Where's my bus?

[CrazyShoeGirl]

Ok, I think I'm putting this in the right thread.

First let me start by saying that I have nothing but respect for bus drivers, I don't know if I could put up with the crap they do all day. I understand that sometimes the bus is late, I accept that, my co-workers accept it.

Anyway, today was an extremely cold day, the kind of day that chills you right to the bone, and I have to take the bus to work. I get to the bus stop 5 minutes early, I even decided to get my coffee at work, just so I don't miss my bus. So I stand there waiting, and waiting, and waiting. 15 minutes go by. I'm getting slightly angry, but again I understand the bus is sometimes late. Another 10 minutes go by, no bus, finally another lady offers me her cell phone to call work and tell them I'll be late because it doesn't appear like my bus is going to show up.
I wait another 10 minutes, finally I see it driving up the street. I big "Finally" coming out of everybody's mouth. It turns out that this is the next scheduled bus, and that the bus I was trying to take just didn't show up. No explanation as to why. So basically, I spent the entire day with a chill at work, because my bus didn't show up.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

[PorkChop]

Oh God yes!

I take the bus to go to school. Last week was finals week. Of all days the bus never came at the time it should of (or close to the time it should of) it had to be the day I had a final exam. I was late for my class and luckily my instructor let me take my test.

I got an A BTW.

[Tex]

Oh, I get royally pissed, to the point I wanna fucking kill the driver. I swear, the only bus in the whole CHT system that is ever on time, is my second morning bus to work. One day, I got off work @ 5:00.

I sit @ the bus stop around 5 past. Schedule says it comes @ 5:15.

Low and behold, about 10 minutes later, it's still not here. So I give it a few minutes.

It's now 5:30, and it's still not here.

Time is now 5:45. You guessed it! Still not fucking here.

Next bus is supposed to arrive here @ 5:50. I hear a noise, another bus is making its round up the cul-de-sac. Guess what? It's the bus that will arrive on the stop @ the other side of the street.

So me and my annoyed co-worker (who already missed her TTA stop on Franklin Street, and will have to wait another hour when we get there) cross the street before the bus arrives @ the stop (I hate this, b/c we have to go all the way up to Carol Woods and East Chapel Hill before the bus goes back around to Franklin). If the bus had arrived @ 5:15 like it was supposed to, I would've been home by now, and co-worker would be on that TTA bus. But that's not it!

We make it all the way around, and *surprise*, no fucking bus going the opposite side, to Franklin Street.

So not only was our original bus late, the damn thing never showed up, and we were riding on her bus going the opposite way, when a bus did show up. What should've been 5:15, turned out to be 6:00 (if we would've waited for it, after its long round).

I guess bitch decided she didn't FEEL LIKE making her 5:15 round like she was REQUIRED to do, and instead decided she needed a damn 30 minute smoke break after she made her previous round to Franklin Street (arrived there about 4:15), and it threw off the rest of her schedule, as a result. One more kicker!

The other bus driver had made it to the end of the street we got on, right after we pulled up to the original bus stop (the one that should've arrived @ 5:15). So it had made its rotation around aformentioned cul-de-sac. Our bus pulls away, guess where bitch goes? Yup! Right around the damn cul-de-sac. I know there are required stops drivers have to make, but unless this driver could not see the other bus (if she couldn't, then I shouldn't be trusting my life w/ a blind ass driver), there is no need to make a second round by the cul-de-sac, b/c one was just made. God, I swear, we both wanted to kill this bitch. It took her forever to get down to Franklin Street too.

"Oh, it's okay. You're already behind by a half-hour that someone is picking up the slack for your ass, and THEN you finally decide to do your fucking job. Then, you can't drive faster than 20 MPH. Some of us have buses to catch, but fuck us. We're not important @ all, right?"

I wonder if this is all a result of the CHT system becoming fare-free (paid for by the University), but why must the damn buses always be late? Every damn one of them except my morning transfer bus, no joke. And why is it that the CHT complaint system only stays open until 5 pm? So they can fuck up after that and not take the blame? Like I daydream w/ some of my stupid customers, I can imagine pulling out an AK-47 and spraying these useless peons. Iff only...

Tex

[scruff]

Regularly.
There's supposed to be 3 buses an hour to the next town.
I usually wait 45mins for a bus.
On more than one occasion I've waited 2hrs.

