The Depressing Route

It's the day you've all been waiting for: the glorious return of Have Bus, Will Travel!

Yes, I know that no one has been waiting that much. However, today's little adventure is all about route #37, which it the bus that comes by my apartment. You know the saying "Familiarity breeds contempt," yes? It does. A lot of contempt.

A fountain at UT that is on the 37 route. (More pics coming
ASAP! My camera is on the blink!)

This route is long and has a lot of stops. A trip from my apartment to UT, in theory, takes 35 minutes. In practise, it's more like 45-60 during rush hour, because we stop at every stop. If I stay on and go all the way downtown, it's a 45 minute trip that can stretch to over an hour. And it's usually packed, hot, and noisy. The worst trip all day is the one right after school gets out, because there are four schools on the route and so the (generally) already-full bus has to take on massive groups of kids. I will say that the kids are always well behaved (better behaved than most of the adults, anyway), but they have us seriously outnumbered. And any small ones, like kindergarten or first graders, have to have a seat, which is hard to manage. And kind of a dumb rule, IMO: When it's that packed, how could they possibly fall down?

To their credit, CapMetro has adjusted the schedule a couple of times to address the problem, but with no success so far. At least they're trying, but in the meantime I go out of my way--to the next nearest bus line 1/2 mile down the road--to avoid taking this route. On the other hand, we used to have an express version of this route that was at least 15 minutes faster, but it was eliminated last summer, despite all my e-mails of protest. I'm still mourning its passing.

Anyway, on to the highlights. From my house to downtown, the bus passes two libraries, four schools, four shopping centres (one of which is quite nice; I'll write a whole post on the Mueller shopping centre one of these days) and one cluster of locally owned Mom & Pop-type shops, a handful of bike routes, two hospitals, and UT. One could, in theory, get a lot of places while riding this route, if one were willing to sit for a while. There are faster buses in the neighbourhood, though.

So, not my happiest bus post. But I'll balance that out by posting about the bus route near my house that I love, I promise.