Routes with One Hour Frequency: Why?

Say it's a Sunday afternoon, and you want to do some shopping downtown. You live somewhere in Colman Park, or along some other route with 1-hour frequency, and you're a fair distance from more frequent bus service. Here are your options for getting into town:

• Take the bus there, and rely on luck to catch your trip back so you don't have to wait another hour for your bus.
• Walk, bike or drive to the nearest bus stop on a more frequent line, find a park, and get on that bus and come back.
• Take your car.

Well, what would you do? Most people, including myself, will choose options 2 or 3. Option 2 is just as viable a choice as option 3, and I would most certainly take that one myself.

So you ask yourself this: what is the use of the bus route with the one-hour frequency?

Route 42 was killed for many reasons; however, its ridership was the most important one. Not only did it come only every hour, even during rush periods, but it covered routes that had at least 15-minute frequencies. That's a different problem, but I'm sure more people would have used it if it ran more frequently, even given its uselessness in the first place.

It is no surprise that most of the 27 buses I ride on weekends are not exactly packed. I'm sure this is an excellent reason why.

Why??