Jeff vs. Greenville Transit Authority, round one

(this is about Greenville's buses and my newly found interest in being a community activist; you may not care, feel free to skip it)

So yesterday I got a reminder about a meeting that's open to the public and hosted by Greenville Forward, an organization aiming to improve many aspects of life in Greenville.  That meeting was titled "Bused Out", and the focus was to be on this question: "How do we build a broken system into a model of high-quality transportation?"  Alright!  The city recognizes our bus system is decently handicapped, and is opening up conversation about how to improve it!  I was not able to make the meeting, as it fell directly during my class time, and in the battle of priorities, school beats civic duty every time.  But I realized I could submit my comments via email, and include many people at Greenlink (the transit authority) on the same email, all the way up to the director himself.  (even though he's called me once or twice before, we've never met)  So I spent several hours writing that one email, trying for the most bang for my buck-- and I ended up sending this off:


     Mr. XYZ, I would love to join you at the Momentum Series titled Bused Out, but my weekly class runs until noon-thirty that day.  So I'll submit my comments here, I so hope that this can help make a difference.  I had planned to bring this to Greenlink's attention again in the future, and if it accomplished nothing then I would have attended a meeting of Greenlink's board, which are open to the public.  Instead I'll tell you here and also include all of my Greenlink contacts on this email-- sorry, some of you won't care.  So, fair warning, Greenlink folks, if I don't see or hear of forward progress on this issue in the next few months then I'll take it to your board of directors-- but to be fair, you first get a shot at fixing it before I go running to your bosses.  But Greenlink folks, please realize that even if you don't hear riders complain about these issues, as of now at least the general public is aware of them.

     THE BIGGEST, ACHIEVABLE INSTANT WIN FOR GREENLINK TOPPING MY TO-DO LIST:

   What makes Asheville's buses so much more reliable is the fact that you know when the bus will arrive at your stop.  What I mean is that when an Asheville bus gets to each and every stop, they'll WAIT THERE until the published schedule says they'll be there.  So you KNOW what time you need to be there by.  Greenlink, on the other hand, just picks up whoever's at the stop and goes on.  So if no one's at this stop, they'll get to the next stop a bit sooner than expected.  If no one's at the next stop, they get to the third stop even sooner.  Add that up four or five times, and you get a bus coming by that's twenty minutes ahead of when the transit authority said the bus would be there.  Which means that even though you were there when the schedule said the bus would be there, oops, sorry, you've got roughly an hour's wait, and for the first twenty minutes you're not even sure you missed the bus so you don't call a taxi-- yuck!

     When I yapped about that loudly before, I heard "The bus may be 15 or 20 minutes early or late."  So for each ride on Greenlink, I need to make sure my schedule accounts for FORTY minutes of potential waiting time?  That's INSANE!  And what about the fact that many of my appointments run an hour, or multiples of an hour?  So I've gotten used to cutting everything short by at least ten to fifteen minutes, "Because I'm taking Greenlink and never know when they'll get here."  (you're definitely not getting good P.R. from me in the current state of affairs)  Now true, I've learned over the last few years of Greenlink patronage that some routes have more consistent timing than others, which means that I probably only have a five to ten minute window of waiting time on certain routes... but I don't know that-- with Greenlink that's entirely dependent on ridership, so they might randomly be on time, they might randomly be 20 minutes ahead of schedule.  When I must make my next appointment, that's entirely worthless.

     There's only two considerations I can see now blocking the adoption of the policy to wait at each stop:

1. The increase in gasoline use.  Yes, so the bus would be waiting at each stop, but how much gas would be used by a bus that's running but not going anywhere?  And that's ONLY if it arrives early.  I very much bet this would be a very negligible expense, and any expense here would be well worth it since it means that the public might actually be able to believe Greenlink when they say they'll be somewhere at a certain time-- which is pretty fundamental to getting a ride from anybody.  "Hey Bob, I was where you said to be when you said to be there, so where were you?"  "Yeah, I was 20 minutes early, that happens.  Deal with it."
2. Educating the public.  A news article or something could be put out to alert Greenville drivers to the fact that if a bus stops in front of them from this point forward, they'll need to safely go around while watching for people boarding the bus.  It's no longer just a pause while folks board the bus, it's a stop until the bus is back on schedule.

     Greenlink, you have been notified.  If nothing is done about buses being early soon, it will result in an item on the board of directors' agenda.  And yes, I know that you plan to use the next bus fleet's GPS systems to catch buses being early, but that depends on two things-- the driver and the GPS-monitoring-person; why catch folks at failure when you can set them up to succeed?  Basic trick of a well-run kindergarten...  It's just a free policy change and training the drivers on it-- seems easy.

     Okay, I just spent so long on that & became so pleased with it, I'm sharing it here.  What it signifies is my realization that I can be an instrument of change-- something's broken?  Be a good neighbor & help fix it...

(and his name's not really Mr. XYZ-- that's what we in the business refer to as an "alias")  ;-)