PATransit Tuesday: What the Crap, take 2
First, a quick response to this column last week. Apparently my bus did show up, just 15 minutes early. It still begs the question, but to be fair, it was made up for the next day when it was 15 minutes late.
Now normally I don’t gripe. I do love the bus. I love not driving. Quite frankly, I dread the days when I have to drive. That being said, I need the bus to be a bit more reliable please!
Yesterday, while waiting at Penn Station for my bus, it went past without stopping. This typically wouldn’t be a huge issue, it gets crowded there: the FACT bus has no idea how to pick up passengers and move on in a timely fashion and the New Stanton Castle bus picks up what I can only imagine is the entire population of New Stanton Castle each time, so I can understand my bus going past without seeing me. When it goes past without a sign saying it was my line, then I don’t know to head to another stop, and I as well as another passenger, are stuck without rides, then it’s a bad thing.
Thankfully a friend was also working downtown and I hopped a ride home, but again, I ask, this time with more fire and brimstone (if that is even possible), what the crap?!
The day your bus was early was the day the funeral procession for the three dead police officers closed large parts of Downtown and Oakland, and points in between.
I don’t know which bus it was, but odds are that was the problem. I think – on days where large portions of the city’s infrastructure have been rerouted – fifteen minutes early might not be so bad?
When it was late, it was Monday the 6th, not the day of the funeral (that day I was somewhat compulsively checking the PAT website to see how things were running). The big problem is that I catch the last trip of that line, so it being 15 minutes early meant that I missed it and would have been somewhat stranded.
I’m also used to it running late so I stick around Penn Station waiting for it, and then that compounded the fact that I missed other buses going in the same general direction.
I still got home, and enjoyed the walk down the hill and back, just a bit of an inconvenience I suppose.