The WIRE has received many complaints about Red Bus performance since the route was extended to the north campus of Coler-Goldwater Hospital, so a reporter took two round trips Tuesday morning. Each round trip took about 25 minutes. This suggests that, without the inevitable bunching, four buses should provide service about every 6.5 minutes. With lined-up school buses unloading and the bunching caused when a nearly empty bus catches up with and trails a bus that is loading many passengers, the wait time is extended.

Here are logs of the two round trips.

The WIRE seeks data on the waiting time at each stop. If you overlook a stop and are willing to record an hour or more of data between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. one or more mornings, please call Linda Heimer at 212-832-3456 for information on reporting format.

Facts:  Bus #2 took 25 minutes to complete a circuit (round-trip, Good Shepherd to Good Shepherd; bus #1 took 23 minutes to complete the same circuit, skipping the stop at Gristede's because another bus was in the drive-through, boarding passengers.

Observations:  Bus #2 was held up for 2.5 minutes, at 7:51:15, because three school buses
in succession stopped traffic to discharge passengers.  Drivers adapted nicely to conditions,
for example not waiting at the Tram station, despite an arriving trip, because another bus was immediately behind, or skipping the turnaround at Motorgate because another bus was loading.  Bunching of buses appears nearly inevitable, because a delay (for stopped school buses, for example) causes one bus to catch up to another.