Submitted by AcademicSavings634 t3_zd5ihz in Connecticut
Just wondering about anyone else’s experiences. This is the second time the Bristol Bus (102) just failed to show up. On top of that there’s a bunch of stops that aren’t even on the schedules so you never know exactly what time to wait for the bus (Eg: the stop right before mountain road near Aldis). Why is that? Even when a bus fails to show up, Customer service also doesn’t do anything to help you.
The bus in that accident might have served OPs line. Taking a bus out of rotation and shutting down the highway would definitely mess scheduling.
The bus in that accident might have served OPs line. Taking a bus out of rotation and shutting down the highway would definitely mess up scheduling.
There are a lot of stops that aren't on bus schedules. The ones that are on the schedule are generally time-checks for the driver, they can't leave until the time in the schedule.
For minor stops between scheduled stops, they only need to stop if someone is at the sign or pulls the rope. If you use one of these, it's a good idea to make sure you're at the stop by the time the bus can leave their previous major stop.
Delays are delays, busses get stuck in traffic too, and sometimes dispatch has them go off-route to get around accidents/ construction.
Source: I drove for PVTA during college.
This is definitely how it is *supposed* to work.
In practice they sometimes leave the time check stops early too.
Accident aside I use the bus for a fairly short route and the timetable is a mere suggestion. The bus is frequently late or never shows up. And I’ve had to run to catch buses that show up early quite a number of times.
I think I’ve encountered two drivers who would actually stop and wait so that they met the timetable rather than arrive early at at subsequent stops. Otherwise it’s a race to get to the end of the line. And the app is for the most part useless unless someone else who got on before you is using it.
There has been a lot of talk in the past about revising routes but no idea what happened with those discussions. And they wonder why more people don’t use public transit.
Yeah I’m mainly seeing a lot of issues with the 102. Rarely is that bus ever on time. Just last week I took it from downtown Hartford and the driver skipped over like 4 stops. I commute from Bristol to Hartford so I heavily rely on it though. It’s frustrating shelling out 30$ for an Uber to make it to work on time everytime there’s a long delay or a bus doesn’t show up. I hope to have a car soon but in the meantime this is what I have to rely on.
What's ridiculous with the "Fastrak" system schedule from Bristol to union station is an hour. Driving, that's 20 minutes without traffic. Half of that trip is on a separated bus way. I acknowledge that a bus should have a dwelling time, but the states premier express bus that takes three times as long as a car to get somewhere is fairly ridiculous. It's now way to provide public transportation that would meaningfully reduce car usage.
Further investment in our public transit system is vital to reducing our highway congestion and reducing overall vehicle miles traveled and emissions.
This. The buses in Europe are fast and reliable. They also don't have rope-pull stops. They don't sit around for a half hour anywhere either.
Same with big cities.
This is also why I refuse to take buses. Not because I don't want to, but because they're so unreliable.
Exactly, we need to get the bus services to be so good that people with cars will occasionally choose to take the bus. Or so that taking the bus is not a huge hinderance for single car multi-driver households. If taking the bus occasionally wasn't so much more difficult and didn't take so much more time those households would be less likely to decide to buy a second car.
Are the buses still free? Could be a higher rate of usage causing delays etc - especially on cold or crappy weather days.
Unfortunately, public transport will never be “perfect” - too many variables. Trains, buses, etc - c’est la vie!
In my experience free fares has made the buses faster; you don't have to wait for people to fish their fare out of their pocket.
They just extended free busses til April!
I would think free buses would allow for all doors boarding like the CTFastrak busway.
I think your bus may have legitimately been in a major accident on i84
Is traffic still backed up from that awful accident?
