ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[jwilliamson]

GRT currently already runs a mixed fleet of New Flyer and Nova buses. And the BusPlus fleet has Chevrolet, Ford and GMC chassis with five (!) different coach bodies and three different engines. So, I don't think adding four Grande West buses to the fleet will have that big an impact.

The fuel economy is likely about 20% better -- and the buses will also be less expensive than full-sized ones. I do assume that they are capable of doing a financial analysis on this.

If you go and look up the diesel mileage of the short busses you'll find that they use about half the diesel as full sized one. However, they only carry 1/4 the passengers. So you're spending 2x the driver costs and 1x the fuel costs on half the passengers.

You're spending that on half the passenger capacity. If there isn't enough demand to fill a small bus, the extra capacity doesn't provide much value.

[bgb_ca]

One advantage I can see is that the shorter buses could operate in areas with tighter turn radius's where full size buses cannot. Maybe they are considering routes like that? Like their reason for not going with Artics in the past was due to Charles Terminal which is no longer used so they are bringing in artics now at the new garage.

[danbrotherston]

One advantage I can see is that the shorter buses could operate in areas with tighter turn radius's where full size buses cannot. Maybe they are considering routes like that? Like their reason for not going with Artics in the past was due to Charles Terminal which is no longer used so they are bringing in artics now at the new garage.

I think Charles Terminal was a challenge for articulated buses because of the platform bays (as opposed to a straight platform) not because of turning radii?

As for turn radii...I've love to have more streets which can't accommodate a city bus...but those are few and far between in this city, certainly in the sprawling car dependent suburbs where this type of bus would be most useful.

Also, if you have a well designed network, it shouldn't be an issue...and any future street that is designed narrow should also accommodate traffic.

[jeffster]

One advantage I can see is that the shorter buses could operate in areas with tighter turn radius's where full size buses cannot. Maybe they are considering routes like that? Like their reason for not going with Artics in the past was due to Charles Terminal which is no longer used so they are bringing in artics now at the new garage.

My buddy takes the short bus to his final destination, when his wife has the family car. He says the bus generally isn't filled to much, so a larger bus would be a waste for sure. Though his trip takes a long time, 2.5 hours each way. Wow. He takes his motorbike during the warm months, about 15 minutes.

[tomh009]

I am sure they are doing a cost analysis, but I'm saying the improvement is probably not much, if fuel economy is 20% better, and the buses were half as much, it's still possible we're saying less than 10% of the cost of those routes.

I often hear of smaller buses (sometimes even vans or cars) being a magic bullet for better transit, and in general, I don't think that's the case. Frequency is absolutely important, but I suspect most routes which are seeing smaller buses are not seeing a high frequency...transit agencies like ours are barely willing to prioritize frequency over cost on heavily used routes.

Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.

[danbrotherston]

I am sure they are doing a cost analysis, but I'm saying the improvement is probably not much, if fuel economy is 20% better, and the buses were half as much, it's still possible we're saying less than 10% of the cost of those routes.

I often hear of smaller buses (sometimes even vans or cars) being a magic bullet for better transit, and in general, I don't think that's the case. Frequency is absolutely important, but I suspect most routes which are seeing smaller buses are not seeing a high frequency...transit agencies like ours are barely willing to prioritize frequency over cost on heavily used routes.

Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.

Again, operational costs....and if your goal is to grow your system, then you hope never to have routes that don't go above 20 passengers.

Ultimately, I'm not opposed to the idea. I just don't think think it achieves much. I don't see that it can make a meaningful improvement in our transit...to me it's nothing more than a minor (and somewhat brittle) cost optimization.

And honestly, this isn't the first time I've heard excitement around the idea...the microtransit/smaller vehicle theme comes up pretty often.

I'm more interested in systems which are focused on maximizing frequency at high density nodes, while minimizing overhead.  I remember being super annoyed there was no ramp here.

   

I timed it once, and figured that a GRT bus could save 30 seconds - 1 minute per trip with such a ramp, and one to the north would also achieve the same efficiencies. A dozen buses an hour made this trip.

I've not done the math, but I'd bet that this type of enhancement would have a bigger impact than shorter vehicles on the transit experience.

We see the same thing with poorly designed transit depots where buses must spend forever meandering into a bus terminal, Greyhound is notorious for this, GO Transit is only slightly less terrible.

[neonjoe]

The above ramp idea would have made sense, my guess the reason that it was not implemted would have been due to the railroad.

