05-24-2016, 09:14 AM
(05-23-2016, 10:25 PM)tomh009 Wrote: I think the real question is how many people DID use each of these stops per day? If it was a score or less, I understand about tilting the balance by skipping the stops and speeding up the travel for the other passengers. But GRT doesn't release that level of detail data, do they?
I believe based on my own anecdotal experience that it was probably more than a score (which is around twenty, I remember from Abraham Lincoln’s famous speech) but that they might require a lot more than that to justify a stop. Certainly the numbers of riders served at Union and Weber was nothing like that at McCormick (as an example).
I still think a few stops should be added to promote future ridership. Mary Allen and Mount Hope will be served by very good transit in the form of Ion in eighteen months’ time. But there are people there developing transportation habits that are based on the dearth of transit options that exist today.
I know transit users who are annoyed at the way the detours have been handled, and have even developed a negative perception of Ion given the disruptions construction has caused to their transit service. Some of them won’t be taking transit when Ion launches because they will have had to find alternative transportation. I don’t agree with that sentiment- disruption is inevitable and I think the GRT has done pretty well with detours. But with the 200 specifically, the schedule is so padded and it’s likely to spend many minutes dwelling on a given run, and its stop spacing is much wider than other iXpress services (or elsewhere on the 200’s route) that I think an extra stop is called-for, and would do a lot to build future demand for our big investment in Ion.