09-20-2015, 09:31 PM
M A V I C wrote:
Friday I saw a notice on the bus that the bus route is changing. I'm a little peeved because last fall a measure was passed by voters to increase funding for busses so they could at least keep service the same, if not make it better. Now they're making my route worse. I'm betting my new commute with the same route will now take 50-60 minutes each way. I have a friend that lives 40 miles north of me and he can get to work in 70 minutes. Drives me nuts how bad bus service is when you just want to get across town.
Yeah, it's especially bad if you have to make transfers. Here in Sacramento, there are bus routes that only operate once or twice per hour, so what should be a relatively short trip can turn into a journey. I'm convinced that light rail has made this worse. It greatly contributes to urban sprawl by making it easier for people to commute from greater and greater distances. The Regional Transport system here provides massive parking lots for commuters. The way I see it, if there were no light rail system, there would have to be more bus routes with greater frequencies, which would make the system far more usable. The Federal matching money for light rail must be like crack.