05-03-2022, 07:45 PM
(05-03-2022, 04:16 PM)ac3r Wrote: I might be forgetting, but does anyone know if the original schedule for the LRT was supposed to be 5 minutes during the day, 7 at night? And if so, why did they change it to 10 and 15? I can't remember if it originally ran that schedule and they changed it due to lower ridership when the pandemic started
No, it was never that low. The baseline service plan from the project agreement back in 2014 only had 8 minute headways on peak, 10 minutes during the day, and 15-30 minutes in the early morning and at night in the fall, winter and spring. The summer schedule was 10 minutes 7:30am to 7pm and 15-30 minutes the other times. All for weekdays. Saturdays and Sundays all year long with 15 during the day, 30 at night.
In 2025 they were expecting to have between one and three double-linked trams from 5:30am to 10:30am and 2pm until midnight and 7 minute headways from 7:30am to 8:30am and 3:30pm to 6:30pm.
However, that was in a 2014 world where they were expecting things to be in service in fall 2017 and no pandemic.
I do not recall, off the top of my head, if there ever was more than a perfunctory statement about the 10/15 headways we actually saw once service finally started, and certainly no explanation.
Frankly, given the Region's known hostility to pedestrian and cycle traffic in engineering designs of intersections, bike lanes and crosswalks, plus an unwillingness to do the necessary and obvious things to grow bus ridership, and combine that with sever ION operation head-scratchers, like why does the LRT have to pull away from Queen Station only to stop and wait for the light to change instead of having the light change synchronised to it can just leave and go through right away, I don't see the Region setting shorter headways even If and when stage 2 is built.