It's called a schedule

The author of this post on the D.C. Metroblogging site should stop complaining and be happy that he was on a bus in the first place. For background, the S1, S2 and S4 buses are my bus route. They travel straight down 16th street from Silver Spring to K street or the White House (my stop) and continue to either the State Department at 22nd and E or the National Mall at 10th street and Constitution.

Typically, my wife and I walk the 10 blocks to work but with the sub-zero wind chill the past few days, we've taken the bus. These buses are supposed to run on a schedule, posted at every bus stop, but some bus driver heroes speed through their route, making the schedule worthless. This causes gaps in service which produces huge delays and crowds of people. If you're not at one of the major stops like U street, 10 buses will pass by completely full, letting people off a block before the actual stop so they don't take on more passengers, and then 5 buses will arrive at the same time that are all empty.

Why can't WMATA, the Washington metro authority, do something about this? Obviously somebody there understands that a schedule is an important part of public transportation, otherwise there wouldn't be one in the first place. If drivers were told what time to be at certain stops, the schedule would work and noone would have to wait half an hour for a bus!