Inspiration, or Why Writing About Transit Experiences Is Important

Happy New Year, everyone! May your trains never break down and your buses always arrive on time... except for when you're running late yourself.

I was prompted (can't remember why) to think about why I love thinking about transit and writing about transit. I had an influence, one that doesn't even know the effect she had on me.

I am speaking of one Kate Lopresti.

I'm not surprised that you've never heard her name. Most people haven't. She's a Portland, Oregon gal whose claim to fame, at least in my book, is that she wrote a series of zines called The Constant Rider.

Yes, Ms. Lopresti is a transit geek like me, like us. Also like me, she prefers to write about her experiences on transit rather than do academic analysis. She writes of her journey across Canada on the train, of passing out on the light rail train The MAX, and of her experiences on her beloved TriMET bus, the 47 Hawthorne. She's a consummate observer of humanity, writing with an eye for that which we call the human drama. From people who won't pay to keep riding at the end of the Fareless Square to passengers with unfortunate food choices (sardines on a cramped train? I don't think so!) to gulping down one's produce before customs, no detail of existence misses Kate's eye.

And it's experiences like this that show the importance of transit. I'm guessing that when the experts sit down to lay out new transit, or to change routes, or to mess with the budget, they deal with numbers and cold hard facts. They don't think of the experiences they'll be removing or changing. The leisurely Metro ride turned cramped and crowded. The late night bus trip back from one's lover now impossible because the bus doesn't run that late. The missed connections with passengers, the lost conversations with drivers. Of course, new experiences will replace the old, but what do we lose?

Transit isn't just a way to get around. It's an experience, it's a part of our lives. Kate's work makes this abundantly clear.

I've owned The Constant Rider Omnibus for years now. My copy is battered and beaten, bent from making its way to the bottom of my bag, stained from spilled liquids. In other words, well loved. After I read it, I'm always inspired to write about my own experiences on transit, wishing that I had more exciting ones to share and write about. (Edit: After reading the website, I'm realizing that I have the 1st edition, which only has zines 1-3 in it. The 2nd edition has additional zines 4-7. Perhaps it's time to replace my old worn out copy with the new one with more content.)

But perhaps that's the point. It doesn't always have to be exciting. Sometimes it's just the grateful look a mother with a little one gives you when you give up your seat so that her and her child may sit. Sometimes it's a bus driver who's unusually pleasant after a long day or who lets you on the bus, despite the fact you're 10 cents short on fare.

Thank you, Kate, for reminding us of the important things in life. Thank you, Kate, for sharing your slice of the world of transit. And thank you, Ms. Kate Lopresti, for inspiring me to write about my transit experiences.

Get There Without A Car Days!

So a number of car free days are coming up.

Car Free DC day is tomorrow, September 18th. Check out their website which encourages transit use, biking and walking to your destinations. http://www.carfreedc.info/

And Tommy Wells, representative for Ward 6 on the DC Council, challenges people to go car free not just on Car Free DC day, but also on World Car Free Day (more about that next), the whole Car Free Week of Sept 16-22nd, and, for a true challenge, an entire month! Check out his Car Free Challenge on his blog.

World Car Free Day is Saturday, September 22nd. http://www.worldcarfree.net/wcfd/


Wednesday, October 3rd is International Walk to School Day. If you have kids or if you attend school, consider walking or biking or taking transit if it's too far to do either of those. http://www.walktoschool.org/ has information and information on Safe Routes for kids to take to school alone can be found here: http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/.

How's Your Walk Score?

Check out this great site: Walk Score. It takes an address, tallies how close it is to things you'd like/need in your life like a grocery store, restaurants, bars, schools, etc. and then gives you a score based on how walkable you are.

I did my own house and I got a 75 out of 100. Not bad.

It's not perfect. It counts the dollar discount grocery store about 2 blocks away that only has a few items as a full fledged "supermarket", but it's good to get a feel. My friend looked up his parents house in suburban Illinois and it got almost a 50 (which was too high, because their house is very much not walkable) but it was because of all the Starbucks nearby. So it's not perfect, but it's still pretty cool.

http://www.walkscore.com/

A Bit More Transit Fun

This one will require a bit of back story.

A synthpop Electroclash group named Freezepop put out a song a while ago called T DJ. Apparenly inspired by a real person, the T DJ is a person who's a cult hero on the Green line of the Boston T subway system. He's known for visibly mixing music inside his head while on the train... and sometimes he actually brings his music mixing supplies on the train late at night and mixes beats for the passengers on the train, turning the car he's in into a small party.

