(06-02-2015, 10:06 AM)BuildingScout Wrote: The initial savings in time for the Ion are rather modest. I surely hope that once they work out the bugs they will have the Ion running at faster speeds.
What are your expectations?
The project agreement's baseline service plan lists 46 minute trips from Conestoga to Fairway, which is pretty conservative-- we've heard trip time estimates as low as 39 minutes, but that was before a number of additional stops were added. And while ION has traffic signal priority, project staff have said it'll be mostly for schedule adherence rather than trying to push trip time down.
Trip time has been an easy target for criticism, but you have to take it in context. ION has more stops and a more useful stop spacing in the urban core than 200. And the 200's schedule has eroded year after year. The 42 minute trip from Conestoga to Fairway is a thing of the past-- leaving before 7am now takes 45. Rush hour 200 trips were creeping up on 1 hour for this journey, now with construction detours they have actually hit that.
This schedule degradation was predicted by RT project staff back in 2009. The argument was never that there would be a huge time savings for ION over the iXpress of the day, but that the iXpress of the day would not be able to keep its speediness in the face of growing ridership and congestion.
I was a little put out that the ION project agreement trip time is 46 minutes. But my expectation is that will be a trip time that can be met all day long. If not, I'll be very disappointed.
Regardless, I think most of ION's time savings over the current 200 will come from the CM to Uptown section, which is also where ridership will be highest. That's a good benefit.