Quote:
Originally Posted by phone
If these improvements succeed within their scope of potential, converting lanes to bus-only and building more hard infrastructure generally in a decade from now will be a much easier sell than it would be now. You just know that half the city would consider losing a lane of SPV traffic on 8th Street to be the crime of the century. Maybe it would be different if the local populous was more transit-friendly to begin with, but that's not the case. That said, transit-friendliness will almost certainly improve as a matter of demographic changes, as more people move here from large global cities where functional transit systems are expected as a part of ordinary urban life, even accounting for Saskatoon's modest size. The political element of transit improvements will be an easier sell if, on top of changing demographics, there's a decently functioning but strained transit system advocates can point to as needing improvement, rather than one that's both poorly functioning and poorly used. As much as I'd like to snap my fingers and have Saskatoon transform into a TOD-paradise with dedicated busways, light rail, pedestrian-only streets, and density exceeding five-over-ones, it is not going to happen overnight, and somewhat incremental change is the only way that we are going to get there.
|
I think bus lanes would be a hard sell on any street in Saskatoon (typical S'toon resident: "Nobody - or at least nobody I know or care about - rides the damn bus!!!"). But based on my anecdotal evidence the three-lane arterials in Saskatoon rarely, if ever, see traffic volumes that meet or exceed their capacity. The one exception may be Circle Drive North between Idylwyld and Warman Road which does experience a rush hour (more like a rush 30-minutes). IMO, the best way to show drivers that bus lanes are not a harbinger for bumper-to-bumper traffic is to build one on a popular, busy street and demonstrate that traffic speeds are hardly impacted.
The second best way to win people over to support bus priority measures is to give them a taste of the positive impacts. The reason the Skytrain in Vancouver enjoys such great support across Metro Vancouver is because tens of thousands of drivers experience its benefits when they go to a Canucks or Whitecaps or Lions game, or attend a major concert, or eat at a restaurant downtown. If Saskatoon built true BRT for the first line and gave residents in University Heights and Blairmore an option to travel to a Rush game at Saskatoon's future downtown arena in 25 minutes or less, while also allowing them to drink and dine downtown without worrying about driving home intoxicated or paying for an exorbitant Uber or taxi, you might see a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise support transit projects lining up to back future BRT lines.
I see two problems for Saskatoon's BRT-lite proposal. First, the project will still be far from cheap. The first 15-kilometre line was projected to cost $44M in 2019 and it will almost certainly cost more than that (inflation Et al.). If this expensive (although not as expensive as true BRT) transit project fails to deliver benefits such as faster travel times and more reliable bus service, you won't see opponents of the system accepting that subpar outcomes are the result of subpar improvements. Instead, you'll see them ignore that the BRT project is far from true BRT, and instead insist that spending on transit is a waste of money.
Second, the BRT system is not supposed to merely improve the transit experience for existing riders. If that was the case, any amount of dedicated lanes or signal priority measures would be great! Unfortunately, Saskatoon is banking on the BRT system to support a downtown arena, an improved convention centre, increased population density on major corridors, and whole cloth transformations of stroads with strip mall frontages into lively and walkable mixed-used destinations. I don't think the BRT-lite proposal will satisfactorily support any of those things. Cities see private developers line up to build on corridors with flashy rapid transit projects like heavy rail, light rail, or true BRT, not express bus services with some winterized bus shelters. With this half-assed "rapid" transit project, don't be surprised if Saskatoon's developers continue to allocate their precious dollars to master planned communities on the fringe of the city and not medium-density infills in the urban core.
Prev
Linear Mode
