Bus nap

RTA says it has a strategy to improve service and get the busses running on time more often. Apparently this involves reducing the number of busses in the "active fleet" and by adjusting the schedules so that they don't look like they're overpromising. That sure sounds like a service cut to me. The dreaded phrase "more with less" is ringing around in there somewhere.  But RTA insists it will make things better in the long run if they aren't spending as much time dealing with maintenance issues and after the new busses they bought with COVID money get up and running. We'll see. 

Anyway I thought this was funny. 

On Wednesday, Willy Lee, a dishwasher at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse in the French Quarter, sat on a bench at a stop on the currently out-of-service Rampart streetcar line watching videos on his phone, waiting for his shift to start. He left home two and a half hours before his 4 p.m. shift began. 

“I leave home around 1:30 because the bus be kinda late,” he said. 

Lee lives in the Little Woods neighborhood in New Orleans East and must transfer buses in order to get downtown, adding more possibility for delays. He said sometimes buses don’t arrive at their expected time shown on Le Pass, the RTA’s app.

In a September interview, Hankins blamed the problems, in part, on a lack of qualified mechanics to quickly fix problems, perform routine maintenance and get buses back on the road. 

The plan announced Thursday will address that by reducing the number of buses that the agency’s mechanics have to work on. Of the 18 buses being pulled out of the active fleet, 10 are being “to sleep.” The RTA will hold onto them, but they will be removed from the roads and the maintenance pool. (The agency currently has 14 buses in that category, bringing the total to 24 beginning in January.) The other eight will be permanently retired.

Anyway, wake me up when a trip downtown from Little Woods doesn't take the same amount of time as a flight to Philadelphia.