The song is quite good and if you're interested in hearing it, Freezepop shares it legally under the Music section of their website. (Or you can click this link and it will play in your browser. Or, right click [or command-click, if you're a Mac user] on it and select Save Link[or Target] As... to save it to your computer: Freezepop - T DJ on WMBR.mp3)

That's the first part of this. Here's the second part.

DMLaenker is an offline friend of mine. He's going to school for urban studies and planning to be a city designer. Because of this, transit is one of his interests. (He's got a really cool belt from Urban Outfitters with portions of the London Underground tube system map.)

Anyway, he was inspired by both the T DJ song and the announcements that Metro makes about "if you see something, say something" to make this whimsical fake Metro announcement on his blog about stale old music remixes on the Metro.

“Metro Transit Police would like to remind you that if you see someone drop a mix on Metrobus or Metrorail - be it a dance mix, a party mix, any mix - kindly ask them, 'Is that your mix?' If it's not theirs, or if they have no idea what you're talking about, kindly kill the DJ and contact Metro transit authorities immediately. Keeping Metro fresh is a responsibility for all of us. Thank you very much, and have a good transit.”

He posted this on his LiveJournal as a VoicePost, so if you want to hear his announcement as it would be announced on Metro, go to the entry on his LJ. http://dmlaenker.livejournal.com/437583.html

Colored LEDs in Metro Stations

So I'm sure you've seen the red lights on the station platforms by now. Or perhaps you've spotted the orange ones. Here's my take on it.

The first time I saw it was at Gallery Place/Chinatown on the Red Line. I didn't know why they were doing it, because, as Metro is wont to do, they didn't inform their riders as to what's going on ahead of time. I honestly thought they made it red because it was the Red Line. However, I thought "Gee, I hope they don't keep this change. It's adding a red glow to everything and the blinking red lights are disturbing." It was making me feel uneasy and uncomfortable, which is a bad vibe to be giving off in an area that is prone to crowding at times. (A stampede would be too easy to trigger.)

And then I saw orange lights at a platform with orange & blue line trains. Or perhaps it was yellow lights at a platform with yellow and green line trains. Either way, I found myself wondering if the color would change depending on what train was coming.

And then I found out that, no, the color is the same and they're putting in red lights regardless of the line.

Which I think is stupid. Thank god for the improved signage, because even *I* would get confused as to how to get to what platform for what train. And the improved signage is IMPROVED, not optimal. It's STILL confusing.

So, yeah, if I saw red lights and I was a tourist, I would assume that I was on the red line. Red line, red lights, makes sense, right?

I think either Metro needs to drop the whole colored lights thing (it's not Christmas, you know) and go with clear LEDs (if in fact they are LEDs that they changed to for more efficient lights) or they need to put the color of the line that you're currently on. For platforms that serve more than one color line, put in LEDs of both and have it blink the color of the train that's arriving.

That's what *I'd* do if I was in charge.

Your thoughts?

Bike-to-Work Day

I missed writing about Bike-to-Work Day. Oh, I had a post all planned out. I was going to write about how I used to bike part of my commute to work, from my house to the Silver Spring Metro station when I used to take the J busses to Bethesda for work, and about all the different events that were going on for B-t-W Day, and I was going to encourage you to try biking. I was even going to say that even if biking the whole way isn't your cup of tea (or feasible depending on how long your commute is... or how in shape you are!), then to see how you can bike part of your route, and use transit for the rest. (Biking to Metro stations is optimal.) It's more feasible, it takes cars off the road, and it's good for you!

But the thing that makes me the happiest about Bike-to-Work Day is that it's always held the week of my birthday. :-) So the area gives me lots of people biking to work as my birthday present. And that's a lovely present indeed.

However... I missed it. It came and went, and so did my birthday. (I'm a full quarter of a century now.) Turns out I didn't even end up going to work on Bike-to-Work Day.

But perhaps YOU biked to work? Or maybe part of the way? Tell me about it!

Montgomery County has bike trail maps available for free. Bethesda even gives out pamphlets with locations of bike racks all around the city. And Metro always has plenty of bike parking, whether it's the (admittedly crappy) bike racks or just railings to lock your bike against. (Check out Commuter Connections for more commuting by bike information. And I'll bet that WABA has info on it, too.)

