This post marks the beginning of a new category called “Empty Buses”.
My family walked to the bus stop at 34th and Guadalupe to take my stepson to his middle-school orientation (he’ll be taking the bus there every day when school starts, so today was a good practice opportunity). We picked up the #22 bus at 8:00 AM (on time), and rode it to Exposition and Lake Austin in about 15 minutes, perhaps 2 more minutes than the drive would have taken. With the 3 of us (plus baby who didn’t pay a fare), there were 7 people on that bus. Several got off in Tarrytown; I think there was only one left on the bus when we disembarked at the middle school.
On the way back, we took the #21 bus, also on time. With the 2 of us (plus baby), there were 15 people on the bus at that stop. A few got off on the way to our stop, but a few got on; so the count stayed around 15 the whole way. Many of the people on the bus were evidently headed towards UT (where the bus goes after our stop).
(Answering Kim, my stepson takes this city bus because he’s going to be going to a middle school in whose attendance area we don’t reside – this is part of the track from his elementary school, which he stayed in after we moved a couple of years ago).
Oh, the 21/22 is my favorite “empty bus.” I use it almost daily to go between my place and UT. The 22 seems to be the only bus that goes from the Eastside to campus, unless you count the LBJ stop campus. I’m in the Communications complex on the Drag, so the LBJ school might as well be Bastrop. I find it frustrating that this bus runs on 40 minutes cycles during rush hour (and even less frequently at night) when there are so many people who use it to get to UT. I suspect that if they increased the frequency more riders would use it since they wouldn’t have live in fear of missing the bus and waiting nearly an hour for the next one.
Okay, is the child on the bus because there’s no school bus? Or is this his school bus? Where’s the back story on this one?
And I add here at the buses from the NW Park & Ride are packed once the UT school year starts. College students everywhere. But they don’t always send the big buses. Or plan the size of the buses around the regular hours that college students use them.