Shameful bus routes

This is part of an ongoing series to identify inefficient bus routes.

Every year, Streetsblog has a "competition" (2017 link) to find the sorriest bus stops in the country. It's a competitive title in America to be sure. I would like to propose another category to the mix: sorriest bus lines in the country.

For me, there are two that stand out as particularly useless (again, it is a very competitive title and I will continue to keep watch for additional contenders). These bus lines makes so little sense that I would rather adopt the Rankine scale for daily temperature measurement.

Here are just a couple I have stumbled across. Note that public transport in the Untied States is considered public welfare and not public good; therefore, limited resources are routinely spent to direct buses where they have no business going.

C-Tran in Vancouver, Washington

This is a real bus route. It is about 2km long.

C-Tran operates a bus route that is essentially a ~10-times-daily parking lot shuttle. Most runs carry zero or no passengers. The entire route consists of circling a mall parking lot.

For what it's worth, the bus circle starts operating bright and early.

The area where C-Tran's unused, taxpayer funded parking shuttle is surrounded by an ocean of asphalt. 

I reached out to C-Tran to ask why this route existed. The response was essentially as I expected: politics, social welfare, and fear of resources being siphoned to more expensive paratransit rides (a topic worth covering in depth for an entire blog post).

The email response from Jim, C-Tran's Director of Operations:

Thanks for asking Nicholas.

We developed Route 73 after hearing from several riders who live in the residential area just north of the Mall. They came to a board meeting and asked that we not move the transit center to the south side where it is today. Knowing we had to move, we thought a route looping around the Mall would continue to serve these riders. As you've observed, there are very few taking advantage of this service. If ridership does not grow on this route, it will likely be eliminated. We'll see what happens over the next few months. Thanks again, Jim

ABQ Ride in Albuquerque, New Mexico

The "BUG" bus, which also holds the title for "worst bus name".

The route looks like someone was trying to carve their initials into the city. Rather than "driving in circles", the route "drives back and forth". Hardly much better.

Albuquerque isn't know for having superb bus service (yet, anyway). Unlike C-Tran, which is apparently considering the elimination of a useless bus route, ABQ Ride has no intention to do so. However, this route actually does see ridership that can only be described as completely transit-dependent people.

Some ABQ Ride buses in downtown Albuquerque, where route 16 forcefully veers off route to go.

A sad route 16 bus stop along a busy, high speed road (though, due to construction, it was reduced to only 35mph!).

ABQ Ride route 16 is actually a blending of routes 16 and 18 (which was discontinued) due to budget constrictions. While both routes suffered from low ridership, it's difficult to believe that anyone on the right side of the map would ever take this bus to anywhere on the left side. It would be faster simply to walk.

As I have hinted previously about route maps, I expect this to be a regular thing. There are just too many examples, especially in small towns where buses operate along squiggly lines. Then again, they serve a very different purpose in small towns.