New bus route changes took effect around Windward Oahu Sunday — and they are a prelude to changes coming to other parts of Oahu.

Riders told us about missed connections and late buses — and for the most part — they realize that big changes like this take time.

Jon Nouchi, deputy director of the City Dept. Transportation Services, says, “I went out there and rode the system all day on Sunday, got to talk with a lot of the people, and I was very pleased to see that we managed to shave a lot of travel time for a lot of people.”

For Lanikai resident Barbara Guss, whose pau-hana commute used to be an hour and fifteen minutes — it now takes her double that — two and a half hours — and she’s leaving work earlier.

The morning commute also has not improved.

“I’m hoping that the connections are such that when I get off of one bus the bus that goes Downtown will be there ready to pick me up. Yesterday I had to wait 25 minutes. I saw the 67 taking off just as our bus was pulling up behind. The driver didn’t wait to see if there were any passengers that could ride his bus.”

Alcian Clegg has been a bus rider for 40 years and says it’s a bit too early to take TheBus to task.

“I believe it’s still too early, there’s a lot of kinks they need to work out. Buses are late and some of the drivers take wrong turns, so hopefully by Friday all the kinks will be worked out.”

She’s hopeful the hiccups will be cured soon.

Nouchi says,”We do apologize if anybody did bear any inconvenience based on what happened out there on the road.”

Kaneohe resident Shantel Webb says, “I think it’ll take me a little bit to get used to all the numbers and like the routes and stuff but so far I feel like it’s doing pretty well.”

For other parts of Oahu — more bus route changes are coming — with rail.

Nouchi says, “We will be looking within the rail corridor to figure out when we do open the first 10 miles of rail, how the bus service will be affected there, so we’re going out to the community right now, so we”ll be going to Neighborhood Boards and going to HART rail town, meetings, Town Hall meetings, to get people’s feedback on what we’re proposing, so we’re starting that process for the beginning of rail right now.”

To get informed and give feedback, the following are links for Neighborhood Board and HART meeting calendars:

http://www.honolulu.gov/nco/default.html

https://www.honolulutransit.org/