So, I've decided to start a weekly post on transit user experiences here in the Twin Cities, hopefully finding something interesting about the transit riding experience. Hopefully more of these will be positive than not, but this one isn't. More after the jump.
Snow has traditionally been a huge problem when riding the bus, as much as it is driving a car. It does slow down the routes and messes up the morning routes that require a empty-bus trip from downtown back up to Champlin or Brooklyn Park. (I take the 766 from Noble Park and Ride) This morning I was pleasantly surprised to see the bus on time! I know Metro Transit already knows when the busses run on time or not because their newer systems have GPS and data connectivity. Those stupid loud beeps you hear from time to time is this 'tracker' letting the driver know how their pacing is.
The park and ride was reasonably clear this morning and drivers are cheerful as usual (I take 2 routes to get into work at the University, connecting in Minneapolis). However when we get downtown it turns out that snow removal of the sidewalks is still underway (! considering the bulk of the snowfall was Saturday night) and the majority of the bus stops were not yet cleared out.
So, to my surprise, they were still not cleared out on my way home. Both at the University and downtown. I pick up a bus at Oak/Washington WB, which is really 'off-campus', the on-campus stops are always cleared by University staff. Oak/Washington is either a MetroTransit responsibility or possibly the responsibility of the business owner that fronts that sidewalk, I do not know the laws/rules of the area.
I expected downtown to be reasonably clear, but no way that was going to happen.
Turns out Minneapolis and MetroTransit don't clear downtown much either. This was formed by people walking through a small one-foot-wide path to get on the bus this afternoon. Its a bad user experience -- nobody has to trudge through this in their garage and in the ramps downtown (or at the University). The sidewalks and intersections are reasonably clear, so they've obviously brought the snow removal equipment near the stops, close enough to use them to just get a little path out of the way would be nice.
Upside: Driver was super cheerful on the way home today. Shes got a instructor uniform on so she must be covering for someone else this evening -- I don't think I've seen her before on this bus, unless they've recently rotated the schedules.
Hopefully next week is a cheerful post on transit, rather than a cranky one.
