Official Fredericton, NB projects thread

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by OliverD

I assume 540 Kitchen & Bar is also opening soon, they posted a preliminary menu to their Facebook page yesterday.

They're opening mid-week.

[Taeolas]

Well, taking the first 13S bus from the Lake was a minor improvement. It only took 75 minutes to get through Maple street this time. :/ Of course he flipped around to 11N once he got to Kings Place, so I had to hoof it the rest of the way to work.

Really, they either need an earlier bus run; or they need a police escort along Maple street so the buses can keep the schedules (and maybe encourage more people to take the buses)

In the mean time some details of the changes are coming out. More later I'm sure.

Weekdays are going to be full hourly, with the last run being cut back to 10:15-11:15 or so. I'm fine iwth that change (ecstatic really; it's something I've been asking for a while).

Cutting the runs are a bit iffy, but we'll see if there are new routes to sort it out.

Renumbering routes, meh we'll see. No big deal either way.

Sadly, there is no mention of any Saturday changes. Saturday really needs to be full hourly service minimum if they want people to be using it. You need that to give people the flexibility in their schedules that people want. Otherwise they'll just keep using their cars.

The lack of Sunday service is a minor nuisance, but I can live with that for now. It needs to come sometime soon (next 5 years or so I'm sure), but we have some fundamental problems in the Monday to Saturday service to deal with before we talk about Sunday. (Sunday service needs to be hourly as well when it comes)

[OliverD]

The new Irving on Hanwell opened today, though the Quiznos and Burger King are not yet open.

[Taeolas]

I'm sure this is being cut'n'pasta'ed alot today:

Request to add an earlier temporary route:

Thank you for contacting Fredericton Transit.

At this time, it is not possible to add an earlier run on any route as that change in schedule would require approval by Council as it would incur increased budget implications.

[Taeolas]

Just got back from the meeting; a good turnout, more than they expected a bit I think.

They basically went over the changes that are coming , and then broke up into discussion groups to gather ideas and commentary.

The changes are fairly big. The goal was to find a neutral budget solution to improving the system.

So the biggest change is, that we are going full hourly Monday to Saturday (the website is incorrect). All routes will be at the same time of the hour during the hours of operation. Monday to Friday will have rushhour half hour routes as well.

To 'pay' for those extra runs, some of the late nite (11:30 PM) runs are being cut, along with the Lincoln and Silverwood routes completely.

There will be route adjustments, but nothing too extreme that I noticed. The 13 won't go through the Corbett Centre any more, and it will run out Woodstock Road to Wagoneers to Smythe now (along Odell park) instead of through the suburb and along Saunders. There were some concerns about access to the Stepping Stone Centre and the old YMCA since the new route cuts that off.

The 15 North will also be straightening out, going up to Maple and around St Mary's/2NC/Cliff in the opposite direction basically.

They may also look into (in January) establishing a slip stop, maybe near the North Side Pizza Delight (on Maple) to help with North side transfers.

Overall, the feel I had is they wanted to 'staunch the bleeding'. They wanted to tighten up the system, to meet the demands of the riders while still staying in budget and encouraging future growth. In my opinion it is a fantastic first step and hopefully it will give us a ridership boost.

After that, next year basically, they'll look at what's changed and see where the demand is, whether it is in Sunday service, Lincoln/Silverwood service, or maybe looking into 15 minute Regent to Kings service.

There was a lot of discussion about the concerns over eliminating those routes and a lot of comments about it. So one solution that might come up might be a small budget boost and replacing those routes as Shuttle runs, one in the morning, one in the evening.

There is another Public Talk on Thursday at Grant-Harvey. They'll gather the feedback and present it to Council in Mid July, and they hope to have it implemented in time for the start of September.

[OliverD]

Was on the northside last night and a few of the developments there are progressing nicely. Looks like the framing for the second floor of the Bowlen Street condo building is nearly finished and they've started putting up steel for the building at the corner of Cliffe and Two Nations.

[Taeolas]

CBC's take on the reaction to the public meeting

Overall, from what I saw, I agree with what they saw. But I also realized that one of the big things they were trying to reach with the plan was to be budget neutral and to provide the frequency people have been shouting for for a long time.

The core from what I saw looks solid now. Hopefully with the feedback we can keep that core and maybe convince council to loosen the purse strings a little to keep the Lincoln and Silverwood services in some form. I personally suspect that with the proposed core, we should see growth in Transit use in general, to the point we'll be able to afford those outlying routes.

[trev71]

I work up on Hanwell Road and live by in behind the old Brookside Mall. I might take the dam on the way home once they close the other lanes. The drive home will be horrible then :| I dont mind being late for work, but when its time to go home I wanna go home

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by trev71

I work up on Hanwell Road and live by in behind the old Brookside Mall. I might take the dam on the way home once they close the other lanes. The drive home will be horrible then :| I dont mind being late for work, but when its time to go home I wanna go home

I would take the dam even now. Probably a 30 minute drive and you won't be stuck in traffic.

[Taeolas]

Evenings haven't been a problem at all so far that I've noticed. But when they switch sides, St Anne's will be closed from Regent, so all that traffic has to cut across downtown to get to Westmorland Street. That could be ugly. I might try it for a day or two after the changeover and see how things look.

Any other bus riders here? Just wondering if the 11S from Carlisle is getting as clogged up as the 13S from Brookside is? Where I live I can easily drop down to Main Street and pick up the 11. I might do that tomorrow anyway just so I have a change of scenery. 4 hours of Maple Street in a week is more than enough.

