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Grand River Transit
Fired up the scanner briefly and the first thing I heard was a bus driver saying none of the stops on her route were properly cleared. She had been fielding complaints about snow from customers all day and having to make special stops for people in wheelchairs. The supervisor asked her which specific stops she wanted to report and she said there were so many the entire route needed to be checked.

That and some dude who stepped off ION and started pissing on the station...
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(03-02-2023, 03:02 PM)Bob_McBob Wrote: Fired up the scanner briefly and the first thing I heard was a bus driver saying none of the stops on her route were properly cleared. She had been fielding complaints about snow from customers all day and having to make special stops for people in wheelchairs. The supervisor asked her which specific stops she wanted to report and she said there were so many the entire route needed to be checked.

That and some dude who stepped off ION and started pissing on the station...

"None of the stops were cleared"....so BAU at GRT then.

Honestly...it must be so frustrating to work for that agency knowing this is intentional.
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When you gottta go, I guess...
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(03-02-2023, 05:33 PM)ac3r Wrote: When you gottta go, I guess...

There should be more public toilets! There are in other countries (Japan, NZ, China). I was getting off the flixbus the other day and wishing there were some in downtown Kitchener...
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I'm so glad they keep increasing fare prices and investing it back in our glorious transit system. Oh wait...

PPP's for the win.

[Image: A75sIeQ.png]

[Image: n6meAh0.jpg]
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(03-02-2023, 06:02 PM)plam Wrote:
(03-02-2023, 05:33 PM)ac3r Wrote: When you gottta go, I guess...

There should be more public toilets! There are in other countries (Japan, NZ, China). I was getting off the flixbus the other day and wishing there were some in downtown Kitchener...

I don't want my tax dollars being wasted on this! There are 19 LRT station platforms you can piss on when you've gotta go. If that's not enough, go find a bus stop. Keep up dude, it's a free for all now. :^)
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The possible loss of Route 2 has reached some community transit advocates, who have put a petition up.
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(04-09-2023, 03:32 PM)KevinL Wrote: The possible loss of Route 2 has reached some community transit advocates, who have put a petition up.

I signed and donated to this petition. This is a boneheaded move - and being seconded by folks that have zero interest in Kitchener is beyond weird. Shit like that makes me feel we're better off as a single city. Back in the day, when Kitchener Transit was run in K-W only, it was a better service. GRT is junk. But cancelling a route like #2 makes me feel we should cancel other less used route. Like skip the routes to the townships.

Anyway, that's the end of my rant.

I should add, #2 was affected for years by construction on Stirling, as well as it was reduced when the Ion was approved in as a cost saving. At the very end of Stirling is a smaller apartment building, I want to say maybe 30 units. However, many of those folks were using the transit, and many were disabled. About 2/3rd's the residents moved out after the transit was taken away, and in the end, the owner never bothered to re-rent those united out, and renovated the entire apartment to something much more expensive.

Really great planning by the region in this regard. Sadly we have a bonehead at our regional chair now, a mayor that doesn't care (except for food, he cares about food), so things will only get worse.
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Two months after GRT proposed cutting Route 2, they have a feedback form up on their website. https://www.grt.ca/en/about-grt/plans-an...djustments

I'm suggesting they terminate Route 2 at Sunrise Centre in the West and Mill/Borden Station in the East order to keep the most useful portion of the route while also cutting the number of buses it takes to serve the area in half. The Eastern part of Route 2 is mirrored by Route 205 on Ottawa St and the Western part is very suburban and mostly served by Route 1 with direct connections with both Downtown and The Boardwalk with 15 minute peak and Sunday service.
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(04-12-2023, 02:55 PM)dunkalunk Wrote: Two months after GRT proposed cutting Route 2, they have a feedback form up on their website. https://www.grt.ca/en/about-grt/plans-an...djustments

I'm suggesting they terminate Route 2 at Sunrise Centre in the West and Mill/Borden Station in the East order to keep the most useful portion of the route while also cutting the number of buses it takes to serve the area in half. The Eastern part of Route 2 is mirrored by Route 205 on Ottawa St and the Western part is very suburban and mostly served by Route 1 with direct connections with both Downtown and The Boardwalk with 15 minute peak and Sunday service.

Thanks for the heads-up about this. I've submitted a comment suggesting that they end the route at the Aud on the east end (ideally with a stop right on East/Eugene George Way - how do we not have better transit to our main events building?) and at the Fischer-Hallman/Highland plaza on the west end (which would still provide a connection to those in Forest Heights who use route 1 to leave their neighbourhood). It trims up the route by maybe 30-40%, and doesn't leave any massive holes in connectivity.
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I was looking at some historic maps and it turns out Route 2 used to go downtown. Just thinking how useful that would be from a connectivity standpoint compared to needing to connect with ION or another route to get downtown. No wonder ridership didn't recover.

https://imgur.com/gallery/YDvUDaT
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(04-13-2023, 09:46 PM)dunkalunk Wrote: I was looking at some historic maps and it turns out Route 2 used to go downtown. Just thinking how useful that would be from a connectivity standpoint compared to needing to connect with ION or another route to get downtown. No wonder ridership didn't recover.

Yes, in the past all routes went to downtown Kitchener. The new model is using the ION as the spine, so the routes don't need to go to DTK to connect. Pros and cons to every model, of course.
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There's nothing notable at King and Borden, except the Tim Hortons, a self-storage, and Grand River Rocks, not the type of land uses that would be friendly to people walking. Given the choice, I'd think folks on Route 2 would rather go downtown without needing to transfer. I think the main reason it continues along Ottawa is that the bus needs somewhere for the bus to park and for drivers to take a break. If this could be moved somewhere else, (say Sunrise Centre) then the route could be more useful.
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(04-14-2023, 09:58 PM)dunkalunk Wrote: There's nothing notable at King and Borden, except the Tim Hortons, a self-storage, and Grand River Rocks, not the type of land uses that would be friendly to people walking. Given the choice, I'd think folks on Route 2 would rather go downtown without needing to transfer. I think the main reason it continues along Ottawa is that the bus needs somewhere for the bus to park and for drivers to take a break. If this could be moved somewhere else, (say Sunrise Centre) then the route could be more useful.

There's definitely not much there right now, but there's at least 3 properties with plans to develop within a block or two of Borden Station. It feels a little silly to remove a bus line that's bound to get a serious influx of users in a few years; I'd be concerned that they wouldn't replace it when the demand shows up.
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(04-17-2023, 11:54 AM)SF22 Wrote:
(04-14-2023, 09:58 PM)dunkalunk Wrote: There's nothing notable at King and Borden, except the Tim Hortons, a self-storage, and Grand River Rocks, not the type of land uses that would be friendly to people walking. Given the choice, I'd think folks on Route 2 would rather go downtown without needing to transfer. I think the main reason it continues along Ottawa is that the bus needs somewhere for the bus to park and for drivers to take a break. If this could be moved somewhere else, (say Sunrise Centre) then the route could be more useful.

There's definitely not much there right now, but there's at least 3 properties with plans to develop within a block or two of Borden Station. It feels a little silly to remove a bus line that's bound to get a serious influx of users in a few years; I'd be concerned that they wouldn't replace it when the demand shows up.

That’s the genius of it: the demand can’t show up if the route isn’t there! If they kept the route, it would get overcrowded and they’d pretty much have to increase it.
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