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Originally Posted by bradnixon
When I spoke to an OC Transit planner in the spring, she told me that transit ridership there was rather poor (and that was with the 101/103 in place).
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It’s all relative I guess, but for what it’s worth, there are more workers at Carling now than last year, and the (fewer) times I use the bus now, there are maybe half as many people than before. Data on ridership would be helpful (and hopefully is being used to guide decision making).
Quote:
Originally Posted by bradnixon
Since then the LRT has opened and the route changes have been implemented. Route 66 was beefed up from what was originally shown in the proposed schedules last winter. I'm curious where things are at now. Your trip is worse because you need to transfer but others could be better.
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Credit for OC to being responsive on improving the 66 - initially it was only every 30 min during the DND/CAF rush hour, which tends to be earlier than the rest of the city, but they increased to every 15 min. That said, I question that stopping the 55 short to Bayshore (vs serving Carling Campus as the 101/103 did) and relying instead on the 66 (and 58) improved city-wide connectivity, especially at the harm to those who used it outside of areas served by Line 1.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bradnixon
I'm skeptical how those routes will work. They will probably only be able to offer a couple round trips to each location so the schedules will only work for a few. It would probably be better if they had a super high frequency shuttle between Carling Place and Moodie/Bayshore to connect with the rest of the OC network. That's the most likely game plan post-Stage 2 as well.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CityTech
Except "direct buses every half hour" will still have a last mile problem, because you can't possibly have direct buses to every address in the city; so most people are going to have to transfer to local routes anyway. And that transfer is going to be way worse because now one of the routes is only 30 minutes.
It's better to invest the services in a single high-frequency route to Moodie or Lincoln Fields for this reason.
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I agree with you both, I worry special routes will be so “boutique” as to not really make a boost in ridership/dent in parking demand (and bradnixon’s link on
The New Route Problem captures this well, I agree). A very frequent shuttle with Bayshore could work - one straightforward way to do this is extend the 55 to Carling Campus, so that combined with the 66 and the 58 you have that frequent (10 trips/hr, spaced properly) connection as well as better west-east network connectivity along the Queensway, south of the areas served by Line 1.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
We are building a transit system with a lack of alternatives, again the lack of redundancy that I brought up when trains fail, but also the lack of ability to get directly between locations in the city without a bunch of transfers. People's tolerance of transfers is limited. There is always a transfer penalty and it is very difficult to make up for that penalty even with frequency. Even a 5 minute wait, is a 5 minute loss.
caveat.doctor's illustration shows that even a direct bus every half hour is better than a frequent rapid transit line and frequent bus routes with two transfers on a less direct routing. It is almost impossible to make up the time lost by the two transfers and the more out of the way route.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
Remember the example of a few months ago where a rider starting on Woodroffe and Hunt Club had to go via downtown to reach south Bank Street. This was a startling deficiency in our transit system because it offered nothing beyond the trunk line through downtown to go a relatively short distance.
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I’m not actually saying that direct but less frequent is better overall, but I agree there are situations where alternatives to going up to the trunk line are needed: echoing your point on redundancy. Besides serving those south of Line 1, cancelling the 101/103 eliminated this redundancy for south/central/east end commuters. Reconnecting the 55 to Carling Campus and extending it further east to Orleans (i.e., restoring the 103) for example would provide redundancy to Line 1 and take pressure off Tunney’s and Blair as transfer points.
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Originally Posted by VANRIDERFAN
About a 15minute walk.
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I’m actually not that much different walk time from Tunney’s, yet the service changes drastically increased my bus commute while keeping VANRIDERFAN’s reasonable - I assume because I live south of the Queensway so connecting at Tunney’s is a detour for me. (What was your commute time before the changes?) I think this just adds to my observation that relying on Line 1 as the primary east-west link isn’t enough - a link further south (like the old 101/103 along the Queensway/Carling/174) serves a different market.
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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
Guess what? If you choose to live in a suburb, you get to put up with one more transfer. People in cities all around the world put up with it. You paid less for your home and got more space. This is the tradeoff.
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Or in this case, people paid more for their homes and got less space in more central parts of the city, "chose" (well, military orders) to work in a suburb, had workable transit service before but had it taken away.
All this to say - I get that resources are limited and there are tradeoffs, that the situation is still evolving, and that ultimately transit might not work for everyone. If the changes actually led to increased ridership rates at Carling, great - I doubt it, but if it did, then obviously the greater good wins. For the time being I’m back to driving mostly, but if things improve I’d love to get back to being a monthly passholder and “being part of the solution”.
(Long tangent to the original question about how the LRT has turned out! I just meant to give an example of the downside, that the concurrent bus changes made transit unfeasible at least for 1 former car-free commuter.)
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I guess you must be quite close to Tunney's?
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