h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Speaking of inconvenient bus transfers, this was a featured story on our Houston NPR affiliate.

Trying to get from Houston to Galveston Island on public transportation.

http://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/news/can-you-really-get-from-houston-to-galveston-on-public-transit/

Interesting.

And also speaking of connections... Cap Metro have recently introduced a new schedule on the two buses I use to get to work - they've made them run every 15 minutes on weekdays between 7am and 7pm. That sounds great - at first. And it is, sort of. They used to run either every 20 minutes or every 30 minutes. That would necessitate consulting the timetable. With a bus that (supposedly) runs every 15 minutes though it's more a matter of just turning up, and if you just miss one there's not much time to wait for another. As long as they're running to schedule. Which one of them rarely does after about 5pm and until after 7pm.

Or if, since they both run every 15 minutes throughout the day, the second bus (the one I'm connecting to) is scheduled to arrive at the connecting stop on the 0, 15, 30 and 45 minute mark, but the first one is timed at 03, 18, 33 and 48, which is the case with my buses home. So how a Cap Metro spokesman reckons you'll never have to wait more than seven minutes for one of those two buses is beyond me

There's also the small matter of how often they run outside those times. Let's not forget that people mostly use the bus because they can't afford a car (or they're British and have a strong belief in a good public transport system), and the reason they can't afford a car is because they don't earn much. What are the jobs that don't pay much? Retail and the service industry. And when are those two the busiest? At the weekends (especially early morning) and (for the service industry) late at night. Which is when these two buses run only every 30, 40, 60 minutes, so good luck if you have to make a connection.

Oh, and did I mention that since they introduced these new schedules a couple of months ago they still haven't updated the bus times on the individual pages for each of the bus stops along the two routes?

Credit where it's due though. They've recently introduced a new feature - every bus has been fitted with GPS, so you can look up the ID number of a certain bus stop and get real time information on when the next one is due. That's got me home a little earlier than otherwise on several occasions, because before I was able to do this I'd look at the timetable, see there was a bus due in say, four or five minutes (it take me about five to get to the stop where I catch my first bus home), and decide not to take a chance on it being a few (or five or ten) minutes late, although I know it probably is, so I get a later bus.

With this new feature I can see that in fact, yes, the bus is running a little late and it's due in seven minutes, so I can make it. Result

Well, this morning was a first. This afternoon quite possibly too.

We got to a stop this morning where there was one bloke waiting. The bus stopped, the doors opened and... he stood up, and didn't get on. He seemed to be struggling with something (I was on the opposite side of the bus and most of the way to the back). It turned out he'd got a buckle on one of the straps on his backpack caught between the slats of the seat and he couldn't figure out how to get it out. We waited a full minute for this to play out, by which time the driver got out of his seat and released the bag in a matter of moments.

This afternoon there was a... well, I don't want to call him a nutter but he was definitely not someone you'd want sitting next to you. Someone who can't sit still, gesticulate a lot for no reason and who move jerkily. You know the kind. When we got to *that* bus stop, the usual crowd of people appeared out of nowhere to get on. The driver shut the doors, raised the bus and started to pull away (bearing in mind we'd already been there a couple of minutes. Your man decides that this is his stop and he needs to get off.

I'd already noticed, as I walked past him when I got on the bus, that both his legs were heavily bandaged, and when he got up he obviously had difficulty walking, in fact moving at all. I don't think he had cerebral palsy but his movements were reminiscent of someone with the affliction.

Which made it all the more surprising when he walked in front of the bus to get his bike off the rack Something he had as much difficulty doing as our friend this morning had removing his bag from the seat.

Total time spent at the bus stop: five minutes. Because as we were about to leave for the second time someone came running up to get on.

This one's a bit difficult.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to be disabled when I was a kid. You couldn't go to most cinemas or theatres because there was little or no wheelchair access. Plenty of theatres and museums would have been out of bounds. Sports arenas probably not so much, but you would have been in a little paddock with other wheelchair users down on the touchline. Nice and close to the action but not such a good view as those higher up in the stands. Most restaurants would also have been either out of bounds or very difficult. And this would all be dependent on having someone to actually wheel you around in the days before motorised wheelchairs.

If you were so disabled that you couldn't even get into a wheelchair you'd have been all but housebound. Or probably institution-bound.

As for buses, forget it. Which is why this one is particularly uncomfortable to complain about. It's fantastic that people in wheelchairs can go wherever the buses go. But this bloke was so severely disabled that he really should have had some assistance, which is why it took him almost 10 minutes to manoeuvre his wheelchair onto the bus and into the space for the driver to secure it.

When you've got to get to work, and it's Saturday morning, and you have to make a connection, and the buses only run every 30 to 60 minutes at that time of the week, is it unreasonable to be by that?

I rarely travel by bus, but yesterday I had cause to and already I have a little bus story to tell. It probably falls into the invisible category. Sorry to clog up your journal with this; I'll stick to the relevant bits.

After work yesterday, I got a lift into town from a colleague, as I was meeting some friends in a restaurant for dinner. I looked around for some shoes, which is why I had gone to town in the first place, (didn't find any), and, as I had over an hour to kill till dinner, had decided to go swimming. I could have walked but that would seriously have reduced the time at the swimming pool. And anyway, it had started to rain.

After my swim I took the return bus back into town. I was the only person on the bus. I got on and asked for a ticket to the town hall, which was the stop nearest the restaurant. There seemed to be some trouble with the ticket machine, because the driver huffed and puffed and wrote the date by hand on the ticket when it came out of his little machine. I sat down - no one else was on the bus.

After the stop before mine, I stood up and, feeling silly, rang the bell for the bus to stop. I thought that was a bit unnecessary because I was still the only passenger and the driver knew exactly where I had wanted to go.

It got dangerously near to the stop - I was standing at the door by now - and he showed no signs of slowing. No one was waiting to get on, and he



Didn't Stop.


I was speechless, and couldn't say anything. He finally stopped at the next stop half way up the high street. I jumped off and had to walk all the way back to my stop. And further because the restaurant was even beyond that.

I suppose he would argue that I got more than I had paid for - and a free ride to the next stop.

Oh, please don't apologise for Stories of the Bus and the Silly People Who Drive Them and the Silly People Who Use Them.

Ooh

If I was start a new journal for such things do you reckon that might be too long for the title, or should I just call it Commuter Tales? Cos plenty (including Sho) also use the train.

oh do it.
then I can tell you about the silly moo on the train this morning...

Done and done F50359?thread=8314188