Grand River Transit

[KevinL]

Idiotic budgeting, in my opinion. We have clear growth in ridership which is hand in hand with general economic growth; surely we can pass along the benefits to one of our vital public services?

[bravado]

Idiotic budgeting, in my opinion. We have clear growth in ridership which is hand in hand with general economic growth; surely we can pass along the benefits to one of our vital public services?

Only vehicular traffic is planned with space to grow. Everything else is planned assuming that today's usage is the highest it will ever be and all that we can ever afford.

Meanwhile, a new 4-lane suburban highway that's never at capacity? Here's a cheque!

[Bytor]

It's ultimately a zero-sum game, though. I you decide to run more buses when utilization is low, you'll need to run fewer buses somewhere else.

It's not a zero-sum game. That's a bankrupt mentality, giving into the "no new taxes" of neoliberalism. Every dollar of invested in public transit results in $5 of economic growth. Lowered publution which translates into better public health outcomes. I'm sure that you know all the benefits of public transit as well as I do.

Unless you get more budget--but, even then, you'll need to decide the same thing and prioritize a uniform schedule vs more buses elsewhere (or another route).

We're not in that situation here with respect to summer schedules. When GRT pares stuff back for the summer schedule there are no routes that get more buses from the pool of those taken away from others. We've clearly got all the drivers, buses, mechanics and other staff to operate at the "full" fall & winter schedules, so why not keep them running on the full schedules all summer? Service drives ridership and we all know what would happen to summer ridership if fall & winter schedules were maintained all year long.

It's a fricking PITA to have to relearn your schedule in June and September and it encourages the perception to all non-students that public transit is not a reliable and practical method of getting to work or other trips around town.

Further, though, when it is about an increased budget, prioritization of where to "spend" new service hours is still not zero-sum. GRT is not going to get the exact same increase in ridership if they added all new service hours to the major routes like 7, 8, 12, and 16 and the iXpress routes than if they added those hours to the neighbourhood routes.

The neighbourhood routes all filter and concentrate to the major and iXpress routes so enhancing any one of them, like extending 15-minute headways, makes that route more attractive to not only those who would ride just it but also makes all the neighbourhood routes that connect to it more attractive to all of their potential riders as well. By enhancing service on that one route you've also effectively enhanced service a bit on a whole bunch of neighbourhood routes as well without needing to change them at all.

Allocating those same service hours to a neighbourhood route doesn't have an equal reverse effect, though. That neighbourhood route only connects to a couple of major routes and any attractiveness it passes on is only to some potential riders, those who would transfer, rather than all riders.

Of course, assigning all the new service hours only to the main routes year after year would eventually have the growth stall out because the main lines depend on those neighbourhood routes as feeders, but GRT is nowhere near that point with any of the iXpress routes or the major route like 7, 16,12, 8, etc…

The best long-term strategy has two parts.

First, give the larger portion of new service hours to the major routes because of the bigger network effect spread to other routes.

Second, give the smaller portion to the neighbourhood routes mostly through infill (a neighbourhood with two routes has better connectivity than a neighbourhood with one route) but don't neglect decreasing the headways as ridership grows. Neighbourhood routes can sometimes evolve into major routes, especially if the service area is growing, and in urban cores you often need multiple parallel major routes because of infrastructure restrictions.

[Bytor]

As you said, it's always a choice of how to spend a given budget. Will more buses in the summer gain more ridership than adding frequency on, say, route 7? Or would it be better to add a completely new route?

That's not the choice though, because even the 7 has typically gotten reductions in the summer.

This summer was the first time ever that GRT did not reduce service on every single route over the summer, and did so by keeping ION LRT and 7 King at the Fall/Winter schedules.

So it's not a case of "more summer busses" versus "higher 7 frequency the rest of the year", only summer vs. summer.

[KevinL]

We've clearly got all the drivers, buses, mechanics and other staff to operate at the "full" fall & winter schedules, so why not keep them running on the full schedules all summer?

I would imagine they incentivize vacation and leave for staff to take place in the summer as things stand; how easily that could be changed is a good queston.

[dtkvictim]

It's not a zero-sum game. That's a bankrupt mentality, giving into the "no new taxes" of neoliberalism. Every dollar of invested in public transit results in $5 of economic growth. Lowered publution which translates into better public health outcomes. I'm sure that you know all the benefits of public transit as well as I do.

