I rode the bus again today. As you may or may not know, my daughter's car went belly up, died, was nailed to the perch and is currently providing charming condo space to varmints in my front yard. Therefore, for over a month now we have been a four person family with one car. The strain is beginning to show because the buses SUCK. Yes, they suck. I'm sorry, Brainshrub, but they SUCK donkey balls in hell.
My daughter ends up getting the car most of the time, because she works way the hell out Hendersonville Road and public transportation out to South Asheville and beyond is a sad, sick joke. The bus goes two or three times a DAY (yeah, a DAY, not an HOUR) and it does not stop between the Wal Mart and the Airport, a distance of 12 or so miles. Somewhere in the middle of those miles is where my daughter works. Note that this is still theoretically within Asheville city limits. She has found that the individual drivers are usually pretty nice about letting her out, although the people on the phone at the Asheville transit authority say that they're not allowed to, and if you need to get anywhere within those 12 miles you're just fucked, sorry. And then, once you've persuaded the driver to let you off somewhere, you still face walking down Hendersonville Road, which seems to have been specifically designed to discourage pedestrians. Or possibly it was designed by crows looking for human roadkill - something like that. At any rate it was taking A 3 to 4 hours to get to work via public transport, and then a taxi back home costs $30 (if you're not in Asheville, you may think that buses run all the time! Ha ha! You are so naive! The Asheville buses, my friend, just this year started running past 6:00 pm at all and now they quit at 10:00 pm, although in actual fact that really means 9:00 pm) so A gets the car most of the time. I, in turn, am taking the bus, because after all I work downtown, which is very close to West Asheville, and what the hell, I said. How bad could it be? Pretty damn bad.
M has been taking the buses for months now, because I have always felt that a teenager who can get himself around town is a happy teenager, and, more to the point, has a happy mother who doesn't have to be chauffering him on all his dubious teenage errands 24/7. M has complained bitterly about the buses, but I mostly ignored him, since M is 14 and complains bitterly about many things. Until lately, when I myself have started taking the buses and have discovered that they do, in fact, as I may have mentioned in the first paragraph, SUCK.
Why do the buses suck?
1. They are routinely late; that is, when they show up at all. The 9 bus I rode today was 35 minutes late - I stood out in the cold for 45 minutes tonight, waiting for the bus. Last Friday, after waiting for 40 minutes, I gave up and went to the bar and got a ride home from a friend.
2. They hardly ever run anyway. The buses that run between downtown and West Asheville run once an hour. Once. An. Hour.
3. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, they simply do not post. On Wednesday, I had to go pick M up at the bus station, since the 6:30 bus was just not going to happen. Tough shit, people. Wait another hour.
4. The people on the buses are scary. And I say that as a long time denizen of inner city Baltimore who has ridden buses and trains all over the east coast, through all of New York and Baltimore and DC and so on and so forth, not a naive young thing fresh from the suburbs but a woman who has routinely been lulled to sleep by the comforting roar of urban gunfire. Yet even to me, the people on the Asheville buses are actively frightening. Last week I ended up getting off the bus two stops early and hoofing it halfway up the hill because I really thought there might be a crack whore war and I was standing right between the two of them. Also, I had heard all the details I could take about Crack Whore A's big fight, subsequent months in the hospital, husband in jail and Mexican pimp.
5. A corollary to 5: the people on the buses are so damn depressing I can't stand it, and the advertising on the buses, which is pitched to the depressing scary people (i.e.: Sell Your Plasma Here!) is also deeply, deeply saddening and wrong. The class system in this country is wrong. The educational system is broken. And nowhere, nowhere, my friends, is that more evident than on the buses.
6. The bus that routinely goes to West Asheville, the #9, is tiny. It's the short bus, but it's packed full of people. It's packed full of people because a lot of people actually live in West Asheville, which you would think the transit authority would have noticed by now, but alas, not so.
7. A corollary to 6: Not everyone who is waiting for the bus can fit onto the tiny bus, so some people must wait for the next bus. An hour later.
8. If you are one of the lucky and or rude ones and have managed to squeeze yourself onto the tiny bus, then your trials are not over. The driver goes like a bat out of hell and the bus heels way over to the side on the turns and the rims of the tires scrape on the roadbed making sparks and frightening noises and you think you're going to die. I have never seen Clingman Avenue flash by so fast as when I'm on that bus - and I have driven it just about every single frickin' day for five and a half years. Some time soon that driver is going to kill a whole lot of people.
9. You never know where the driver is going to stop. It's totally fucking random. You push the stop requested thing or pull the little wire and he will stop. . .eventually. When he feels like it. When a sufficient number of bus stop signs have flashed by. Whatever. Walk, you stupid bus riding peon.
10. The bus maps and schedules are indecipherable, which doesn't really matter, which is why I put it last, since none of the drivers obey them anyway.
