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Grand River Transit - Printable Version

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RE: Grand River Transit - Viewfromthe42 - 12-28-2015

It's an old number, but I believe that a year or two ago, daily boardings on the Central Transit Corridor (the 200 and 7) within Cambridge totaled ~4,500, but I do not know what the split was between those two routes.


RE: Grand River Transit - Pheidippides - 01-04-2016

Given that Ion is supposed to allow for "the redeployment of 19 buses and 50,000 service hours annually" where would you allocate those resources?

Go.


RE: Grand River Transit - Pheidippides - 01-04-2016

(12-23-2015, 02:58 PM)mpd618 Wrote:
(12-23-2015, 02:48 PM)MidTowner Wrote: GRT doesn't tend to publish ridership by line, does it?

No, but they should. Let your regional councillor know you think so.

You can also suggest it to Region of Waterloo's Open Data Portal:
http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regionalgovernment/OpenDataHome.asp


Via:
opendata@regionofwaterloo.ca


RE: Grand River Transit - Lens - 01-04-2016

I wouldn't mind seeing a few routes shifted to make a Weber iexpress route


[Image: TOzdNcU.jpg]


Or a Breslau Airport link

[Image: nCC08I9.jpg]


RE: Grand River Transit - TMKM94 - 01-04-2016

IMO the 7 detour should become the permanent route. Once ion is running there won't be a need for a bus to go down King ST. (Between Allan and Victoria) once the transit hub opens the bus could go down Victoria to King instead of turning at Joesph. IMO The detour is more convenient for many people (Cherry Park area, Strange St. Belmont Village MT.Hope St. Gruhn ST. area) there is the 8 but it's not as frequent and it doesn't go into Uptown. if you're going to Conestoga mall you have to transfer at University and King. 8 Fairview is more direct then 8 University but it doesn't go through Uptown either.


RE: Grand River Transit - zanate - 01-04-2016

(01-04-2016, 03:10 AM)TMKM94 Wrote: IMO the 7 detour should become the permanent route. Once ion is running there won't be a need for a bus to go down King ST. (Between Allan and Victoria) once the transit hub opens the bus could go down Victoria to King instead of turning at Joesph. IMO The detour is more convenient for many people (Cherry Park area, Strange St. Belmont Village MT.Hope St. Gruhn ST. area) there is the 8 but it's not as frequent and it doesn't go into Uptown. if you're going to Conestoga mall you have to transfer at University and King. 8 Fairview is more direct then 8 University but it doesn't go through Uptown either.

I think the underlying sentiment here (and on related posts about the 200 detour on Weber) is that there should be better transit service on streets parallel to ION. It's a good idea whose time will have to come eventually.

Can't say I like the practical implications of removing 7 from King St., though. There's a heavy reliance on local service along King, and there are a lot of destinations in between ION stops to generate ridership as well as the way that 7 provides access to King St. N (Waterloo) and King St. E (Kitchener) areas unserved by LRT. Whereas in contrast there's just not much along Park.

Maybe in time that changes? I'm keenly aware (having lived in the area) that there's a big gap in continuous "N/S" streets between Westmount and King. Perhaps a Caroline - Park - Belmont - Highland route could be viable.


RE: Grand River Transit - chutten - 01-04-2016

(01-04-2016, 12:11 AM)Pheidippides Wrote: Given that Ion is supposed to allow for "the redeployment of 19 buses and 50,000 service hours annually" where would you allocate those resources?

Go.

One bus each dedicated to personal shuttles for the top 19 posters on WRC's transit threads? Big Grin

After that flippant response I was actually going to pull up some population density information and use that to provide a thoughtful answer... but finding population density information for the region seems next-to-impossible. I've found these maps that are coloured by planning district, but they aren't dated despite their methodology otherwise being decently spelled out. I'm guessing their 'current' data is from 2006.

Statscan only publishes based on electoral district. There might be raw data down to the postal code, but that'd require some serious analysis and GIS fiddling to change into something useful.

Decent analogs using the width and location of roads exist and are tempting... but one needs only to look a King St versus Fischer-Hallman to see how that could go completely wrong.

What would be nice is a map overlay using the regional property tax roll information and assumed occupancy/employment numbers as per the above linked report. Heat map that sucker, and we could have a winner.

