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Grand River Transit
#16
(10-29-2014, 09:25 AM)ookpik Wrote: Yes CBC reported the same thing. For example Grand River and St Mary's hospitals, seniors' facilities, transit terminals and the like.

What I don't understand is why we need this noise pollution in the first place. It's common sense and simple courtesy to give up your seat to those who clearly need it more. I'd have thought that "peer pressure" in the form of stares and comments from other passengers would be enough to get self-absorbed inconsiderates off their bums.

Yeah, in a perfect world...
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#17
(10-30-2014, 11:33 PM)DHLawrence Wrote: Yeah, in a perfect world...
Are you saying that you've witnessed situations where people refused to move to give a seat to someone who clearly needed one?

I'm curious why GRT feels these sorts of announcements are needed. I don't ride on public transit here but I do regularly in Europe. Buses have seats near the front that are designated for seniors, disabled, pregnant women, etc. Everyone including children use those seats if they're unoccupied. But in every case that I've witnessed they'll get out of those seats the moment they're approached by someone who needs them. There's never been a need for the bus driver to intervene. It's just done.
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#18
GRT finally offers real time data online! http://realtimemap.grt.ca/

Now that the data is available, it's only a matter of time before we start seeing locally-developed mobile apps including the real time arrivals, which will be awesome.
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#19
GRT 2015 service change proposals are out!

http://www.grt.ca/en/aboutus/2015PCC.asp

Highlights:
New Highland/Queen/Victoria iXpress
Removal of most or all of the rt 7 branches
Possible phased beginning of Ottawa iXpress
New 200 iXpress stops at all future ION stations
Major changes in southeast Kitchener

Here's a gif to get a sense of what's different between their two proposals:
http://i.imgur.com/KYzTF3Q.gif

Keep in mind, that the final choice might be a hybrid between the two.  The western changes do not depend on the eastern ones.
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#20
My initial look at the proposed changes is positive. I'll have to look at the details more carefully before commenting more fully.

Also, in the planning and works agenda (http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/region...educed.pdf) it states that GRT ridership for 2014 is currently projected to be 21.9 million, which if holds true, I believe would be the first reduction in ridership in many, many years (wasn't 2103 +22million?).
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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#21
Good catch. I wonder why since as best as I can tell bus use continues to increase as student population grows.
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#22
(11-04-2014, 12:51 AM)BuildingScout Wrote: Good catch. I wonder why since as best as I can tell bus use continues to increase as student population grows.

With the university district housing developments, I suspect there's some reverse trends for student ridership that might counterbalance student population increases.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the figure, though.
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#23
I don’t understand Route 15. It is a very short walk from the 204 on Victoria to Wellington Street (I can’t picture right now where the best places to cross the tracks are). Likewise, if someone really wants to take the bus to a job on Shirley, the 204 station at Lackner is not far. I just can’t see this rush hour-only bus to serve a handful of businesses being successful.

It looks like there will be a lot of improved connectivity between the various iXpress services and the local lines. These look like good changes, generally. I think the consolidation of routes is a good thing, and I can see that a lot of these lines become a lot more intuitive.

Edit: I still think the 204 should go all the way down Victoria South, instead of Highland. I assume that this is just so it can pass through the Charles terminal, and that it will one day be adjusted to use Victoria the whole way, through the King/Victoria station.
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#24
(11-04-2014, 02:01 AM)mpd618 Wrote: With the university district housing developments, I suspect there's some reverse trends for student ridership that might counterbalance student population increases.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the figure, though.

I actually noticed that students tend to ride the 92 or any of the uni buses now that they are very frequent, rather than walking home as one was forced to do back in the day of buses that went by every 40 minutes off-peak and stopped in every corner, even to Northdale/Columbia.
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#25
(11-04-2014, 09:28 AM)MidTowner Wrote: I don’t understand Route 15. It is a very short walk from the 204 on Victoria to Wellington Street (I can’t picture right now where the best places to cross the tracks are). Likewise, if someone really wants to take the bus to a job on Shirley, the 204 station at Lackner is not far. I just can’t see this rush hour-only bus to serve a handful of businesses being successful.
The 204 station at Lackner is about 1.6km from the GO layover yard, for example. And nearly a kilometre from Bingemans, which is a pretty big destination. Christie Digital is another destination that would get much better service as a result.


(11-04-2014, 09:28 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Edit: I still think the 204 should go all the way down Victoria South, instead of Highland. I assume that this is just so it can pass through the Charles terminal, and that it will one day be adjusted to use Victoria the whole way, through the King/Victoria station.