The bus service has been suffering at least since the pandemic if not longer. The short answer is that it’s chronically mismanaged at the very top. The long answer is that drivers are overworked and abused to their breaking point. They work extremely long schedules, frequently forced to work mandatory overtime, and get very little time to deal with their personal lives. They are forced to deal with the public and everything that entails and have very few resources for protection from being abused by passengers. It’s a difficult and stressful job that proves the point that money and benefits aren’t always the be all end all in life. Despite being in a Union the company generally doesn’t care about employee satisfaction, leading to many experienced drivers quitting and finding replacements has been challenging to say the least. So every day routes get cut, stops get missed, busses get delayed largely due to staffing issues combined with inexperienced and beyond burned out drivers. If you pass by someone wearing a blue CT Transit shirt, please tell them they are doing gods work.
I’ve been riding the same route for 15 years and the problems have always existed. I don’t blame the drivers. At least where I am there have been mentions of revising the routes (because they are inefficient) for ages, yet nothing has been done. The drivers could probably devise a whole new system that could be more efficient based on their knowledge of routes and the various challenges.
Yes and no. I agree with the drivers being overworked and overwhelmed but like the other guy mentioned, there’s been problems with CT Transit even before the pandemic or even dating back to before Fastrak was a thing. The whole system needs a revamp.
Absolutely, the whole system has been terribly managed for a very long time. The majority of drivers work 10-12 hour days because of the ridiculous routes and schedules. You might sign on for 10am, drive for 3 hours, be off for 2 hours, drive again for another 2 and a half hours, have a half hour off, then drive again for another 3 hours before signing off and driving home, however long that might take.
I would love for them to run on Sundays considering most people that ride the bus probably don’t have M-F jobs, and even if they did they still need to get shit done on Sunday. Most jobs when you tell them you can’t work Sundays because there’s no transportation, will schedule you anyways and just tell you to drop $40 on an uber.
Buses do run on Sunday’s. It’s a limited schedule though
In southeast CT the Seat bus only runs Monday-Saturday unfortunately. Saturday is a reduced schedule as well.
Try the Transit app
Yeah I've used this as well it shows where the bus is (theoretically). It's not perfect but it usually shows GPS of the bus on the route so you at least have some idea of whats happening.
I also sometimes double-check on Google Maps but I am not sure they are getting real-time data.
I know the buses have GPS, maybe we need to develop a tracker website.
Have you called yet to lodge a complaint? I’m sorry this happened to you. I have some contacts there. Can you inbox me?
I’ll inbox you later
Some tips:
In my experience you have to make sure it doesn't come early, not just be at the stop on time. Buses coming early might be a bigger issue than buses not coming at all.
Always have the schedule with you (or on phone) so you can be prepared to wait for the next bus or find an alternative if it's infrequent/last bus.
Look for alternate routes or choose routes/destinations where there are multiple ways to get to the same place. So if one line isn't running, you can walk a couple blocks over and catch a different bus that's going to the same area. With buses, I find that normalizing the idea of walking 15-20 minutes on either end of the bus trip can be helpful since it gives you many more options and besides it can be good exercise.
These are good points but shouldn’t be necessary on a regular basis.
I dont disagree with this either, but this probably isnt the greatest idea during unfavorable weather and for older/disabled folks that have to walk longer than they can manage on a regular basis.
>Even when a bus fails to show up, Customer service also doesn’t do anything to help you.
Other than apologize How should they help you?
At least act like you don’t hate your job? The lady on the phone today was just miserable. In the past they’ve been able to tell you if a bus has left or not and have been able to give you further information.
Maybe they do hate their job. Most customer service jobs suck. you spend the entire day apologizing to nasty people over something you had no control over in the first place.
They absolutely hate their job. They field calls all day either from Karen trying to make a minor inconvenience out to be a life changing problems, people chronically addicted to various substances relaying nonsensical stories, or people just flat out lying about their experiences on the bus, and they have to continually placate them. It wears on you after a while.
I use Google Maps. Sometimes the bus is early, so I have to wait for the next one. Occasionally it doesn’t stop, and I assume it was full.
But I get what I pay for—which is nothing until April 1, 2023. (Hopefully longer.)
Someone had proposed to make the free fares a permanent thing but that was back in June so I don’t know if it was considered yet. Something about unlike other States, CT only makes a small profit off of bus fare so it’s not necessarily needed.
