Long waits and being late for work are some of the gripes passengers have with the Southeast Area Transit District (SEAT) bus system.
“If you’re paying to go somewhere you should hurry up and go,” said Taj Johnson of New London, who uses SEAT buses to get around town.
Delays have made him late multiple times.
“It could be a job interview. It could be me going to pick up somebody, like a family member from school. It could be anything,” Johnson said.
Caitlyn Turner has also been late to her job.
“Right now they’re doing a whole bunch of construction so now there are a lot of buses that are being delayed 15 minutes sometimes,” said Turner, an East Lyme resident.
SEAT said Connecticut’s money problems are to blame. Personnel costs are the biggest part of SEAT’s operating budget, general manager Michael Carroll said.
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“We would love to have more service, we would love extra drivers, obviously,” he added.
For the last couple of years, SEAT's state funding has been frozen in place, according to Carroll, adding about 70 percent of funding comes from the state, about 20 percent comes from fare revenue and the last 10 percent from the 10 local towns participating in the program.
Spare buses and spare drivers are limited. Plus with the state budget is in flux, Carroll fears cuts.
“We don’t have a lot of staff that we can cut, so unfortunately if funding is cut, we’re going to have to look at service reductions,” Carroll said.
Passengers can track buses in real time and SEAT works to be transparent on Facebook and Twitter when there is a delay like there was Wednesday morning.
“We schedule two extra drivers every day when we can find them. This morning we had three drivers call out at the last minute,” Carroll said.
Some passengers told NBC Connecticut they don’t normally see service interruptions. In fact, Carroll said it makes up less than 1 percent of the total service, but he understands the frustration and would be willing to talk with anyone affected to see if SEAT can help make it right.
