The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[Dengler Avenue]

Does it mean that, if the 2 expressways were provincial responsibility (as are Conestoga Parkway in K-W and Hanlon Parkway in Guelph), Hamilton would have been able to dump money on HSR (Hamilton Street Rail)?

[someone123]

A revised BRT map for Halifax:


Source

Another aspect of transit planning there is ferries:

Originally Posted by q12

Overall this is all pretty modest given how the city is growing at over 2% per year. I am not sure building a small BRT route every year or two can increase transit's modal share.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by someone123

A revised BRT map for Halifax:


Source

Another aspect of transit planning there is ferries:



Overall this is all pretty modest given how the city is growing at over 2% per year. I am not sure building a small BRT route every year or two can increase transit's modal share.

At first glance this appears considerably more extensive than Ottawa's BRT ever was at its height - before part of it was converted to LRT.

[Nouvellecosse]

On one hand I'm tempted to criticise the idea that this is being branded as BRT when it's basically express bus routes with an increased number of bus lanes (although with them absent in some key places such as the bridge). However, despite the false expectations that may be raised by the branding, this is one of the major improvements that the transit service needs. The stop spacing is currently too frequent which is annoying for anyone traveling longer distances. This helps to correct that one a few major corridors. The service patterns are currently also not sufficiently clear and frequent (some corridors such as Portland st. have frequent service when you combine multiple routes but the intervals aren't evenly spaced and you have to know which routes go where. The main question I have is how local service on those corridors would be affected.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Acajack

At first glance this appears considerably more extensive than Ottawa's BRT ever was at its height - before part of it was converted to LRT.

I doubt it will be exclusive lanes - not that exclusive lanes are the be all and end all. Skips at lights and strategic use of exclusive or semi exclusive lanes can do wonders if you're not dealing with full on grid lock.



The proof will be in the doing though - maintaining all day high frequency is the hard part. Calgary has absolutely failed at this on its new BRT routes.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

On one hand I'm tempted to criticise the idea that this is being branded as BRT when it's basically express bus routes with an increased number of bus lanes (although with them absent in some key places such as the bridge). However, despite the false expectations that may be raised by the branding, this is one of the major improvements that the transit service needs. The stop spacing is currently too frequent which is annoying for anyone traveling longer distances. This helps to correct that one a few major corridors. The service patterns are currently also not sufficiently clear and frequent (some corridors such as Portland st. have frequent service when you combine multiple routes but the intervals aren't evenly spaced and you have to know which routes go where. The main question I have is how local service on those corridors would be affected.

If they made the MacDonald Bridge's middle lane a bus only lane, with lights giving buses going both ways the ability to bypass the mess, it would really improve things.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The proof will be in the doing though - maintaining all day high frequency is the hard part. Calgary has absolutely failed at this on its new BRT routes.

Would you say Calgary has "failed", or are they just providing service adequate to meet demand? I get that increased frequency will encourage ridership, but right now the buses rarely seem full, especially outside of peaks. Hopefully ridership does grow, and they continue to improve the service so it becomes more like actual BRT rather than fake BRT.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

On one hand I'm tempted to criticise the idea that this is being branded as BRT when it's basically express bus routes with an increased number of bus lanes (although with them absent in some key places such as the bridge). However, despite the false expectations that may be raised by the branding, this is one of the major improvements that the transit service needs. The stop spacing is currently too frequent which is annoying for anyone traveling longer distances. This helps to correct that one a few major corridors. The service patterns are currently also not sufficiently clear and frequent (some corridors such as Portland st. have frequent service when you combine multiple routes but the intervals aren't evenly spaced and you have to know which routes go where. The main question I have is how local service on those corridors would be affected.

This plan is very similar to what Kingston has been implementing since 2013 which was very successful; ridership there has grown by double digit percentages every year since 2014 and it has the highest growth rate in ridership per capita in the whole country.

Originally Posted by milomilo

Would you say Calgary has "failed", or are they just providing service adequate to meet demand? I get that increased frequency will encourage ridership, but right now the buses rarely seem full, especially outside of peaks. Hopefully ridership does grow, and they continue to improve the service so it becomes more like actual BRT rather than fake BRT.

