Grand River Transit

[KevinL]

Yes, it's to mimic the LRT canopy design.

I spotted three of those around Mill station this morning.

[Markster]

The flat roof ones are easier to see realtime displays from a distance. The GRT stops at ION stations are all getting realtime displays.

[yige_t]

Effective today (May 15), Route 110 will operate year-round during midday period, in addition to the existing year-round peak service.
http://www.grt.ca/en/schedules-maps/reso...15-web.pdf

[razzie13]

What's your reasoning?

[nms]

Innisfil partners with Uber to provide public transport

Adding a bus would have cost the town $270,000 annually for one route and $610,000 for two, which they thought would be too expensive.

[Innisfil land use planning manager Tim] Cane said the town council wrestled for years with the question: "How do we afford a transit model that on a good day would serve maybe 20% of the population?"

The community has set aside $100,000 for the programme's initial 6-9 month phase and another $125,000 for the indeterminate second phase.

[KevinL]

The entire GRT fleet is to be outfitted with traffic signal priority units.

All GRT buses to be outfitted with device to control traffic lights

[timc]

How effective are the priority signal units? I think it's a good idea.

[taylortbb]

How effective are the priority signal units? I think it's a good idea.

The units themselves can be quite effective, but it's a question of how they're configured. The units can be configured for absolute pre-emption (signal immediately changes) which is what ambulances/etc get, but obviously that would be too far. Currently GRT has signal priority on route 200 and it's configured to allow extending green/yellow times by a few seconds but only when the bus is behind schedule, the light hasn't recently been extended by a bus, and only at a small number of designated intersections. And the buses are scheduled such that they should never be behind schedule in normal traffic, so the units are mostly unused.

It would be more interesting if GRT started tightening the schedule enough that signal priority was required to keep the schedule, and the units were actually regularly used. Also if the amount of adjustment was allowed to exceed a couple seconds, and to be used repeatedly at the same intersection. But I've seen no sign traffic engineering is willing to let them do that, and it appears they're not even willing to let ION do that. So we'll have to wait and see what the actual effect is.

[timc]

What I meant to ask is how effective have they been in Waterloo Region.

[Markster]

It's hard to say.
Presumably, they do their job, which is to help out drastically-behind-schedule 200 iXpress buses. But considering this is used in addition to heavy schedule padding, it's hard to say one can feel the effect as a rider.

My read on this is that it's being installed on all buses mostly as an operational convenience for GRT. I've heard that it was always a little annoying for them to keep only the iXpress branded buses on route 200. This way, every bus will be able to run on a route that gets transit priority, and the dispatcher doesn't need to worry.

[Canard]

I wonder if that also suggests they'll lose the "iXpress" wraps? I think it'd be a bit of a shame, since I think the logo is really sharp!

...but, if I recall correctly, the wrap also causes a loss of about 50% of the window space. So losing it might not be that bad.

[Markster]

The iXpress 200 is being eliminated when ION service starts.
Given that the other iXpress routes are more like regular routes with slightly wider stop spacing expectations, it doesn't make too much sense for them to inherit the specially branded buses.

I am quite curious about which routes will get to use signal priority on University Ave.

[Elmira Guy]

I nominate the #8 to use this technology as it is very frequently off schedule.

[Canard]

Can you imagine how complex the software must be to coordinate all the requests for priority signaling - especially once ion starts, and we throw that into the mix?

I'm a mechanical guy, not a software guy - so I think about stuff like this (how priority is assigned) often while waiting for elevators.

[Rick O'Shay]

The route 8 is getting tore apart from what i have seen of the new maps.  It will not go up as far as University but will be turning on Union and going to Margaret.  Going south it will be two different routes as well I believe the 20 will take over the Franklin side and go over to Wilson. Court-land side will not be turning on Walton but continue down to the street Tim Horton's is on I forget the name Shelly I think.   Hopefully that will fix the route 8 problem.