BusTalk

[Dieseljim]

Rochester,NY has several examples of intersuburb routes that are quite reasonable. One is the 14 Ridge Road line which runs from Greece to suburbs just east of the city.Another is 27-Unity, running between Henrietta and Pittsford

[RailBus63]

Centro has made several tries in Syracuse. In the late 1990's, one new 'crosstown' route was begun and several other routes were restructured to allow customers to access area shopping destinations without having to transfer downtown. The new route was 60 West Direct and traveled from the western suburbs of Solvay and Camillus to the Carousel Center mall, the area's largest. I think ridership suffered because attempts to develop ridership always resulted in a twisting route that was far from being direct, and the single bus assigned to such a lengthy route meant that headways were always infrequent and required a schedule to keep track of. Various permutations were tried until the route was finally eliminated last fall in Centro's first recession-related cutbacks. The other 'direct' services - modifications of existing services to allow a bus on one route to continue on to a shopping destination on another route - still survive although they are no longer advertised and basically function as route extensions.

In 2002, two neighborhood circulators were begun as part of a system-wide route restructuring. One route is still in operation - the 723 Suburban East - but it barely survived the recent service cuts and now only runs Monday through Friday on a shortened route to Fayetteville where connections can be made to the route 62 trunk service to the city and other destinations. The other circulator (736 Suburban West) was a dismal failure and was discontinued in less than a year.

One other crosstown-type survive is operated by Centro - during the school year, buses are operated on Friday and Saturday evenings from the Syracuse University campus direct to Carousel Center. I can only imagine how much fun those late night rides back to the campus must be for the driver.

[HwyHaulier]

Dieseljim - RailBus63 -

It goes without saying, the "pros" in the trades have wrestled with this most vexing set of problems. In near all instances, they throw up their hands,
and declare solutions as much too costly, or otherwise impractical. There is much useful, related reading on site of Minneapolis FRB...

The matter touches on the larger issue of Senior Mobility solutions. In any case, clear signals these kinds of operations don't belong in transit budgets?

I'm beginning to think there might be some benefit of having true deregulation. (Such is not the case when it is claimed the environment is deregulated,
yet the resident TA the sole entity that may engage in transit activity!) A possibility that some "lanes" might be amenable to ad hoc jitney operators, in
true "free market" environments. Here, the concern should be evidence of insurance, and compliance with safety requirements...

.......................Vern..................

[Dieseljim]

The one intersuburban route that I overlooked was Buffalo Transit Company's original route between Buffalo and Akron, which also linked the city of Buffalo as well as the suburbs of Cheektowaga,Amherst,Clarence, and Newstead(Akron) together. Another BTC route that linked the suburbs together was the Broadway Line, which serviced Depew,Lancaster,Alden, and went as far east as Darien in Genesee County and Attica, in Wyoming County. Since Buffalo Transit was basically a suburban bus company that not only linked most of Buffalo's suburbs together, but linked them with the city as well,owner John G. Campbell, a former Yellow Coach salesman who bought the company in 1942, came to see the logic of merging his company with the city oriented Niagara Frontier Transit System, which had limited suburban service, thus sowing the seed for today's regional bus system serving Buffalo and Erie County, and Niagara County. NFT acquired BTC in 1961 and kept it a seperate company until 1963 while plans were developed to integrate the operations of BTC into the larger NFT. The upshot was NFT sold off all of the remaining 36 and 45 seat buses and kept the 20 TDH5106s that BTC had bought together with the TDH5302 "fishbowls", which were the first such buses in the Buffalo area and renumbered and repainted them to 600-619 for the 5106s and 700-709 for the 5302s. After 1963, BTC was history. I sure would like to get my hands on some more of that company's timetables.