One of the reasons why Kingston's plan was successful is they stuck to it even as the buses were mostly empty in the beginning. The financial plan had very conservative estimates of ridership growth so that city money would be budgeted to fund the new express service instead of revenue growth. Even though many newly introduced BRT routes ran nearly empty outside of peak, they resisted the urge to cut frequencies and stuck with it, continuing to aggressively expand the network with city money, and are now being rewarded with massive ridership growth.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Would you say Calgary has "failed", or are they just providing service adequate to meet demand? I get that increased frequency will encourage ridership, but right now the buses rarely seem full, especially outside of peaks. Hopefully ridership does grow, and they continue to improve the service so it becomes more like actual BRT rather than fake BRT.

If it was an LRT line you would never have this argument, and likely if the province had seen the proposed service levels, the lines would not have been funded.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

If it was an LRT line you would never have this argument, and likely if the province had seen the proposed service levels, the lines would not have been funded.

You wouldn't, no, but a moderately upgraded bus line is not an LRT line, and Calgary transit isn't going to have a fleet of unused vehicles if they don't run them on the MAX lines, as they would with LRT. Would significantly more ridership be expected if the frequency were doubled? If so, then that's a good reason to do so. But if not, then they might as well wait and see and only increase frequency when demand justifies it.

The 16 Ave line does appear to be well used when SAIT is in season. Do we have ridership stats?

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by CityTech

This plan is very similar to what Kingston has been implementing since 2013 which was very successful; ridership there has grown by double digit percentages every year since 2014 and it has the highest growth rate in ridership per capita in the whole country.



One of the reasons why Kingston's plan was successful is they stuck to it even as the buses were mostly empty in the beginning. The financial plan had very conservative estimates of ridership growth so that city money would be budgeted to fund the new express service instead of revenue growth. Even though many newly introduced BRT routes ran nearly empty outside of peak, they resisted the urge to cut frequencies and stuck with it, continuing to aggressively expand the network with city money, and are now being rewarded with massive ridership growth.

I appreciate that, I'm not sure though right now that Calgary has the budgetary room to provide a "loss leader" type of service on those lines. Their operating budget would appear quite squeezed, with service cut backs and a reduction in the number of new LRVs ordered etc. Short sighted of course, but I don't think CT has much choice given the money they are given.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

You wouldn't, no, but a moderately upgraded bus line is not an LRT line, and Calgary transit isn't going to have a fleet of unused vehicles if they don't run them on the MAX lines, as they would with LRT. Would significantly more ridership be expected if the frequency were doubled? If so, then that's a good reason to do so. But if not, then they might as well wait and see and only increase frequency when demand justifies it.

The 16 Ave line does appear to be well used when SAIT is in season. Do we have ridership stats?

The MAX Orange (16 Ave for others) has a scheduled trip time which is as fast as the Eglinton LRT in Toronto, 28.3 kph.

Not everything needs to be built out with dedicated infrastructure to have great real world results. It doesn't make it worse - it means it is responsive to the context to meet the desired service standard.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The MAX Orange (16 Ave for others) has a scheduled trip time which is as fast as the Eglinton LRT in Toronto, 28.3 kph.

Not everything needs to be built out with dedicated infrastructure to have great real world results. It doesn't make it worse - it means it is responsive to the context to meet the desired service standard.

That still is what MAX is though. We didn't need to buy a fleet of new buses like we would for an LRT, so there isn't really any need to run more buses than the demand dictates. Not that that would even be the case with an LRT (sunk cost fallacy), but I can see it politically being more favourable to run empty trains than empty buses.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by milomilo

That still is what MAX is though. We didn't need to buy a fleet of new buses like we would for an LRT, so there isn't really any need to run more buses than the demand dictates. Not that that would even be the case with an LRT (sunk cost fallacy), but I can see it politically being more favourable to run empty trains than empty buses.