I think it’s because The state assumes that the majority has motor vehicles, they don’t think for the less fortunate or tourists I swear
Yeah that’s evident. It’s not just transportation. Have you seen how they clean the sidewalks? Every year in Bristol they shovel half of it and the other half you have to either trudge through snow or walk on the road and risk being hit. I feel even worse for the elderly or people with children
It is a state-run enterprise, and the service is so poor, only the neediest use it. Is there any state-run enterprise that provides good service? They are rare.
Welcome to Connecticut
Well, your Bus Driver killed someone, so they were a bit busy with that.
It is a state-owned enterprise that is operated by a private contractor.
the schedules only show a couple of stops on each route as timepoints
You are not 'a customer." This is not retail. You must estimate your nearest stops that are not listed.
This is a problem in Ma as well, public transport is notoriously unreliable forced some people i know to buy a car. CT traffic seems worse now Covid is basically over and people migrated out of ny to ct.
There is no profit motive for the buses to run on time.
Because it’s run by the government
I'm sure a private bus line would be much better 🙄
Vast majority of people don’t need or use public transit, so there isn’t really a need to push to be efficient or useful.
I mean you're not wrong... there's a reason the highway got built by taking a bulldozer to the projects but we'll never let a bulldozer within a country mile of Westport/Greenwich or Old Saybrook (for high speed rail).
“Vast majority of RICH people don’t need or use public transit, so there isn’t really a need to to push to be efficient or useful.” FTFY.
Guess I’m rich, who knew?
Not against public transit, it’s just a fact vast majority of people in this state have a car and drive to work. Why would I take a bus for my 45min commute with strangers who will likely annoy me and also have to be on someone else’s schedule when I can just drive myself?
Public transit works when you’re relatively close to your job.
Half the time the buses where I am are standing room only. I'm not in a big city either, maybe 50k. They are used by and a lot of people who are dependent on it.
That's cool, doesn't change the fact that almost 80% of people drive solo to work in CT, and 4.4% take public tranist. Not saying there aren't people who rely on public transit, heck, 4% of 100,000s of thousands of working people is a lot of people, but my point is that the vast majority of people in this state do not take public transit.
Compare that to a state like NY, where only 53% of people drive to work and almost 30% take some form of public transit, now compare the difference in how transit operates and investments in it between our two states...
If we invest hard in the infrastructure, will more people take it? Probably depends greatly on where you live, where you work, etc, and I would guess many people do not live where they work or in a convenient enough location that public transportation would even make a difference.
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When’s the last time you took the bus? I’m a daily rider and the majority of the busses between 7:30-8:30 am and 4:30-6pm are quite full. If I time it poorly I’m standing for my commute. The parking at the Flatbush and Elmwood stations are great - never had any problems. Yes the busses have been infrequently lately but that seems more on a lack of bus drivers.
Free public transit is a net social good. It’s not a heavy burden on tax payers and helps support less cars on the road.
CT has its issues for sure, but the Fast Track is a good deal for riders all things considered - especially with the free fare they’ve been allowing lately.
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how many drivers does it take to pay back highway construction costs?
What denominator are you used to base that calculation of 60k per daily rider on? Curious how you arrived at that figure. Is that spread out over the years since 2015 when it started?
All things considered - any infrastructure investments is going to have a while to pay off. But we don’t necessarily need to have a “ROI” when it comes to public goods. This is a service our taxes pay for to better all people in the area that choose to use it, while getting less cars on the road and reducing traffic in hartford. If you’re skeptical and want to hear a decent podcast on why public transit should be free, I’d encourage you to listen to this great freakonomics podcast from a few months ago.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519?i=1000577277867
Let’s be fair, there’s incompetence in CT in many aspects of our lives.
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Compared to other states we are one of the best.
And yet there’s still incompetence.
Sure, just give me your address and Ill get you the fuck out
Sorry we’re not up to your standards, Mr. Classiclytrainedchef.
It’s ok, you’ll do better next time chief.
G3Saint t1_iyztuwg wrote
There's a massive accident on the highway which is causing delays everywhere. it could be this bus is just stuck in that mess