Alrighty, another CTtransit route! Now, this one’s a bit tricky as there’s THREE(!!!) variants of the route. But, looking at the schedule, the 271M to Milford is the full run, with the 271S to Savin Rock and the Sunday-only 271R being short-turns. The full run also runs every 40 minutes, while trips go to Savin Rock every 20. Now, with that out of the way, let’s get into it.
So I got on the bus at Union Station instead of the New Haven Green, and from there we were off to the races. A few turns and Route 1 later, we were on Howard Avenue. Was there a prison? Not really. However, I wouldn’t describe this as the best part of New Haven. Dangerous still? Not really, though. But it was a high ridership area, and from here, we turned down Kimberly Avenue. We passed through a bunch of row homes and shops, even a school and a park. Soon enough, we went under the interstate and over the West River, into West Haven.
So, at this point, the road became Elm Street as we passed more of the same. Yep. More houses, more shops. Same stuff, different town. We made a turn, down Campbell Avenue, which seemed sorta walkable, I guess. It has parking on the sides of the street. Eventually, though, we’d make our way to the ocean and Savin Rock Park. By this point, ridership has fallen significantly, but there were still a few people on the bus.
Alright, from hereon out it was what is probably rich NIMBY hell. Following the ocean, on the side I was sitting on, it was just houses upon houses, sometimes a park, but it all looked like it’d belong to rich people. There was also a beach along the way at one of the turns, and the other side had much more for the eyes to see. Eventually, there were some shops like Sunoco and Dollar General. At one point, we even turned down a side street that probably shouldn’t have buses on it. And yes, it’s part of the route.
Finally, we made it to Milford. From here, we turned down New Haven Avenue, deviated towards Milford’s MNRR station, and went back up the way we came. From there, we went further up Gulf Street, and down Route 1 to the end of the route at the Connecticut Post Mall.
The good: Well, it serves a lot of mostly high density neighborhoods! It also directly-ish serves Milford’s Metro-North station, along with the Connecticut Post Mall. Short-turns to Savin Rock are also nice, since not everyone needs to go the full hour ride out.
The bad: What’s with Sunday routing being different? It also feels like it drags on forever through rich NIMBY hell, but to be fair not many people there are probably looking to take CTtransit.
Nearby points of interest: Milford’s downtown and the Post Mall. Also, Savin Rock and the West Haven Green.
Overall, it’s a decent enough route. It definitely serves a lot, and, at least on my run, was a few minutes early. Nevertheless, I’d say that this route would be better having the express variant over the 261.
Rating: 7/10
