The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[1overcosc]

In Kingston, all conventional bus routes end at 11:30. After that, there is a special night bus which circulates around the central area until 2:30am.

Here, it's not much of an issue because most of the bar-goers are university students, who all live in the downtown area anyway and thus can just walk home. Those who do live farther away are only about a third or so of the patrons, meaning it's not as hard to get cabs for them.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Couple things in Toronto Transit today:

Apparently the second phase of the VIVA BRT on highway 7 in Markham has opened this week, though the official ceremony and full completion is still a month or two away.

Also, GO transit issued a $50 million tender for the detailed design of the Davenport grade seperation (rail to rail) on the Barrie line, a new station at St. Clair, as well as the implementation of a second track on the line to allow for AD2W service. This is the first feature we have seen from the provincial funding passed a month ago, its amazing to see it happening so quickly. This is estimated to be a roughly $600 million dollar project in total.

So how far does the Highway 7 Rapidway extend now? Last I checked it ended around Leslie Street in the east.

On the topic of the Barrie line... How much second track is this? For $600M I expect it's probably quite a lot... is this alone enough infrastructure for all-day two-way service at least to Vaughan, or is more needed? (I get that for AD2W up to Newmarket or Barrie it would probably require a lot more than $600M).

It's interesting how the Barrie line, with new stations at St. Clair, Eglinton, and Sheppard, is evolving into what looks to be a useful north-south express line through Toronto proper, plus convenient links to the urbanizing part of York Region with the planned station at the Highway 7 VIVA corridor. A preview of whats to come with RER?

I'm a bit surprised that it's the Barrie line that's moving this fast. I would have thought that aside Kitchener & the Lakeshores, it would be the Stouffville line that would be the first to get AD2W infrastructure as Markham, unlike Richmond Hill & Vaughan, is relatively far away from the YUS subway.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Actually a major advantage of having many nodes is reverse commuting allows you to get twice the use out of the same transit line (people are going in both directions all day, so you don't have full trains in one direction and empty trains in the other).

Same goes for highways.

That's a good point and god knows I would rather be on the reverse commuting side of the equation.

It is still inherently more expensive to serve many employment centres than a larger one downtown. Cities with large employment generators in the core always tend to have higher ridership levels.

One of the reasons of course is that the further away from the core an employment centre is, the better the chance it is near a freeway and has free/cheap parking. Conversely the more scattered and suburban the The mobility impaired and seniors also make up a good chunk of transit users and cities with a high concentration of health, social, employment centres the less likely there is rapid transit and bus service is uniformly lower in less populated areas. The more suburban the employment, the easier it is for car drivers and more time consuming for transit users.........exactly what you don't want.

Another issue that negatively effects nearly all Western cities is the lack of post-secondary education downtown. Students make up a good chunk of transit riders and none of the Western cities has a university downtown. Some are now getting satellite campuses and Edmonton has Grant McQuine {sp?} and Winnipeg has always had U.W but even still the numbers are limited especially compared to Toronto and Montreal.

Also established downtown universities are nearly always in high density areas in walkable neighbourhoods which are conducive to transit use.

The mobility impaired and seniors also make up a good chunk of transit users and cities with large hospitals and social institutions downtown see higher ridership from those patrons.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by vid

The people in charge of Thunder Bay Transit said that they want to extend transit service on Friday and Saturday nights, but they don't have the funding or personnel to do it. City council doesn't have too many concerns about it, other than the fact that transit system costs have been going up regularly while provincial subsidies stay roughly the same.

The ball is basically in the province's court, and as far as they're concerned, public transit outside of the GTA and Ottawa isn't that big of a concern.

That's the problem with sharing a province with Toronto. It's great to have such a large city so easily accessible (just a 1 hour, $250 plane flight away) but at the same time, the needs of that region are so different from ours, that our needs get totally ignored. We have to fit our square peg into the round hole the province is providing and it's getting to a point where we just can't make it work anymore. Kathleen Wynne is significantly more responsive than Dalton McGuinty ever was, but 18 months in we're getting little more than talk right now. We don't want to have to wait until 2018 to see progress here, when places like Saskatoon are moving far ahead of us on the exact same issues.

I rather think that Toronto is a net benefit for funding in the rest of the province. Various large corporations and whatnot causing a massive boom to the province's budget. The north is one of the poorer regions in the province and has massive amounts of infrastructure for it's population. Not saying it's perfect, but I'm still pretty sure that many parts of Ontario would have much less budget.

