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I've found the train times to be right on schedule, but the bus times. HA!! Sometimes they are and sometimes they're not. Its a crap shoot. Now during peak rush hour times, I've found them to be on schedule but after that sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't. Not fun if its too hot or raining.
Did some contract work for the Fairfax Connector, I am not a transit professional. I found that a transit system strives to have the bus arrive at a stop on schedule or just after.. certain stops are "time points". When you see a bus sitting at a stop it may be that the bus is ahead of schedule and is sitting at the "time point" to get back on schedule.. running ahead of schedule may be beneficial to riders who are already on the bus but no good at all to riders who arrive at a stop on time only to see the tail lights of their "ahead of schedule" bus leaving them stranded.
From having interfaced with most of the transit systems in Metro DC I believe that all of them attempt to post accurate schedules and opperate their fleets on schedule.
I have ridden Metrobus SEVERAL THOUSAND times in every quadrant of the city. The commuter busses that run between DC and the suburbs are the most RELIABLE (this includes Metrobus as well as private lines). The local Metrobus routes that run strictly inside DC on the other hand, usually start on schedule at the beginning of their route, but after several miles they often get skewed off-course by heavy traffic, and end up running in bunches together followed by very long intervals with none at all. On those routes where busses are supposed to run every 3- 5 minutes and stop to pickup on every single corner, in actual practice, many drivers purposely "leapfrog" (travel in bumper-to-bumper caravans of 3 or 4 busses, with 15-20 minutes between each caravan) so that by doing this, each bus in the caravan can alternate or "takes turns" with the other busses picking up only on alternate corners and "leapfrogging" past the others. The drivers think is more efficient and saves them time, but this leapfrogging results in frustrating unreliable service. I have seen this time, after time, after time, and a few times have written letters of complaint, resulting in Metro sending "monitors" out to observe and take notes and hopefully penalize these drivers.
Location: Far Northeast, D.C. and Montgomery County, MD
220 posts, read 703,812 times
Reputation: 79
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhinestone
I just don't know how people who CLAIM THEY TAKE THE BUS can make such asinine statements when NextBus exists? Do any of you really take the bus?
That nextbus BS dont mean nuffin' when buses still come 10-20 minutes late or dont come at all, granted this is only the case of bus routes in bad areas of DC (mainly the buses in NE and SE), but still its wack. and then half the time when I check next bus it says no info available or somethin' like that. I don't either bother with reading bus schedules anymore, bus will come when it comes.
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