-- We dodged a proposed fare increase that was skedded for Jan. 1 (my monthly pass would have gone from $62 to $69; individual fares would have risen from $2 to $2.25), and the CBus, the vanity coach that takes High Street, German Village, and Arena District revelers around those areas (and anyone else who needs to go there, but it's mostly ridden by partiers and hipsters) remains free, at least until May 3 (at this writing on May 2, it appears it will remain free for the time being).
-- Ugly new bus stops have been built downtown, and several downtown stops have been consolidated (in other words, closed). At least some of the new shelters have heat, and most actually have the line schedule posted, something I've been bitching about for years. The new shelters are part of a plan to spare tourists, out-of-towners and Statehouse bureaucrats the sight of motley groups of COTA riders who congregate downtown trying to make transfers. Ultimately, riders will be herded to side streets but this has not happened yet. Dayton did something similar, but built a fairly nice station for its riders, complete with electronic timetables that tell you how long you will wait for a bus to arrive. This is something I'd love to see in the COTA system. Still, in the far-flung reaches of the COTA empire, some bus stops are still only signs next to drainage ditches (I plan a photo series this year documenting the sorry state of many of our bus stops that I plan to title, Our Filthy Bus Stops).
Old-school COTA shelter
COTA shelter 2015
-- Some new coaches have been put into service, with smooth vinyl seats replacing the icky, fabric-covered ones of yore (see previous post: Of Bedbugs and COTA). I can't wait until all of the seats are changed so that passengers won't use the plastic grocery bags COTA inexplicably provides for customers to toss their trash into as plastic seat covers (I'll be addressing this in an upcoming entry). To its credit, COTA also has been putting hybrids into service, doing its part of cut down on the dangerous diesel pollution buses generate.
-- Still, many of the buses remain filthy (I blame riders for this mostly), and while on-time performance has improved, the system still can't handle large downtown events like today's Capitol City Half-Marathon, which caused sheer pandemonium and chaos for the system (see subsequent entry: Marathon Madness!). Drivers have generally been friendlier, at least to me, but many still can't tell you where and for what bus you can make transfers. Also, timetables are not aligned well enough to effect transfers; I can't tell you how many times I've approached the Hamilton Road/East Main Street intersection hoping to catch my transfer, only to see it pull away as I watched helplessly from the bus as it approached the intersection. Surely COTA planners could alleviate this. And drivers SIMPLY REFUSE to wait for approaching buses to allow riders to make transfers.
-- I don't know how many folks actually read this--I have almost 1,000 "views", probably about 500 are my own--but I did receive my first piece of fan mail, which I will address in the next entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment