ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[neonjoe]

How much time is left in the busPlus contracts? Maybe the smaller buses are mean to facilitate new busPlus type routes without breaching any contracts with the existing contractor.

[Bytor]

Well sounds like folks have proved ridership overall was up when LRT started and in the first year (for GRT as a whole?) That's good if true.

Well, that's a rather backhanded comment.

That being said, I've said it before, I'll say it again - the city needs to make it easier to get aboard the LRT from some of the more suburban, And yet relatively  dense areas, if the city, seamlessly and without needing to take 2 bloody busses to do so...your Conestoga College a s Pioneer areas, your Forest Glen areas, your Ira Needles, your Beechwoods and Laurelwoods, Stanley Parks and Bingemons...at least 8 to 12 tentacle lines would be ideal for the LRT...or short busses, a fleet of which run through  neighborhoods every 15 mins connecting to a LRT that runs every 5 to 6 mins...you'll see an uptick...give an incentive to leave the car behind [Now mind you Sars-COVID probably threw a wrench into it all]

Transfers are not something to be afraid of and usually either speed things up or increase frequency. I would encourage you to read this. https://humantransit.org/2009/04/why-tra...-city.html

But…

Conestoga College → the 10 and the 110 connect to Fairway Station

Forest Glen Plaza → the 22, 33, and 201 connect to Block Line Station, the 12 connects to Fairway Station, the 12→Fairway Station and the 205+3→ Mill Station also bracket Country Hills, Country Hills West, and Williamsburg

Ira Needles/Boardwalk → the 204+1 to Queen and Frederick Stations, the 20 to Central Station, the4 to Grand River Hospital Station, the 5 to Waterloo Public Square and Caroline Stations.

Beachwood & Laurelwood → the 13, 29, 31 to UW station

And here I'm just going to stop and tell you to look at the damn maps yourself. You didn't know the numbers and you obviously don't know the network, so might I suggest that you go try a little self-education before you want to make complaints that only make you look ignorant?

[Bytor]

Country Hills perhaps not the best example - I'm actually thinking a bit further out like in some examples I gave  even so, more frequency is key - they can be smaller busses (smaller costs) and relatively seamless ...

Smaller busses aren't smaller costs, though. The short busses, even though they only can carry 1/4 the passengers they still use close to half the fuel of the full-sized ones. And since the fixed cost of a driver is the same, the end result is the short busses have a higher operating cost per ride than the full sized ones and as such if the route ever has more than 20 riders on a segment at at time it's cheaper to use a full sized buss than two small ones.

[Bytor]

I completely agree that frequency is key, but I don't think that smaller buses help that much, it would be nice to have a specific number on operating costs, but given that driver and maintenance will be about the same, and fuel will be a large fraction of a full size bus, I cannot imagine the savings is much, and the operation cost of having to manage a fleet with more than one type of bus isn't free either, it could literally come out negative.

GRT currently already runs a mixed fleet of New Flyer and Nova buses. And the BusPlus fleet has Chevrolet, Ford and GMC chassis with five (!) different coach bodies and three different engines. So, I don't think adding four Grande West buses to the fleet will have that big an impact.

The fuel economy is likely about 20% better -- and the buses will also be less expensive than full-sized ones. I do assume that they are capable of doing a financial analysis on this.

If you go and look up the diesel mileage of the short busses you'll find that they use about half the diesel as full sized one. However, they only carry 1/4 the passengers. So you're spending 2x the driver costs and 1x the fuel costs on half the passengers.

[jwilliamson]

GRT currently already runs a mixed fleet of New Flyer and Nova buses. And the BusPlus fleet has Chevrolet, Ford and GMC chassis with five (!) different coach bodies and three different engines. So, I don't think adding four Grande West buses to the fleet will have that big an impact.

The fuel economy is likely about 20% better -- and the buses will also be less expensive than full-sized ones. I do assume that they are capable of doing a financial analysis on this.

If you go and look up the diesel mileage of the short busses you'll find that they use about half the diesel as full sized one. However, they only carry 1/4 the passengers. So you're spending 2x the driver costs and 1x the fuel costs on half the passengers.

You're spending that on half the passenger capacity. If there isn't enough demand to fill a small bus, the extra capacity doesn't provide much value.

[bgb_ca]

One advantage I can see is that the shorter buses could operate in areas with tighter turn radius's where full size buses cannot. Maybe they are considering routes like that? Like their reason for not going with Artics in the past was due to Charles Terminal which is no longer used so they are bringing in artics now at the new garage.

[danbrotherston]

One advantage I can see is that the shorter buses could operate in areas with tighter turn radius's where full size buses cannot. Maybe they are considering routes like that? Like their reason for not going with Artics in the past was due to Charles Terminal which is no longer used so they are bringing in artics now at the new garage.

I think Charles Terminal was a challenge for articulated buses because of the platform bays (as opposed to a straight platform) not because of turning radii?

As for turn radii...I've love to have more streets which can't accommodate a city bus...but those are few and far between in this city, certainly in the sprawling car dependent suburbs where this type of bus would be most useful.

Also, if you have a well designed network, it shouldn't be an issue...and any future street that is designed narrow should also accommodate traffic.

