Getting Around: Tucson, AZ

SunTran (Tucson Transit), please do better.

Your website is a hodgepodge of pages.

Tucson runs free transit, but hides that information on two pages, one of which isn’t even linked any more.

I was digging around a full 10 minutes on Tucson’s website trying to figure out what the fare is, and couldn’t find it. Finally I googled “Tucson transit fares” and it led me to a “How to Pay your Fare” page which says they’re free.

Also there’s both a “Learn to Ride” page and a “How to Ride” page.

SunTran also claims to have “The official Sun Tran app”. But it’s just the Transit app. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Transit app, I use it extensively, and I’m glad SunTran encourages its customers to use it. But let’s not pretend it’s SunTran’s app.

I suspect they used to have their own app, switched to Transit, and didn’t update the verbiage on their website effectively.

Even at the stations, it’s not clear the fares are free. The fare machines are still there, but there’s paint on the ground that tells you fares are free.

What are we doing here, Tucson?

I rode the Tucson streetcar a lot. It’s easy to find, easy to get on, takes you useful places.

And it goes slowly enough that if you miss it, you can probably just beat it to the next stop by walking. I saw it pass once, walked to the next stop, and had to wait at least 5 minutes for it to arrive.

Ope!

The streetcar is almost constantly stopped at red lights and blocked by traffic. Just crazy slow.

But when it’s 90 degrees out, I’ll take a slow saunter through downtown on a nice, clean, air conditioned ride.

It does have live tracking in the Transit app. But that tracking was unrealistically optimistic.

I also rode the bus once. I travel with a bunch of luggage and wanted to lighten my load, so I dropped a couple books I finished at a local little free library. I took the bus back to downtown.

The bus was fine. Typical bus. But, like the streetcar, it was just really slow. Arrived five minutes late and took its time.

I got off off at the central bus depot, which is right downtown! It’s pretty big and pretty well maintained, right next to the streetcar, and about a block from Amtrak. Nice!