Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

[quote pid="115713" dateline="1721752293"]

I don't know where the image you quoted is from, but it's at best misleading. The Kitchener line can support 15 minute service to ... I dunno...probably Georgetown. But west of that, into Kitchener, there is only a single line, and Metrolinx is adding bypass tracks, that isn't enough to support 15 minute bi-directional service. The overpass isn't the limiting factor.

This was directly from metrolinx case presented to the courts to justify the expropriation. It is not misleading it clearly states 15min services between kitchener and union. It doesn’t say 15min service on the kitchener line. 

Passing tracks can be added in the future to accommodate 15min service. The point is although its not on the table right now. Metrolix is definitely planning for it in the future. Which is a good thing.
[/quote]

I dunno what to tell you. 15 min service would require twinning the line. Metrolinx have explicitly stated they will not do this. Nor do I think it’s actually necessary.

[Bytor]

Huh, this is the first time I've ever heard an explanation as to why we didn't get Presto for GRT:

Presto could not be selected because they did not respond to a Request for Proposals, which is a Regional requirement. Having our own system allows us to ensure our fare products meet our unique customer needs. At the time, Presto was not capable of providing certain features GRT needed, such as handling a U-Pass program.

Really? That was well-known back when EasyGO was bought and installed.

[Bytor]

Imagine thinking we have "unique customer needs" compared to the far-and-away biggest transit payment system in the country. Just more nonsense language to protect some specific little Regional silo/fiefdom. It wouldn't be Canadian policy if it wasn't weird little feuding between governments without anybody considering the interest of the citizens!

There were literally fare products that GRT offered which Presto did not did not have and refused to add them to the system for GRT, including the ability to accept payment on MobilityPLUS vehicles, the ability to integrate a U-Pass program and the ability to issue machine readable paper tickets from fare vending machines.

https://web.archive.org/web/202309271711...3-1112.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/commen...e/hjbbbw7/

So, yes, we did truly have unique customer needs.

I feel that you have a bit of a blindspot with respect to supposed silos and fiefdoms.

[Bytor]

This is not a new statement, it's the one they've been using for years and year.

It is also complete and total bullshit.

"Presto could not be selected because they did not respond to a Request for Proposals, which is a Regional requirement."

The region created a requirement (Request for Proposals) that Presto would not fill....I won't say we did it to intentionally exclude Presto...but this is not a reason not to have Presto...but it is nothing more than an excuse, we could have chosen Presto, if we'd wanted, an RFP is no required by anyone but us.

Governments in most cases cannot engage a vendor without RFQ/RFP for large contracts. Doing so would be to establish a sole source/single source contract, which is generally not permitted and can only be done under certain circumstances outlined in the relevant laws & bylaws. Even if ${Company} is the best, if they didn't bid, if they didn't respond to RFQ or RFP, it doesn't matter.

This archived PDF of P&W meeting from 2013 has a lot of good in-depth explanations.

EasyGO came in at roughly $11M. How much do you think an MoU with Mextrolinx/Presto would have cost us, and based on the timeline issues mentioned in that PDF, how late do you think it would have been?

At the time, Presto was not capable of providing certain features GRT needed, such as handling a U-Pass program.

So? U-pass used to be handled by students showing their student card, the same thing could have continued.

Having our own system allows us to ensure our fare products meet our unique customer needs.

Bravado put it better than I could...we're not a special fucking flower, nothing about our transit system or it's users is in any way unique.

Oh horse puckey.

You need to tap student cards for more than just proof of payment. The taps provide valuable information to tell who transferred where, something you need when you have multiple routes stopping at a given place and you need to know which ones to prioritize synchronizing to each other and to provide the shortest delays for the most people.

Also, Presto wouldn't do paper tickets or the Mobility Plus vehicles.

Calling not getting Presto "bullshit" requires ignoring a whole lot of information about the problems with it.

[Bytor]

It just got a lot closer than it was, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener...-1.7269827.

KW is spoiled for news today! 

This is a massive win for our Region because it solves the biggest bottleneck in finally getting hourly (or better) 2WAD service. This, plus all of the passing tracks that are in construction, is shaping up to be some decent service!

Hopefully this project can be timed so that it's done around the same time as the new Central station.

This in and of itself is not a bottleneck for hourly service all the way to Kitchener. The Breslau passing track is far more important for the half-hourly peak time/direct.

It is a really good nice-to-have in that it makes the scheduling of passenger vs. freight much easier, but it's not a must-have.

[bravado]

Imagine thinking we have "unique customer needs" compared to the far-and-away biggest transit payment system in the country. Just more nonsense language to protect some specific little Regional silo/fiefdom. It wouldn't be Canadian policy if it wasn't weird little feuding between governments without anybody considering the interest of the citizens!

