Santa Fe Bus System & The Walk of Doom

Last Saturday we decided to go to the movie theater to watch "Kick-Ass" the movie. Getting to the movie theater went smoothly, and we had some time to spare when we arrived at the movie theater. We got on the route 2 bus near the train station and took it until the Olive Garden stop near the movie theater. The map below shows where the movie theater (B) is compared to where we live (A). The distance is about 4.5 miles.

The movie started at 5pm, and ended at roughly 7:05pm. We left the theater and at 7:10 we were just leaving the parking lot when I noticed a route 2 bus coming down the road, and knew that we needed to get on that bus. I told Joel and Ho Fong, and they didn't believe I had actually seen the bus, until it was far too close to be able to get to the bus stop in time to board the bus. In any case, we hoped we could make it to the next stop before it left, so we sprinted across 7 lanes of heavy traffic. We ended up getting to about 50 feet behind the bus while it was stopped at the next stop, when it tragically pulled away, leaving us behind.

Upon inspection of the bus schedule at that stop, we found out that the bus that had just pulled away was in fact the last bus of the night (at 7:12pm). How could a city have their last bus running only until 7:12 on the weekend???

In any case, we decided to begin the walk home. As we were walking we saw several buses that said "not in service" on their screen. The walk took forever, and took us through some fairly seedy feeling areas of the city. We got home at about 8:50pm, roughly 90 minutes to 100 minutes from when that bus had pulled away from the bus stop.

For future students:

do not rely on public transportation to get around Santa Fe on the weekends. The weekdays aren't even that good either, I think they end around 9pm.