The COTA Challenge: Day Three

Today I had several errands to run and thought it might be a good idea to test out the effectiveness of making multiple stops with the bus. Afterall, this was during the day and my stops were all either downtown or in the Short North, and I’d have to pay to park at meters three times for three stops, which would quickly add up.

All the routes I rode today ran on time which made the overall experience pleasant. The only problem was that my downtown stop was on a street where the routes came in 20 minutes headways. So a quick 5-minute stop resulted in a 15-minute wait for the next bus to come by. But since it was a nice day, and I was only a 10-minute walk from High Street, I opted to just take the stroll over to catch a bus there instead.

I was afraid while out that I’d encounter some timing issues as I decided to take a detour to Tigertree to check out their new space and chat for awhile. But the #2 pulled up as soon as I walked outside, so it really didn’t delay me at all.

Oh, and as I mentioned on Friday, we have three routes that take us home, the 6, 11, and 16. I was a bit confused that day and trying to get off at either Nationwide or Long to catch one of these buses on the different routes they run, but today I figured out that I was overcomplicating things. I can just hop off on High Street at the stop between Long & Gay and all three of these buses will pick us up from here. I knew that I’d quickly be figuring out some of the challenges. For anyone intimidated by the maze of COTA routes… it gets easier after a couple rides.

All in all I spent about an hour and a half running around today. Probably the same amount of time I would have spent if I had drove when you consider the extra time finding meters, parking the car, and getting Desi in and out of his car seat (which he has grown to dislike). I got to save myself about $5 in parking fees and gasoline usage to boot.