So, for now, let me just allocate my 19 buses and 50 kilohours (running the numbers, looks like 8 hours per bus per day) to existing routes. Which ones? Let's go with the iXpress routes since the buses are already branded as such. There are currently (Monday, midday-ish, Winter schedule) the following bus allocations (according to the finally-released real-time vehicle position data )

Code:
200 19
201 6
202 6
203 2
204 6

(So that's where the 19 are coming from.)

We are only one bus short of doubling the frequency on every iXpress route. 15min down to 7.5 on 201,202,204. 30min down to 15 on 203 (30min? Wow, that's atrocious).

So my vote is for doing that.


RE: Grand River Transit - KevinL - 01-04-2016

There will be a lot of restructuring come 2017 when Ion launches - in particular, the Country Hills - Ottawa area will see the launch of the 205 (Ottawa-Lackner to Sunrise) and two new Ion stations that are not conversions from the 200 (Block Line and Mill). Routes like the 3, 11, 22, 12, and 201 will need to be reworked into the new layout, and possibly new ones launched.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 01-05-2016

(01-04-2016, 01:48 AM)Lens Wrote: I wouldn't mind seeing a few routes shifted to make a Weber iexpress route


[Image: TOzdNcU.jpg]

I second this. A rapid service on Weber could attract significant ridership, I think.

Edit: Lens' station placements also seem logical to me.


RE: Grand River Transit - tomh009 - 01-05-2016

(01-05-2016, 09:31 PM)MidTowner Wrote:
(01-04-2016, 01:48 AM)Lens Wrote: I wouldn't mind seeing a few routes shifted to make a Weber iexpress route

I second this. A rapid service on Weber could attract significant ridership, I think.

Edit: Lens' station placements also seem logical to me.

Weber iExpress should be able to run fairly quickly, too: most of Weber (once you get south of Bridgeport) flows fairly well.


RE: Grand River Transit - dunkalunk - 01-06-2016

Not to be pessimistic, but I don't see willingness in the short term of GRT to place an iXpress route on Weber which has the potential beat the end-to-end run time of ION on opening day. While a trunk route running the length of Weber (possibly diverting to serve Hazel, WLU, and the Transit Hub) certainly makes a lot of sense and would serve a lot of trips, making this an iXpress route has the potential to draw ridership away from the ION corridor instead of to the ION corridor.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 01-06-2016

I think that's a good point, but also kind of a depressing one. It would be a bit sad to see a potentially successful route (I have no doubt a Weber route would be) overlooked because it would draw ridership from Ion (it probably would because it would be faster and more convenient for a lot of trips). I think a Weber route should have been a no-brainer for a long time now, and I've always wondered why one wasn't introduced. With the "chokepoint" between Guelph and Victoria (it was never that slow, but I understand that it would have become progressively worse) eliminated, it made even more sense.


RE: Grand River Transit - Markster - 01-06-2016

I'd say it's largely been a victim of "conventional" transit planning. Focusing on hubs, with spokes radiating out from them. The existing hubs are already connected via King, so there's little "need" to connect them again via Weber.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 01-06-2016

I bet you're right. But another north-south crosstown would be called-for, and King and Weber are not too close together in most places.


RE: Grand River Transit - zanate - 01-06-2016

(01-06-2016, 09:45 AM)MidTowner Wrote: I think that's a good point, but also kind of a depressing one. It would be a bit sad to see a potentially successful route (I have no doubt a Weber route would be) overlooked because it would draw ridership from Ion (it probably would because it would be faster and more convenient for a lot of trips). I think a Weber route should have been a no-brainer for a long time now, and I've always wondered why one wasn't introduced. With the "chokepoint" between Guelph and Victoria (it was never that slow, but I understand that it would have become progressively worse) eliminated, it made even more sense.

You could run a local service along Weber, instead of a limited stop service. That to me would make a fair amount of sense, because as a rapid service, Weber would be redundant. As a local service with ~4-500m stop spacing, it would provide the kind of destination access that various routes provide in dislocated parts (8, 4, another branch of 8, a few others). To me that would be taking the map shown above and filling in the gaps with one or two intermediate stops, maybe tweaking a few others.

Unfortunately, it lacks an easy opportunity to interface with ION unless you do make a detour off Weber. That could be justifiable at Victoria as shown, maybe also at Ottawa, and Northfield?

These tactical detours could make a big difference, because it makes switching to the Weber line from ION a one-transfer switch, and that in itself would make it worth taking ION to one of these interchange points, even if it means a certain amount of back-tracking.