Grand River Transit

[zanate]

You're also talking about public transit as entitlement, and I think you've missed the point. Coverage standards like ours exist because as a society we've accepted that public transit provides a social service.

You lost me right there. First we as a society have barely accepted that public transit exists, we are far from settled about how prevalent it is.

I disagree. Perhaps we have barely accepted that public transit exists for "us", but the prevailing attitude to transit is it's something you spend a few bucks on for poor folks and those who can't drive: that's what I mean by "transit as a social service". In that role, maximum coverage for minimum dollar is the objective. Ridership numbers are a distant concern. Trip time and comfort hardly enter into it.

Now we're talking about maximizing the utility of transit and growing ridership. I'm arguing that this goal has not (and in my own opinion, should not) replaced the old one.

Second you make it sound like everyone is being served and I'm breaking some ground by withdrawing service which is disingenuous. We do not provide public transit to large parts of the region, such as the townships or the new subdivision in New Dundee road or no off-peak hour service for so many of the existing routes. All we are left to argue is where we draw the line.

That's a good point. I'm trying to say that we can't just dismissively discard low ridership routes because our transit system still has the defined goal of providing a coverage standard. Changing that goal means talking to council, not the transit agency. And in a conversation like that, we will have to talk about how much of our transit system's role should be to provide coverage even with lower ridership growth potential, or higher cost.

I think we're due to have that conversation. The way the coverage standard is structured is an impediment to restructuring the system to a higher frequency grid network. There are tools like MobilityPlus that can supplement our regular transit system, and maybe we can acknowledge that not everybody needs a symphony hall transit stop within 450m, if a stop slightly further away provides a service frequency of better than 2 concerts per month.

But while I strongly support restructuring our transit system in search of higher utility for everyone, I can't agree that we should discard transit's role as providing the level of mobility it does in less-easily served areas for people whose lives are dependent on it.