On another topic, I am getting more and more worried about the City's BRT plan. First of all, this project has to be one of the worst cases of "BRT creep" in all of North America. BRT typically has a few elements:
- Wider station spacing
- Dedicated runningways
- Signal priority
- Pre-boarding fare payment
- Increased frequencies (<15 minutes, at a minimum IMO)
Meanwhile, Saskatoon's BRT may have signal priority and the increased frequencies remain to be seen, but it is obvious to me that the buses will be repeatedly snarled in traffic due to a lack of dedicated runningways (3.5kms out of 38kms).
What is especially asinine is that a number of the corridors could quite easily have dedicated bus lanes. Let's be honest, how often does 22nd or 8th need three traffic lanes? With the removal of some curbside parking, 8th could have a dedicated bus lane plus two general travel lanes all the way from Broadway to Boychuk, and the same can be said for 22nd from Idylwyld to Diefenbaker. Attridge/Preston could also have bus lanes added. The setbacks along those roads are very deep and there is plenty of space to add a third bus-only lane. If 24-hour dedicated lanes are too big a political pill to swallow, how about making them time-sensitive? Maybe just weekdays from 7 to 7, or maybe even just weekdays in one direction during peak commute hours? Or, the city could be especially forward-thinking, and use traffic sensors to control electronic signage. When a street gets too congested due to Christmas shopping on the last Saturday before the holiday, or because a big concert just finished downtown, or the Rider won the Grey Cup and everyone is out cruising, the electronic signs could theoretically "activate" the dedicated lane to speed up the buses. And remember, dedicated bus lanes would have knock-on effects for the entirety of the city's bus network; these lanes would not only benefit BRT.
As for fare payment, Saskatoon could use BRT as an opportunity to launch a new contactless fare payment system. I would suggest Saskatoon copies Portland's fare system exactly. Riders can use credit or debit cards if they rarely use the network, or stored value if they regularly ride. Transfers between lines and modes are seamless because the system remembers your payment method. There are daily and monthly fare caps that stop charging you to ride once you pay the equivalent cost of a transit pass. And there is pre-boarding fare payment at LRT stops but without expensive fare gates.
We should call Saskatoon's "BRT" what it actually is: an express bus network. Now, that will still be an upgrade from the current system where a student travelling from Stonebridge to the UofS currently has a 38 minute bus ride with 25 interim stops (BRT will reduce that to 8 stops). But implementing express busses could be done for a whole lot less money, and I am worried that spending in excess of $125 million on "rapid transit" when the result will be anything but will make even more Saskatoon residents turn against transit.
I would love for Saskatoon to dream bigger with its transit. There are many cities around the world with small populations like Saskatoon that have subways (Lausanne, Switzerland is the classic example with a metro population of 330k and a fully-automated metro system with two lines) but even just proper BRT like there is in numerous cities in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, and China would do wonders for the city.
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