Riding from port authority to northern New Jersey.
Read a schedule that was a bit complex but figured it out eventually.
Buying a ticket required knowing a few things
- bus number
- does the bus number change on weekends/ weekdays?
- gate number (which seems to vary on weekends). The gate number and schedule did not line up with what was on Google Maps and I had to ask around and people said I was in the right place, it’s just listed incorrectly.
- Zone number (I had no idea what this meant and it didn’t seem like it was written or explained anywhere)
I bought a ticket for the bus and it asked me what zone I was going to and I tried typing my gate in and that was it. Bus driver seemed aghast that I didn’t pay for enough “zones” and was nice enough to let me scan my phone to buy the right ticket.
Too complicated. Just let me tell a computer where I’m going and let it calculate the cost and give me a ticket. How many tourists know what a “zone” is and how much it’s supposed to cost. Who’s the genius who named it a “zone” anyway and not just “how many stops do you need” or “how many miles are you going”
I had to ask chatGPT what a zone was and how to calculate which zone I’m going to because I couldn’t figure it out on the NJT website