Free bus service increases BlueGo ridership
STATELINE – Free buses at the end of December helped BlueGo increase its ridership by 39 percent compared to 2011 for the same month.
Curtis Garner, who runs the South Shore bus system, called the 131,545 passenger trips in December “extraordinary”.
He gave a presentation to the Tahoe Transportation District board on Feb. 8. TTD oversees the entire transit operation.
BlueGo provided free rides on two routes Dec. 22-Jan. 6 as spare the air days.
The ski shuttles saw an increase in ridership of 42 percent in December. In addition to the buses being free during the holidays, it helped that the fresh snow was being measured by the foot and not in inches.
“It shows ridership responds when it’s free,” TTD Executive Director Carl Hasty said.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Blue Go has made huge strides the last couple of years in it’s ability to stick to the printed schedule much better. The iphone app to see where the buses currently are were not downloading during snowglobe according to concert goers.Unfortunately I haven’t noticed any backup plans for peak times when schedules are useless. I wonder if there are viable options like the buses being able to manipulate traffic signals, an oncall floater Y directly to Heavenly Village bus to let the 50 and 53 help to get back on schedule. I don’t see how multiple experiences during the free period of standing in subfreezing temps for around an hour or longer when a bus is scheduled to stop by every half hour or so is conductive to people wanting to leave a nice warm vehicle at home.
I ride the 50 every day and those 2 weeks we hell on us. The fifty is already Always late on the 4:30 run but during that time it was 30 minutes or more late. On top of the 40 min wait twice I couldn’t even get on the bus because it was overcrowded. The 3 times I did get on people were pressed up against eachother and so many people were standing in the aisle you had to push to get out the door. People were late to work, getting home, all around late