[ssiguy]

Something happened on my post in the 3rd paragraph!!

Skip from "The mobility" up to and including the word "social".

[ScreamingViking]

Toronto will always be the focus of regional transit. But all-day 2-way GO represents a huge opportunity for cities along the spokes of the network to take advantage of the improved service to attract more firms that may draw commuters into their business areas, and not just serve residents who travel to Toronto.

Hamilton is especially well positioned to do this, given the location of its stations relative to its major employment zones. I've yet to see the city talk about this, but I hope they're working on a strategy.

It would be good for GO too - more passenger revenue in the counter-flow directions will offset the operating cost.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

So how far does the Highway 7 Rapidway extend now? Last I checked it ended around Leslie Street in the east.

On the topic of the Barrie line... How much second track is this? For $600M I expect it's probably quite a lot... is this alone enough infrastructure for all-day two-way service at least to Vaughan, or is more needed? (I get that for AD2W up to Newmarket or Barrie it would probably require a lot more than $600M).

It's interesting how the Barrie line, with new stations at St. Clair, Eglinton, and Sheppard, is evolving into what looks to be a useful north-south express line through Toronto proper, plus convenient links to the urbanizing part of York Region with the planned station at the Highway 7 VIVA corridor. A preview of whats to come with RER?

I'm a bit surprised that it's the Barrie line that's moving this fast. I would have thought that aside Kitchener & the Lakeshores, it would be the Stouffville line that would be the first to get AD2W infrastructure as Markham, unlike Richmond Hill & Vaughan, is relatively far away from the YUS subway.

The VIVA busway now goes from Bayview to just short of Warden, a distance of around 5.5km. It doesn't travel under the 404 however. The portion Between Bayview and the 404 opened last year, and the portion between Warden (Technically Town Centre Boulevard) and the 404 opened last week.

This is probably just the first of several tenders we will see over the next few months for design work, GO needs to move fast to build out the network if it wants to meet the 10 year goal.

The procurement is pretty vague one exactly what is involved in the project beyond them adding an additional track and station at St. Clair (which likely also means the Davenport grade separation as they were originally both included in a single EA), but given that it is a $50 million dollar contract just for the design and engineering portion of the project..

$600 million is the original amount quoted for the construction of AD2W GO on the Barrie line.

Hamiltons AD2W GO station will be James North, not the existing station. James North isn't really in walking distance of downtown Hamilton.

AD2W will be great news for the likes of Barrie, Kitchener, and Guelph however. Oshawa and Hamilton will end up with close-but-not-quite stations a km or so from downtown.

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Hamiltons AD2W GO station will be James North, not the existing station. James North isn't really in walking distance of downtown Hamilton.

AD2W will be great news for the likes of Barrie, Kitchener, and Guelph however. Oshawa and Hamilton will end up with close-but-not-quite stations a km or so from downtown.

Sure it is - 1 or 1.5 km really isn't that far. The new station will need to be supplemented with much better local transit as well. The area around a future Centennial Parkway station has redevelopment potential too.

All the development slated for the north end of the city is planned to be mixed use, and there is so much unused industrial land not far to the east. If the city isn't thinking about how to capitalize on this and better integrate their land use planning, they're ignoring opportunity.

Oshawa's downtown is quite a bit farther from its GO station so I agree with you there.

I'd also like to see more GO bus service into downtown from surrounding cities. Brantford wants it, places south and east could use it as well.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Beedok

I rather think that Toronto is a net benefit for funding in the rest of the province. Various large corporations and whatnot causing a massive boom to the province's budget. The north is one of the poorer regions in the province and has massive amounts of infrastructure for it's population. Not saying it's perfect, but I'm still pretty sure that many parts of Ontario would have much less budget.

I'm thinking policy wise, not financially. The province can throw all the money it wants our way, but if it's doing the wrong thing it won't help. We don't have Toronto problems, we have Winnipeg problems.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by vid

I'm thinking policy wise, not financially. The province can throw all the money it wants our way, but if it's doing the wrong thing it won't help. We don't have Toronto problems, we have Winnipeg problems.

Thunder Bay is built on a lake tied to the St. Lawrence Seaway. It's clearly part of Ontario. You need good policy and enough money. Being part of Manitoba would see Thunder Bay roughly as ignored as it is now, being just as split off from the province and would be out of cash as it's own province. The lands just can't support a high enough population density, so it's best off for the north to be attached to the biggest population in the country.