Is tax money never ending? Can we multiply our investment by five ad infinitum? No one here is arguing against a larger budget as far as I can tell, only that for any given budget there are countless possible permutations of service and you only get to pick one.

We're not in that situation here with respect to summer schedules. When GRT pares stuff back for the summer schedule there are no routes that get more buses from the pool of those taken away from others. We've clearly got all the drivers, buses, mechanics and other staff to operate at the "full" fall & winter schedules, so why not keep them running on the full schedules all summer? Service drives ridership and we all know what would happen to summer ridership if fall & winter schedules were maintained all year long.

This argument makes no sense. When the summer schedule gets reduced service, it allows a greater portion of the given budget to be allocated during the rest of the year. You don't have to spend equally throughout the entire year, you know.

Would you argue that we should have overnight service operating at the same frequency as peak service during rush hour? We clearly have the drivers, buses, mechanics and other staff to operate the peak service schedule. I get the nature of work on these timelines aren't directly comparable, but I think you should understand the point.

You don't need to suspend reality to argue that summer service is inadequate, that service year round is underfunded, etc. Those points stand on their own.

[Bytor]

It's not a zero-sum game. That's a bankrupt mentality, giving into the "no new taxes" of neoliberalism. Every dollar of invested in public transit results in $5 of economic growth. Lowered publution which translates into better public health outcomes. I'm sure that you know all the benefits of public transit as well as I do.

Is tax money never ending? Can we multiply our investment by five ad infinitum?

You seem to have a private, nonstandard definition of what "zero sum" means.

I never said that tax money is never-ending, but that doesn't mean we're collecting a reasonable amount. Especially not after decades of neoliberal trickle-down-ism. Case in point Kitchener's Advanced Infrastructure Replacement Program. It should never have been necessary in the first place, and even then it failed to meet it's goals.

No one here is arguing against a larger budget as far as I can tell, only that for any given budget there are countless possible permutations of service and you only get to pick one.

And therein lies the problem—defeatist acceptance of the neoliberal mantras of "lower taxes" and "trickle down" and saying that the only thing one can look at is the current budget and not talk about how it should have been different.

We're not in that situation here with respect to summer schedules. When GRT pares stuff back for the summer schedule there are no routes that get more buses from the pool of those taken away from others. We've clearly got all the drivers, buses, mechanics and other staff to operate at the "full" fall & winter schedules, so why not keep them running on the full schedules all summer? Service drives ridership and we all know what would happen to summer ridership if fall & winter schedules were maintained all year long.

This argument makes no sense. When the summer schedule gets reduced service, it allows a greater portion of the given budget to be allocated during the rest of the year. You don't have to spend equally throughout the entire year, you know.

Would you argue that we should have overnight service operating at the same frequency as peak service during rush hour? We clearly have the drivers, buses, mechanics and other staff to operate the peak service schedule. I get the nature of work on these timelines aren't directly comparable, but I think you should understand the point.

You don't need to suspend reality to argue that summer service is inadequate, that service year round is underfunded, etc. Those points stand on their own.

Your analogy is made unworkable because of that lack of direct comparability.

What's the latent demand for transit service during summer daytime? Given that people still have jobs during the summer and often make more trips to festivals around town, visiting friends, and such, one can infer quite high. Not dropping the LRT to 15-minute daytime headways and the still visibly high usage per tram has shown this to be so.

What's the latent demand for all-night service? No where near as much. The number of people on a given bus or tram stays high until 9:30pm or so but then noticibly drops off after that. How much do you want to bet that this after even with the extended 15-minute headways on the busiest bus routes that

[dtkvictim]

And therein lies the problem—defeatist acceptance of the neoliberal mantras of "lower taxes" and "trickle down" and saying that the only thing one can look at is the current budget and not talk about how it should have been different.

You're arguing with your own imagination. I never said that the budget is right, or anything about the current budget. It doesn't matter if we quadrupled it overnight, what it said remains true.

Your analogy is made unworkable because of that lack of direct comparability.

