Bull City Connector

Forty years ago or so, Fred Smith started Federal Express with one central idea: to deliver packages from one locale to another overnight, all of those packages needed to be shipped to a single location, or "hub," first, where they would be sorted and then re-shipped to their final destinations. Even a package that was being sent from Raleigh to Durham would be shipped to the hub before being sent to its intended address in the Bull City.

The hub system that made Federal Express a success was in time adopted by other concerns whose business was to transport items from one place to another. Unfortunately, those concerns were airlines and municipal bus companies. What works for packages does not work for people.

What makes the Bull City Connector, Durham's new bus service that runs along Main Street between the Golden Belt on its east end and Duke University on its west, such a fine service and the best thing to happen to this city since the restaurant revolution began around seven years ago, is its independence from the hub system that renders traveling via DATA buses all but hopeless. That it is free is beside the point; what makes the service attractive is its convenience.

What we now need is the equivalent of the Bull City Connector running along all the major thoroughfares in Durham. Imagine traveling by bus from one end of Roxboro to the other without being detoured to the Durham Station Transportation Center and put in purgatory for half an hour. In other words, what we need is a bus service that turns its back on the perfidious hub system and puts its passengers first.