[Innsertnamehere]

Oshawa's main station will be moved to the CP line just east of Simcoe street once the Bowmanville GO extension is constructed.

[miketoronto]

Smaller cities than St. John's and Thunder Bay in Switzerland have night bus networks on Friday and Saturday evenings.

http://www.zpass.ch/

[ScreamingViking]

Re: a new Oshawa station - Good news. That will be a much more central location. Do they intend to keep the old one or does the track connection have to be built west of it? (there's that rail bridge over the 401 just to the east, but it's quite close so the grading may not work; it will need to have double track too)

[Innsertnamehere]

they will decommission the old one and construct another one almost directly to the north on Thornton road. The extension will have 4 stations, Thronton, Simcoe, Clarington, and Bowmanville.

[Taeolas]

Update on Fredericton's transit system (laughable as it is).

The uproar over cancelling two of the 'lesser used' routes (Silverwood and Lincoln) has convinced the council to keep them going for a year at reduced frequencies. Note that these routes were already at a reduced rate to start with.

Some people were calling out the committee's numbers on the so called 'low use' routes, noting that the existing schedule, the averages matched many of the other routes when you factored in that they only ran at a fraction of the rates. (For example, one of the reports the council apparently used, rated the routes based on passenger counts over 5 days,despite the two routes already having reduced runes compared to the rest of the routes in the system)

Of course, keeping the routes running doesn't come for free. So the council has approved transit rate increases last night. Single ride tickets go up to 2.50 from 2.25 immediately, and in January monthly passes go up to 80$ and single ride tickets go up again to 2.75. The council blames it all on those extra routes, which seems like blatant scapegoating. (Especially since they have also decided to spend 10 million dollars to renovate an old arena instead of decomissioning it, and they haven't figured out where the funds for that will come from yet). The rates go up, despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be any other options considered. (Such as changing the senior pass rates; currently at 50$/year instead of the regional standard of 50$/month, or raising parking rates or even running hte parking metres on Saturdays)

Personally, I don't mind increasing the rates; everything gets more expensive. But I'd rather see a big increase that also improved the overall system (by adding needed Sunday service), instead of the scapegoating the council has done instead.

[MalcolmTucker]

What is Fredericton's farebox ratio like? Is the system set up with a central gathering point and a coordinated pulse on the collector routes?

[Taeolas]

Freddy has a hub and spoke system. Buses leave King's Place (the hub in the Downtown core of the city) on approximately 20-25 minute routes to areas of the city, then they turn around and come back in, so the same bus is back to King's Place after about an hour or so.

Three or four of the routes curl around and meet up at the Regent Mall on the South side of the Saint John River, but the North Side routes and the "Low density" routes just stretch out and come back in.

With the changes coming next week we are getting hourly service across the board, Monday to Saturday, with half hourly service on weekday peaks. Routes start about 06:45, and the last routes end around 22:50 or so.

The city just recently allowed businesses to pick their hours on Sundays; before they were limited to 12-5 hours of operation. Bus service is non existent on Sundays (despite most of the routes going by the major churches in the city; one turns around in the parking lot of a big cathedral)

It ONLY serves the city itself, to the city limits; we have some bedroom communities (Lincoln, which is where the airport is, Hanwell, Oromocto, etc...) just outside that could probably help improve the service, but that isn't being looked at yet; we aren't quite big enough for a Regional system but that's probably 10 years out realistically speaking.

As for the Farebox ratio, I'm not sure. From the public consultations on the changes, I did find this:

For 2014, the operating budget for Fredericton Transit is $3,805,521, with revenue projections of $1,729,000.

[Beedok]

As for when buses end, I'm fairly certain that if you don't live on the transitway in Ottawa your bus tends to stop at about 12 or 1am. I have no idea when the bars close, but I'm guessing it's later than that.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Beedok

As for when buses end, I'm fairly certain that if you don't live on the transitway in Ottawa your bus tends to stop at about 12 or 1am. I have no idea when the bars close, but I'm guessing it's later than that.

Bars close at 2 am in Ottawa.

[1overcosc]

Yep. Almost all routes in Ottawa stop between midnight and 1am. The Transitway has 24/7 bus service, though, and there's a good chunk of the city's population within a reasonable walk of a Transitway station. This is actually extended in the overnight hours as many Transitway routes detour off of the actual Transitway corridor and onto streets, acting as local buses, during the late night to increase coverage. For example the #95 Transitway bus to Orleans provides local service on St. Joseph Boulevard after 1am.