While not being known as a tree huger I am hopeful that somehow mass transit can play a bigger part in our community. I don’t agree with how they are spending money to do this but I do realize that once they have spent the capital I should at least try to work with what we get.
The bus service operates several “circulator” routes in town. These bus routes typically cover a small area of town and terminate in one of our several transfer stations. Once a passenger gets to a transfer station they can take a different bus to continue their journey.
I freely admit that I am not an expert on mass transit systems. That being said, some of the other routes seem wasteful to me. Route 11, “Mesita via Kern Place” is an example. This graphic is from the sunmetro.net web site:
This route offers service every 65 minutes during week days and every 80 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays. That is better than nothing but is hardly convenient for someone who does not want to wait over an hour to catch a bus.
It seems to me that the portion after Baltimore that heads downtown is not needed. Baltimore Drive turns into Glory Road, the location of a transfer station. Instead of running down Florence the bus could continue on Baltimore down to the transfer station. Passengers could transfer to a different bus at that point. If the goal is to get downtown there are four different routes that run up and down Mesa in addition to this one. Brio is one of these.
Looking at the timetable the route from the northern end at Camelot Apartments to the Glory Road transfer station would take about 10 minutes. Our route 11 could then head back into the neighborhood giving patrons service at 20 minute intervals. The buses could even expand their route in the neighborhood making access more convenient for some residents. They could cover additional streets and still offer 30 minute service.
Would offering more frequent service increase ridership? We won’t know unless we try it. As it it now service every 65 minutes is only attractive to those who must use the service. People with their own cars don’t want to wait an hour.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
From my own point of view, the biggest issue is not the length of time between buses. It is the distance that most people live from a bus stop. You add the walk, plus the wait time, plus the walk from where you get off to your final destination, it can take forever to get to or from work, even if you would like to park your car and use the bus.
Planning? The city chose to put a Brio stop at Montecillo, an upscale apartment community where everyone owns nice vehicles, rather than put it a mile away near a critical mass of lower-income apartments, where people are less likely to own cars or have reliable transportation.
The odd thing about scheduling is that I am now seeing Brio buses and regular buses literally back to back in traffic — no time between them.
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Exactly right. I sat in a little shop at Mesita and Mesa yesterday and saw what amounted to “packs” of buses – a regular bus, a Brio bus, and a mini SunMetro bus – traveling together. Saw one person get on a Brio.
The nearest bus stop for me is nearly a mile away. There is nothing there but a sign “Bus Stop.” No seat, no cover. If you happen to miss the bus by 5 minutes, you wait an hour, in the sun, wind or occasional rain. And that bus would now take me downtown, after which I would take another bus to get to, say, Sunland Park shopping mall. I can drive home to Sunland Park twenty minutes.
While the folks at Montecillo may all have cars, there will be a section for “senior living” and those residents might like the Brio service…and of course, in Chihuahua season Brio will be an alternative to the parking garages charging you ten bucks for storing your nice vehicle.
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By all means, anything for the Chihuahuas. It is still irritating to see Brio TV commercials outside of baseball season providing free on-screen advertising for the faux university that has its name on the ballpark. That’s free advertising at taxpayer expense, yet the city doesn’t receive a penny from the millions of dollars in naming rights fees the university reportedly is paying to Mountainstar.
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Apologies if I appeared to be approving the Brio trips as a bennie for the Chihuahuas.. but when you have upwards of $200 million in taxpayer money going to the full cost of the stadium as documented in today’s post, obviously you want to ensure that the parking charges won’t reduce attendance. Ultimately there will be four Brio lines feeding to the transit center near the stadium…maybe they can hire some of those faux university students to operate the buses.
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The sad reality is that their commercials in Spanish speak for themselves. The doctor who speaks on behalf of this “faux university” cannot even pronounce the word Southwest. Through their marketing strategies and advisers, those students are convinced they are going to land good paying jobs and are encouraged to obtain massive amounts of student loans to pay for a great university. After all, this “university” is more expensive than UTEP and EPCC.
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As an employer of almost 40 years myself, I would look at their graduation of any “Private” “University” as a really big “So what”.
I might hire the person based on their knowledge after speaking with them.
I might even hire them for just 2 weeks to see how they fit in or perform. The piece of paper they get is worthless to me by itself and would promise no job whatsoever.
An employee’s ENTIRE JOB is to make life easier for me. Period.
An employee’s entire job working ANYWHERE is to make the bosses life easier and smoother. Period.
To make things work, to get along and work with others MAKES my life easier and problem free.
If anyone wants a job, they need experience and sometimes to get that they need to volunteer to work for free maybe somewhere for a while and GET some experience. That counts much much more than any piece of paper.
You know, but first, they need to decide EXACTLY where they want to work and a very good reason of why they want to work somewhere.
They might have to “camp out” on my business door steps every day for several days or for weeks or just start bringing me customers and THAT will provide MY motivation for hiring them.
If they EVER use the term in applying: “Well, I just need a job.”
Then the answer is NO.
They will be hopping from job to job to job. No thanks !
WHY aren’t parents (or schools) teaching them this?
WHY aren’t high schools teaching them that an employer is just about the most important person in the world to them.
(OR, they just wont be able to EAT !)
High School should require a class each year on:
HOW to Get and Keep a Job,
and
How to earn a living even on minimum wages,
or
How to Survive on mimimum wages, or less. ( Because sometimes that’s all that there will be.)
Unless a person wants to “Stay at home and never work”,
what else is an education for?
OK, I’m pretty much OFF TOPIC by now. I know, I know.
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My “reply”/ Post, was to: Sad El Pasoan on Nov.7, way down below, that does not have a “Reply” button attached to his post. So my post jumped to the top and does not seem to apply to anything the original topic is.
My post deals with the Fake Southwest University.
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