So fuck the Asheville buses. I am sorry to report that they suck most horrendously and you know, as a good little liberal type person, I went into this really wanting to like them, but I can't, because (did I say this already?) they SUCK.
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6 comments:
excellent "critque". I used to live in San Francisco and was a frequent public transportation user (SF has great public transportation) and I have had far more strange to scary encounters on the Asheville Bus system then I ever did there.
Yeah, I was just talking about this with a Baltimore friend and we think the real issue with the people is that there is no cross class bus ridership. Pretty much 95% of the bus riders in Asheville are the bottom 2% of the socio economic scale and so it's unnaturally skewed. That's why, if you're waiting for the bus dressed like you work in an office you get the hairy eyeball - or mugged, as a woman I met there last night was telling me.
Hi! This is Paul from The Brainshrub Bus Project. Thanks for mentioning my blog. :)
I have noticed for that the buses have been running late recently. I have theory as to why after talking to drivers:
The Free Fare promotion has gone on too long, and drivers are turning into de-facto baby-sitters for the cities homeless population.
They resent this deeply, and it's beginning to effect their job performance.
Also, there is one driver in particular that slows down the whole system.
Both problems will be solved by November 11th.
I'd like to address your other concerns point-by-point:
1. They are routinely late
See my opening paragraph.
2. They hardly ever run anyway. The buses that run between downtown and West Asheville run once an hour. Once. An. Hour.
Not true. There are two: The number 1 runs at the top of the hour, the number 9 leaves at the bottom of the hour and takes you as far as the Ingles on Haywood.
3. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, they simply do not post.
Yes, the transit website needs an overhaul and a way to better communicate better to riders.
I have several ideas on how to do this, but that's another topic.
4. The people on the buses are scary.
Again, see the first paragraph. Once the fare is returned, the crack-heads will stop using the bus. (They certainly have been a problem lately.)
Having said that, I think this speaks less about public transit and more about the problems that face our society that we collectively refuse to face.
5 (corollary) the people on the buses are so damn depressing
Yup.
And that's why those of us who do not have depressing lives must make a special effort to ride the bus so that the poor have an opportunity to be exposed to a different lifestyle.
As an added bonus, when more of us do ride the bus, better advertising will follow.
6. The bus that routinely goes to West Asheville, the #9, is tiny.
Yes, the #9 does suck.
But then take the #1 at the top of the hour. Much cleaner.
7. (corollary) Not everyone who is waiting for the bus can fit onto the tiny bus, so some people must wait for the next bus. An hour later.
See above.
8. If you are one of the lucky ones to get on the #9 the driver goes very fast.
That's because the transit system is spread a bit to thin because of the Bilmore Square Mall.
To explain:
Not only does the #9 needs to bring people all the way to the Biltmore Mall and back within 30 minutes, but they also have to pick up passengers in Pisgah View apts - BOTH WAYS!
That's no small feat even if you with a car that didn't need to stop.
IMHO, malls should have to pay for the privilege of having a bus brought to them.
The ways malls are designed are anathema to making sure public transit can arrive and leave efficiently.
9. You never know where the driver is going to stop.
This runs completely against my experience. The driver always stops at the bus stop as long as you give her at least a block advance warning.
10. The bus maps and schedules are indecipherable, which doesn't really matter, which is why I put it last, since none of the drivers obey them anyway.
Oh come on now. This simply isn't true.
I'm a bit color-blind and even I can make it out. Yes, there could be some improvements, but they are all minor. (Perhaps a better close-up map of downtown showing the DIRECTION the buses will be going when they leave the station, for example.)
In closing, all I have to add is that I agree that it takes awhile to get used to the system.
But once you do, you'll start to see your car as the wasteful method of getting around.
Sincerely,
Paul -V-
www.brainshrub.com
The argument that the crackheads and homeless will stop riding the buses when the fares go from free to $1 (it's the same argument the transit authority used when discussing last Monday's near shooting on the 41 bus) is fundamentally flawed, though. I mean, what, they're going to get their Mercedes' out of storage now that the buses aren't free? They have to ride the bus if they want to get anywhere, because they're the same people who have been riding the bus all along, at every price.
This may be hard to believe: But to a drug addict or homeless person $1 is a lot of money.
Plus, if you are that tight on money, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 starts adding up quickly.
In the current situation, they can hop on and off the bus without thinking about it - in fact it's started turning into a social activity.
However, once the fare returns they will scale back the travel.
I have no problem with sharing a Bus with a homeless person, homeless people do not scare me, and contrary to popular opinion the homeless are rarely dangerous (actually less so than the average population of people with homes) They have no place to go, they are routinely harassed by the police and yadda yadda yadda lack of houseing. People dont want to ride a bus all day, they just have nowhere else to go, raising bus fares wont change that.
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