Southwest Rapid Transitway Stage 2 -- Improvement or Deterioration?
About 6 years ago, I explained that the SWRT Stage 2 should not be built, because the 2 minute time saving would not be enough to justify the cost.
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The frequency to U of M is reduced, there are currently 8 161s from 8 to 9 AM, and this will be reduced to 7 BLUEs to U of M. Taking route 180 from downtown currently takes me 30 minutes. Taking the BLUE and the 690 will now take me 35 minutes due to the transfer time. Yes, the 690 will have 6 busses per hour compared to 4 on the 180, but I don't care, as I just leave when there's a 180 one coming, and time my downtown transfer. The 180 is reliable, usually a little early, and never arrives more than 5 minutes late. The whole spine-feeder idea is inferior to the current system. Imagine if the $420 million was invested in a transit endowment at 6%. This could do one of the following forever with the interest:
At this point, WT should forget the spine/feeder routes, and simply place the old express routes on the transitway, cancel most transitway stops for the BLUE line during rush hour, and increase stop speed limits from 30 to 60 to allow these buses to pass the stops and move on their way. Maybe then the 161 would save a minute or 2. Of course, this won't stop Winnipeg Transit from false advertising. Quote:
If the new spine/feeder system is going to go through, it must be proven that yes-- it will save the average traveler x number of minutes. But I'm quite sure that that x would be negative. |
When arguing for building the SWRT they touted time savings of 7-10 minutes per trip but only used the 160 and 161 as the benchmark for times and ignored the 160 and 161 Express times which would have defeated the argument for the SWRT time saving all together, a proper cost/ benefit analysis was never done and the city just steamrolled it through.
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Given that the new phase isn't even open yet it's maybe a bit early to ask whether it's an improvement or a deterioration?
The poll itself is also nonsensical... |
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Frequency and avoiding delays will be the advantage.
We'll see how it works out after the first winter season. |
This thread should be deleted, it's dumb. I've never seen a more biased poll in my life.
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Kind of hard to take this thread seriously, when the BLUE route hasn't even been put to service yet.
I'd wait until April of next year to see how this whole thing panned out, whether or not it saved a few minutes. |
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But of course instead, we got Pallister playing around as a dictator, slashing funds and locking people in their homes, getting WPS to mop up his own mess... along with Katz and other former mayors, also blasting out the basis of Winnipeg Transit from the bottom up... We could've done this right the first time DECADES ago. Instead, we get this solution straight out of a childrens placemat from Denny's. Its bullshit. |
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It was slippery Katz and the clueless city council who okayed the ridiculous non-direct route to the benefit of a select few! |
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The bend in the route is to save costs with rail relocation (In my opinion they could have put one lane on each side, so no rail relocation would be required). It was a significant savings, so all taxpayers benefitted from it.
Anyways, that's not the problem. At 70 kph, the extra 1.5 km only adds 77 seconds. The problem is all the stops. Imagine no stops. The transitway is only used by people going to and from downtown, and another route brings people from Pembina to the express routes that get off the transitway. This is the only way to actually save time, and at 80 kph would save 6 minutes over the 161 at 27 kph. I still don't think this would be worth it, but this is as fast as it gets. There would also be a huge saving in costs not having to build 8 multi-million dollar stations. You just can't have stops and expect to save time anywhere in Winnipeg, besides in and around downtown, as the traffic just isn't that bad. The cost-benefit analysis that was done assumed 19 kph as a baseline and 28 kph for BRT. If the accurate figure of 27 kph as a baseline were used, I wonder if this project would have even gone through. |
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So when will the Winnipeg Railway Museum be moved? How soon can this happen is not fast enough. And once the transit buses get onto U of M property on University Crescent...have you ridden the bus on that street? Terrible roadway, bumpidy bumpidy bump, that needs immediate attention (repaving). It's another failed street (like Stafford), due to all those buses going on University Cres. How soon will it be repaired? We could have had improved (repaved) south Main, University Cres., for god sakes as part of the 1/2 Billion for this awful half-assed project. :slob: |
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The two main reasons that were given for choosing the dogleg were (1) fewer crossings of residential streets and (2) more empty land so more opportunities for TOD. Quote:
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They should get rid of that stop immediately (except for buses that turn). The AM rush is bad too. I don't know why we have to wait an extra 2 - 5 minutes in traffic just so a few people don't have to walk for a minute to Assiniboine. They could even move that stop closer. |
the full route from graham transit mall down to the university station seems to be all of about 5 minutes shorter based on the schedules.
i mean, great that I'll get to the bombers game 5 mins faster, but half a billion seems steep in all honesty it feels like the real winners here are drivers (it takes a whole bunch of buses off regular roads). a perfect manitoba project: a giant transit investment that yields negligible improvements to transit but makes life easier for drivers. |
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https://i.imgur.com/LnOYViC.png that way, the buses turning onto northbound main wouldn't have to go all the way to the rightmost lane and then shift back to the leftmost lane to turn onto graham. |
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