[OliverD]

Foodland on Main is closing as of July 5, one of 50 stores Sobeys is shutting down across Canada: http://business.financialpost.com/20...-close-canada/

[Taeolas]

Not too surprising; we already have 3 Sobeys in the city itself, and that Foodland location is really REALLY outdated. With nicer places to shop at just up the road, it's a wonder it kept going as long as it did.

If the mall didn't have an absent owner, that might be an ideal time to just knock the whole thing down and redevelop it to more modern standards. Maybe that can happen anyway.

[trev71]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

Not too surprising; we already have 3 Sobeys in the city itself, and that Foodland location is really REALLY outdated. With nicer places to shop at just up the road, it's a wonder it kept going as long as it did.

If the mall didn't have an absent owner, that might be an ideal time to just knock the whole thing down and redevelop it to more modern standards. Maybe that can happen anyway.

Hey, that doesnt really surprise me. We have too many grocery stores in Fredericton now with Walmart now in that business. That store wasnt even really looked after well. The store looked and smelled the same since it was Lofood back in the 80's. I remember going there with my dad as a kid and that smell is the same 25 years later.

The only sad thing out of all of this is the people who will be losing their jobs

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

Not too surprising; we already have 3 Sobeys in the city itself, and that Foodland location is really REALLY outdated. With nicer places to shop at just up the road, it's a wonder it kept going as long as it did.

If the mall didn't have an absent owner, that might be an ideal time to just knock the whole thing down and redevelop it to more modern standards. Maybe that can happen anyway.

Who's the owner?

[Taeolas]

Originally Posted by trev71

Hey, that doesnt really surprise me. We have too many grocery stores in Fredericton now with Walmart now in that business. That store wasnt even really looked after well. The store looked and smelled the same since it was Lofood back in the 80's. I remember going there with my dad as a kid and that smell is the same 25 years later.

The only sad thing out of all of this is the people who will be losing their jobs

I'd dare say that with Foodland going now, we probably have the right number of stores in the right areas now. There's 4 big Northside stores and 5 big Southside stores (counting Walmarts, not counting small guys like Victory), and they're fairly decently spaced apart from each other. Foodland, with Superstore up the road, and Sobeys around the corner, was in a bad spot really, and didn't get any maintenance.

For the remaining stores we have (and admittedly I don't use the Coop but it looks well maintained and busy), this puts St Mary's on the bottom now. Since it's the Reserve, and the only real option for "North side, east of the Ring Road, bottom of the hill" I doubt it's in any danger of closing. But it is in desperate need for renovations/modernizations IMO. Maybe WalMart might draw enough traffic from them to encourage them to update.

As for Foodland closing, hopefully most of the employees can find slots in the other 3 Sobeys stores. It shouldn't be too difficult I suspect all in all.

Originally Posted by OliverD

Who's the owner?

I don't know (and I haven't been by to check); so I'm just admittedly repeating 2nd and 3rd hand information. (I think I overheard it at the Main Street Public Planning meetings last year or earlier this year). They acknowledged that that mall is one of the eyesores on Main (second only to Crappy Tire), and it's high on the "Something must be done" list; but others 'in the know but not official' commented on the side that part of the issue is an absent/hard to contact owner who's unwilling to do much more than the bare minimum maintenance (if that)

[trev71]

I honnestly think they should just tear it down and rebuild something decent looking. But i know that will probably never happen. the old Canadian tire building should be tore down as well.

Look how long it took them to fix the old train station

[OliverD]

I wonder how long it will be before the northside Superstore is renovated or decamps for Two Nations Crossing. Even when I lived on the northside I often shopped at the south side Superstore just because it had a better selection and checking out was faster.

[pat610]

Originally Posted by OliverD

If you live west of Brookside drive and are traveling uptown, you're looking at under 30 minutes of travel time via the dam which is pretty good.

Last summer I commuted from Knowledge Park to Douglas. After taking the Westmorland Street bridge a couple times I gave up and took the Mactaquac route. It was marginally quicker even then and a nicer driver to boot.

I think people are overreacting to the wait times on the bridge. For some reason Monday was the only day it has been bad so far. Just have to be smart about it. I live in Douglas and work downtown. Monday I took the dam and it took 30 minutes, leaving at 8:15 AM. Tuesday I left at 8 AM, took main street, then McKeen (where there were no cars!), left onto maple and left onto the bridge. Got to work in 25 minutes! Wednesday I left at 8:10 AM and took the ring road the whole way in. Traffic was backed up the hill a bit at Maple but no worse than at other times without construction at times. Only took around 20 minutes. Today I left at 8:12 AM and didn't hit ANY traffic until I was through the lights at Maple! Left lane was backed up but nobody was in the right lane. It took 15 minutes to get to work today. Not sure what happened but everyone must be going to work at different times or different ways than me!

[Freddypop]

I agree. With the exception of Monday which took me one hour, departing at 8:10, I have been able to travel from Brookside to UNB in about 20 minutes each day...taking the Ring Road.

[Taeolas]

The buses have been having it rough.

Monday, I caught the 7:45 13S Prospect, and it took 90 minutes on Maple.
Tuesday, caught the 7:15 (earliest possible route) and it took 75 minutes on Maple.
Wednesday, caught the 7:15 and it took 60 minutes.

Today, I caught a lift with a coworker, and we came down Douglas and skipped most of the lineups so it wasn't bad (got to work at 7:15 after leaving around 6:50 or so)

Tomorrow, I'm hoping a lot of people are taking Vacay and the lineups will be sorted out more.