The four mile, forty minute bus ride

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Rad Sallee’s Move It! column details one Metro bus rider’s particularly bad experience:

Jamie Maring writes that a 4-mile ride on a Metro bus “took 40 minutes and every part of the experience was unpleasant.”

For context, remember that she transferred from MetroRail to the 10 Willowbend bus at the new Texas Medical Center Transit Center and it was the evening rush hour in this extremely congested corridor.

The bus is small, runs at 28-minute intervals, and it fills up. “We all piled in, found a place to hold on … and off we went,” she said. But not far: It took 10 minutes just to turn left onto South Main because the signal gave traffic on Pressler a very short green light. And standing for much of the ride was both uncomfortable and unsafe, she said.

Metro spokesman Ken Connaughton said the route is assigned a 29-foot bus because it has low ridership compared with other routes. On a recent Metro check, he said, there was just one trip in which riders had to stand for numerous stops.

“We will examine recent data … to see if this was a unique or regular occurrence,” he said.

But if it does not happen regularly, he said, short buses are appropriate.

As for the stoplight, Connaughton said Metro helped the city evaluate its timing when the transit center opened, but he noted that since then, Pressler has become a through street east of Fannin.

The resulting traffic may be delaying buses as they wait to turn left onto Main, Connaughton said, and Metro has asked the city to re-evaluate the timing.

We can add this to Laurence Simon’s firsthand accounts of nightmarish bus rides. And here’s the point: Metro can justify, excuse and talk in circles all Ken Connaughton wants, but as long as bus rides are inconvenient, time-consuming and uncomfortable, people will often do whatever it takes to find other transportation.


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Anne Linehan is a co-founder of blogHOUSTON.