What's the latent demand for transit service during summer daytime? Given that people still have jobs during the summer and often make more trips to festivals around town, visiting friends, and such, one can infer quite high. Not dropping the LRT to 15-minute daytime headways and the still visibly high usage per tram has shown this to be so.

What's the latent demand for all-night service? No where near as much. The number of people on a given bus or tram stays high until 9:30pm or so but then noticibly drops off after that. How much do you want to bet that this after even with the extended 15-minute headways on the busiest bus routes that

Yes, the value of latent demand fulfilled per extra dollar spent on service during the summer is almost certainly better than overnight. But you're making a value judgement on how to spend the budget by distributing service unevenly over some time frame, just as GRT has. Surely you acknowledge that without the budget increasing, increasing overnight service would come at the cost of daytime service and they would have to meet somewhere in the middle? Why do you deny that same tradeoff in regards to summer service?

I'm not arguing against increasing the budget, improving service, or doing away with the summer schedule. I'm just confused why there are people here arguing against the reality that you only get to pick one way to spend a budget and every choice comes with tradeoffs.

[taylortbb]

Every transit system reduces service at times when ridership is lower, I don't get why this is controversial. Overnight, rush hour, summer, midday, Christmas holidays, etc, are all just different times with different ridership patterns. Just as transit agencies cut back trips in the summer, they add trips in nominally off-peak periods (e.g. Sundays) when necessary (e.g. long weekends). All major cities do this.

The question is how it is done. When Toronto reduces subway frequency in the summer is there any outrage? No, because it goes from every 2 minutes to every 2.5 minutes. No one looks at the schedule so no one even notices the service reduction.

I think there's a fair point that our summer service levels should be higher, especially on core routes. But to pretend that travel patterns don't change is silly. If GRT proposed improving summer evening service, beyond fall evening service levels, because longer days means people are out later, that would be entirely reasonable. Especially now that we're not in a world of paper schedules, but instead everyone getting real-time schedule updates via their smartphone.

The fact that people's commute patterns depend on an exact bus at an exact time... that's the signal our service levels are too low. There should be multiple ways to get somewhere, just like there are in the road network, and service frequent enough that the exact bus isn't a relevant concept. But that higher service level should still adjust throughout the year as travel patterns change.

As for budgets, no one is arguing we can't raise taxes to spend more on transit. The point is that when we raise those additional dollars, we should allocate them in the way that has the most benefit. I'm not convinced that's better summer service. At least we have summer service, what about overnight service for shift workers who currently can't use transit at all? Or what about alleviating overcrowding? Even if we decide that we should fund them all, it takes time to ramp up service (buy buses, train operators, etc), so we still always have that question of what we should do first.

[ludo643]

Every transit system reduces service at times when ridership is lower, I don't get why this is controversial. Overnight, rush hour, summer, midday, Christmas holidays, etc, are all just different times with different ridership patterns. Just as transit agencies cut back trips in the summer, they add trips in nominally off-peak periods (e.g. Sundays) when necessary (e.g. long weekends). All major cities do this.

The question is how it is done. When Toronto reduces subway frequency in the summer is there any outrage? No, because it goes from every 2 minutes to every 2.5 minutes. No one looks at the schedule so no one even notices the service reduction.

I think there's a fair point that our summer service levels should be higher, especially on core routes. But to pretend that travel patterns don't change is silly. If GRT proposed improving summer evening service, beyond fall evening service levels, because longer days means people are out later, that would be entirely reasonable. Especially now that we're not in a world of paper schedules, but instead everyone getting real-time schedule updates via their smartphone.

The fact that people's commute patterns depend on an exact bus at an exact time... that's the signal our service levels are too low. There should be multiple ways to get somewhere, just like there are in the road network, and service frequent enough that the exact bus isn't a relevant concept. But that higher service level should still adjust throughout the year as travel patterns change.

As for budgets, no one is arguing we can't raise taxes to spend more on transit. The point is that when we raise those additional dollars, we should allocate them in the way that has the most benefit. I'm not convinced that's better summer service. At least we have summer service, what about overnight service for shift workers who currently can't use transit at all? Or what about alleviating overcrowding? Even if we decide that we should fund them all, it takes time to ramp up service (buy buses, train operators, etc), so we still always have that question of what we should do first.

Totally agree! Adjusting service levels based on ridership makes sense.

