Ratasha Smith photo
Lee: On time over the summer, late this fall.
Perrin Krala wakes up at 6:30 a.m to catch the B1 bus in order to make it to Southern Connecticut State University for a 9 a.m class. Kyle Johnson switched from the 3:40 p.m. bus to the 2:30 p.m. after the bus left him late for class a couple of times.
In a city with Yale, Southern Connecticut State University, Albertus Magnus, the University of New Haven and Gateway Community College, many of the people riding CT Transit are students on their way to class.
When you’re trying to get there on time, the bus schedule matters. With CT Transit, students have to build in up to hours of extra time to make it.
“I used to take the 3:40 p.m. bus, but it’s always late,” Johnson said as he waited in downtown Ansonia to catch the F bus to New Haven for a transfer to Southern. “So now I take the 2:30 p.m. bus to make sure I have enough time to get to class.”
It’s tough to get from the Valley to New Haven, said Johnson, 29, a former Housatonic Community College student. He takes the F bus every Tuesday and Thursday and needs to get to campus before 5 p.m.
Krystina Morgan photo
Johnson.
The bus being late is weird for Johnson, a sergeant in the National Guard. He’s used to everything being on time.
Yale student Anna Lee said the buses downtown were on time all summer, but then started getting later as the semester wore on.
“I think over the summer they were the most punctual. I really liked them then,” said Lee, who is from Dallas. “I used them a lot, like every day basically.”
Lee uses the CT Transit buses instead of Yale shuttles because she wants to explore off campus more.
“I use Yale shuttle buses quite infrequently because I feel like it only gets you to Yale buildings,” Lee said. “I like the public bus because they get you to pretty much anywhere you want.”
According to Yale’s transportation site, the shuttle goes to multiple university stops, the East Rock neighborhood, and Union Station, in comparison to CT Transit’s 22 local routes around New Haven.
Samantha Montes said the bus is usually on time for her.
“I usually use the CT Transit app on my phone,” said Montes, “but for the most part, I will come to the stop closest to the time that I need to be at school and I just wait.”
Montes usually rides the D bus, which she said “can get too crowded and the buses can be very messy.”
“There is never anything too bad,” said Montes. “The most I’ve seen are people high off of drugs. The bus driver is never able to do anything about it, though, because he is either concentrating on the stops he has to make or the bus is too crowded for him to notice.”
Perrin Krala, who wakes at 6:30 a.m. to catch the bus to Southern, said she would rather get a ride. The bus takes a lot longer getting to Southern because of all the stops, she said.
“It’s pretty boring on the bus,” said Krala. “It gets really crowded on the bus which makes it nerve-wracking.”
Waiting underneath the Fitch Street bus shelter on a crisp fall day with purse in hand and bus pass at the ready, Jennifer Vazquez patiently waited for the B line, her connection to the Green, where she meets the C1 bus, to take her home to Meriden.
Vazquez, a Southern Connecticut State University sophomore majoring in public health, rides the bus each Tuesday since she totaled her car in an accident last May. She can get rides most days, but Tuesdays she gets out early, and public transportation is her only way home.
While the average wait time for the B bus is 10 minutes, she can usually expect to wait up to an hour for the C1 bus because it comes downtown only once per hour.
Joseph Kelley has similar struggles taking the B, O and F3 buses to get to work and school at Branford Hall Career Institute.
While the Branford route is the longest of the three routes he uses daily, it seems to be the least of worries.
“Taking the bus to Branford at times is easy. There are times when I hate it because of the heavy traffic in East Haven,” Kelley said.
The B bus is a different story. He said he just hates the B bus in general, not elaborating. Kelley says the bus schedule barely fits his needs, nor the needs of other passengers.
“I think they [passengers] actually became fed up with public transportation with the raising bus fare, the new drivers who are rude and inconsideratem and the buses are not even clean to the public,” Kelley said.
Although Kelley may have his criticisms of CT Transit, right now it is the best option for his budget. He pays $54 for a monthly pass, instead of paying daily, saving him $39 a month. As of now he has no money saved, but projects he will be able to purchase a car within six or seven months, now that he has received a promotion at work.
“I’m saving up to get a car,” Kelley said. “For now the bus is my way of getting around until I have enough money to save up to get a car.”
The CT Bus Diaries project is a collaboration between the New Haven Independent, the Valley Independent Sentinel and students from the multimedia journalism class at Southern Connecticut State University. The students are blogging about experiences on CT Transit’s bus lines in order to give a glimpse into the commutes of the people using the bus system.
Share your CT Transit experiences with us by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) photos or videos to Jodie Mozdzer Gil or tagging #CTBusDiaries on Twitter posts.
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This is a great reporting project and I commend the students and editors for taking it forward.
This kind of storytelling is so often missing from policy debates around transit - it is so much richer than the "boarding and alighting" studies that are the stock and trade of transportation engineers. A next step would be to analyze the data collected here to advance as set of proposals to do with routes, fares, comfort, safety, urban design, etc.
Mobility is a central issue for the future of New Haven and all cities. A more robust, more legible, more appealing bus system system will have long term positive impacts for a broad set of our citizens. So keep up the good work and keep riding!