One thing I have been wanting to gripe about is yet another DART/Rodney Square thing. We know that they have intentionally scheduled lots of buses to arrive at close to the same time, then almost no buses for a half hour followed by another mass arrival of buses. From my observation at Rodney Square, lots of buses arrive around a quarter to the hour, and then a quarter after. If you sit and watch the buses, you will notice that there are long periods of time during which only one or two buses come and go. So the pile-up is definitely a DART creation.
Another thing makes this problem worse. Some buses "lay over" at Rodney Square for anywhere from 5-10 minutes to nearly a half hour. This happens when a bus pulls up, lets its passengers disembark, and then the driver just parks there until his next run. Usually he has the signage as "Dart Garage" rather than the upcoming route number. He may lock up the bus and leave for a potty break or to get a coffee. A few minutes before his next run, he returns, turns the route number signage, opens the doors, and starts letting passengers enter the bus.
I've also seen this happen frequently at the Christiana Mall Target/Food Court stop, where a lot of people transfer. There are way fewer buses here, but it still creates problems and I've missed my transfer bus at this location because a driver returned to his laid-over bus, turned on the route sign, and took off immediately - before I even saw the route sign!
There are several problems with buses laying over like this:
- It adds to the congestion at Rodney Square (or elsewhere). During busy periods, there may not even be enough spaces for buses to pull up and park along King, 10th, or 11th Streets. Buses that are not actively unloading passengers, or allowing them to get on, have no business taking up space here. The drivers should find another place to park if they need to take a break.
- Some drivers leave their buses parked mid-block. This creates chaos when other buses arrive. Some may pull in ahead of the parked bus, some behind. Riders have no idea where their incoming bus will park, and if they are handicapped, elderly, or have poor vision, this creates a big problem, as they do not know where to wait for their bus... in front of the parked bus, or behind? If they guess wrong, and their bus leaves before they can discover it is there and make their way to it, they will miss it.
- When a bus is parked without route signage displayed, at or near the "head of the line," riders are left to wonder whether THAT bus will "turn into" their bus, or whether their bus will shortly pull in way down the block. This is a particularly difficult problem during busy periods when buses are stretched all the way down the block. And it's even harder for the elderly, disabled, and those with poor vision. To be sure not to miss your bus, you have to keep scuttling up and down the block, to see it signage has been turned on in the unsigned layover bus, or the bus you're looking for has arrived at the other end of the block.
- The driver of the layover bus too often arrives back at his bus just before it is scheduled to leave. He turns on the route sign, waits a minute or two, and then takes off. Passengers waiting for this bus near the other end of the block may not have time to make their way to the layover bus before it leaves, even if they are able to see it (often impossible when the trees at Rodney Square are leafed out). I have personally seen drivers pull out within a minute or less of turning on their route signs, and heard other angry riders complaining of drivers who turn on the route sign as they are pulling out.
This is a supervision problem. Where are the DART supervisors? This stuff should not be happening at all, and would not be so common if drivers were well-trained and were adequately supervised. I should note that it's just a minority of drivers who do this... most have good sense and are there to make travel easier for their riders. But that unprofessional minority does give DART a bad name.
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