Metro Imagines More Buses Running on Time
Street Art on Melrose Ave.
Tired of waiting for buses that seemingly never show up on time? Do you get doubly frustrated when after waiting for an eternity, two buses show up within moments of each other? Well, the Metro Board feels your pain.
In May, Metro conducted a survey of the largest transit operators in the country. Not surprisingly, Metro had the worst on-time performance for its bus fleet. Only 62.7% of Metro buses run on-time.
In response, Board Members Yvonne Burke and Bonnie Lowenthal moved that Metro make increasing on-time performance a top priority of it's long range plan and funding priorities. The first phase of their plan will be voted upon next week when the Metro Board voted on adding two new transit operating supervisors to each of their service sectors.
But is it fair to blame Metro for buses' performance? After all, as Roger Snoble noted at one of yesterday's committees, Los Angeles is home to the most congested roads in the country. If news reports are to be believed, that congestion is breaking up as a result of gas prices. It will be interesting to see if the anecdotal evidence of reduced traffic heralds better on-time performance from Metro buses.
In the meantime, it's up to Metro to come up with more ways to move more buses as quickly as they can. The introduction of six new rapid lines on June 29th is a good start.
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