Try biking to the Metro instead of driving. It's fun, good for you, and it might even be faster than driving, depending on traffic. And also find out if there's a bus route that goes by your house. Because if it's the end of the day and you're tired (or a little too tipsy from Happy Hour; drinking and biking do not mix. I know this the hard way.), you can always take your bike on the bus home.

(BTW, Metro has SO much really great, awesome information on their website that's so far hidden in the bowels of their website that you'd never find it. But that's a blog post for another day.)

Transit Meme

(I know what you're thinking... two posts in one day! How did we get to be so lucky!)

I don't know about you, but I'm a... oh, how shall I put it... meme whore? Yes, that's apt. If someone posts a quiz on their LiveJournal, I have to take it.

And then I saw this one. It allows you to put down every subway system you've ever been on. And it has almost every subway across the world.

Below are my results, updated now that I went to Boston (actually Cambridge) the other week and got to ride the T. (It was very exciting. I'll have to blog about it.)

Got at b3co.com!

Are you interested in doing this? Here's the URL for the little app.

http://metro.b3co.com/

(Note: it's a little buggy. If you add a badge and then take it out, it doesn't show up in the list to add it back in again. Just close the page and reopen it and it should show up again. And for the results in HTML, after you add all the badges, select the "put it on your site" link in the upper right hand corner.)

Feel free to post your results as a comment!

(And sometimes I feel more like Transit Fangirl than Doctor Transit. But I promise, I'll have real content one of these days... yeah...)

North American Rail Systems by Size

Thank Collier, a commenter on Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, for this one.

The same as the link below, only this is for all of the subways/light rail/etc. for North America.

http://www.radicalcartography.net/?subways

However, they're obviously not to scale to the size of North America (for some reason, it took me a little bit to realize that.) OTOH, it's in GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR! :-)

World Subways, Presented By Scale

Check it out... it's very cool and lets you get a better feel for city size.

Subway systems of the world, presented on the same scale.

(And on a total aside, sometimes I come across content in the strangest way.

I work at a bookstore. I use LibraryThing, both professionally and personally. So I read their development blog. Well, LibraryThingforLibraries is finally in a library. So I go over to the personal blog of the person who instituted it in the 1st library. And I came across the above gem.)

Even Batman Takes the Bus

'Cause I felt bad about not posting, I thought I'd share this cool t-shirt design with you.



What's that about the bus being the "Loser Cruiser"? Would Batman take the bus if it wasn't cool? I didn't think so. :-)

You can get this shirt from the folks over at NoiseBot.com. Check it out: http://www.noisebot.com/justice_cant_wait_t-shirt

A (Long) More Formal Introduction

Forgive me for not introducing myself properly earlier.

I'm C4bl3Fl4m3 ("CableFlame"). As of this writing in April of 2007, I'm 24 years old (I turn 25 in late May) and I live in Takoma Park MD, right on the DC/TP/SS border, right near Shepherd Park. I'm the newest Transit Doctor in the League of Transit Doctors. I want to thank Richard Layman for bestowing me with my Mad Doctorate in Transit.

I write different than Richard. Whereas he writes more academic pieces, my writings are far more informal. They're my narratives of what I've seen and experienced. I have no formal training in transit systems... just years of experience.

I've been replying to posts in his Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space blog for a while now. I'll give my 2 cents on just about anything, but I'm more likely to reply in the transit posts than any of the other posts. See, I've been a transit nut all my life.

I grew up in the middle of the woods in South-Central PA, about 35 minutes southwest of Harrisburg PA, in the Cumberland Valley. A very rural area, with farms and trees and streams, livestock and forest creatures. Beautiful country, but quite lonely. However, the area obviously didn't have any mass transit options available. The closest transit stop was in Carlisle, PA, about a 15 minute drive away, and it was one commuter bus that ran at rush hour and would take you into Harrisburg. (CAT) Honestly, I've never been on it.

However, I remember my first experiences with transit. My aunt and uncle live in New York City. I can remember my excitement of being able to take the subway there. I remember visiting Washington DC somewhere around 5th grade and taking the Metro and the Metrobus. And my grandparents live in Williamsburg, VA, the home of Colonial Williamsburg. And CW has its own private bus system to get you around the Colonial area and back and forth from the visitor's center. I rode that bus quite a bit growing up. I've always thought that subways were extra cool and that there was something special about mass transit.

