05-29-2023, 01:32 PM
(05-28-2023, 09:26 AM)danbrotherston Wrote:(05-28-2023, 07:05 AM)nms Wrote: Who is on the hook for running the 310R buses? Is it a one-to-one capacity replacement, or one-to-one vehicle replacements?
Adding an 7 or 8 mainline bus might seem like an easy fix, but I don't imagine that GRT happens to have a huge number of buses sitting idle waiting to fill in, nor are they able to pull buses easily from different routes to take up the slack.
This is on point...I seem to recall GRT runs pretty lean in terms of spares...they're going to be hard pressed to pull in more than a few extra buses. If they know a delay is going to last an extended period, maybe they can pull in a few more, but many of us should think about how many of us would be able to jump up and go to work on our day off if our employer called.
Which is why the need to rethink their spares methodology.
When the ION LRT goes down to takes them half and hour or more to get a bus bridge in place. What really should be happening is all but one of the supervisors on shift should immediately each jump into a pre-checked bus and drive it to a point along the bridge route. Be there in 10-15 minutes or whatever the drive time is from the Strasburg or Northfield barns. That final supervisor coordinates getting any called in drivers to one of the bridge endpoints, picking them, up at the barn and ferrying if necessary. That way you can give the called in drivers 60-90 minutes to get in and replace the supervisor driving the bus. Since supervisors are required to maintain bus driver qualifications, there's no reason this cannot be implemented as part of their job.
The bus bridge should also be cleared to operate on the LRT right of way, since no running trams will be one it anyways, and to avoid traffic congestion.