Quote:
Originally Posted by J81
What was condescending about my reply?
A few posts back you claimed that timetable times dont matter and yet now you want to quote them as the bible and you quote Dartmouth to Moncton and not Halifax to Moncton which is what im talking about. But since we’re talking about the timetable times, what you see on the VIA website is the schedule with time built in for meeting the opposite direction VIA train which no longer happens since the service only operates 3 days a week. 99.8% of the time train 15 out of Halifax does not meet any trains enroute to Moncton and routinely arrives between 1700-1705. Thats a 4-4:05 minute trip. Now go look at the bus schedule from Halifax ( not Dartmouth ) There hasnt been a passenger train on the Dartmouth sub in decades. Infact it might be closer to 100 years. It’s incredibly slow at 25mph for most and 15mph for the rest. So it will never happen.
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The timetable isn't useful if it's wrong. It doesn't change the actual trip times that people experience which is what matters. I already knew how much time each mode took by using them, so the fact that the timetable does show reflect this difference means the times you quoted couldn't have come from there. It's true that the schedule isn't that reliable without knowing what the on-time reliability rate is, but in my experience we can generally assume that when it isn't reliable it's pretty much always going to be slower rather than faster. And with the train, I've experienced more delays beyond the schedule than with the bus.
And why would I only compare trips from the Halifax side when the bus offers both and we're comparing the bus and the train? If one offers something the other doesn't, that's important for any comparison. Not not only does it make more sense to take the bus from Dartmouth for everyone in Dartmouth, Cole Harbour, the Prestons, etc. which is is a good 1/3 of the metro area, but it would even make sense for a lot of people on the Halifax side. It would be quicker and easier to just take a transit bus across the bridge than to deep downtown. For instance, according to Google maps, it's one minute quicker to take transit from Mumford Terminal (the main bus hub on the Halifax side) to the Dartmouth Maritime bus stop than the Halifax stop. So that means it's both departure points are roughly equal for people in Spryfield, Clayton Park, Fairview, as well. And it's also faster to get to the Dartmouth stop from Bedford/Sackville because of the fast 87 route.
But even if it did take slightly longer to get there, you'd save time not having to re-trace your steps after getting on the intercity bus. When I checked the schedule, Maritime bus quotes it as being 2:50 from Halifax to Amherst, so still 15 minutes shorter than the train, but leaving from Dartmouth is 35 min quicker than the train. So even if there was only a bus stop in Dartmouth and none in Halifax, nearly everyone would still a have shorter overall trip on the bus since there are few (if any?) places from where it would take 35 minutes longer to get to the Dartmouth stop than to the Halifax stop.
As far as why the first reply was condescending, claiming to "debunk" something someone said is very accusatory, basically claiming the info they provided is "bunk". It's generally best to discuss where each person got their info and determine why two data points don't agree, then determine if one source is better than the other. Without doing that, to then expect someone to immediately accept your info over their own without offering them any justification is condescending because it assumes you're just somehow a fundamentally more competent information source then them. Not that important but just seemed very weird...