I disagree - Highland is the much busier commercial corridor, and it's also 4 lanes wide for a bigger portion of it.
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#26
No one's posted it in thread, but here are the dates and locations of the public information centres:

Quote:Thursday, November 6,2014
Region of Waterloo Administrative Headquarters
Main Lobby,
150 Frederick Street, Kitchener
2:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014
University of Waterloo
Room 1301 (DC 1301)
William G. Davis Computer Research Centre
2:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, November 13, 2014
Wilfrid Laurier University Concourse
Fred Nichols Campus Centre
2:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Real Canadian Superstore
Community Room,
875 Highland Road West, Kitchener
4:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, November 20, 2014
St. Anthony Daniel Parish
Raphael & Michael Rooms,
29 Midland Drive, Kitchener
4:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Emmanuel Village
Bistro Room,
1250 Weber Street East, Kitchener
4:00 - 8:00 p.m.

The online comment submission form was supposed to go up yesterday, but there seems to have been a delay.  They don't have a new date for that.


Quote:Online Comment form on the proposed service improvements will be available soon. We apologize for the delay.
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#27
Christie I get, and it’s a shame that there is no good connection for people on foot from Victoria to Wellington near there (such as there is near River Road). If there was, it would be a very short walk to the 204 stop at Edna.

I don’t think that Bingeman’s really would be a significant trip generator for a rush hour-only service. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but I can’t see this being a good use of the resources. There are a lot of reasons why services that run only a few hours a day are no good.

Re: 204. You’re right that Highland has much more commercial activity, but I think it’s worth a lot to have a line that is easily understood. “The Victoria express bus runs the length of Victoria” is a lot simpler than “The Highland-Victoria 204 iXpress runs across Highland, then Queen, then turns at King and takes King to Victoria, and then Victoria North.” Note that the 20 takes Victoria South and then Frederick, and the 204 takes Highland and then Victoria North. Backwards.
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#28
(11-04-2014, 12:11 PM)MidTowner Wrote: I don’t think that  Bingeman’s really would be a significant trip generator for a rush hour-only service. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but I can’t see this being a good use of the resources. There are a lot of reasons why services that run only a few hours a day are no good.

I agree. I'm puzzled about the Bingeman's route. This is old style public transit that has always failed so miserably. Have we learned nothing?
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#29
(11-04-2014, 02:01 AM)mpd618 Wrote: With the university district housing developments, I suspect there's some reverse trends for student ridership that might counterbalance student population increases.
I must admit, commuting in from Kitchener this year, things have been less squishy than last year. Sept/Oct 2013 were guaranteed crush loads on the iXpress in the morning rush, with many people standing all the way from Charles St. It's rare that I've been on a bus that full (during morning rush) this season.
Another anecdote is that leaving UW, there's a very heavy turnover on the iXpress at Laurier. Something that isn't there in the morning. The crush of students is not continuing as far into Kitchener anymore.

What I imagine we're seeing here is that yes, the towers of King St are making significant changes to travel patterns. My guess is that students are still gravitating to the most reliable service, the iXpress, but inbound in the morning, they wait at the iXpress stop and take whichever bus comes first. In the evening, they all go to the iXpress stop, crush load it (because there fewer alternate services at DC) and then all pile out at Laurier to go home to the towers.

(11-04-2014, 09:28 AM)MidTowner Wrote: I don’t understand Route 15. It is a very short walk from the 204 on Victoria to Wellington Street (I can’t picture right now where the best places to cross the tracks are). Likewise, if someone really wants to take the bus to a job on Shirley, the 204 station at Lackner is not far. I just can’t see this rush hour-only bus to serve a handful of businesses being successful.
Route 15 is a coverage route. It's political. GRT has been asked to provide a bus to Bingeman's for years, and they've (rightfully) said that it's unfeasible as a successful route. What they've done is extended the rush-hour extension of the current 15, and provided more (rush hour only) coverage for the industrial along Shirley. There are very few crossings of the railway tracks, so any service on Victoria is almost entirely unrelated to Shirley.
The service will not be popular. But it will provide some basic service to a part of the city that's been isolated from transit.
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#30
(11-04-2014, 12:34 PM)Markster Wrote: Route 15 is a coverage route. It's political.  GRT has been asked to provide a bus to Bingeman's for years, and they've (rightfully) said that it's unfeasible as a successful route.  What they've done is extended the rush-hour extension of the current 15, and provided more (rush hour only) coverage for the industrial along Shirley. There are very few crossings of the railway tracks, so any service on Victoria is almost entirely unrelated to Shirley.
The service will not be popular. But it will provide some basic service to a part of the city that's been isolated from transit.

I'm curious if they'll add full day coverage for the Summer season, if even hourly, to allow Bingeman's to have a consistent transit connection.  I'm sure there'd be a number of people looking to cool off that would use it.
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