Riding a Fresno bus often means a long wait and trouble finding a seat. In other words, not much has changed.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

Measure C, Fresno County's half-cent transportation sales tax, promised better bus service when voters ratified its 20-year extension in 2006.

Today, in a crippled economy, the measure yields far less money than expected. Promises have been cast aside, at least for now.

It's a vivid contrast to the boom years. Back then, a committee drawn from local governments and community groups wrote the extension plan and set aside 20 cents of each Measure C dollar to support bus systems in Fresno, Clovis and rural Fresno County.

Among the promised benefits: Buses every 15 minutes on the busiest routes, free rides for people older than 65, and new bus routes in underserved suburban areas.

So great was the promise of that new funding stream that Fresno city officials decided to start early. They got $11.1 million in federal grants to begin 15-minute service on four FAX routes that were standing-room only with 30-minute service.

"I think everybody believed we were going to see a lot of money rolling in and we were going to be able to make some big changes," said John Downs, FAX planning division manager.

The good times didn't last. When the bottom fell out of the economy in 2008, sales tax collections -- including Measure C -- tumbled as well. Now, the measure is projected to yield almost 30% less revenue than was expected when the extension plan was written in 2005.

For Fresno's FAX system, that means $164.5 million over 20 years instead of $235 million. For Clovis, it's $23.6 million instead of $33.7 million. For the rest of the county's bus systems, there's $47.9 million instead of $68.4 million.

And that -- along with parallel cuts in sales tax-driven transit funding from state government -- means much of the promise of Measure C for public transit has been unfulfilled.

Vidal Medina, who cannot drive because he is legally blind, rides the bus every day to his job as independent living specialist at a social-service organization called Resources for Independence. He says Measure C hasn't improved transit at all for him.

"Today, I still walk a mile to the bus stop. It still takes me an hour and 15 minutes to get to work. If the bus is overloaded or running late, you can add a half-hour to that," he said.

Complaints like those were a driving force behind the Measure C plan's increased emphasis on transit.

Better transit was billed as a way to reduce air pollution by getting people out of their cars, and relieve unemployment by making it easier for people to get to their jobs.

Measure C funding, it was promised, would make buses more attractive by putting more of them on the busiest routes to reduce travel times and ease overcrowding. And for a while, with an assist from the federal government, that's what it did.

Fresno's experiment with buses at 15-minute intervals began in October 2005 on Blackstone Avenue's Route 30 and expanded one month later to Route 28 on Kings Canyon Road. Route 38 on Cedar Avenue was added in January 2007 and Route 34 on First Street the following June, just before the new Measure C took effect on July 1, 2007.

All four routes previously had buses every 30 minutes. So the change doubled the number of buses on each route and cut maximum waiting times by half. For the first two years, the federal grants covered the costs. Measure C was supposed to pick up after that.