To: tw@city.windsor.on.ca
hi.
it's just weird that it runs until 1:00 am but not until 2:00 am or 3:00 am. it's like a compromise that doesn't really satisfy anybody.
if the concern is cost with running almost empty busses, it would make sense to stop it earlier. nobody is going to get off work in detroit and take the bus home at 1:00 am. the sports games are all done well before then. it seems like the later running time is specifically to accommodate people attending concerts and whatnot.
but the reality is that, in detroit, the concert venues are mostly in odd zoning areas, which allows the shows to run until after 1:00 am. this puts people in the weird situation of either:
1) having to leave before the show is done (which is no fun) or
2) having to wait somewhere until the busses start running - which i might add is 8:30 on sunday morning.
that is to say that my experience is that extending the bus to 1:00 really isn't significantly more useful than stopping it at 12:00, because if i'm out past 12:00 then i almost always want to be out past 1:00. meaning i'm never catching it - i'm always waiting until the morning.
if there was an extra run at 2:00, even *instead* of the run at 1:00, it would be far more useful to people needing to catch it home. ironically, i think you'd find more traffic on a 2:00 am bus than on a 1:00 am bus for that reason.
there's also a sort of safety issue. i grew up in ottawa, so i'm used to the buses running out of downtown almost all night. the way it's understood there is that it stops people from drinking and driving. and, my understanding is that there's quite a bit of data around that. having a transit option to get home after the bars close is kind of a good idea for that reason alone.
just a thought: the reality is that it's really needlessly late for the daytime crowd, and yet a bit too early for the nightlife crowd.
j