V bus takes too long

I took the V bus from Edgewater - near the pond - yesterday around 4:50. It arrived as the real time service told me it would on the Chapel Hill Transit website. When it got to the park and ride lot next to the church on Market Street, the bus sat for 10 or more minutes so as to be on schedule. To my great surprise, the driver left the bus with its engine on (as best I could tell) and appeared to walk out of sight toward Weaver Street Market; she returned about 10 minutes later. We then took off and I arrived at Glen Lennox shopping center with about 40 mins elapsed. That's just too long to make this attractive. How can we improve this?