There were literally fare products that GRT offered which Presto did not did not have and refused to add them to the system for GRT, including the ability to accept payment on MobilityPLUS vehicles, the ability to integrate a U-Pass program and the ability to issue machine readable paper tickets from fare vending machines.

https://web.archive.org/web/202309271711...3-1112.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/commen...e/hjbbbw7/

So, yes, we did truly have unique customer needs.

I feel that you have a bit of a blindspot with respect to supposed silos and fiefdoms.

The point is that other things, like industry, have to work hard to do what's right for the customer, or else get beaten by the competition. We seem to do what's right for whatever the checklist is at city hall and anything that might be an inconvenience for cost more than budget just "isn't appropriate for us".

EasyGO is a bad experience for the customer. Nobody seems to care about that. Other cities have universities. Other cities have mobility buses. Other cities have payment terminals and random unique infrastructure scattered all over the place. You're supposed to get over those speedbumps in the interest of the user experience.

Even if Presto was a bad idea 10 years ago, it isn't now. Where's our 2024 RFP? If someone at the Region was actively looking out for the customers' interest, that work would already be in progress today.

[Bytor]

I don't know where the image you quoted is from, but it's at best misleading.

https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onlt/doc/20...W54AAAAAAE

The Kitchener line can support 15 minute service to ... I dunno...probably Georgetown. But west of that, into Kitchener, there is only a single line, and Metrolinx is adding bypass tracks, that isn't enough to support 15 minute bi-directional service. The overpass isn't the limiting factor.

Right now it doesn't. And while 15-minute headways all the way to Kitchener isn't part of Go Expansion or OnCorr or whatever it's called these days, Metrolinx has never said that they'd never scale up to that.

This fly-over, while not a must-have for either the hourly two-way, all-day service or the half-hourly peak time/direction service, it is a pretty damn nice nice-to-have that will make it easier to schedule passenger vs. freight trains through Bramalea/Georgetown corridor as well as decreasing the trip time by allowing the GO trains to run at faster speeds through it.

[Bytor]

It's just the region choosing to do things their own way to stroke their ego. It's like the recycling system. It's 2024 and the region is still using the tiny blue bin program they started back in, what, 1980 or something? Meanwhile most large urban centres across North America now use the big ass bins on wheels since it's more efficient, but Waterloo Region refuses to change because they were the ones to come up with the blue bins. Those made sense 40 years ago when the population was tiny and you mostly recycled your old tin cans and newspapers. It makes no sense to continue using today.

As of March the Region no longer collects residential recyclables through the blue-box program.

[ac3r]

As of March the Region no longer collects residential recyclables through the blue-box program.

Um...what? They may have renamed it to the "circular materials" program, but not a whole lot has changed in regards to the collection process. It's still the same inefficient, tiny curbside one-blue-box-at-a-time collection program but under a new name.

[danbrotherston]

This is not a new statement, it's the one they've been using for years and year.

It is also complete and total bullshit.

"Presto could not be selected because they did not respond to a Request for Proposals, which is a Regional requirement."

The region created a requirement (Request for Proposals) that Presto would not fill....I won't say we did it to intentionally exclude Presto...but this is not a reason not to have Presto...but it is nothing more than an excuse, we could have chosen Presto, if we'd wanted, an RFP is no required by anyone but us.

Governments in most cases cannot engage a vendor without RFQ/RFP for large contracts. Doing so would be to establish a sole source/single source contract, which is generally not permitted and can only be done under certain circumstances outlined in the relevant laws & bylaws. Even if ${Company} is the best, if they didn't bid, if they didn't respond to RFQ or RFP, it doesn't matter.

This is obviously not true on face. Presto doesn't do RFPs. Other cities in Ontario have Presto. So it is trivial to demonstrate that it is not a legal requirement that we had to use an RFP process that excluded Presto. This is why I call this bullshit. It isn't a legal requirement. It was a choice we made to use a process that excluded Presto. Whether that was the purpose of the choice, I don't claim to say, but it is none the less the effect of a choice that WE (our city, our government) made, not one that was forced on us. If we'd wanted Presto, this would not have stopped us.

This archived PDF of P&W meeting from 2013 has a lot of good in-depth explanations.

EasyGO came in at roughly $11M. How much do you think an MoU with Mextrolinx/Presto would have cost us, and based on the timeline issues mentioned in that PDF, how late do you think it would have been?

EasyGO was also very late.

