Quote:
Originally Posted by JustACitizen
The transit issue is a chicken egg scenario. If it sucks people wont use it. To get it to where more people would use it, the service must be quicker and more convenient. To do this it would cost money and be a lost leader for years. Try getting from the east end to Southland Mall. An hour and 10mins is unacceptable in a city as small as Regina. There needs to be more buses more frequently and more routes and later at night, but that wont happen as long as the city tries to run it near break even cost wise. Arcola someday will be well suited for a light rail up the middle of the boulevard portion in the far east, but good luck at bottleneck bridge (Ring road)...In the mean time more express buses from node to node would help alot. An airport bus is a must in any city it is quite odd that we do not.
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Agreed, but it certainly can be done. I was a first year student when they introduced the U-Pass, and witnessed plenty of moaning and complaining about having to pay into a bus service. Nobody wanted to utilize the service, and ridership was pathetic. However, after a year or so of paying for a service they weren't using, people sucked it up and began taking the bus rather than commuting and paying for a parking pass.
Similarly, if the city began to heavily subsidize the bus transit and improved service area as well as cut down on commute times, I believe we would witness a similar scenario. Obviously people would be up in arms about their property taxes going towards funding transit, but after improving the accessibility of service, I wholeheartedly believe people would change their way. Save them time and money, and I think we'd see pretty big change. For example, to my understanding the express route from the east to downtown has been a success thus far. Unfortunately, improving service across the city and making it as efficient as commuting by car would be a huge capital undertaking and I pray for the soul of whoever ends up proposing it on the cities end.
However, to touch on your example, the urban sprawl of Regina will be the death of transit. The distance from the Sandra Schmirler in the east to Southland is just over 10 km driving distance. Comparatively, the driving distance from One World Trade Centre in Lower Manhattan to the Guggenheim in the Upper East Side is roughly 12 km driving distance. Everyone loves to say Regina is a small city, and population-wise, it certainly is. However, the sprawl of development has made effective and efficient transit in this city nearly impossible without some brilliant solution from someone much smarter than myself.
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