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Bunches o' buses
By adamg on Wed, 06/11/2008 - 7:16pm
Jenny naively believed the schedule that said a number 1 bus would depart Mass. Ave. and Newbury Street for Harvard Square every 14 minutes.
Naturally, she wound up waiting 42 minutes - and then two of them showed up at once.
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My current commute
The Green B Line to the #1 Bus.
Try that insanity for a while...
oh please
We do it much better here in JP. The #39 will come in bunches of three, and they're the articulated busses! It's hilarious. They literally take up a block together.
More commonly, they'll be spaced out about 2-3 minutes between each other headed back to Forest Hills, and yet I'll sit at the inbound stop (5 minutes from Forest Hills) and wait another 20 minutes for a bus to arrive.
Ha! That's nothing! Number 1
Ha! That's nothing!
Number 1 buses are actually tending to run in triplets nowadays.
Tuesday evening, while I waited for in inbound bus at Mass Ave and Bay St, within two minutes I saw three outbound 1s. In the next five minutes, there were two more.
As I rode the inbound bus that finally deigned to arrive (one of the outbound flock of three, I believe), I saw at least two more outbounds before I even reached Central Square - that is less than a 5-minute trip.
(I should mention at this point that, yes, in some evidently mythical reasonable weather, I could have walked to Central faster. But I also have a bum leg, which I try to save for walking places where there is no alternative.)
Oddly enough, I'd left plenty of time to make my connection with the seldom-seen 47 bus, which was strangely more or less on time for once.
In any case, I'd have ended up waiting at bus stops for quite a while regardless, in the miserable, sweltering weather.
What really narks me, though, is when you've been waiting forever and the 1 bus finally moseys up - packed to the roof vents and not another in sight. This is a frequent occurrence at night.
If they must run in herds, at least let them run in herds when it's actually useful. (Strangely enough, this did happen to me just the other week: returning from the Back Bay I boarded a sardine can at Newbury St. By the time every possible cubic centimeter had been packed, a second bus, virtually empty, showed up. I (with several others) was able to make a daring switch at Beacon St, at no extra cost thanks to my Charlie Card.)
42 minutes?
Good God, why do people bother with public transit in this city? I can't believe people actually consider that acceptable.
Two Tired
I got too tired of waiting for multi-tired vehicles to find their way past four tired vehicles.
So I got two tired.
I avoid the bus whenever
I avoid the bus whenever possible nowadays, so I don't know what is typical, but most of my experiences have been negative.
For example, most of the few times I've taken the #1 (on the flawed assumption that it would be faster than walking from Central to Newbury), I've have to wait forever. One of the times, on an early evening, the wait was over an hour. Nowadays, I expect to wait at least half an hour.
When the #1 bus is especially late, what's even more infuriating than being made late myself is the suspicion that people don't ride this bus unless they *have* to, which makes the unreliability even more offensive to me.
That bus stop in Central is not a happy place, and I imagine being subject to the whims of the bus every day just goes that much further towards crushing one's spirit.