BUSTIME

Is RantWoman the only person on the planet who still uses BUSTIME, "Metro's automated stop lookup service?" RantWoman ADORES bustime because she can use a plain old ordinary phone or in RantWoman's case cellphone. RantWoman dials a number, listens to exhortations impractical to RantWoman to get the info she needs on the web, steps through some menus, and gets scheduled departure times for the next 3 buses at her bus stop. Well, that is what USED TO happen.

Here's the deal: the Rant family all finally got our cellphones migrated. RantWoman would most happily have gotten something with a camera, a QWERTY keyboard, talking menus, even full internet access. Unfortunately, RantWoman's budgetary sensibilities reared their ugly heads and RantWoman settled for a plain phone with nicely tactile buttons where RantWoman can actually most of the time read the menus and the text messages. Even though RantWoman MIGHT rather get her own dang info off the internet, RantWoman cannot do so and that is why she loves BUSTIME.

RantWoman uses BUSTIME,once or twice a month if she is traveling someplace she commonly goes but at a time she less commonly travels or if she is in a new area. RantWoman, if she presses her nose up to the schedule sign can some of the time read schedule information except that at stops where many buses come by, the route RantWoman needs can be predicted to have its schedule posted at about RantWoman's waistline, or even RantWoman's knees. This would be another case where RantWoman might use BUSTIME.

Problem is, since the September bus shakeup, RantWoman has had decidedly mixed success using BUSTIME even for routes close to where she lives. RantWoman knows that a big bus shakeup means data tables to maintain. RantWoman knows that if a caller has to step through menus, the phone system can be collecting data about what info is wanted. RantWoman knows that she could have just opted to get into the queue for a live human sooner. RantWoman was pleased with the info she finally got. RantWoman is even tolerant of guinea pig services if Metro is trying to figure out alternatives for new ages and new technological environments: RantWoman would love to be seduced by soemthing better than BUSTIME, but at this point a plain phone is what RantWoman has for accessing this info and RantWoman would really prefer to keep BUSTIME.