[ijmorlan]

The above ramp idea would have made sense, my guess the reason that it was not implemted would have been due to the railroad.

There is already a level crossing there. The bus ramp wouldn’t have to involve any changes to the crossing itself, although the way it’s drawn on that map shows it curving across the tracks.

I had the same annoyance when I used to take the bus to campus. My thought was to re-instate the little tail of the original route of University (Dearborn) Ave. as a bus-only connection.

I noticed that often the bus would have to wait at the light at Seagram; due to a busload of pedestrians crossing, it would be unable to make the right turn on red. Then it would turn on the green and wait for the same busload of pedestrians at Ring Road to make its right at that point. And of course this is after sometimes taking some time to even get to the traffic light in the first place.

Cutting a full minute off a bus route is nothing to sneeze at.

[tomh009]

Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.

Again, operational costs....and if your goal is to grow your system, then you hope never to have routes that don't go above 20 passengers.

Ultimately, I'm not opposed to the idea. I just don't think think it achieves much. I don't see that it can make a meaningful improvement in our transit...to me it's nothing more than a minor (and somewhat brittle) cost optimization.

And honestly, this isn't the first time I've heard excitement around the idea...the microtransit/smaller vehicle theme comes up pretty often.

My assumption here is that the operation costs are lower. If they were higher, I don't see any reason why GRT would have ordered these.

These are not microtransit -- it's more like a 2/3-scale bus -- and I don't see any huge excitement about this. But if it's a more efficient way to use our transit budget, and allows the savings to be spent elsewhere, I don't see the reason for the grumbling.

[danbrotherston]

Again, operational costs....and if your goal is to grow your system, then you hope never to have routes that don't go above 20 passengers.

Ultimately, I'm not opposed to the idea. I just don't think think it achieves much. I don't see that it can make a meaningful improvement in our transit...to me it's nothing more than a minor (and somewhat brittle) cost optimization.

And honestly, this isn't the first time I've heard excitement around the idea...the microtransit/smaller vehicle theme comes up pretty often.

My assumption here is that the operation costs are lower. If they were higher, I don't see any reason why GRT would have ordered these.

These are not microtransit -- it's more like a 2/3-scale bus -- and I don't see any huge excitement about this. But if it's a more efficient way to use our transit budget, and allows the savings to be spent elsewhere, I don't see the reason for the grumbling.

"costs" is maybe not the right word...inflexibility.

[neonjoe]

The new mid size vehicles are 30' instead of the standard standard 40'. So not too much smaller. Perhaps its for more Bus Plus style routes without them being contracted out to Voyago. Ideally for a township route, maybe to Breslau. (If I remember correctly the 2021 planned network map has a route 77 from Ottawa/Lackner to Sportsworld via Breslau)

[danbrotherston]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but given it's part of the ION project, I figured it works here, but it's really about cycling.

I recall on Northfield that someone was suggesting to the region that the cycling/ped infra should have been diverted to the middle of the overpass in order provide segregated infrastructure and protection. Given the infamy of the cycling lanes on this section, it seems like it would have been a good idea.

The region of course dismissed such ideas because the design they built is perfectly fine, who wouldn't ride there (the answer is everyone of course).

But I did think it was a unique solution, and our engineers are highly conservative, and unwilling to try unique ideas (except this year for some reason). However, it is no longer unique. Apparently Viva used this design on their Highway 7 Rapidway over Highway 400. I've not seen it in person, and to be fair, Highway 7 is probably even more hostile to pedestrians and cyclists than Northfield, but still, it is amazing how much better our overpass could have been.

https://youtu.be/DiO0P3SDSDU?t=335

[ijmorlan]

I recall on Northfield that someone was suggesting to the region that the cycling/ped infra should have been diverted to the middle of the overpass in order provide segregated infrastructure and protection.  Given the infamy of the cycling lanes on this section, it seems like it would have been a good idea.

Thanks for pointing this out. I was talking about this idea before, although there may have been others as well. It’s good to see something like what I was thinking put into practice.

[dtkvictim]

While I can appreciate that it's definitely a better solution, that still looks like a thoroughly unpleasant environment to be in.

[danbrotherston]

While I can appreciate that it's definitely a better solution, that still looks like a thoroughly unpleasant environment to be in.

No question about that.

That area will never be walkable...it's a thoroughly anti-pedestrian situation (and I don't care how possible it is to walk places).

However, making places like that safely bikeable I do believe has a huge impact on enabling other transportation options. It's still not pleasant, but if it is at least safe, it's feasible.