If you are one of the few people that has not been on the 8, count your blessings. I can't imagine a bus route that better demonstrates how practical OneBusAway is than this one. Throughout any given weekday, this route is supposed to run every fifteen minutes. However, it tends to run every 30 minutes in pairs or on occasion every 45 minutes in triplets on weekdays, meaning you'll have the choice between two or three buses full of unhappy, late riders.
While there are definitely more routes like this in the Metro system, this route's pure reliability on being late is ridiculous. They might as well start calling it the late (or l8 for short) and revise the timetable to say "runs sporadically and unpredictably throughout the day."
The 8 is also mind-bogglingly slow. Its route is so long and goes through so many congested corridors that even on the timetable, it takes it an hour and twenty minutes to get from terminus to terminus. Add that on to traffic delays and it will easily take two hours.
OK, enough ranting. Let's address some of the major problems I see in it.
First of all, I think the route is too long. It provides great inter-city connections, but its length means that when a particular bus is late, it is almost impossible for it to make a turnaround in time to get back on schedule. When a few late trips combine, it runs up to thirty minutes late simply because it doesn't have a chance to get back on schedule. The longer the route, the more these trips become later.
Much of the route itself is just badly planned. For example, the turn at Madison Street and Martin Luther King Junior Way is so acute that a sizable portion of grass next to the curb, maybe two or three yards, is permanently wiped out. Most of the time, cars in the opposite lane have to back up, making the intersection a mess.
Another example of this is in between Jackson Street and Yesler Way. The bus has to take four large, difficult turns at typically tight intersections in the space of a few blocks. If it just continued down Martin Luther King Junior Way in t2his section, five or even seven minutes would easily be shaved off of the route time.
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| 8 stop at Columbia City. Notice the (symbolic?) lack of timetable. |
Thanks for the ongoing support; I know I haven't posted in way too long. Hope you enjoyed the somewhat sarcastic rant.
And I know this is a fail, but I'm leaving for six weeks to go off to music camp to1morrow, with my cello, so sorry about that. Hopefully I can get Jonathan to post (I can only access internet on the weekends there). Thanks.