The Internet rocks and Google Transit bubbles

Today, another guy named Anonymous added a comment to one of my posts. He said:

Uh, I seem to recall being able to get around on public transit -- in Sacramento and elsewhere -- long before anybody ever heard of the internet.

This prompted my snide rejoinder:

And at one time you could find streetcars in downtown Sacramento running so often that you didn't need a schedule.

At a minimum today you need the bus schedule book RT sells for a buck. RT's service is so sporadic and uneven -- half-hour service for awhile and then a 45-minute break; bus lines that only run during "peak" periods; bus lines that don't run on the weekend -- that someone who wants to use transit is REQUIRED to plan ahead. The Internet makes that easier.

Allow me to throw the wife under the bus as an example.

After having problems with late or missing buses two days in a row, I spent some time this afternoon trying to map out escape routes for the wife. I can imagine the conversation if I called 321-BUSS and explained that I needed help deciding what the wife should do if the train and bus don't meet.

"Get off the train at the Starfire stop and take the No. 80 bus."

"And if the train is late?"

"Then you will miss your bus."

"Oh."

The obvious escape route is to continue to 65th Street and catch the No. 82, which is the bus I ride home from work. Under the ideal scenario, the wife would get off at Starfire and if the bus did not arrive by the time that the next inbound train arrived, then she would board the train and go to 65th Street.

But, of course, nothing that involves Sacramento Regional Transit scheduling is that easy. The train that matches up at 65th Street with the No. 82 is the same train that is supposed to catch the No. 80. If the wife gets off to wait and the bus doesn't arrive, she might as well wait for the next bus, a No. 84, that runs a half-hour after the No. 80.

After consulting RT's infoweb.sacrt.com, I decided the wife is going to have to decide each day whether to get off at Starfire or continue to 65th. If the train is on time, she can play Russian Roulette with the No. 80 -- bus arrives on time, empty chamber; bus arrives late, misfire; bus never arrives at all, bang!

If she knows the train is running late -- or she tires of playing the No. 80 game -- then she can just stay on the train. She'll get home a half-hour later than if she made her No. 80 connection, but she'll get a ride all the way to her front door.

Today, the wife watched traffic on Folsom Boulevard as the train approached Starfire, looking for the bus. The train was running six minutes late, which meant that if the bus was on time, it would have already driven past the station. But as she looked west on Folsom she could see a bus approaching. She got off the train and was able to catch the bus.

Tomorrow? Who knows.

* * *

Three cheers to the Google Transit guys and gals for restoring the next-stop bubbles to the Google maps. If you click on a bus stop icon now, you will see a bubble that shows the next two departures for each bus using the stop. As I have mentioned before, RT's trip planner offers the same information, but Google's map interface is unbeatable.