Grand River Transit

[Pheidippides]

 So your comment seems to single out students for no good reason, I'm sorry to say.

I am all for building future transit users by developing transit use habits and putting off car ownership through incentives, but in this case it seems as though a premium service (15min service on a local route) is being provided at a discount price (26% of the cost of a monthly pass) to a very distinct set of users; so yes, I was singling out students.
 
The 92 has 15min service (bi-directional) when most “local” routes like the 3, 22, etc. are limited to 30min service and unlike other local routes the 92 only runs September to April thus not serving the greater community the rest of the year. Also, the current route 92 has greater reach into the greater community because it uses mostly regional roads and connects to more useful destinations (e.g. full grocery stores). The proposed route uses a largely “private” road (ring road and its connectors) for 44% of the route and really doesn’t connect to anything that isn’t already walkable from campus (e.g. fast food). With the new routing around ring road you will see a large number of people using it as a circular to avoid walking across campus which makes it seem as though the revised route is solution in need of a problem to solve; especially when there are so many other options along or near the 92’s route that are going to the same places at high frequency. With the proposed increased frequencies of a lot of the university area’s routes I think a lot of the overcrowding issues the 92 was implemented to alleviate will be largely resolved and remove the need for the 92 since there will be >20 trips per hour across University at peak times (without counting the 92’s trips). At least the BusPlus routes funnel users from low walkability/lower serviced areas to higher walkability and serviced areas; this route does neither.
 
Obviously GRT has data that shows that the stops along the University/Westmount/Erb/Fischer-Hallman/Columbia leg of the route were not as well used and that it is still needed to alleviate the overcrowding on the remaining part of the route, but I wish they would provide that type evidence as rationale when proposing their changes each year. I would love to see the boarding/alighting data for all routes become open data, but especially this one pre and post route changes.
 
At least with the proposed shorter loop not as many resources will be needed and can be reallocated to other parts of the system, but it would better if all of the 92’s resources could be redirected elsewhere.
 
I don’t know what a proper analogy would be, but maybe imagine the outrage that would be generated if that school bus shuttling drivers from the parking lot on Dominion to Sunlife/GRH were a GRT route that parking lot users got to use for a fraction of the full GRT fare and only operated at shift change times.

I am interested to see TriTAG’s further take on the proposed changes.
 
Thanks again for the always interesting discussion and ideas!
 
Don’t forget to actually fill out the feedback form too so GRT can hear so of these great suggestions!