The Martlet

Dear B.C. Transit,

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the continuation of late-night transit in Victoria. It’s amazing, it really is. And we’ll use it, because we know that if we don’t use it, we’ll lose it. We’ll come right out and say it, we love late-night transit!

In fact, we love all transit. And we know the more we use it, the better it will get.

However, there is one eensy, weensy, teensy, tiny thing that you could do to make our use of transit easier. We don’t mean to whine; we don’t want to sound greedy. But, if it’s not too big a problem, could you make it so the buses actually run according to schedule?

Too often someone arrives on campus late and grumpy because their bus was late. Or maybe it was early — it’s hard to tell sometimes. We’re at the point now where it feels pointless to even look at a schedule because the bus won’t be arriving a few minutes within the stated time. And sometimes, when you’re running late, you don’t have an extra ten minutes to get to the stop early enough to ensure you don’t miss your bus, or the extra ten minutes to stand around on the side of the road waiting for it.

And, if you want us to use late-night transit —which we want to do, we really do ­— then can you pretty please run the last bus on time? Or at least, not early. Because when you see your last bus home pull away from the bus stop five minutes early as you run desperately to catch it, you die a little inside. Because now, you’re stuck downtown, or at work, or wherever the hell you are at 1:30 a.m., and your only way of getting home is to waste money on a cab or enjoy a long, lonely walk in the dark.

As students, many of us ride a lot of buses. In fact, we’re one of your biggest busing demographics. UVic and Camosun students provide almost $5 million to your annual budget. And for many of us, the bus is our only means of transportation. We rely on it to get to school and work on time.

But it’s gotten bad, this timing thing. So bad, in fact, that more and more students are switching over to their bikes — a more reliable (but also more sweaty) form of transportation.

Now, don’t get us wrong. We realise it’s unrealistic to expect perfect punctuality. We understand traffic changes, or that a poorly timed red light can delay a route by a few minutes. We understand that accidents and traffic delays happen. All we want is that, if the schedule says a bus is going to show up, it actually does within a few minutes of when it’s supposed to.

For now, though, while you mull this over, we’ll continue to rush to our bus stops 10 minutes early, and bring a book or our iPod in case we end up hanging around on the side of the road for 20 minutes.

But again, thank you, thank you, thank you for late-night transit. It really does mean the world to us.