Saturday, November 6th will finally be the end of the Downtown Transportation Center and replaced with the shiny new Bonneville Transit Center, located about 1 mile south of the current one. My office moved over there last week and I've been able to enjoy the quiet before 10,000 'visitors' a day flow through there. I never really liked working at the admin. building as I felt sort of isolated from the operations and now I'll have 16 bus routes to watch. I plan on randomly boarding a bus from time to time and just ride around a bit. So many operators know me that it will be hard to go incognito, so I'll probably board with my ID. I don't care if the passengers say anything to me or not. I silenced a bunch of them when I boarded a Route 105 not too long ago, so I look forward to the stares as I walk the coach. Most of our passengers think the RTC is just a big government agency that doesn't ride the buses or care, but little do they know I'm everywhere man and I show up all over and I've tailed some buses in an RTC car to watch what they're doing. Fun to see their driving styles change a bit when I pull up behind them. :-)
I haven't taken any photos of the new terminal yet but if I think of it on Sunday, the first day of our service change, and I have time to spare from my monitoring of service, I'll try to take a few. We have a new express route starting in December that will run from Summerlin in the west to downtown, the Strip and the airport. This will certainly help the ridership of our Centennial Express which has seen 10% increases in ridership in each of the past few months. It's probably time for me to cut the cord on that one and let it fly solo without me intervening so much, but it's hard to ignore it when it's in my backyard. I'm really proud of how it's doing considering that I've been the one that's been focusing on it more than anyone.
When you drive behind the buses to monitor them, are you in a marked car? TCAT had one company car that was not marked so they could monitor drivers without the drivers being able to see the monitor, which then led to issues when I was using that car for a bus stop survey, was blocking bus stops, and had no markings to indicate I was with TCAT.
I bet you are in Vegas. What think you of the CIVIS buses.
It's really fun waiting for one of your buses to show up and the driver spots you before he gets to the stop...and you can see him doing this "oh $h*t" incognito seatbelt buckling. Thing is, I never check and wouldn't notice if I didn't see their arms flailing in the windshield trying to get it on.
It's great that you get a perch near the actual operation - transit admin buildings suck! No offense to fellow transit employees who are stranded in them.
Quote from: Tristan on November 04, 2010, 10:11:29 AM
It's great that you get a perch near the actual operation - transit admin buildings suck! No offense to fellow transit employees who are stranded in them.
Yes some of us have no choice in where we end up....
Yeah, I think it will be better for us to finally be where the action is. Hopefully the passengers appreciate it too. I'm nervous about the service change, but I think it will go ok. I plan on being out and about quite a bit over the next week monitoring things.
With WMATA or other really large transit systems, it's hard to be at a specific center. It makes sense to be in a central location and then fan out across the system when you can.
Oren, yes, I use a marked car. I like them to know who is watching them!
The Civis buses are good, except getting parts is a pain because they are no longer in business. We can't wait for the mileage to rack up so we can retire them!
Not saying there's a better way of doing things, I just ... wish there were. You put Admin at one division and in comes the perception that that div gets better equipment, better treatment, etc etc, and ... indeed that perception might actually be true, intentionally or not.
I think for our riders, they really appreciated all of the staff that was at the BTC this week. Since I'll be there all the time, I'll be in the bays as much as I can. Those that helped us out kept referring the passengers to me because I knew where everything was and what route everyone needed. It sort of bummed me out because I wanted to do some other things rather than help the other volunteers out. It was pretty useless having a lot of them there.
P'dawg's the big man on campus out west!