Don't Back Down

There are people who will try to tell you that Charlotte is the Queen City. Don't believe them. Charlotte is Bus Stop City.

I've never been a huge rider of the bus. Even when I was in school I didn't ride the bus that much. I won't say that there weren't school buses back then, I just don't recall them being all over like they are now. But whenever I did ride the bus, I remember having to walk a good bit to get on the bus. Not the case in Charlotte. For whatever reason, Charlotte has to have the closest bus stops I have ever seen. There are some places in Charlotte (Idlewild Road North and Milton Road being two of them, but I'm sure that there are others) where the bus stops are perhaps a hundred feet apart.

I'm not making this up. And while I haven't measured it, so the stops could be a bit farther apart, they could also be closer. Whatever the case, this is far too close. By the time the bus gets moving, it has to stop again.

There is just no way that these stops should be so close together. I'm not saying that they need to be miles apart or anything, but let's get real. There's no harm in making them a half mile apart. Or a mile. Heck, I don't know how far the standard is for this sort of thing. Maybe there is no standard. Maybe there shouldn't be a standard. I'm just thinking that whatever the case, this is just a little bit too close together.

It isn't that I'm trying to make life more diffcult for people on the bus or anything like that. It's just that for all the whining about how much the public transportation costs in public money, even if they hike the fare every year, and how much gas there is, this seems like an awfully simple way to help out. If like any vehicle, starts and stops are a big part of the cost of running, then surely making fewer, more efficient stops would make a whole lot of sense, wouldn't it? How hard could it be? If nothing else, it would make traffic move along more smoothly, without as many stops behind all those buses.