I admit, I don't understand this fixation on expresses for travel within the city. Not only does the express have to be *fast* to be worth it, it also has to leave when you want it to. Which means it also needs to be frequent, which means you'll need a high ridership. So the demand has to be pretty strong.
So where does the ridership come from? If you take a route like 200, and cut out all the non-major destination stops, what does that do to the ridership? You not only lose all the riders who would board at those stops, but also all the riders who would disembark there. I'm not convinced that we have much ridership driven only by trip origin/destination pairs that are both express-worthy stops.
When you add on the fact that we're seeing more connection points (especially along ION) to cross-town routes that don't converge on central terminals but establish grid connections along the way, you further weaken the appeal of "more express" routes because you're losing transfer ridership by cutting those intermediate stops out. So I don't see how you can drive a nice short headway.
You also have to consider the practical travel time savings possible, especially for buses running in mixed traffic. How much time can you really save by not stopping, or cutting out route deviation? Does that time savings even outweigh the average wait time penalty from your loss of frequency because of diminished utility for riders? And even if it does, does it (along the central corridor) also outweigh the simplicity, confidence and comfort that a higher frequency, semi-rapid transit line like ION should offer?
I can see a city the size of the GTA benefiting from this kind of transit. I don't see the utility here in Waterloo region. I'm curious if I'm missing something.
So where does the ridership come from? If you take a route like 200, and cut out all the non-major destination stops, what does that do to the ridership? You not only lose all the riders who would board at those stops, but also all the riders who would disembark there. I'm not convinced that we have much ridership driven only by trip origin/destination pairs that are both express-worthy stops.
When you add on the fact that we're seeing more connection points (especially along ION) to cross-town routes that don't converge on central terminals but establish grid connections along the way, you further weaken the appeal of "more express" routes because you're losing transfer ridership by cutting those intermediate stops out. So I don't see how you can drive a nice short headway.
You also have to consider the practical travel time savings possible, especially for buses running in mixed traffic. How much time can you really save by not stopping, or cutting out route deviation? Does that time savings even outweigh the average wait time penalty from your loss of frequency because of diminished utility for riders? And even if it does, does it (along the central corridor) also outweigh the simplicity, confidence and comfort that a higher frequency, semi-rapid transit line like ION should offer?
I can see a city the size of the GTA benefiting from this kind of transit. I don't see the utility here in Waterloo region. I'm curious if I'm missing something.