From faulty signs to broken air conditioners to spotty dispatch, the Howard bus system is struggling to remedy riders? woes
“We are not happy about the situation,” said Richard Kirchner, head of local group Transportation Advocates.
Countywide, electronic signs at bus shelters intended to alert riders of when the next bus is coming are instead fixed on the current time.
So riders arrive thinking they are just in time for a bus, but 10 minutes later, the clock is also 10 minutes later, but no bus has arrived, said Bridget Mugane, president of the Howard County Citizens Association.
“They have never worked properly,” she said.
Mugane also bemoaned the physical state of the buses. She called them “rickety” and “not clean” and said some seats had been slashed and covered in graffiti.
“It tells you the economically disadvantaged and the elderly are powerless and voiceless,” she said.
The system also came under fire recently for problems with the paratransit service, which provides rides for people who are elderly or disabled.
Some riders say they “wait hours for buses that don?t come or come at the wrong time,” Kirchner said.
The selection of a new system operator, First Transit Inc., and recently reworked routes seem to contribute to the riders? grievances.
The problems with the electronic signs mainly stem from the route change, said Carl Balser, Howard?s chief of transportation.
“When we change routes, the algorithms have to get enough data points from running the routes to predict it for the next time,” he said, adding that takes two to three months.
At least some of the boards are always malfunctioning, since they are exposed to changes in temperature and moisture, Balser said.
The fleet is old and has been since the county inherited the system a decade ago. Many of the buses have outlived their useful life on the road, he said.
County Executive Ken Ulman has agreed to buy two large buses, which are expected to last longer than Howard Transit?s current smaller ones, which will arrive in about a year, Balser said.
