Grand River Transit

[tomh009]

Yeah, not just the range in itself but the charging time--the bus spends too much time in a charging station at the maintenance facility, necessitating more buses and more drivers (and higher costs).

[KevinL]

Could they put charging stations elsewhere on the network? I imagine one at Fairway would be useful.

[dtkvictim]

I'm curious how road damage is being considered too, assuming they weigh a lot more. I often see road maintenance costs brought up as an argument against cars, and by extension this is argued as a point in favor of transit. But I did some back of the napkin math once using the fourth power rule, and the numbers were not anywhere close. Something like 50-100x more damage from a fully packed bus vs everyone in single occupant F150s IIRC.

I wonder if anyone has done the math to see if the increased emissions from road maintenance using heavier electric busses is even being offset. Thankfully we at least have pretty clean power generation here.

[ac3r]

Hahahaha. I recall some months ago when I said electric buses were most likely going to be a total waste of money and not work out for our region at present time, then everyone on this forum got out their pitchforks and told me how I'm wrong.

ICE is still king, guys.

[timc]

E-buses not viable for GRT fleet, Waterloo Region council told
https://archive.ph/BznjA

It appears that GRT is having some challenges with the short ranges of the current electric buses. It also sounds like they may have to start purchasing from New Flyer again as Nova is transitioning to fully electric.
Interesting tidbits that they are still looking for 60ft buses, but hey still haven't prepared any pads to allow for accessible boarding on all three doors.

We don't even have boarding on two doors yet. Who's talking about three?

[dtkvictim]

E-buses not viable for GRT fleet, Waterloo Region council told
https://archive.ph/BznjA

It appears that GRT is having some challenges with the short ranges of the current electric buses. It also sounds like they may have to start purchasing from New Flyer again as Nova is transitioning to fully electric.
Interesting tidbits that they are still looking for 60ft buses, but hey still haven't prepared any pads to allow for accessible boarding on all three doors.

We don't even have boarding on two doors yet. Who's talking about three?

I think that's pretty normal. When I lived in Ottawa the 3 door buses allowed rear boarding, and the 2 door busses didn't. It makes sense as the semi-one-way flow in the front and out the back doesn't really work as well with 3 doors.

That said, no one should ever look to what OC Transpo is doing for guidance on how to run a transit system.

[KevinL]

New business plan was announced today. Lots of big plans!

• Service every 10 minutes on weekdays, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m., and every 15 minutes all other times, on 16 routes in Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo
  
• Highway express: Introduce frequent and rapid single-seat service between Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo
  
• Overnight network: Launch 24/7 service on key routes, with 30-minute overnight frequency 
  

Plus more - details here: https://www.engagewr.ca/grt-business-plan

[panamaniac]

New business plan was announced today. Lots of big plans!

• Service every 10 minutes on weekdays, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m., and every 15 minutes all other times, on 16 routes in Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo
  
• Highway express: Introduce frequent and rapid single-seat service between Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo
  
• Overnight network: Launch 24/7 service on key routes, with 30-minute overnight frequency 
  

Plus more - details here: https://www.engagewr.ca/grt-business-plan

What is "single seat service"?

[timio]

New business plan was announced today. Lots of big plans!

• Service every 10 minutes on weekdays, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m., and every 15 minutes all other times, on 16 routes in Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo
  
• Highway express: Introduce frequent and rapid single-seat service between Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo
  
• Overnight network: Launch 24/7 service on key routes, with 30-minute overnight frequency 
  

Plus more - details here: https://www.engagewr.ca/grt-business-plan

What is "single seat service"?

No transfer required between Waterloo and Cambridge.

[nms]

More GRT details are here.

Proposed frequent transit network routes include:

301, 302, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 7, 8, 12, 16, 20, 51, 53, 61

GRT’s focus areas for new coverage include:

• Cambridge industries
  
• Southwest Kitchener
  
• North Waterloo
  

Preliminary proposed overnight network routes include:

• Routes 301 (modified bus service integrated with routes 7 and 91),
  
• 302 (modified service integrated with route 51),
  
• 201,
  
• 202,
  
• 204,
  
• 8,
  
• 12,
  
• and industrial trips
  

[nms]

Orangeville is seeing a dramatic transit use increase since switching to fare-free in 2023 and has committed to doing so until June 2027.

From the CBC article:

Orangeville isn't the first city in Canada to offer free transit for everyone, but it is the largest. Canmore, Alta., (pop. 17,036) went fare-free in 2022, after a few years testing it out in the summer. Mont-Tremblant, Que., (pop. 11,000) started its free transit program in 2019. 

