Posted on 09/11/2014 12:54:38 PM PDT by MichCapCon
GRAND RAPIDS – Commuters looking for a faster way to travel may have to look beyond Michigan’s first “rapid transit” bus line. The service, which began the last week in August in Grand Rapids and is known as the Silver Line, cost taxpayers $40 million but takes twice as long as a car driving the same route.
The service is called “rapid” because the buses have their own lane and bus drivers can signal traffic lights to stay green. The buses also feature newly installed bus stops where you buy your ticket from a machine and validate it before you board. The stops also provide camera surveillance, real-time arrival signage, sidewalk snowmelt, an emergency phone and free Wi-Fi.
Free Wi-Fi could be a welcome amenity because a ride on the 9.6-mile route takes 39 minutes based on timing of a recent ride. A car making the same trip took 20 minutes. Furthermore, the Silver Line is just a minute faster than an existing line, mainly because the existing line has more stops along the route.
Bill Mills of the Kent County Taxpayer Alliance is not surprised by the performance. His organization has been monitoring The Rapid, the authority that runs the metropolitan area’s buses and the new Silver Line.
“$40 million for a special line to go up and down Division (Street) where we already have a bus line? It’s just a gross waste of money,” says Mills.
The Rapid, the authority that runs the Silver Line, did not return phone calls or emails, even though it was informed that Michigan Capitol Confidential planned to time a Silver Line ride. Before videotaping at Central Station, one of its security guards asked Cap Con to stop photographing until a Rapid representative came out to discuss the story. Later, the representative did not return a phone call or email asking for comment on the results.
Commuters say they’re not sure if they will use the route because Division Street is not a road they normally travel. The 9.6-mile route begins at Central Station on Grandville in Grand Rapids, loops around the Spectrum Hospital complex on Michigan Avenue, then heads south to 60th Avenue in Cutlerville. One rider, a mental health counselor who asked not to be named, wondered why the line stops at 60th and not eight blocks farther south where Pine Rest Psychiatric Hospital is located.
“It seems like the Silver Line is geared for a specific kind of clientele. The Rapid would have been better off spending the money improving the existing line which can get very crowded because it offers numerous stops,” he said.
Because millions of dollars were invested into the bus stops, it will be nearly impossible to change the Silver Line route. Instead, there is an effort to develop another one serving students at Grand Valley State University.
That’s just fine, in liberal-world.
Things move too quickly here. We need to be slowed down, so that we’re more like Kenya or Zimbabwe.
Once we dial in the physics and engineering we’ll be able to hop into a stylish, cushioned container, plug in some coordinates, and fly directly to any destination on earth in a relatively short period of time. Cars and buses will be things of the past. Trains and trucks, however, as a means of industrial and agricultural transportation are here to stay a while. Even there we may come up with channels more efficient.
“We need to be slowed down, so that we’re more like Kenya or Zimbabwe.”
Mullah Obamadork is working that.
Stay tuned for further details of corruption, idiocy, and decline brought to you by quota boy.
Riding on a bus takes longer than driving a car?? This is a surprise?
The downside to the car is you’re not as likely to ride next to someone who’s pee’d themselves and passed out and lack of air freshner sales hurts our thriving ,shovel-ready economy.
So not only is it slower than a car, it ties up a lane of traffic and creates a potential hazard by turning lights green suddenly when it goes through. Its so screwed up, its the perfectly Liberal bus.
For it to be perfect, it would also need to be short.
Put an expensive, "rapid" bus line on a route that no one travels -- now there's good city planning for you.
Short? It’s under 10 miles long. I don’t see how a bus route could be much shorter.
Like governments everywhere; truculent, arrogant, and accountable to no one.
Because millions of dollars were invested into the bus stops, it will be nearly impossible to change the Silver Line route. Instead, there is an effort to develop another one serving students at Grand Valley State University.
Sounds like some powerful people decided that this special route was needed for some special people. I suspect that some special people needed some tax payer money as well.
A special route with special high tech stops that do not serve other buses, a short route that could have served a lot more riders by being just few more miles longer.
Is it incompetence or intensional mismanagement?
Not the route, the bus. It should also have a trap door in the floor so it's easy to throw people under it.
Gov’t. works, very efficiently. /sarcasm.
Yep - them dang locals seem to always be stopping so folks can get on and off....
If the new buses are hybrids they get extra credit for good intentions.
If whites are forced to ride in the back of the buses, this would be a nearly perfect liberal project: Green, expensive and anti-white with no discernible benefits.
Not mentioned is they did not build two extra lanes but instead took a four lane road down to a two lane during the busiest time of the commute. While most people don't take the entire route, they often use Division to get around traffic blocks on 131.
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