Grand River Transit

[Pheidippides]

I understand the need for crew changes and breaks, making sure the entire network is as efficient as possible, and working within the limits of the allocated budget/available buses, but there is definitely still room for improvement.

Take for example the #2. Each trip it arrives at Charles Terminal and then sits for 13 minutes before it departs again. It does this 32 times a day. So it is sitting idle 416 minutes a day (7 hours!). The entire route takes 47 minutes to do (1,504 minutes a day) meaning the bus is idle for 21% of the day (still using fuel, still paying an operator). Even if you cut that idle time in half to 6.5 minutes you can get 4 more trips a day. Cut that to further to 3 minutes and you can get nearly 7 more trips a day. That's enough for AM/PM rush 20 minute service instead of 30min service. Imagine the fuel savings alone.

The iXpress regularly swaps the operator, does a safety check around the bus, and boards/alights a much heavier passenger load than the #2 in less than 3min.

That said I have also been stuck on an iXpress that is waiting to get on schedule again for upwards of 10 minutes which makes no sense. The iXpress should just go, the next one will be along soon enough.