Bus route announced for Two Nations Crossing
Published Friday September 19th, 2008
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By HEATHER MCLAUGHLIN
[email protected]
Fredericton's transportation committee has approved the bus route for a three-month pilot project to extend service to the Two Nations Crossing-Cliffe Street area.
The route, to be known as route 9, will leave Kings Place with the rest of the city's transit buses and travel to Killarney Lake Lodge. The bus will connect with route 13 - Brookside Drive.
The service will run six days a week during the pilot project on an hourly basis from 7:10 a.m. to 6:35 p.m. There will be some half-hour service in the morning and evening peaks to provide connections to other established routes.
Transit manager Alex (Sandy) MacNeill said it's the first time the city has created a transit run that interconnects with another bus route. All other transit routes in the city travel out and back to Kings Place on a fixed route.
For the first time, passengers who want to visit northside destinations on routes 9 and 13 won't have to cross the St. John River to the Kings Place hub to get to their northside locale.
During the trial period, passenger-count data will be collected and compared to standards contained in the city's transit master plan, MacNeill said.
Passenger volumes need to reach between 35-45 per cent of cost-recovery over a 12-month period for the route to be permanently established.
That equates to between 20-30 passengers per hour aboard a bus.
Based on the uptake and destinations of passengers, the city will be able to make some estimates of growth potential on the route, he said.
"Transit needs density," MacNeill told the transportation committee Thursday.
Typically, a new bus route should target high-density residential areas with busy commercial nodes, since people are usually trying to get from home to work or home to shops, MacNeill said.
Merchants along Two Nations Crossing have welcomed the bus service experiment, but at least one has expressed disappointment that the service won't operate during the late evening hours when retail workers are looking for ways to get home from work.
"I fully understand the concerns of some of the store owners in the
Two Nations Crossing area about the route not being late at night for some of their workers," said committee chairman Bruce Grandy.
"What we were pushing for is an interim solution, knowing it's a demand area. We have to start somewhere."
Grandy said he hopes that public demand will assure the viability of the route so the city can work up to a full schedule.
"We'd love to be able to jump in (with) both feet, but right now we can't do that," Grandy said.
There may also be disappointment that the bus won't enter the SmartCentres mall property, but only run along an outer access road of the mall parking lot.
Grandy said it's a safety issue because there are so many pedestrian crossings near the entrances to the stores, as well as a time element.
If the route becomes permanent, however, the city would look at creating a mini-hub with a bus shelter so that people have a place to queue up for the bus.
Coun. Scott McConaghy said the challenge is out there to the individuals, groups and businesses that have clamoured for the new bus route.
"Use this or you might lose it," McConaghy said.
Coun. Marilyn Kerton, who works in the Social Development Department's new office on Two Nations Crossing, said she expects strong uptake from clients of the department who are walking to get to their appointments with counsellors and social workers.
The government has been operating a shuttle van between St. Mary's Retail Centre and the office building for social assistance clients since it relocated to the north side of the St. John
River.
Transit drivers have also noted that people who live outside the city limits usually bicycle or drive to Killarney Lake to pick up the route 13 bus to get into the city, although the city doesn't have any kind of formal park-and-ride program for non-residents and residents of
Fredericton.
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Woodside: Fix train station on York St. or tear it down
Published Friday September 19th, 2008
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By HEATHER MCLAUGHLIN
[email protected]
It's time to fix it up or tear it down, says Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside.
The York Street train station, which sits on property owned by J.D. Irving, is being propped up by two-by-fours as more of the building's roof structure crumbles.
Although all kinds of groups and proposals have tried to salvage the railway station as a community landmark and heritage site, none seem to have fit the bill or come up with the right economic formula to justify retaining the building.
While Woodside has applauded efforts to spare the building, he said it's becoming too much of an eyesore and he's fed up.
"The situation is intolerable and unacceptable. My next letter to the Irvings is (to tell them to) either move on this or tear it down. Get it out of there," the mayor said Thursday. "People don't even like to drive down York Street. It's pathetic."
If Irving can't salvage it, fix it up or rent it out, Woodside said, it should go in and clean up the property and take the building down.
"I'm saying enough is enough ... I want something done with it. If they're not going to fix it up or rent it out, I want something done with it. The time is now to get rid of the eyesore because it's an embarrassment."
Woodside said there are right reasons for trying to save it, but public safety is coming into play, as well as the visual blight on the capital city.
"I'm not a supporter of having that eyesore year after year after year, with the promise that something's going to be done and it's not," he said.
A spokesperson for J.D. Irving in Saint John couldn't be reached Thursday.
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