[jeffster]

One advantage I can see is that the shorter buses could operate in areas with tighter turn radius's where full size buses cannot. Maybe they are considering routes like that? Like their reason for not going with Artics in the past was due to Charles Terminal which is no longer used so they are bringing in artics now at the new garage.

My buddy takes the short bus to his final destination, when his wife has the family car. He says the bus generally isn't filled to much, so a larger bus would be a waste for sure. Though his trip takes a long time, 2.5 hours each way. Wow. He takes his motorbike during the warm months, about 15 minutes.

[tomh009]

I am sure they are doing a cost analysis, but I'm saying the improvement is probably not much, if fuel economy is 20% better, and the buses were half as much, it's still possible we're saying less than 10% of the cost of those routes.

I often hear of smaller buses (sometimes even vans or cars) being a magic bullet for better transit, and in general, I don't think that's the case. Frequency is absolutely important, but I suspect most routes which are seeing smaller buses are not seeing a high frequency...transit agencies like ours are barely willing to prioritize frequency over cost on heavily used routes.

Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.

[danbrotherston]

I am sure they are doing a cost analysis, but I'm saying the improvement is probably not much, if fuel economy is 20% better, and the buses were half as much, it's still possible we're saying less than 10% of the cost of those routes.

I often hear of smaller buses (sometimes even vans or cars) being a magic bullet for better transit, and in general, I don't think that's the case. Frequency is absolutely important, but I suspect most routes which are seeing smaller buses are not seeing a high frequency...transit agencies like ours are barely willing to prioritize frequency over cost on heavily used routes.

Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.

Again, operational costs....and if your goal is to grow your system, then you hope never to have routes that don't go above 20 passengers.

Ultimately, I'm not opposed to the idea. I just don't think think it achieves much. I don't see that it can make a meaningful improvement in our transit...to me it's nothing more than a minor (and somewhat brittle) cost optimization.

And honestly, this isn't the first time I've heard excitement around the idea...the microtransit/smaller vehicle theme comes up pretty often.

I'm more interested in systems which are focused on maximizing frequency at high density nodes, while minimizing overhead.  I remember being super annoyed there was no ramp here.

   

I timed it once, and figured that a GRT bus could save 30 seconds - 1 minute per trip with such a ramp, and one to the north would also achieve the same efficiencies. A dozen buses an hour made this trip.

I've not done the math, but I'd bet that this type of enhancement would have a bigger impact than shorter vehicles on the transit experience.

We see the same thing with poorly designed transit depots where buses must spend forever meandering into a bus terminal, Greyhound is notorious for this, GO Transit is only slightly less terrible.

[neonjoe]

The above ramp idea would have made sense, my guess the reason that it was not implemted would have been due to the railroad.

[ijmorlan]

The above ramp idea would have made sense, my guess the reason that it was not implemted would have been due to the railroad.

There is already a level crossing there. The bus ramp wouldn’t have to involve any changes to the crossing itself, although the way it’s drawn on that map shows it curving across the tracks.

I had the same annoyance when I used to take the bus to campus. My thought was to re-instate the little tail of the original route of University (Dearborn) Ave. as a bus-only connection.

I noticed that often the bus would have to wait at the light at Seagram; due to a busload of pedestrians crossing, it would be unable to make the right turn on red. Then it would turn on the green and wait for the same busload of pedestrians at Ring Road to make its right at that point. And of course this is after sometimes taking some time to even get to the traffic light in the first place.

Cutting a full minute off a bus route is nothing to sneeze at.

[tomh009]

Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.

Again, operational costs....and if your goal is to grow your system, then you hope never to have routes that don't go above 20 passengers.

Ultimately, I'm not opposed to the idea. I just don't think think it achieves much. I don't see that it can make a meaningful improvement in our transit...to me it's nothing more than a minor (and somewhat brittle) cost optimization.

And honestly, this isn't the first time I've heard excitement around the idea...the microtransit/smaller vehicle theme comes up pretty often.

My assumption here is that the operation costs are lower. If they were higher, I don't see any reason why GRT would have ordered these.

These are not microtransit -- it's more like a 2/3-scale bus -- and I don't see any huge excitement about this. But if it's a more efficient way to use our transit budget, and allows the savings to be spent elsewhere, I don't see the reason for the grumbling.

[danbrotherston]

Again, operational costs....and if your goal is to grow your system, then you hope never to have routes that don't go above 20 passengers.

Ultimately, I'm not opposed to the idea. I just don't think think it achieves much. I don't see that it can make a meaningful improvement in our transit...to me it's nothing more than a minor (and somewhat brittle) cost optimization.

And honestly, this isn't the first time I've heard excitement around the idea...the microtransit/smaller vehicle theme comes up pretty often.

My assumption here is that the operation costs are lower. If they were higher, I don't see any reason why GRT would have ordered these.

These are not microtransit -- it's more like a 2/3-scale bus -- and I don't see any huge excitement about this. But if it's a more efficient way to use our transit budget, and allows the savings to be spent elsewhere, I don't see the reason for the grumbling.

"costs" is maybe not the right word...inflexibility.

[neonjoe]

The new mid size vehicles are 30' instead of the standard standard 40'. So not too much smaller. Perhaps its for more Bus Plus style routes without them being contracted out to Voyago. Ideally for a township route, maybe to Breslau. (If I remember correctly the 2021 planned network map has a route 77 from Ottawa/Lackner to Sportsworld via Breslau)