When I became a teenager, my need for freedom grew exponentially. However, I didn't feel like I was ready to drive a car yet when I was 16. I understood the power and responsibility that one takes on when they drive a car (the ability to kill someone, if you're not careful), and I was, frankly, scared by it. I wasn't ready. So I biked everywhere. I'd take 4 hour bike rides in the gorgeous countryside around my house, but I'd also use my bike to go to the library in the nearby small town. I hated how, on the main roads, the giant 18 wheelers wouldn't share the road properly. There were places w/ no good shoulder and when you're biking at 20 mph, being forced off the road by some tractor trailer and into the gravel would get you thrown from your bike. Not fun.

I moved to Columbia MD at age 19 in 2001 (long story) and I was excited at living in a place where there was transit... where I wouldn't have to own a car. I lived there for a year and 3 months, and I quickly learned just how inefficient suburban transit systems are. (Howard Transit, Corridor Transit, and Connect-A-Ride have a long way to go.) I also learned how few people took the bus, and how the people who did were the poor people who couldn't afford a car. I also learned that they were almost always people-of-color.

After visiting Washington DC a large number of times and making friends closer to the city, I decided I wanted to live there, with one of the main reasons being because they had a better transit system. I could get where I wanted to, when I wanted to go there much better than in Columbia. So I moved to Silver Spring.

Well, between the years of 2002 and 2004, I moved 9 times all over the DC area in MD. Every time I've moved to a new place, I've always had to choose places that it wouldn't be necessary to own a car to live there comfortably. I've lived in Takoma Park 2x, College Park 2x (once at UMCP), Kensington, and North Rockville (Shady Grove in King Farm). I've lived on both ends of the Red Line as well as on the Green Line. I've had commutes both short and long. I've lived in an area where I wasn't in walking distance to the Metro (Kensington) and had to rely on both Metrobusses and Ride-On (MoCo transit) busses. I've had commutes where I biked part of my commute. I currently live on some of the major bus lines and use them on a regular basis. I've commuted from my house in TP to Bethesda every day for 9 months, taking the bus that will be replaced by the Purple Line, so I know the everyday riding issues of the Purple Line.

Transit is a part of my everyday life. My daily commute is a flexible one, consisting of a number of options for getting to and from the Metro station, for taking the subway or the bus to work. I love the fact that I don't have to own a car and I live the Carfree lifestyle, having been introduced to the term and radical anti-car living by an individual I met living and hanging out at UMCP that I called "Bike Peter" (because at the time I had a roommate named Peter as well). (Sometime I'll have to write about him on here. He was something else... and a wonderful model for us all.) I don't bike so much anymore, but I used to take part of UMCP's Critical Mass bike ride, taking over the streets with a number of bikes to show that the city "doesn't have to be a church for cars" (the words of Bike Peter from the Critical Mass fliers) and that we bicyclists are legit traffic too.

Transit's also a part of my non-every day life. I enjoy travel quite a bit and always use transit when on the go. I love NYC, so I've taken the Greyhound, the Chinatown Bus, and Amtrak to NYC before. (My recommendation? If you have the money, Amtrak. If you don't, Chinatown bus. It's better than the Greyhound.) I've ridden transit in (let's see if I can remember them all): NYC (MTA, PATH, LIRR, and NJ Transit), Atlanta (MARTA), Baltimore (MTA and the MARC), Berlin (BVG: U-Bahn & S-Bahn), Chicago (CTA, the L, and METRA), Paris (RATP), Metz & Nancy (in France), Toulouse, and Seattle (SoundTransit and King County Metro Transit). (I'm sure I forgot one in there somewhere... I always do.) Transit has the same basic usage everywhere (you need to know your route number/letter/color and terminus, you have to know how to pay fare [exact change, please], etc.) but the feel of the various systems is often times quite different and the experiences you have with the operators and other riders can be as different as night and day. (Best place to ride the bus? Seattle. Everyone's SO friendly and helpful. People actually TALK to each other on there.)

I like the built in time that taking transit to work affords me. I use the time to listen to music, read (I'm an avid reader, and that's my time for reading every day) or sometimes simply to look out the windows and daydream. I've also been known to observe the other passengers, and occasionally try to draw. (I'm a horrible artist, but it's just for fun.) Heck, sometimes I even take the time to observe (people that I find to be) attractive men and women on the cars. (Don't we all check out people we think are hot on the Metro?) Even though I've lived in the DC area for 5 years now, taking transit all that time, I still haven't quite gotten over the inherent coolness of subways. Sometimes I still get a little bit of that thrill I got as a child because I'm riding a subway.

