JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Just a few days into the new schedules, Action News received emails in our newsroom saying that the opposite is true.
We took these complaints to JTA, as bus riders tell us there have been a lot of buses running behind schedule.
Screens at the Rosa Parks Transit Center are supposed to let bus riders when and where buses will arrive, but this week, riders said the new schedules are not right.
Forty thousand people pass through the Rosa Parks Transit Center every day, according to Leigh Ann Rassler of JTA.
This week, JTA did a complete change, adding new schedules and routes, hoping to cut travel times in half for riders.
“We’ve been concentrating on the customer experience,” Rassler said.
The new changes were needed, Rassler said, because the old system just didn’t flow.
"We had routes that stopped at 10 or 11 p.m. at night. We realized we had a lot of shift workers out there, that we could get them to work, but we couldn't get them home," Rassler said.
So JTA doubled the routes and made them run longer.
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“We also improved the frequency and how often the bus comes,” Rassler said.
Eric Mayhew rides the bus often and doesn’t like the new routes.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “I used to catch L7 to Moncrief, go straight home.”
But he said his once-straight trip home now makes more turns.
“Two hours. It takes about two hours to get home. That don’t make no sense,” Mayhew said.
Bus rider Glen Schallman likes the changes.
“It’s great for me. They added service to where I live. It’s right by my apartment,” Schallman said. “My bus runs every half an hour now and late at night.”
Action News went to the intersection of Boulevard and Eighth at 12:24 p.m. Friday. According to the bus schedule, the next bus was supposed to arrive at 12:31 p.m., so we wanted to see if it would show up on time. We waited, and the bus showed up right on time, at 12:31 p.m.
Rassler said that has not been the case with all the routes this week, but JTA is working out the kinks.
"Yes, some of the buses have not been exactly on time. The on-time performance has been lower than expected this week," Rassler said.
Rassler said there have been some rumors about fees going up. She said that’s not going to happen.
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