[Acitta]

Record ridership to continue on GRT in 2024

[danbrotherston]

Every transit system reduces service at times when ridership is lower, I don't get why this is controversial. Overnight, rush hour, summer, midday, Christmas holidays, etc, are all just different times with different ridership patterns. Just as transit agencies cut back trips in the summer, they add trips in nominally off-peak periods (e.g. Sundays) when necessary (e.g. long weekends). All major cities do this.

The question is how it is done. When Toronto reduces subway frequency in the summer is there any outrage? No, because it goes from every 2 minutes to every 2.5 minutes. No one looks at the schedule so no one even notices the service reduction.

I think there's a fair point that our summer service levels should be higher, especially on core routes. But to pretend that travel patterns don't change is silly. If GRT proposed improving summer evening service, beyond fall evening service levels, because longer days means people are out later, that would be entirely reasonable. Especially now that we're not in a world of paper schedules, but instead everyone getting real-time schedule updates via their smartphone.

The fact that people's commute patterns depend on an exact bus at an exact time... that's the signal our service levels are too low. There should be multiple ways to get somewhere, just like there are in the road network, and service frequent enough that the exact bus isn't a relevant concept. But that higher service level should still adjust throughout the year as travel patterns change.

As for budgets, no one is arguing we can't raise taxes to spend more on transit. The point is that when we raise those additional dollars, we should allocate them in the way that has the most benefit. I'm not convinced that's better summer service. At least we have summer service, what about overnight service for shift workers who currently can't use transit at all? Or what about alleviating overcrowding? Even if we decide that we should fund them all, it takes time to ramp up service (buy buses, train operators, etc), so we still always have that question of what we should do first.

Totally agree! Adjusting service levels based on ridership makes sense.

Statements like this are fundamentally backwards. Ridership responds to service levels. But it also responds to things like reliability. Making transit not work well on Sundays or in the summer lowers ridership.

Lets frame this around roads. Your local residential street is empty a lot of the time, on Sunday's it's probably almost never used, so are would you think it reasonable for the city to close your road on Sundays? What about over the summer when lots of people are on vacation?

[bravado]

Plowing costs a lot in winter, maybe they should only plow 1 lane instead of both on the suburban highway, and maybe just during rush hour?

The point is that only one mode of transit has limits imposed on it in the name of sensible budget choices - while everything else gets priority access to the chequebook, despite costing a lot more to maintain.

A suburban highway costs the same to the taxpayer when empty at 2AM and full at 5PM. That cost inflexibility means that if you’re in charge of the budget, of course you’re going to only pull the levers that are available to you: removing buses and trains and limiting anything new that people might be demanding. It’s just more proof for when transit users feel like second class citizens… in the budget, they clearly are.

Better transit can be seen two ways:
1: more costs to be avoided (current state)
2: more service that will generate more ridership

[taylortbb]

Lets frame this around roads. Your local residential street is empty a lot of the time, on Sunday's it's probably almost never used, so are would you think it reasonable for the city to close your road on Sundays?

Yes, that's why there's a movement called "car free Sundays" where they close portions of the road network during lower traffic times to make room for other things. It's great, but it doesn't mean we should have "car free rush hours".

[danbrotherston]

Lets frame this around roads. Your local residential street is empty a lot of the time, on Sunday's it's probably almost never used, so are would you think it reasonable for the city to close your road on Sundays?

Yes, that's why there's a movement called "car free Sundays" where they close portions of the road network during lower traffic times to make room for other things. It's great, but it doesn't mean we should have "car free rush hours".

Actually, car free rush hour would be an immense improvement in rush hour--I can personally attest. But leaving that aside, I was illustrating the double standard to which applies to people driving vs. not driving.

Why is it not just acceptable but "just makes sense" for transit riders to see a significant delay or even complete loss of mobility on Sundays, when a person driving a car would find it intolerable to experience the same.

Hell, we tried doing temporary bike lanes during COVID, and drivers were not inhibited in the slightest, but even the appearance of being limited even a tiny bit was so intolerable that the project was cancelled early in Cambridge, and has not been mentioned again. And yet, during the pandemic, transit riders faced massive cuts to service which took years to be reversed.

It is simply remarkable how blind we are to the double standard here.