The blinker makes a heavy “plink plunk” sound when it flashes as the bus changes lanes on Route 24 on Wednesday evening.

It’s 7:32 p.m. and the roughly 35 riders, many of whom are on their way back from working in Boston, are only halfway home to New Bedford.

For them, to commute to Boston for work is to live three hours each day on the DATTCO bus. That’s 15 hours per week, 780 hours per year.

The blinker’s plunking Wednesday echoes through the otherwise silent coach, as if taunting riders, keeping track of the monotony like a clock.

Plink. Plunk. Plink. Plunk. You’re. Stuck. On. This bus.

Marcy Rebello, 29, of Acushnet, is one of those commuting Wednesday. She doesn’t pay attention to the stop-and-go traffic the bus is battling, instead passing time reviewing a Power Point presentation about population health on her computer.

Rebello, who rode the bus to work a few years ago, started again this month after landing a job at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital.

The commute means she leaves her house at around 6 a.m. and often is not home until after 8:30 p.m. It is tiresome, and extraordinarily boring, she says.

But this week she discovered that the DATTCO bus has wi-fi.

“It was like a whole new world,” she says.

That’s because the worst part about commuting is that it just feels like a waste of time, Rebello says.

You’re stuck in a tin can, traveling between different parts of your life, in limbo.

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