I want to have faith in the application, the network, King County Metro's ability to produce a quality program and the information it provides me...because it is SO USEFUL, it could quite possibly the best thing about having a smartphone, on demand bus arrival times for any stop on the route you are currently standing. Seriously, it has changed my life and it makes taking the bus anywhere, one million times better. At least. Even without the "app", I knew the bus would arrive. It usually does arrive, on time and with no surprises. Late at night or early in the morning when you HAVE to catch the bus on time because it's the last one or you've got an appointment in the morning, the application will tell you it's delayed or early and by how many minutes. It isn't always correct though and that can have devastating effects, like leaving you an hours ride from home or a phone call to an unhappy voice deep under the covers.
Last night I was waiting for one of the last buses across the 520 bridge, I watch the numbers on the screen change from 2 to NOW to -1 without ever seeing a bus. Next bus in twenty minutes and it's coming from Redmond and regularly has three bikes on the rack already, leaving you to hold your breath as it approaches and you can't yet see if you'll have a space.
Really? Can I really believe that there will even BE another one in twenty minutes? After just having a betrayal like that?! I'll be a sucker if I stay and nothing comes by but I'll be a fool if I took one bad moment like that and rode all the way around for no reason. Like I said, it's usually accurate, so I don't really have a great reason to doubt that the next one will be there, at the same time, can I really trust it? That's what's running through my head and it is an awful feeling to have, the flow of your day can be seriously disrupted (first world problem!).
So what's a body to do? I need to take some kind of action, just sitting around isn't helping anything, if that next bus isn't there either, I'm going to feel mighty powerfully bad. I decide to stand out in the bus lane and try and flag someone down for a ride across. If it works, great, I've done it two or three times before during extreme weather events where the bus sservice is patchy, traffic is Bad and everyone knows it.
Someone has to come to the "last bus of the night" conclusion, right? I mean, we're all commuters here what's not to understand? Hitch hiker with a bike at a stop right before the impassable-by-bike floating bridge? Maybe he missed the last bus, that's quite unfortunate, I should give him a lift across. Wrong, nobody so much as slowed down in my fifteen minutes of thumbing it.
Maybe my lights and reflective bands weren't attracting the speeding cars very well or people don't have bike racks or people just couldn't react fast enough to help even though they wanted to. I did see mostly sedans and a fair amount of construction traffic, not too many trucks or minivans. I was in a state of "cautiously optomistic but also wanting to do something about my situation", I fully expected that next last bus to show up, but what if it didn't? That's a long way to ride late at night, definitely worth the calorie saving potentially preventative act of waving my arm back and forth.
In the end though, this story grew from my loathing of not knowing how much to rely in a technology I don't fully understand but that appears to be very "smart" and usually performs flawlessly...except when it doesn't. Dilemma!
No comments:
Post a Comment