Orangeville is twice the size of Canmore and, before going fare-free, about 100,000 riders a year used the three routes of its bus system.

In 2023, the year free transit began, it had 225,000 riders and it's on track for more than 260,000 this year.

The budget for Orangeville transit is almost $1.2 million a year and in 2019, the last year for which data is available, fare revenue accounted for about $150,000.

Since collecting fares cost up to $80,000 a year, Orangeville decided it made sense to cover that small portion of the transit budget another way.

While I expect that the ratio of cost to collect fares for GRT to fares collected might be greater, I wonder what it is.  How much does it cost GRT to maintain all of its fare infrastructure (including fare inspectors, collection terminals etc) in a given year.

[danbrotherston]

Orangeville is seeing a dramatic transit use increase since switching to fare-free in 2023 and has committed to doing so until June 2027.

From the CBC article:

Orangeville isn't the first city in Canada to offer free transit for everyone, but it is the largest. Canmore, Alta., (pop. 17,036) went fare-free in 2022, after a few years testing it out in the summer. Mont-Tremblant, Que., (pop. 11,000) started its free transit program in 2019. 

Orangeville is twice the size of Canmore and, before going fare-free, about 100,000 riders a year used the three routes of its bus system.

In 2023, the year free transit began, it had 225,000 riders and it's on track for more than 260,000 this year.

The budget for Orangeville transit is almost $1.2 million a year and in 2019, the last year for which data is available, fare revenue accounted for about $150,000.

Since collecting fares cost up to $80,000 a year, Orangeville decided it made sense to cover that small portion of the transit budget another way.

While I expect that the ratio of cost to collect fares for GRT to fares collected might be greater, I wonder what it is.  How much does it cost GRT to maintain all of its fare infrastructure (including fare inspectors, collection terminals etc) in a given year.

Good for Orangeville!

This is something I think a lot of people don't talk about. The cost to using transit for users goes down, but also the gross cost of providing transit. Fare collection and fare disputes are complicated expensive processes to administrate, just look how how much money we've dumped into EasyGO.

The fact that orangeville was collecting fares at all in this obviously ridiculous scenario likely stems from a systemic, almost religious belief in the fact that things should be paid for, a belief that somehow becomes an obscene, offensive suggestion as soon as it is applied to driving or parking.

I've seen it also with the small rural transit operations we've been seeing. Like, they charge a lot (10-20 dollars) for a trip, but FRR is usually <10%, and while the cost of collecting fares is probably also lower, the number of people who are deterred by the 10-20 dollar cost is significant, no casual trips for those people. So yeah, for <10% increase in the budget they could go fare free, it is such an obvious obvious good decision that only seems wrong in face of the religious fervour around poor people not getting a "free ride" literally and figuratively.

[bravado]

I think that using services should cost something - and I think it’s not good for the long term stability of a service to take out that revenue source. People should internally understand that nice things cost money and you should pay for your use, even if heavily subsidized.

The cities across the world with the best transit have fares, and I think it’s important to keep that link between usage + payment.

[danbrotherston]

I think that using services should cost something - and I think it’s not good for the long term stability of a service to take out that revenue source. People should internally understand that nice things cost money and you should pay for your use, even if heavily subsidized.

The cities across the world with the best transit have fares, and I think it’s important to keep that link between usage + payment.

Do you feel this way about libraries? schools? healthcare? roads? snow removal? parking? criminal justice? municipal trash collection? public parks?

There is a very VERY long list of free things that society provides. Why are none (well many) of these things uncontroversial or even assumed?

There's nothing inherent about them that makes them free. Libraries here in the Netherlands aren't free, you have to pay to use them, I found that surprising, but only because of my cultural context, not because libraries are inherently different from transit which means it should be free. Different countries have different fees for schools, these are cultural choices.

I don't think there's anything inherent about a service that means it should cost money. How something is funded is clearly relevant, but not to whether it is a good service, or something valued by a community.

I will say one thing though....that's an intensely neo-con/liberal statement. The idea that monetary transactions are the definition of value is....problematic. Lots of things don't have monetary value assigned to them but are extremely valuable--home labour most specifically, but also community, friendship, more ethereal things as well--our failure to recognize these things has been a fundamental source of problems in western society. Sorry to put it so bluntly.

Also, I'm not sure that usage based fees provide the best long term stability. They're prone to "death spirals" and also like, a complete collapse with COVID and such. Every transit agency is still trying to recover from this.

[dtkvictim]

Many people reject funding free services that they don't think they will ever use or benefit from. To a significant number of those people, subsidizing those services is more palatable.

In that context it's easy to see some sort of fee (even if just nominal) as a form of protection against future defunding.