Transportation in Omsk is very different than the modes of transport that we usually use in the United States. Russians use public transportation much more frequently than most Americans do. Although some cities in the United States, such as New York and Washington D.C. have a lot of access to public transport, a lot of places in the U.S. do not. Both Minnesota and Indiana, where I grew up and went to college, have significantly less public transportation than Omsk.
In Omsk, there are four main methods of transporation: walking, driving your own vehicle, taking the bus or taking a marshrutka. A marshrutka is like a bus, in that it has a set route that it follows. However, unlike a bus, it does not stop at every stop on its route. Instead, the riders wave down the marshrutka to get on and tell the driver to stop when they want to get off.
For the most part, because I live in the center of the city and very close to my university's buildings, I walk to my destinations. When I go to the gym across the river, I take a bus or a marshrutka. The buses and marshrutkas are very cheap--less than 50 cents for each ride.
Because walking is such a big part of transportation here, there are often under-the-road walkways at intersections instead of crosswalks.
