was Justin Timberlake being exactly one second late to save his mother, and his stupid mother giving two days to pay the rent and leaving her own clock with ninety minutes. Dumb bitch deserved to die.


She also gave him 30 minutes at the beginning of the day so "he could have a nice breakfast". She essentially gave her life away so that his son could have an extra muffin. She was really bad at budgeting.

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'She also gave him 30 minutes at the beginning of the day so "he could have a nice breakfast". She essentially gave her life away so that his son could have an extra muffin. She was really bad at budgeting.'

LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

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Why do people keep debating when all the answers are already in this thread?

We can convert between time a dollars because in the movie they use time as currency, so we just have to look at the price in time and in dollars of the same goods. By that method, either coffee was essentially free or bus rides were prohibitively expensive.

Right. That's exactly the point of this DYSTOPIAN society.
Coffee should be affordable because it makes people more PRODUCTIVE.
On the other hand, travelling around should be oppressed as much as possible to keep people in their ghetto. Transportation should only be used if you can't avoid it, eg. paying off debts.

The point made by many on this thread is not that public transportation was expensive, but that it was so fantastically expensive that it made no sense to use it

You are ignoring basic FACTS made by the movie here. The mother GUESSED it was a two hour walk. We SAW that she was wrong.
I bet you can not estimate a distance you are used to drive by bus correctly. Especially not if your life depended on it. The mother was desperate, she argued with the driver because she didn't HAVE two hours. It didn't matter if it took two, three or fifteen hours to walk, because anything beyond ninety minutes is ALREADY too much for her. Maybe she subconsciously even knew that it would take MORE than two hours to walk, because if it was actually three or four hours, there would've been no point at running at all and she could've just as well lie down and wait to die on the spot.


Oh, and the breakfast money thing: haven't you people ever heard of tragic irony?
But yes, the over-the-top dramatic timing of that dying scene was horribly cheesy.
Man, I didn't even like the movie but you are criticizing it for the wrong reasons here.
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