Quote:
Originally Posted by mersar
Its been quite a contentious issue out in Cochrane, including since that story from 2011. Its been back and forth at council numerous times, including a few goes at figuring out exactly what form the system will take. At one point they were debating between:
1) Local dial-a-bus serving the core areas of Cochrane operating between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. with 30-minute frequencies.
2) Local dial-a-bus servicing the established areas of Cochrane operating between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. with 60-minute frequencies.
3) Regional peak and limited midday transit service operating between Cochrane and Crowfoot LRT (Calgary), with a conveniently located park-and-ride in town.
Eventually they decided on option 2, partially as CRP is working on a regional plan and they figure that thats the best way to achieve the service into Calgary. So they've submitted that as their Greentrip request, so not the double deckers anymore but rather smaller shuttle buses.
Most of the issues they've ran into were due to numbers. Originally they envisioned over 14,000 hours of service a year, and those options they decided to go with only requires about 7,000. There was some outcry about the $35/year/house in tax increase just to pay for it, and a lot of outcry about no one really wanting it but a few people on council (despite an ipsos reid poll that something like 78% of people in town want some form of transit). Then there was outcry over how much of the town would be serviced and how often (option 1 would have left out the 3 fastest growing subdivisions, option 2 includes all of them).
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I don't quite get these options. Would/will options 1 and 2 be service into the Calgary DT core or also just to Crowfoot? If they plan on a fixed frequency, is the dial-a-ride designation arising from the routes through all the subdivisions being spatially flexible?
I have to say, given the current details, the service sounds a bit like it's setting itself up for failure but I guess we can wait and see.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Riise
London is scrapping their fleet of bendy buses and even went so far as to update the original Routemaster. If double deckers were a legitimate possibility in Calgary, I'd deffo prefer them. Riding on the top deck is great way to view the local environment and helps reduce congestion as passengers travelling longer distance can place themselves out of the way on the top deck.
I find this debatable especially as Calgary only allows boarding to take place at the front of the bus and the new Routemasters are capable of providing three door operation during peak-periods. Additionally, double deckers improve the speed of transfers between buses at busy bus stands as passengers do not have to travel as great a distance. |
I remember coming across an article about a year ago mentioning more and more agencies pushing toward double deckers, London obviously being one of them.
I think for larger cities and/or cities with denser PT networks, they are perhaps a better option than for something like Calgary: Those kind of networks can easily have streetside bus stops that see 3-4 buses there at approximately the same time. In such a case, as well as in the road network itself the additional space (time-space) freed up is rather advantageous.
It of course depends somewhat on your faring system as well as you've alluded to(tap-in & out, just in, all-door self service, pre-paid, post-pay, etc.), but I wouldn't say its overly debatable as to the dwell times themselves. Even given the same number of doorways (and focusing on disembarking only), passenger flow through articulated buses is easier.
Given what I am assuming the Calgary "BRT" (ugh) demand profile to be, disembarking would be more critical than embarking anyway: Relatively high movements at either end of the route, but the p.m. peak being more spread out and the disembarking being done at the more spacious suburban terminal. In essence, in the a.m., were it to be a double decker, and given that most of the alighting occurs at a couple streetside stops downtown you'd see a slow, heavy outflow of passengers where you least want it.
**I'm assuming that the intermediate stops on the NC "BRT" are not overly demanded, but I'm not actually sure to what degree this is the case.**
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