05-06-2015, 10:01 AM
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.
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.