As for cost, I have no idea, but I know what is most expensive...doing EasyGO, having a worse system, then sometime in the future, doing Presto anyway, because our shitty system is holding us back.

At the time, Presto was not capable of providing certain features GRT needed, such as handling a U-Pass program.

So? U-pass used to be handled by students showing their student card, the same thing could have continued.

Having our own system allows us to ensure our fare products meet our unique customer needs.

Bravado put it better than I could...we're not a special fucking flower, nothing about our transit system or it's users is in any way unique.

Oh horse puckey.

You need to tap student cards for more than just proof of payment. The taps provide valuable information to tell who transferred where, something you need when you have multiple routes stopping at a given place and you need to know which ones to prioritize synchronizing to each other and to provide the shortest delays for the most people.

But we weren't tapping student cards BEFORE Presto, and if we really wanted to get students to tap a card, we could have given them Presto cards.

Also, Presto wouldn't do paper tickets or the Mobility Plus vehicles.

Calling not getting Presto "bullshit" requires ignoring a whole lot of information about the problems with it.

"Presto wouldn't do paper tickets"...neither does EasyGO...and yet it remains physically possible to pass a piece of paper to a transit vehicle driver, nothing about presto prevents this.

The point of calling all this "bullshit" is not that there isn't some nominal reason, but that none of these requirements are insurmountable or frankly even slightly difficult to overcome.

We have a worse system because of these excuses.

[tomh009]

EasyGO is a bad experience for the customer. Nobody seems to care about that.

Yes, EasyGo isn't the best experience. But let me ask two questions:

• Did we know that the user experience would be bad when EasyGo was selected 10 years ago? Payment by phone etc did not exist back then.
  
• Is EasyGo user experience impossible to improve, and thus the entire system must be scrapped?
  

[tomh009]

On a different topic, are the EV buses in service yet? I have seen one in testing, but have not spotted on in revenue service yet.

[danbrotherston]

EasyGO is a bad experience for the customer. Nobody seems to care about that.

Yes, EasyGo isn't the best experience. But let me ask two questions:

• Did we know that the user experience would be bad when EasyGo was selected 10 years ago? Payment by phone etc did not exist back then.
  
• Is EasyGo user experience impossible to improve, and thus the entire system must be scrapped?
  

To say that EasyGO is a "bad experience for the customer" implies there is one "the customer"...this is obviously not true. The experience varies by the customer, for some it is fine, for others it is mediocre, and for others, it is just bad. In some cases, the experience can be improved (we could throw more good dollars after bad supporting every feature that Presto enables, like supporting phone NFC or credit cards) for others, the experience inherently cannot be improved because the lack of payment card integration is the bad experience.

As for did we know 10 years ago? I think 10 years ago it was foreseeable that credit card support would come to transit, whether we knew it would come to Canada, that's a fair (or fare ha) question, but it isn't like we supported EasyGO because we wanted this feature and feared Presto would hold us back.

We also knew for 100% certainty that SOME users would want to use GO and GRT and that this would be an increasing use case and that the lack of integrated fare payment is a point of friction. This was something we absolutely knew right away would create a bad user experience for some users.

I would suggest that the best thing EasyGO could do now is support payment by Visa/MC and then you solve most (but not all) of the problems we have (you get fare payment integration for most users, pay by phone, etc. but we don't get a unified interface to view and collect all your spending). But I have no idea what excuses/problems will roadblock this, I suspect they will not be small in size or number.

[danbrotherston]

On a different topic, are the EV buses in service yet? I have seen one in testing, but have not spotted on in revenue service yet.

Well, that is awesome. I know a lot of people poo poo EV buses, and there are probably higher priorities, but most of those people have not stood at bus stops getting covered in diesel soot while getting deafened as a stinky diesel bus pulls out of the stop. EVs really make a meaningful improvement to bus rider comfort. I've been on a few EV buses in NL, but none operate in my city, which still uses very comfortable hybrid buses, but even then, the difference was noticeable.

[tomh009]

I would suggest that the best thing EasyGO could do now is support payment by Visa/MC and then you solve most (but not all) of the problems we have (you get fare payment integration for most users, pay by phone, etc. but we don't get a unified interface to view and collect all your spending). But I have no idea what excuses/problems will roadblock this, I suspect they will not be small in size or number.

I wonder how hard it really would be to enable NFC payments by phone (essentially a virtual EasyGo card on your phone). Creating one for the Japanese stored-value card systems (PASMO and SUICA) or UK (Oyster) is quite simple, and it gives you a full charge/reload history on the phone. I believe that from a SUICA reader perspective the phone is just a card.

Not everyone wants or can use a smartphone, but those people would be able to continue using the existing EasyGo cards.