Why bother special branding for bus service and then deliver lousy frequency? Inevitably, the outcome will be empty buses.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Acajack

At first glance this appears considerably more extensive than Ottawa's BRT ever was at its height - before part of it was converted to LRT.

As others have mentioned none of this would be on exclusive transitways like Ottawa's. Parts of it would have [occasional stretches of] dedicated lanes and signal priority, much (/most?) of it would be mixed traffic.

The scale is also a bit different. I think the stops in the Halifax proposal are a bit closer together than Ottawa's on average. If you look at the Yellow line for example, North to Quinpool, Scotia Square to Sackville St, and Drysdale to Greystone are each about a 5 minute walk. The distance between stops doesn't really scale as you get further from the core in this proposal as much as it does in many systems.

The biggest improvement here so far IMO is that they managed to make a map that's relatively easy to understand. I know that Halifax Transit has been quietly adding transit lanes and signal priority in the handful of places where it's least difficult but there are a lot of significant challenges with this proposal, if the goal is to have a service even close to what "rapid transit" is generally understood to mean (even by a very loose definition in SSP terms). Notice that the peak travel times are projected to be considerably higher than off-peak. Literally 0/4 of the routes make sense if the goal is to have reasonably consistent travel times. It's really just "frequent" transit, not rapid (and tbh it annoys me that they redefined the terms "Rapid Transit" and "BRT" until they could demonstrate that this totally counts as "rapid transit" and the terms themselves had lost all meaning)

[edit: I'm hoping that the "proposed peak travel times" take into account the fact that the extra buses themselves will contribute to congestion whenever they're stuck in traffic - on the MacDonald Bridge for example - but I'm not confident that they do]

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Why bother special branding for bus service and then deliver lousy frequency? Inevitably, the outcome will be empty buses.

They'll be empty if you run at frequency higher than demand necessitates. They can always add more once demand rises. I'd agree with running buses at higher frequency than needed at first to attract ridership, if the City did not have a squeezed budget. But they do have a squeezed budget, so running empty buses is not a luxury they have.

[MalcolmTucker]

Back to Halifax, given the travel time savings predicted at peak:




We can see where the travel time savings are likely coming from.

All routes coming and going from Bridge Station have travel time savings, so I bet they're improving access to and from the station itself for ~ 1 minute of savings.

Both routes crossing the bridge have a savings, so improvements on the bridge itself likely contributes ~ 2 minutes of savings.

The purple bridge route going to the Shopping Centre has significant time savings. The purple route through the Robie/Young intersection is likely to be prioritized (perhaps an intersection skip), most likely with skips at Bayers/Oxford, Bayers/Windsor/Young too.

The further out sections, I bet they can get those travel time savings just from moving where stops are, having less stops, perhaps extending greens, shortening reds, and having a bit of preemption at stations.

All in all looks like a good plan - for only $132 million.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The service patterns are currently also not sufficiently clear and frequent (some corridors such as Portland st. have frequent service when you combine multiple routes but the intervals aren't evenly spaced and you have to know which routes go where.

I like this map to give people a sense of perspective if they've never used Halifax's transit system before:



If I were a tourist looking at this I would just give up.

[Doady]

Halifax Transit just needs to switch branch route numbering system like TTC and MiWay. For example, Dundas Street in Mississauga is served by 1/1C/101/101A, two lines on a map instead of four. It would simplify the system without needing to completely overhaul it. Maybe a few realignments and synchronization of schedules would be enough. 80 and 81 could be 80 and 80A, for example.

[Hali87]

^ They actually are in the process of doing something like that. They've been gradually simplifying the routes (sort of) and renumbering them since that map was published (the confusing one). It's slightly less complicated now but ultimately not much (it can only be simplified so much - HRM's geography/street network is a lot more complicated and disjointed than Toronto's). The "new" numbers follow a different numbering system than the old ones (which won't really make sense until most of the old routes have been converted), so for example the old routes 19 and 20 became the 9A and 9B, old routes 80 and 81 became the new 8, old routes 2, 4, and 52 were reworked into current routes 2 and 3, old route 9 became the new 19, and old route 15 was split into new routes 25 and 415. Easy peasy!