I’ve commented before on the soak-the-suburbanites scheme Metrobus runs in my neighborhood (the local bus veers away from the local Metrorail station like Dracula recoiling from a crucifix and spends 20 minutes heading up the highway to the Pentagon, thus “justifying” the charging of an “express” fare for the service of eventually delivering me to the Metrorail system, where I pay again to back-track most of that 20-minute ride).
Finally, I happened upon a newspaper piece in which one of the Metro directors waxed enthusiastic about the “transportation hub” and “redevelopment” around Crucifix Station (aka Franconia-Springfield, for those of you familiar with Northern Virginia). This inspired me to write a letter pointing out that these functions might work better if the buses in the neighborhood actually went there.
Ultimately, I got a reply explaining how this bus routing came to be. It seems that in the dim mists of time when Crucifix Station was new, it did actually occur to Metro that the local bus routes ought to connect to it. However, there were concerns that the horrendous difficulty of changing from a bus to a train, possibly adding as much as five minutes to travel time, might unduly burden the sensitive souls of those passengers who were ending their trips at the Pentagon rather than simply trying to get into the Metrorail system (the latter were, obviously, inured to the terrible hardship of making the transfer, and their time was so worthless that delaying them twenty minutes, much less five, was not a concern).
The letter did mention one of the points I made (about the establishment a few years back of a genuine express bus from Crucifix Station to the Pentagon for the commuters who wanted it), and noted that rerouting to use that connection has been under study.
Supposedly, the new manager taking over the Metro system next year intends to focus on cleaning out inefficiencies in Metrobus routing and operations. I’ll believe it when I see it.
I too will believe it when I see it, although I must admit that I am praying that the new Head Guy of Metro will be successful in this endeavor.
I’m in suburban MD, in PG County, which probably has the worst bus service of the metro area. The county bus system, called THE BUS (duh!), is the pits–only runs M-F (no weekend service!), buses don’t run frequently enough and they are -rarely- on schedule, they duplicate Metro routes in some cases; some routes have very few riders while others are crowded all day long, and they stop running before 7 PM.
Most of our Metrobuses do at least “feed” into the subway stations, but let me assure you, there are plenty of places in the county where there is no public transportation. Many routes arrive at stations within minutes of each other, which makes it hard to make connections most of the time. Then you’re stuck waiting sometimes more than an hour for the next bus. This is what irks me the most: I live 5-10 minutes from my job - that’s travel time BY CAR. It takes me two buses to get there and, if the system is running smoothly with no delays, 45 minutes to get to work via public transit. Another improvement I’d like to see would be bus shelters with seating–at least if you have to wait for a bus for an hour, there should be a place to sit down and protection from inclement weather.
On the other hand, the local system (Fairfax Connector) in my area – but not, unfortunately, quite close enough to home to be very useful – is run quite well. (For one thing, they route their buses in a rational fashion: local routes in this part of the county feed into Franconia/Springfield station, and the aforementioned legitimate* express bus line runs between there and the Pentagon for people who are going there and prefer to avoid stops en route.)
I’m about half convinced that Fairfax County should shift the bus portion of its transit budget from Metro to the Connector, and expand service on the latter to replace the Metrobuses that combine the worst features of local and express routes.
*If you can’t count all the stops on the fingers of one hand, it’s not a legitimate “express” line deserving of a premium fare. The opposable one at the end is a “thumb” and does not count as a “finger”.
Here in Bend, OR, we finally got a public bus system. It’s great- this town’s not huge, only about 70k in population, but quite a few people here don’t have vehicles so it works out well.
Mostly. The first problem is that it serves the affluent NW section of town, the NE hospital area, the affluent-and-on-the-way-to-the-mountains SW section… but only barely serves the SE section of town- the area that has the largest amount of middle-to-low-income people. In other words, the area that needs the bus the most gets the least service.
The second problem is that they got rid of the dial-a-ride program when they implemented the bus system- so now all those people who relied on the DAR system have to walk to the bus stops, instead of being picked up at home for a nominal fee. This really affects people who are marginally handicapped and the elderly, especially when it’s snowing.
Heheheeheee - never heard Franconia-Springfield called “Crucifix Station” before but I like it (it’s the one closest to us, also).
When we first moved to the area we had no bus service - the closest stop to our house was most of a mile, and ran 4 times in the morning and 4 times in the evening, and only to the Pentagon. Things didn’t improve until Van Dorn Street station opened up.
Now we have adequate (though just) service. But for reasons that continue to escape me, only one of the two buses that runs anywhere near our house goes to Crucifix Station. The other one still struggles up to Van Dorn. Rational? erm, no (and these are both Fairfax Connector routes).
I do remember there being some grumbles exactly the opposite of yours, back when Metrobus changed a number of routes - that had formerly gone to the Pentagon, now went to Franconia/Springfield. I guess they listened to those complaints. Rally enough people to complain and perhaps they’ll switch things again.
I f’ing hate Metrobus…it’s like a third-world bus service. The Metro itself is relatively trouble-free, and they inform riders when the train is going to arrive and if there are delays. For the bus, no info, no nothing, so you stand out in all kinds of weather for who knows how long for the damn things. I only live a mile from the EFC station; I’m going to start walking or get a bike or something.
Supposedly they’re working on a GPS-driven system by which commuters can tell where the buses are in real time, similar to Nextbus.com (which already covers Alexandria’s DASH buses and Fairfax City’s CUE. If they do get it working, it will be a quantum leap forward and will be reason enough for me to buy a PDA. But I’m not holding my breath.
Metrobus employees, with few exceptions, seem to have IQs equal to or lower than room temperature. I’ve seen drivers – on many occasions – have to ask passengers which way their route goes, the route they’re supposed to be driving! I should think that one of the graduation requirements from elementary school should be the ability to read a map. And doesn’t Metrobus have any sort of training – dry runs, or even using the birds-eye view in local.live.com to move through their route so drivers can recognize the landmarks? :mad:
So if Metrobus does go on Nextbus, I expect the system to work, sort of, for about a month, and then break down permanently, with continued promises of fixes which never quite happen.
I read an article in the Washington Post a while back that a lot of Metrobus routes just follow the old streetcar lines and haven’t re-evaluated whether the routes still make sense. IIRC, Metro never wanted to inherit the bus system but had it forced upon them as part of getting the subway funded.
I find the bus runs pretty well in DC, although we live close enough to walk to the metro, but when I lived in NoVA it only worked for you if you kept regular business hours and were heading to the Pentagon.
The county bus system, called THE BUS (duh!), is the pits–only runs M-F (no weekend service!), buses don’t run frequently enough and they are -rarely- on schedule, they duplicate Metro routes in some cases; some routes have very few riders while others are crowded all day long, and they stop running before 7 PM.