It's a combination of them;
- getting stuck in traffic, so being late
- getting so stuck in traffic the office recalls them, as they'll be running at the same time as the next bus, or over the hours they're allowed to drive safely, so have to come back to base to clock off/take a break.
- bus breaking down
- driver refusing to continue on that route due to violence/vandalism from passengers/nearby pedestrians (most winters the no1 route stops running in the evening for a few weeks through Meridian Estate cos some brat has thrown a brick at the bus)
- no driver
-management have schedualed insufficient drivers
-driver ill
-on hols and no replacement,
-or still stuck on another, running late, bus

I have a standard text message on my phone, to my boss's phone number. "Appologies, early bus not shown, late bus late, will be in soon. hopefully. Scruff."

[KellyHabersham]

This sort of thing happens all the time on one of the bus routes I frequently take, but part of it may be because it's coming from a direction where there's alot of construction going on because of a light-rail system being put in. And too, it's one of those routes where people get on and off at every stop (or so it seems), and this does slow down the trip a bit.

[marty]

Tex: I used to go to school in Chapel Hill. I took the bus once, couldn't seem to find one that was ever on time again, then gave up and walked everywhere else. Terrible.

[Tex]

The reason why I don't walk is b/c I live too far from work to do so, and no one lives out my way. But the bus system is useless.

Tex

[GolfCart34]

I remember back in the day having issues with the "T" in Boston. I would occasionally take the T into the city from the Chestnut Hill stop. The college I went to offered a shuttle from the security booth to the stop and back. Anyway, it would never fail... I would see 3 or 4 outbound trains go by and end up waiting for 30 - 45 minutes for the inbound one to finally come by.

The strange thing is... If we could get on the other shuttle and be dropped off at the Reservoir stop (which was only 1 stop up from Chestnut Hill heading inbound) the inbound trains seemed to be aplenty. I was wondering if there was some magical black hole between Chestnut Hill and Reservoir that would cause the trains at one stop to be plentiful and the trains at the other stop to be few and far between.

[Gerrinson]

Oy, this brings back some bad memories of when I used to try to take the bus to work.

When I did take the bus, I often had to take it an hour earlier than should have been necessary because the bus was always 15 - 20 minutes late. Of course, having told my manager that I didn't have a car and needed to take the bus (and providing her with a bus schedule) she would still schedule me in so early or out so late that I couldn't take the bus both to and from work.

For about a year, I wound up walking to/from work. 6 godd*** miles! When it's -10 F and the wind chill brings it to -20 that's a hell of a long walk. There were quite a few times I pondered killing that manager so I could wear her steaming corpse home to keep me warm. (Yes, I have issues. But making someone walk in that kind of weather when you could have scheduled them within the normal bus route hours is cruel and torturous.)

[Sliceanddice]

people ask me why i dont take the bus and thats why, the buses are farely regular around here, i could set my watch by them moost days. But one, not that dependable, two they make weird stops, like the 20 minute wait in front of an apartment complex near by... where only about 5 people ride the bus or use other transport. No buses on sunday. Cant depend on them to get me on time. I would have to leave an hour earlier than i would for what would be a 5 minute drive. And for school? 30 minute drive made 3 hours because no bus near me goes directly to my school, i would have to take one bus to one city another to a the next then get on one a the bus that actually head to my school (3 ever hour, heading different directions) when i could be sleeping, eating doing house work or studing oi not worth it.

[wagegoth]

I take a bus across SF Bay every day. It runs approximately once an hour. So you know what happens if one bus doesn't show up. And, yes, that happens. Of course, it seems to happen more often when it's raining, cold and windy, or during one of our few heatwaves.

They changed the route six months ago, and they're still giving substitute drivers the old map, which means they don't go past my stop.

[MMATM]

Our university bus system, while free, isn't even worth that much. They should seriously be giving all the students that live on-campus a credit towards their "fees" (since so many get full-tuition scholarships, tuition is about $800/semester versus the $8,000+ in "fees") for having to put up with such bullshit.

Buses (almost all buses) run every 15 minutes. Some of the off-campus buses run every 10 or every 20, depending on how far they go.

On more occasions than I can remember (at least 50 over the past 3 semesters, with no exaggeration whatsoever), I have watched 3, 4, or 5 of the off-campus (meaning 10- or 20-minute separations) buses go by without seeing a single campus shuttle bus run through. Many times the campus shuttle has been more than 45 minutes late (despite the fact that there are multiple buses, and that all of them are supposed to have gone by at that point), and so I've stopped taking the bus to class. Which means I have a 20-30 minute walk to most of my classes.

