Learning to read a bus map or a train schedule makes a whole city yours.

A city is only as large as the part of it you know how to reach. Learning how routes and timetables work turns a place you get driven through into somewhere you can go by yourself, for the price of a fare and some attention. The freedom is not really about transport. It is about not needing permission or a lift in order to be somewhere.

Work out one journey you have never made alone and plan it properly: which route, which direction, what time the last one comes back. Make it this week, then do the second one without planning.