Anyone else notice in the past 3-4 weeks that the 271 bus route to Bellevue/Issaquah has just straight up skipped key posted service times in the morning? Wednesday morning, the 7:44 service never came and I waited for a good 30+ minutes to finally be picked up by the 7:57 service, which was a few minutes late to add insult to injury. There were so many people waiting at the first stop of the route by this point that a handful of individuals were unable to board at the UW hospital stop and the 520 stop was skipped entirely despite another ~10 people waiting.
This has recently become embarrassingly common, not just a rare exception. In the past 3 weeks I have experienced similar cases on at least four of my maybe twelve commutes.
I know the bus drivers have little-to-no agency to do anything, but I have tried politely asking them to escalate these issues to dispatch, and I have also sent emails to the King County Metro to no avail.
What’s particularly frustrating to me is that the 271 commuting route is heavily trafficked by many individuals who are privileged enough to switch to personal means of transportation if they want to. If the bus keeps sucking ass as much as it has recently, an increasingly-large share of people will inevitably revert to driving personal cars, adding more traffic, decreasing bus ridership, and exacerbating the collective action issue we have in the first place. It’s incredibly frustrating.
submitted by /u/IVIaximilian
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