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Comments
Brave souls
I've often wondered if that would work, but I've never had the nerve to try, on account of I enjoy having structural integrity.
Ice rock and a hard place
Sometimes I do feel sorry for the bus drivers when it is snowing this bad. They have to maintain their schedule at certain stops, but then they have the "Catch the bus" app that makes them look like douchebags if they don't stop at every stop.
Not an excuse for the bus drivers that passed those passengers three times, but it's a bad commute day for every one.
Bottom Line
This sounds like the old joke about the bureacracy in the UK being so bad that a passenger got a letter saying "If we picked up passengers the bus wouldn't be on time".
You don't pass up passengers. I have had this issue when my kids take the 94. No excuses - basic part of the job.
Bus drivers repeat: I pick them up I drop them off. I pick them up I drop them off.
Oh I agree
I don't think it's an excuse at all to not stop at your stop, esp. when you see people there. I used to take the 57 and that was/is notorious for passing passengers. One time, after the bus passed me, I ran down to the next stop b/c of the red traffic lights he hit and I got on the next one. Some of them are just sadistic...
I think the T admins though need to ease up on the bus drivers and emphasis that picking up passengers, esp. in bad weather, is more important than staying on the minute. Unfortunately, I think they link their promptness with their pay a lot of times.
"I think they link their
"I think they link their promptness with their pay a lot of times." Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
They rush through stops so
They rush through stops so they can take a snooze at the end of the line. sneak a smoke ect. or go home if they have a kid at daycare I had one new driver on the 44 bus complaining because he was picking up all the passengers. while the other drivers were snoozing at jackson station. they have a little house at mattapan station they blow by the stops and grab a snooze or a pizza there cause there a head of schedule. they know where all the camera blind spot are.one time The driver thought their was no one on the bus going to forest hills and so he turn the lites out and was driving me to papa ginos. the inspectors mean while take the trucks home and grab a few hours snooze time. or go to lodge meetings and someone keeps track of the calls. In case they have to make an apearance.This has been going on for 20-30 years. like the false repair records and stealing money.
Or take a bio break
Or use the phone, eat some food and check their blood sugar, or take mandated breaks that keep them from killing the guy with the roll of pennies, etc.
I think the problem is that there is a fear of a driver ever getting more than a 5 minute break that makes the schedules unworkably tight. I'm sure your job requires a full eight-hour shift with no breaks even to pee. yeah. right. We'd all end up paying for that in health insurance costs and sick costs.
I pick things up
And I put them down.
yuck, yuck, yuck
gee...that sounds like a REALLY good old joke.
Looking in the mirror again,
Looking in the mirror again, 1047?
not an issue of schedule
It's an issue of space. I was passed by a 32 bus this morning, and the reason was obvious: it was packed to the gills. No more room.
It doesn't do anyone any favors to stop and try and squeeze more people on. The best thing to do is to get that full bus turned around as quickly as possible.
When they have multiple busses going in one direction, sometimes one of the bus drivers makes the call to skip stops where no stop is requested, knowing that the other bus is at most a few minutes behind them.
In Case Anyone is Interested in the Back Story...
The first bus that passed by did appear to be kind of full. Although, honestly having lived in Brooklyn for 6 years, I think we could have fit another 20 people on there by NYC standards.
The second and third buses though had plenty of room by anyone's standards and just zoomed by. By that time, there were close to 10 people at the bus stop. When we saw the fourth bus coming, 3 women stepped onto Hyde Park Ave to make sure we weren't passed by AGAIN. Luckily our stop is in a spot where the buses have plenty of time to see you and stop. Which this one did.
I got to the bus stop just down from Cummins Hwy at 7:50 this morning when the Catch the Bus app said the next buses were 6 min, 7 min and 8 min away. I got to Forest Hills at 8:47. Which I know, because that's when I emailed my boss to say I was excruciatingly late despite leaving early.
So. Between the buses not stopping and the extreme slowness required to make our way down the unplowed Hyde Park, it took almost an hour to go less than a mile this morning.
That's kind of crazy.
re: the back story
That is ridiculous. I really wish that it were actually faster to take the bus than to walk, but given this situation, you all absolutely would've made it to work faster if you had walked. Which is why my coworker walks to work every Wednesday. From Roslindale to Roxbury. But he is pretty hard core.
Hyde Park Avenue
It was a little faster 45 or so minutes later but not a whole lot faster. The first bus in our 4 bus convoy was quite full -- and probably did not make any stops (other than drop offs). Bues 2 and 3 had lots of room, while bus 4 was virtually empty when it arrived at the Cummins Hwy stop. From that point on, buses 2, 3 and 4 took turns as to pick ups.
I feel your pain
I used to live off of Hyde Park Ave. in JP and relied on the 32, except it was utterly impossible and unpredictable to rely on. I found sometimes waving towards the bus helped, thinking the bus driver didn't see me at the stop, but wouldn't jump in front of a bus zooming by at 40mph either. I always fantasized about moving a mile over into Roslindale where there are multiple bus routes to choose from to get to Forest Hills. Anyways your commute today sounds really crappy and I hope it is better tomorrow. Good luck!
Its wonders do not perform.
Then there is the opposite problem when drivers refuse to stop to let passengers go. Every time that happens another email is fired off. The response is always that a manager will meet with the driver and a union representative. I don't understand why a union representative is needed or how that assures that a driver will stop refusing to stop. But the T union moves in a mysterious ways, its wonders do not perform.
