The joys of public transportation

[yendi]

I was presenting at a small conference at Tufts this morning, and foolishly decided to go into work after it ended (shortly before midday).

Total time (including leaving the Tufts library, waiting for the 96 bus, waiting for the 71 bus, waiting for the 70 bus, and walking the rest of the way to the office): Two hours, fifteen minutes.

On the plus side, they had wonderful sandwiches there before I left, and a co-worker whose birthday is today had cupcakes when I hit the office. So I didn't starve (always a big concern, of course).

Comments

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

The 71 is one of the lines that the T admitted a few weeks ago has 'ghost transit' issues... in that it does not run as often as the schedule says and hasn't in years, so that the wait for buses on the line is much longer than it appears.

The 70 is also unpleasant at various times of the day, and is never on schedule from roughly noon through about 7:00. (We live on the 70 line, and it gets stuck horribly in traffic when things get busy). Always worse on Friday... rush hour starts at 3:00 and runs until 6:00 or 7:00 depending on the weather and time of year.

[yendi]

The 71 was actually the least of the waits (only ten minutes), but given its frequency, I'm not surprised that it was one of the ghost buses.

The 70 has a chunk in the middle that reeks of poor design, as it detours in Waltham Center to go to the Commuter Rail stop, effectively adding ten minutes to the route (more during rush hour going in-town, when for some reason, the 70a that starts at the commuter rail is held back deliberately until the nearly-full 70 has to pick up 25 passengers at the rail stop). Ten minutes for a one-block detour.

[litch.livejournal.com]

My experience of bus transit is that if you only need to take one it's fine, but if you have to make more than one transfer it quickly exceeds being worth the effort and can quickly become worth calling a cab.

[yendi]

True, but since my transit pass gets me all buses for free, I spent no money.

[davidlubar.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I recently spent 27 hours making the two-hour flight from Allentown to Chicago. No sandwiches, but there was definitely bourbon at the end of the first evening.

[yendi]

Wow! That beats any of my air travel horror tales (and I have plenty of them) by a lot.