I must admit, not only do I have my driver's license, but I actually enjoy driving a car. (gasp!) I love how I have absolute freedom of movement in a car... how I can go whereever I want, whenever I want. After being stuck living in the woods for 18 years, this freedom is a big deal to me and, I must admit, it's a bit heady when I stop and think about it. I also love the feel of the open road before me. I really enjoy road trips. This is something that most transit advocates don't seem to have, and I think it helps me bridge the (sometimes seemingly impossible) gap between transit advocates and car lovers. When it comes to getting greater ridership on transit, although I know and would love to see the radical reforms that most transit advocates espouse, I recognize that it's too much, too quickly for your average car driver and I'm far more in favor of small baby step style changes to slowly wean the car driver off their car. (For example, more parking at Metro stations to encourage more people to make at least part of their commute via transit, as well as better shuttle service to and from Metro stations from neighborhoods.) I think it's more likely to actually WORK that way rather than a cold turkey (or almost cold turkey) approach.

I'm a member of Flexcar, a car sharing service, but haven't actually gone out and used it yet. I've only had it for a couple of months.

I'm known to call out Metro on their shortcomings. I've been saying for years that the handholds are wrong (too high... DC has lots of short people, including the 5'1" myself). Within the past 9 months, after interacting with Richard and everyone on Rebuilding Place, I've also been noticing how horrible their marketing is, how unavailable information is (specifically for bus services), and, recently, how this system will die if they don't expand beyond 2 track service.

I'll also give credit where credit is due. Example. I love Commuterpage and the Commuter Store and I desperately wish that MD had the same thing.

I have other interests in my life that, inevitably, color the way I look at transit, merely because we can't fully separate all of our interests from the others... we're whole people and one side of us will leak a bit into the other. I'm a computer geek, being formally trained in PC maintenance and repair (CompTIA A+ certification) and SOHO (small office/home office) networking (CompTIA Network+ certification). I like it when tech and Metro collide. I used to have a Palm that I used to download bus schedules from Commuterpage (I wish they'd have them up for every route) and Ride-On. My work at the time had Adobe Acrobat Pro (the full version) so I'd make my own PDFs with selected last and first train times from the stations I frequented the most. (Yes, these are available in PDF online but their table structure translates extremely poorly to PDF on Palm.) I'm also a geek in many other ways. I enjoy fandom, writing fanfiction and role playing. I've been known to role play on busses before with other RPers and to read fanfic on the bus that I've downloaded online, turned to PDF, and downloaded to my Palm. I'm just a generally geeky kind of person and I think it gives me a more critical eye for transit.

My other main interest is human sexuality. I eventually want to get my (actual, not Mad) doctorate in it, and I already do sexual education. I've been interviewed for a podcast, I've given presentations on it, and I've done one-on-one education about a wide variety of issues via online chat. (Ok, insert obligatory jokes about Metrosexuals here. ;-) )

So that's the long and short about me when it comes to transit. I'd love to hear a bit about you. Tell me about your interests!

Thoughts on the New 79 (7th St./GA Ave. express) Line

New Metro Extra Bus, Georgia Avenue NW. Photos by Richard Layman.

Hi there... I'm C4bl3Fl4m3 (that's "CableFlame" to those of you that don't read 1337), newest Mad Doctor in the League of Transit Doctors. I'll put more about myself later. Just know that as Dr. Richard writes up more academic style, more formal report style posts about transit, mine are far more informal and deal more with the social aspects.

Today, I'm going to write about the new 79 express bus on Georgia Ave.

For those of you who don't know, for a while, they've been talking about adding an express bus on the 7th St./GA Ave. corridor. Ever since Dr. Richard posted about this last fall (and included a map of the proposed route), I've been very excited about this. See, I live 3 blocks from said GA Ave. corridor near the DC/Silver Spring border. I've complained about the 70/71 (local) service before (namely that it's so unreliable heading to Silver Spring that you can't use it for time-critical use). So the idea of having an express bus that stops near my house and can get me downtown in half an hour (the amount of time it takes me on the Metro) for the price of bus fare? Good times.

So yesterday was the first day of service. And I had to go to my friend Fritter's house for Monday Night Faerie Potluck. Well, he lives on the GA Ave. corridor too, just north of Howard. So I thought, WTF, I'll try out the new bus service.

