Ah, the holidays: No season of transit riding is quite so interesting. Free service into the wee hours of Jan. 1 made New Year’s Eve a treat. The rest, however, was often downright frustrating.
Paper schedules became completely useless, what with reduced Sunday service on a Friday, increased Saturday service on a Monday and Thursday, regular Sunday service on another Friday, and increased Saturday service on … a Saturday.
Combine that with five days of seemingly arbitrary reductions. Fourteen routes were cancelled, along with portions of three others. Peak-hour trips were cancelled on 47 routes, with frequencies reduced on three others and two routes reduced to peak only.
Even checking the list of reductions often wasn’t enough to ensure a bus. The 1, for example, was listed as “some peak trips cancelled,” but the snips were actually made around the noon hour.
I understand the need to prevent empty buses and give drivers time off, but I have to wonder if there isn’t a clearer (and less random) way to accomplish the same goals.
Either way, the changes — and weather — kept me on my toes. I traded a potential express bus to Mill Woods for a trip on the 8, just to ensure I’d make it there at all.
With these sorts of short-term reductions, I couldn’t trust Google’s transit recommendations. Grudgingly, I returned to the dark ages of the ETS provided trip planner.
Some of my obscure and arcane knowledge came in handy again, allowing me to bypass the stop finder by using the list of arbitrary placemarks, like convenience stores and daycare centres.
My old standby for a trip to Whyte Avenue was the Princess Theatre, good enough for most of the strip if the trip used a 4, 6 (excuse me, 7), or 106.
Of course, when planning that kind of trip, the six recommendations from the university always seemed to consist of variations of “take the 4 going west and transfer to the 4 going east after two blocks.”
Perhaps this confusion is ETS’ way of reminding us of what we have. My girlfriend donated tickets to a group of stranded children, but wondered whether others would have only done so during Christmastime.
So, among other things, I’m thankful for regular schedules, for ETS getting us on Google’s transit planner, and for having real late night transit for once. Most of all though, I’m just grateful to be able to ride transit at all.
