Not so Marvelous Marin II

At first blush, Golden Gate Transit seems like an ideal system.  Clean, cushy buses and swift ferry boats that whisk commuters from their sylvan suburbs north of the Golden Gate to their offices in downtown San Francisco and back again--what could be better?  It even runs on schedule (pretty much).  And yet, and yet...after taking GGT to my evening classes at Dominican University of California for more than a year, I have noticed some serious issues that make it less than ideal.

Take the policy of not letting passengers exit throught the back door.  What's up with that?  Most transit system encourage--insist even that disembarking passengers use the back door.  Muni even has a recorded voice that instructs passengers to do just that. But if a passenger moves to the back door on GGT, the bus driver ignores him or her.  The passenger asks to be let off.  The bus driver tells him to move to the front door. The bus sits and waits, getting further behind schedule Why?  I asked a bus driver.  The bewhiskered old geezer's non-answer boiled down to "because that's the way it's done".  I called GGT and no one seems to have an answer, or if they do they're not saying.  It's a mystery...

And take the new schedule.  It seems like a good thing.  All departures on the hour and half hour from the major transfer points.  The #33 bus that formerly took me from the San Rafael Transit Center to Dominican was eliminated in favor of the new #49, a main line that runs to Novato on the hour and serves the area later in the evening than before.  Plus, a new shuttle to Santa Venetia, the #233 that runs every hour on the half hour, effectively doubling service to Dominican.  I should be happy...except the other day the #80 was running late, so I get to the Transit Center just in time to see the #49 pulling away.  Arrrgh!!!  Fortunately, the #45 that runs up Lincoln hadn't left yet, so I get close to where I'm going, kinda sorta....  Dear GGT, if you are going to make timed transfers, then buses should wait up to five minutes beyond their scheduled departure times for other buses before they depart.

And then there is the shuttle, which is operated by Marin Airporter, and is apparently a closely held secret.  No mention of it in the new GGT schedules; no signage at the Transit Center. I asked around and was finally pointed to it by a transit cognoscenti.  I know that they are different systems, but because they are transit partners, it would be in GGT's best interest to promote the other service, but no they pretend like it doesn't exist!  And don't get me started on the southbound stop at Grand and Elm in San Rafael that has been missing for almost a year...  I've come to the conclusion that GGT is a transit system designed by people who have never ridden a bus; they learned about them in school..