I frequently travel through downtown bloomington on Washington street so I see a lot of buses headed towards the place on front street where several routes converge so people can switch lines. I did see a mostly full bus once. The rest of the time there are 2-4 people on the bus. Yes that is anecdotal evidence but I’ve been driving through there for 7 years so it’s a lot of anecdotal evidence.
I’m still in favor of public transportation even though it will always have to be subsidized. However, the lunacy of connect transit running those huge busses is crazy to me. I read that the buses are getting older. Seems like a good time to replace them with smaller buses like State Farm uses. With the savings they might even be able to run more routes. Another added benefit is that the routes won’t be restricted by intersections where the buses are too big to turn.
None of this will happen of course. It really seems like a good old fashioned pissing contest so that bloomington and normal can say they have the biggest buses. Not really sure who they are competing against though.
I ride the green regularly and it’s often packed. Yellow, from Heartland to Uptown. Packed. The buses, are in fact, not big enough! You’re not looking at the right buses. Some routes are designed to cover geography, I’m guessing. They feed people into the system, and on to other routes. So not every route will perform equally. Instead of anecdotal evidence, why not report the news? Even the Pantagraph reported that Connect is experiencing its fourth highest ridership ever, this year.
If that is what the Pantagraph is reporting, they are wrong. March is the first month higher than the previous year since I started reporting. Maybe buses should only run from ISU to Heartland if that’s where the riders are. Empty buses are everywhere else.
If what you say Bob is true then perhaps you can grapple for once with some common sense. Keep big busses for the high ridership and use smaller busses or eliminate where ridership is next to non-existent. In regards to the P-graph reporting, I couldn’t care less what those idiot editors allow to be written.
Perhaps riders like Bob could pay a fare equal to even half of the cost of his ridership. If Riders like Bob do that, then the very large and costly subsidy is reduced and it won’t be such a big news story.
$400k-500k per month is a lot easier to swallow than $800-900k.
I frequently travel through downtown bloomington on Washington street so I see a lot of buses headed towards the place on front street where several routes converge so people can switch lines. I did see a mostly full bus once. The rest of the time there are 2-4 people on the bus. Yes that is anecdotal evidence but I’ve been driving through there for 7 years so it’s a lot of anecdotal evidence.
I’m still in favor of public transportation even though it will always have to be subsidized. However, the lunacy of connect transit running those huge busses is crazy to me. I read that the buses are getting older. Seems like a good time to replace them with smaller buses like State Farm uses. With the savings they might even be able to run more routes. Another added benefit is that the routes won’t be restricted by intersections where the buses are too big to turn.
None of this will happen of course. It really seems like a good old fashioned pissing contest so that bloomington and normal can say they have the biggest buses. Not really sure who they are competing against though.
I ride the green regularly and it’s often packed. Yellow, from Heartland to Uptown. Packed. The buses, are in fact, not big enough! You’re not looking at the right buses. Some routes are designed to cover geography, I’m guessing. They feed people into the system, and on to other routes. So not every route will perform equally. Instead of anecdotal evidence, why not report the news? Even the Pantagraph reported that Connect is experiencing its fourth highest ridership ever, this year.
If that is what the Pantagraph is reporting, they are wrong. March is the first month higher than the previous year since I started reporting. Maybe buses should only run from ISU to Heartland if that’s where the riders are. Empty buses are everywhere else.
If what you say Bob is true then perhaps you can grapple for once with some common sense. Keep big busses for the high ridership and use smaller busses or eliminate where ridership is next to non-existent. In regards to the P-graph reporting, I couldn’t care less what those idiot editors allow to be written.
Perhaps riders like Bob could pay a fare equal to even half of the cost of his ridership. If Riders like Bob do that, then the very large and costly subsidy is reduced and it won’t be such a big news story.
$400k-500k per month is a lot easier to swallow than $800-900k.
There own numbers show riders on down year to date!