So…how did Sam and I end up getting from Tiverton on the 61x back to Boston? Why, we took the SRTA, of course! Yes, we had to walk about an hour to get from the Fish Road Park and Ride to the terminus of the 1, but it was a surprisingly nice walk, and now, here we are on the SRTA for the second time! It certainly won’t be the last, either…

Shove Street? What an odd name!

Although businesses line the road closer to the Rhode Island border, the 1 starts a block north of that, where it’s a lot more residential. We immediately turned onto Broad Street, a very deceiving street, as it’s actually really narrow. Next, we turned onto Shove Street, as seen on the bus’s headsign, and we used this to merge back onto South Main Street, which had a mixture of dense houses, apartments, and businesses.

A blurry picture, but there’s the ocean!

Outside of a park, we curved onto Broadway, which was all dense houses. We turned onto Middle Street at a park, then it was a left back onto South Main Street. It was basically all retail up until we hit Fall River City Hall and I-195, where we turned onto Frontage Road. From here, it wasn’t long until we arrived at the Fall River Terminal.

Going alongside I-195.

SRTA Route: 1 (South Main)

Ridership: The most comprehensive SRTA ridership data I could find shows the numbers by month, which is a little awkward, but I’ll work with it. The route seems to get about 350 people per day, which is pretty good. My ride only had three people, but it was one of the later trips of the evening, and it was going inbound.

Pros: As I would come to learn about the SRTA, they like to run routes that are twisty. That’s why it’s nice to see that the 1 here is nice and straight, running mostly down South Main Street with a slight jog to serve Broadway. The route is also frequent, with service every half hour on weekdays and Saturdays; it even runs until around 9 PM during the week!

Cons: No Sunday service is always going to be a complaint for me when it comes to the SRTA. This is a route that serves a major corridor in Fall River, and I think it would get the ridership needed to support at least limited Sunday service, say, every hour.

Nearby and Noteworthy: Along South Main Street closer to downtown Fall River, there are some interesting restaurants, from ethnic food to plain ol’ hot dogs.

Final Verdict: 8/10
The 1 checks almost all the boxes: it serves a major corridor, it gets good ridership, and it runs frequently for an RTA route. The one problem? No darn Sunday service! I don’t think the system needs it on all routes, but this is definitely one where it would make a lot of sense.

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