Bus #23 Rant/Question

[hghlndprk]

Route 23 leaves the last downtown stop, 3rd and Union at 12:10am, early at least half of the time.

I have had to take a taxi home from work, a $35 fare, twice this week.

Does anyone else have this problem? Is there anything more that I can do beyond complaining to Metro customer service, which I have?

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[WSB]

How much earlier than 12:10?

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[JustSarah]

Yes, the 54X used to leave 3rd & Virginia up to 15 minutes early when I’d be ready to leave work, but it seems to have improved a bit. It’s frustrating, especially when it’s the last bus of that particular route. In my opinion, an early bus is much worse than a late one. With a late bus, at least it will show up; if it’s early, you’re just screwed.

I watch the tracker before leaving work to get an idea of how long a wait I’ll have for the bus, and I remember one 54X going from “no info,” meaning it’s not available on the tracker yet, to “19 minutes early.” Then, sure enough, it registered as “departed” my stop 19 minutes early. I’ve heard someone mention the issue to a driver before, and the response was that they can only stay on schedule if they’re early to the first few stops.

That may be true, but it’s incredibly unfair to the people who catch the bus early in the route. Drivers need to take this schedule issue up with Metro if they’re being given grief over running late.

Anyway, hghlndprk, I empathize. It’s crappy.

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[Jiggers]

I used to work in Belltown for a year and had this problem with the 54 late at night leaving early. It’s a pain to have to go and wait for 45 minutes for the night owl in the winter at 2:15 am and not too mention you had to walk all the way up to Union St. from Bell St. after 1:15 am.I quit that program. Metro is NOT efficient enough.

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[Bob]

My theory is that some of Metro’s fringie-loonies among the part time driver corps come out very late at night and on Sundays, quite likely because they’re barred from doing so at any other time.

One recent Sunday I took a local to get to the WS hub where the 560 and a lot of other routes stop. It runs every hour on Sundays. The driver gave me a ticket with very little time on it, so I asked for an up-to-date one. Boy, was that a mistake.

It soon became apparent that he’d carefully calculated the tiny amount of time he’d set on that ticket. As he pompously explained, he’d started driving the bus in Ballard at noon. Therefore, adding the regulation two hours to that, and subtracting the length of time that the route normally takes to get from Ballard to WS, which was an hour and a quarter, but also taking into account more time for the considerable lateness of the bus, anyone who was intimately familiar with the Driver’s Regulations could obviously see that of course there was hardly any time remaining. There arose a hint of a crazed gleam in his eye, as if doing this to some random elderly pasenger was a moment of his highest enjoyment.

So on the way back from my errands I walked home from the bus hub, a mile and three quarters with my bag of groceries. Just so I wouldn’t have to pay that tinfoil trumper another fare just to hear him tell me something like that all over again.

I took it pretty slow and rested a few times and my knees held up okay. I do support Metro, but it’s harder to support it when it’s run like that.

Whoever wins in November, ontime service is so lousy now at Metro that something has to change. I believe it would be a great improvement if our WS routes ran independently of routes in other areas.

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[lighthouse]

hghlndprk wrote: Is there anything more that I can do beyond complaining to Metro customer service, which I have?

Send the taxi receipts to Metro, describe in detail (dates and times) why you had to take the taxi, and ask them to refund your taxi fare. And send copies of the letter to the mayor and KC executive.

I doubt they’ll pay, but it’s a more concrete action than just complaining to Metro’s customer service group. At least it might get someone’s attention and they’ll tell that driver to stop leaving early.

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[Jiggers]

Transfer time is a complete joke. Metro is greedy. You can’t get anything done in that amount of time so I don’t even bother to ask for a transfer. I’ve complained to Metro years ago, but I never got a response back and I assume the just delete my email without opening it up.

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[flowerpetal]

Wow, that leaving early stuff is shockingly bad! I like Lighthouse’s suggestion of sending a copy of the receipt to Metro. It would be even more effective if you involved one of the local tv stations. They must have a consumer protection kind-of person, right? And the Times has a the traffic/commuter answer guy. More people need to hear about this.

And one who doesn’t need to hear about it because it is not his jurisdiction at all; is the mayor. Right the Exec for KC, but save your time and forget about the mayor.

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[Bob]

Jiggers,

I don’t care about the fare, financially speaking. But I do care about the many broken connections. My time isn’t money any more, but still time is life. Even though the little brochures promise connections, the printed timetables lie like a rug and Metro is pretty much unconcerned whether those connections happen.

On a four bus errand (two there, two back), I always mentally add one and sometimes two extra half-hour waits for missed connections. So a nominally two hour bus errand generally becomes a two and a half hour errand, and sometimes a three hour one.

Every missed connection is a serious service failure. And every time a connection is missed is an opportunity for Metro to work to understand how to re-match that schedule to reality, so that the connection is not repeatedly missed.

But no one, NO ONE AT ALL, at Metro has that attitude. The driver I mentioned is only a more pronounced example of the “passengers’ time is worth less than nothing, failure is normal and is actually desirable for cost reasons, and furthermore we’re always right” approach prevailing in Metro’s headquarters leadership.

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[WSratsinacage]

I’ve never been impressed with Metro. If SPD wrote tickets for all of the traffic infractions I have seen, the city would be able to balance the budget. Sure, there are some good drivers, just probably not enough of them. I would be pissed if I had to ride the bus and put up with this, whether I had a car or not. I have a car and admire those who have a car and still ride the bus. I guess your tolerance is higher than mine.

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[KBear]

I wonder if those red light cameras have caught any Metro buses yet. And I wonder if Metro would actually pay the fines if they were.

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[flowerpetal]

Metro is King County’s headache, not the City of Seattle. SPD could write tickets all day and raise revenue; it would not help Metro’s bottom line at all. That’s why I stated above that the mayor, now or future, has little control over what Metro does.

That’s why it was so laugable when candidate McGinn was making Metro one of his priorities. I guess no one told him that Metro is not in his purview.

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[KBear]

flowerpetal, no one said revenue from traffic tickets would benefit Metro.

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[flowerpetal]

Thanks KBear. Perhaps you are right. I thought that was what WSratsincage was communicating in #10. Perhaps not.

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