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May 18, 2006
Running for buses
I think I’m a fairly saavy user of public transportation. I commuted about an hour each way on the Washington DC Metro througout middle school and high school; spent lots of time on London buses and subways during a semester there; and then used Berlin buses, trams, and subway at least two or three times a day when we lived there.
But I’ve never had such a bad time riding buses as I have in Seattle this month! This despite having more and better tools than ever to help plan trips and predict bus arrival times: the ugly crystal ball of MyBus.org (which can send per-stop arrival times to my phone), the thorough King County Trip Planner, and the excellent Google mashup Bus Monster, which shows the location of individual buses in real time.
Still, I’ve found myself waiting 20 or even 30 minutes for a bus that should be running every 10, have misunderstood the location of bus stops by blocks and blocks, and have now twice failed to get off at the last stop before the bus makes one of those annoying multi-block runs without a stop (a different bus each time, ahem). I’ve even missed the free Amazon shuttle bus between our main building and downtown a few times. (Ok, so that just means waiting five minutes for the next one, but when you’re hurrying, you know?)
Posted by Andrew at May 18, 2006 11:38 AM
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