A recent study by the Hampton Roads Transit Authority may mark the end of the line for Suffolk’s laid-back, stop-anywhere bus routes.

With Tidewater’s most unreliable routes and its most accommodating network of stops — two factors that turn out to be intimately related — public transportation in Suffolk fails to provide a reasonable alternative to driving for most people. The HRT study showed that buses are an average of 10 to 15 minutes late reaching their scheduled stops, and in some cases delay their riders as much as 30 minutes.

In a city as large and spread out as Suffolk, a viable bus service operating in some core areas can be a major benefit, at least to those who live in those areas. People who live downtown, for instance, can take advantage of public transportation to get to Obici Hospital, Wal-Mart or other destinations on the other side of Suffolk’s core. But reliability should be a hallmark of that service, not the exception.

Reliability is also the key to getting people to use public transportation to go to and from work each day. With gas prices again on the rise and traffic clogging roads all over the region, those commuter trips are one of the best arguments in favor of public transportation, whether it’s light rail in Virginia Beach and Norfolk or a network of simple bus routes in Suffolk. But people who can’t be sure when they’ll arrive at work on a bus are unlikely to use that mode of transportation to get there.

Suffolk’s HRT buses have always been extremely accommodating to their riders, driving into the parking lots of big-box stores and apartment complexes and even stopping door-to-door to pick up passengers. The practice is a quaint holdover from the days when the city operated the system itself.

Times have changed, however, and the viability of the city’s bus routes is now in jeopardy. It’s time for the city to sacrifice the convenience of a few riders for the good of the system as a whole. Suffolk should endorse the transit authority’s proposed changes and then encourage citizens to make use of the faster, more reliable bus routes. The effect of the changes — getting more cars off of Main Street — should prove to be worth the sacrifice.