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(05-04-2015, 04:57 PM)Drake Wrote: Was there ever any discussion by GRT about a true express bus? Like, one that Starts at Conestoga Mall and stops at Say King/University, Waterloo Town Square, Victoria St (future train station), Fairview Mall, Somewhere practical in Cambridge, Ainsle St?
I find our current iXpress set up to be somewhat misleading and am left wondering what the express part of it is.
Prior to the iXpress, there was the 101 Express that went from Fairview Park Mall to UW, with stops at the Charles Street Terminal and Uptown Waterloo.
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05-05-2015, 01:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-05-2015, 03:18 PM by BuildingScout.)
I think we need to evaluate the introduction of the iXpress in context. Back then there were active groups who opposed the removal of stops: mostly parents and seniors who would make enough of a raucous every time the issue came up to make it a non-starter. So the GRT people came with this idea of introducing a new service with the rational amount of stops that should have been in place to begin with. They called it 101 Express to emphasize that it wasn't competing with regular service.
Then a funny thing happened: Everyone started taking the iXpress, often bypassing local stops to take the faster bus as people came to realize the benefits of a faster bus service. This allowed GRT to finally reduce the number of stops on regular routes while slowing down the iXpress.
If we had designed the system from scratch there would be likely no iXpress while regular routes through main streets (King, Weber, Erb, Fischer Halman, Victoria, Ottawa, etc) would have iXpress-like separations between stops.
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(05-05-2015, 11:56 AM)zanate Wrote: I admit, I don't understand this fixation on expresses for travel within the city. Not only does the express have to be *fast* to be worth it, it also has to leave when you want it to. Which means it also needs to be frequent, which means you'll need a high ridership. So the demand has to be pretty strong.
So where does the ridership come from? If you take a route like 200, and cut out all the non-major destination stops, what does that do to the ridership? You not only lose all the riders who would board at those stops, but also all the riders who would disembark there. I'm not convinced that we have much ridership driven only by trip origin/destination pairs that are both express-worthy stops. Again, admittedly I am a non GRT regular. I had not considered this in my original question, but it inspires me to ask another. Could GRT not evaluate peak times EG 7AM-9:30AM and 4-6PM and run limited true express buses along designated or identified major route(s)to move people from hub to hub? Would that be something that people would be interested in?
Right now, some don't take the bus due to convenience... if you paid your $3 and rocket past all these little stops when you were really only interested in a local route at the beginning or end of journey would it increase global ridership?
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I used to be the mayor of sim city. I know what I am talking about.
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You can't pick winners and losers like that for all but the rarest of cases. The time when the fewest buses are available is during rush hour, and every bus that is as you describe is forced to come from someone else's route. Then, unless everyone shares your destination and origin (one slightly, the other exactly), the new bus works excellent for few and terrible for most.
My preference is for a focused main grid that requires no schedule, as LRT and iXpress are trying to be. Take it this way: in Toronto, even if I need to take a bus at both ends of my journey, with two transfers, the middle, subway portion is so fast and frequent that I can determine my first bus based solely on travel time. Most negative reactions to transfers come from having to wait for your bus for ages, but when you put the frequent service in the middle, you need only know that your second bus leaves at 9am, the subway takes 10 minutes to get there from your first bus' subway stop, and so you pick a bus that arrives at the first subway at 8:50, minus some safety time for the transfer.
I can vouch for the horrible nature of focused buses. I used to live at Highland and Victoria, and every morning my bus would pull into Charles just as my second bus was leaving, and I spent 30 minutes of a 45 minute bus ride sitting in Charles Terminal.
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With peak-only service, you're a slave to a transit schedule, and people understandably don't like that. The feeling that a rider has no flexibility (even if he would rarely avail himself of that flexibility) is a big disincentive to transit use. This is true even if there is other services at other times that might serve you, since it means learning the schedule of a different service which you don't actually use.
Peak-only service makes good sense in some situations, and it might be called for somewhere in the Region, but it has big drawbacks. It's also more expensive to provide, so it means less service generally.
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(04-13-2015, 09:29 PM)YKF Wrote: (04-13-2015, 11:03 AM)Markster Wrote: My reading of the map told me that yes, it does.
The new 20 will not stop at Charles St. Terminal. The routing (traveling eastbound) will see it travel along Victoria St., make a right onto Weber, and then turn left onto Frederick St.
2015 Preferred Changes Plan Map
Going back a bit, but does the new 20 replace the 19 completely then?
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Not only 19 but also 15 will be folded into the new 20.
There was an article in The Record today about the 204 being launched in September. The headline referred to a "Kitchener crosstown" line. That sounds great.
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September 7th, as announced here.
Look for the final revision of the proposed changes in the Planning and Works agenda for the May 26 meeting. The agenda is usually posted the Friday before the meeting, so we should get a look at what exactly we're getting on the 22nd.
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(05-13-2015, 09:56 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Not only 19 but also 15 will be folded into the new 20.
There was an article in The Record today about the 204 being launched in September. The headline referred to a "Kitchener crosstown" line. That sounds great.
Thanks!
I too am excited about the new 204 iXpress. I always expected it to run down Victoria though, rather than Highland first.
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What they seem to have done with the 204 and the new 20, is to connect similar neighbourhood profiles on either side of King St.
*) The 204 runs along major commercial corridors.
*) The 20 runs along residential/low-density corridors.
This is useful to GRT, because now that the east and west routes are combined, it lets them assign different frequencies to the different corridor types, without having confusing short turns at King St.
My hope is that in the future, once Victoria S and Frederick show a need for frequent service, they swap the branches, and run the buses straight along their respective streets.
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Is Highland Hills terminal going to be destroyed this fall? Looking at the proposed 2015 service changes, only one route (I believe it's the 22) is shown to go into the terminal. I suppose the fate of Forest Glen and eventually Charles Street terminals will be the same.
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It's sort of being replaced by the Boardwalk terminal isn't it?
..also "destroyed" is a bit overly dramatic, n'est-ce pas?
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Destroyed? More likely abandoned.
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Haha I'm not one with the words :p I meant not in use anymore. Bad choice of word.
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If the Highland hills terminal isn't really going to be used anymore wouldn't the mall owner (Loblaws?) want the land back? Meaning the terminal would be demolished/destroyed.
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