One notably epic failure at life took place on Halloween last year. (Note: temperature outside was around 20 degrees Fahrenheit.)
My GF was at a party helping set up, and three of us were supposed to take one of the off-campus (comes by every 30 minutes after 6pm or so) buses and meet her. We arrived at the bus stop at 6, to see a bus (not sure if it was ours) leaving. And so (times are approximate):
6:00 - We figure we have 30 minutes to wait. We wait. I (as Captain Jack Sparrow) entertain the throngs of Halloween crazies.
6:15 - Bus comes. Not our bus.
6:30 passes. No bus.
6:40 - Bus comes. Not ours either.
6:45 - We call GF (by now the party has started) and leave a message saying we will be late because the bus is late.
7:00 passes. No bus. We call GF again, leaving a message that one of the buses (there should be 2 on the route) must have been recalled, and we will be leaving campus as soon as the other arrives.
7:05 - Bus comes. Again, not ours.
7:15 - GF calls back, wondering where we are. We explain the late bus.
7:30 - Bus comes. Not ours. One of us (not me) calls a friend to check the bus schedules and notices online. Relays information that website says that all buses are running as normal.
7:45 - Bus comes. Not our bus.
8:00 - GF calls back, wondering where we are. We tell her the bus appears to have quit running without telling anyone (and stranding the whole neighborhood around the party, incidentally, as there is only one bus that runs that way).
8:05 - Bus comes. Not ours.
8:15 - GF calls again. Says she's coming back to campus and fuck the bus. One of her friends (with a car, who had just arrived) would drop her off.
8:20 - Bus arrives. Not ours, but one that had not passed before now. We are intrigued that a bus that appears nowhere on the schedule should show up randomly, while the regularly scheduled bus would stop running with no notice and leave an entire neighborhood (of four- and five-person houses, totaling about 60 people) without transportation. Some of these people have cars, I'm sure, but for those who didn't (close to half, according to the hostess of the party) they had to walk several miles home in the freezing cold.

And such is why I never take the bus any more and despise the university bus "system". A committee of severed penises has more intelligence than the university, in my opinion. And I'm willing to prove it, just bring me the university administration and a rusty butter knife.

[/rant]
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[myswtghst]

When I was in college, I only took the bus home from class. Never to class, as there was no guarantee when the bus would show, and I figured if I had to leave an hour before class, I might as well get the excercise, rather than standing at the bus stop for that hour.

[rerant]

This happens to me ALL the time. My bus route if famous for being late or not showing up.
I've actually decided to go a step further than just complaining to anyone who will listen to me, and written to the Toronto Transit Commission. Twice, actually.

The first time I wrote was to inform them that in one day a northbound bus was nearly 15 minutes late, and a southbound bus later that night simply did not show.
I can't remember specifically what my second letter was in reference to, but I know it was something exceeding what I feel to be a fair amount of time between scheduled arrivals (10 minutes).

I'm actually planning on writing them AGAIN, since the other day I waited at the subway station for 45 minutes before a bus showed, then when one finally made an appearance it wasn't running the full route, but instead forcing passangers to transfer mid-way.
Ok, fine, snow storm, we'll let that one slide.
But that exact same thing happened again two days ago, so it's no longer an issue of weather and instead the asshattery of the TTC.

I made each letter as polite as can be in spite of my seething rage at this near daily issue, but I intend to continue writing intil
A) someone contacts me with an explanation
B) the service gets fixed

Call me irritating, call me a pain in the ass, but fares have gone up every year for I-can't-remember-how-long and nothing has gotten better in terms of service.
Yeah the buses are nicer, but that doesn't get me to work on time.

[HawaiianShirts]

I understand that sometimes the bus is late, I accept that...

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

I had just the opposite happen the other day. I had to make one transfer on my way to work (normally, I make zero transfers, but I was coming from the college instead of my apartment that day). I got off the first bus and found a nice place to stand and wait for the next.

The bus I expected was supposed to show up at 3:46. I figured I had just missed the 3:06 (it was about 3:10) and pulled out a book. At 3:30, a bus with the route number I needed pulled up. I got on, not arguing at all that it was early. Turned out that it wasn't early at all. The 3:46 was running right on time. I caught the 3:06 running late. Lucky me!