So I get out of work @ 6, head over to Chinatown on the Red Line and wait at the stop. Now, first off, there was no advertising around the station or the stop that there was a new bus line running. Nothing. No ads, not even a Route Map at the stop. The stop did have the new "Metro Extra" blue sign, however. (To check out the sign, click on this link to go to the WMATA page on it.) I thought I had missed the last bus (they stop running at 6:30), but I waited about 5 minutes, and, sure enough, the new style dark blue bus came pulling up. The bus didn't have the route on the front yet, instead sporting a "Not In Service" banner. However, riders of the buses in the DC are used to this, and it was sporting hand drawn "79" signs in the front and side window.

I had to admit, when I spotted it, I was excited. New bus, new route, first day of service for the route... I was making history. Well, sorta. The bus was shiny and clean and new. I stepped on the bus as the driver announced to each of us that it was a limited stop bus. I nodded as I paid my fare with my SmarTrip card.

And it was then that I noticed the flaw with this service. Nowhere inside did it have a map of the route. Not posted on the walls nor fliers in the racks. And there was much discussion with the people getting on as to "does it stop at _____ street?" Even after we got going, some of the people were still trying to confirm what was going on, and one woman even got off at Convention Center, obviously angry and upset over the confusion and that the bus wasn't going to stop where she needed to.

Another woman on the bus behind me had a flier for the new route. I asked her where she got it. She said "they mailed it to me". Well, I never got such a flier, and if the only way to get a flier of the route (or even be aware of its existence) is via the mail, then there's a problem. Yes, it's on the Internet, but this bus serves lower class, poorer areas whos access to the Internet may be limited or non-existent. Because I didn't know exactly which stop I should get off at, I asked the lady if I could borrow hers, which she let me do.

The bus didn't have many people on it after the first stop or so... I'd say between 5 and 10. As people got on the bus at the various stops, the same questions were asked "where does this bus go?" "will it stop at my stop?" Much of this confusion could be dealt with if 1.) there was more signage and fliers for the route and 2.) people were more pro-active in learning about transit. So many people won't even look at the maps at the bus stops (some of the ones we passed had the map of the route up) or read the schedule to find out when the next bus is coming, or if it goes where it needs to go.

So I rode the bus, and asked the bus driver which of 2 stops would get me closer to my destination. He said the latter, which would cause me to back track. I got off and it was a 7 minute walk to my destination. Perhaps slightly longer, but not on a steep grade uphill as it would have been had I gotten off at Howard Ave. (or St. or whatever).

In short? Unless Metro gets their act together and starts publicizing this route more and getting out information better about the stops on the route, etc., the route is going to fail. Metro will find that there's low ridership and that it's no faster because of confusion of people getting on the bus holding it up while they try to determine if it stops at their stop or not.

Another issue with the bus is that, right now, it only runs during rush hours. However, have you ever taken the 70 during night? Like from the hours of 9 to closing? It's PACKED. And by packed, I mean almost to the capacity of what the bus can carry. It only runs every half hour then, and for the busses that aren't the "accordion busses" (I know there's an actual term for them that Dr. Richard uses, but I don't remember it), it gets dangerously full. (I'm a short woman, 5'1", and I'm too short to use the overhead handholds. I can only hold on at certain places. Because it's mainly poor/lower class people that take the bus, and we have a decent number of poor Hispanics/Latino(a)s in this city, and quite a few of them are short, like me, there's a large number of people that can't use the overhead handholds. And so we're stuck crowding around the few vertical bars and behind the seat holds. It's dangerous.) Anyway, the 79 needs to not just run during rush hour, but the late nights too. Many people who use the bus have jobs that are 2nd or 3rd shift or that run late at night. These people are coming home at night at 9, 10, 11 o'clock. It's Lower Class Rush Hour during those hours, and yet service isn't designated to them at those times.

Basically, I think they're putting the new service at the wrong time. I don't know the amount of people who use it to commute during morning and evening rush hours, but I do wonder if it's anything like late at night. If they want to keep service during rush hour, add it during the Night (as opposed to evening) Rush Hours. If they have to cut the regular rush hour service to do that, then do it. Radical ideas, yes, I know, but I think it would be worth it.

So those are my thoughts on the 79. Have you ridden the line? What were your thoughts? Even if you haven't ridden the line, do you have any ideas on it?