My bus driver showed me a crazy stat about our route the other day

So I take the 42 bus from downtown to the east side every morning, and last Tuesday my driver (nice guy named Rick) had a little screen showing our route data. He told me that on average, we hit 137 red lights between the two terminals each trip. I was shocked because I always figured it was maybe 40 or 50 tops, you know? It's made me way more patient about sitting at lights now, especially since he also said that adds about 8 minutes to the ride. Has anyone else ever asked their driver or looked up stats on their regular commute route?

3 comments

3 Comments

lunaf6721d ago

137 red lights seems wild but 8 minutes of added wait time feels low for that many stops. Did Rick happen to mention if that 8 minutes included the longer waits at major intersections or was it averaged out across all the lights? Just wondering if the really long lights downtown are skewing the average or something.

sarah_patel2521d ago

The 8 minutes is probably an average across all 137 lights, but those downtown lights can be brutal. I've sat at some intersections for what felt like 2-3 minutes just waiting for a left turn arrow that never comes. Bet the ones near the mall or highways are way shorter though, like 15-20 seconds each. The real killer is when you hit every single light wrong on a main road and suddenly that 8 minutes turns into 20 because of one giant intersection.

nancycooper22d ago

Everything in life has hidden wait times we never notice until someone points it out lol