Has the problem stopped? As far I can tell it has. On the other hand the T plans to remove the stop anyway - in spite of the fact that the stop is frequently used. But then the T moves in a mysterious way, its wonders do not perform.
Weingarten Rights
I assume the union involvement has to do with Weingarten Rights, one of the basic rights of US labor case law.
Basically, in a union workplace, the worker always has the right to have a representative in any meeting that is investigatory or disciplinary.
Thank you.
I didn't know that right existed. Have never worked in a union environment and so have not encountered that.
This is one item that makes a strong positive case for unionization. It is harder to use intimidation or make veiled threats when a neutral third person is observing.
Neutral?
Are you saying that the union rep is neutral? Are you kidding?
The main role of the union rep is to make sure the member doesn't screw up by talking too much, or at all. He's like a lawyer in that he's there to protect the member's rights. He's also there to be a hardass so the member doesn't have to be. ;-)
A half full 70 passed by me
A half full 70 passed by me this morning in Watertown, about 6 of us waiting to get on. Of course the 70 was running one bus every 30 mins.. I had to pay for a cab to be an hour late to work. Screw you MBTA
If you happen to have an
If you happen to have an iPhone and have the Catch the Bus app (yeah, both big assumptions), the app not only tells you the estimated arrival times of buses, but also the bus number. So if a bus did pass you by, it would be easy to get the bus number, if you didn't catch it as it passed you by, at least making a complaint easier to file against the driver.
The Route 32 Convoy
This morning (around 8:45 or so) four 32 buses were traveling one after another -- in a convoy-like mode. They seemed to be doing a decent job of taking turns picking up passengers (each doing every fourth stop -- more or less).
Mass Ave Convoy
On Tuesday, I was on Mass Ave Arlington waiting for either the 77, which comes every 7 minutes, or the 79, which comes every 12 minutes. No buses for 30 minutes, then 2 79s and 5 77s all in a convoy. I think that was the longest bus convoy I've ever seen.
Seven in one row?
Never seen one longer than four. ;~}
I don't ride the bus much anymore
After 5 years of the 71 and the 73 in Watertown/ Belmont, but I saw the convoy thing all the time, mostly when the first guy is a newbie, and doesn't understand passing pickups when he's full and there's an empty behind him.
It seems to me that bus drivers need the power to "go express" i.e. make an announcement halfway through the route, that if you want to get off between X and Y, you need to get off at X and get on another bus, because I'm not stopping until I get to Y. This obviously only works if there's a bus right behind, and it's kind of a PITA, but it would speed things up a lot for the people going to Y.
late buses going express
I've thought about that a lot, and I see two problems with running a late bus express (or turning it back the other way in the middle of the route).
You wouldn't want drivers making this decision on their own. But it's tough for a supervisor who's somewhere else to find out about the problem and get the word to the driver.
And moving a bunch of people from a crowded bus onto another would take some time.
It would also be nice if drivers could be reassigned on the fly at busy terminals. If a driver is sitting around on layover, or about to go on a frequent route where nobody is waiting to board, they could be switched to a rotue that's running late and has a long line of people. But that could cause problems for that driver's later assignments.
buses are not run like a business
The problem, as I see it, is that the T doesn't run the buses like a business with paying customers. They run it more like a public service, for which you should apparently consider yourself fortunate. You can get on a bus with a broken fare box and pay nothing, or a bus can drive by, ignoring paying passengers. The fares may not cover the actual cost of operating the bus service but they are supposed to subsidize the cost, and that doesn't happen when the drivers alienate the customers.
32 is the pits
Sadly, #32 busses passing you is not unique to the bad weather.
I live in the "V" between Hyde Park Ave and Washington Street and have a choice of which set of bus lines to walk to. #32 is a tad closer.
Between 2 PM and 4 PM weekdays, and if you live between Cummins Highway and Forest Hills, it is entirely possible for 2-3 and even 4 busses to pass you that are chock full. Some of it is kids from Hyde Park High School and other middle schools along the route, and some of it is people on the way to work for the 2nd shift.
What they need to do is run a truncated bus that reverses around Hyde Park Ave and American Legion Highway back to Forest Hills a few times a day to alleviate this problem.
Due to the lack of reliability, I ceased walking to the #32 and now walk to Washington Street to get one of many busses headed to Forest Hills. It is a bit farther to walk but I really don't have a choice.
My wife also ceased trying to catch early morning #32 busses to Forest Hills in order to get to work on time. According to the schedule, there are a couple of busses that should pass by and get her to the station in plenty of time to meet a cross town bus to Dorchester, but the reality is that the scheduled busses never appear. At least one driver told her that sometimes the first few busses leave the garage late so they are late making the return trip.
She now also has to walk to Washington Street.
It gets worse.
On a Sunday or holiday she has to walk a statute mile to Forest Hills to make connections because there aren't any early morning busses to get her to the station. Once there she has to take the Orange Line to the Red Line because there is also no cross town bus that early.
Apparently no one works 1st shift on Sundays.
The "T" bases service on need I am told. I'd like to see Manager Davey try to get a #32 some afternoon. It might be an educational experience and wake up call.
Is the 50 a feasible option for you?
I used to take that sometimes, though it doesn't run as often as the 32.