For the report cards maybe it could be an idea to do them borough by borough, instead of doing one of each of the more than 200 lines in the system. Then, let the riders state on the cards in which line they use to ride.

However, in response to buses stopping far too often…I feel like you have to be talking about buses in the city. I live towards Forest Hills over by Queens Mall and there are several spans of time where the bus stops are few and far in between. There are certain buses that go out further towards the Rockaways that literally have several miles in between their stops. Frequent stops on the M 104 make sense only because the area is largely populated and it’s a ‘fast paced’ area. People don’t expect to have to walk five blocks for a bus. However, I’ve been on that bus at times where every single stop it’s made has had more people than the capacity of the bus board.

Personally, I think that it’s really clear that one of the bigger problems with the bus system is that they don’t know their ‘market,’ if you will. You know when you take a bus often enough that you can go ‘oh okay, this stop is coming up–everyone will get off and I will get a seat’ ? The MTA doesn’t know this. Subways have express stops for a reason and the bus system never thought of that apparently. Take the Q88; yes, the bus has ‘school hour’ extra bus service (at least on the chart they do). However, the bus stops at Queens College (which is a commuter college in the middle of nowhere) and a skirt of high schools right before QC on it’s way towards Queens Center. More often than not, there is the bunching up of buses that you talked about. However, it’s rarely used the way it needs to be. The area is as a whole unavailable to subways for miles upon miles. However, the MTA must not be aware of this. The buses that supposedly run quicker during school hours do, in fact, not. There is often a line at the Queens College stop that goes over 100 people along the block and develops very quickly. Twenty minutes to a half hour later, three buses will stop. One will let on half of the group and of the other two, one will only let people off and the other one will hesitate before leaving (never opening its doors). This happens so consistently. Even on the Q60, a similar situation happens. However, past 5 o clock….we’d be rather lucky to so much as see one bus every hour on either of those lines. Apparently, people never use buses after school lets out.

Also, you probably have a point about buses stopping too often and having overlapping routes in busy areas, but what about all the areas that have way less traffic and are served only by buses? Those people probably would say on a report card that they want *more* bus stops. Especially old or disabled riders who have trouble transporting themselves even a few blocks. Those riders might say the same thing even if they had a subway stop on their block, because there’d be a good chance it would not have an elevator for them.