Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Not really, the 99 is crowded all the way through. We also haven't factored in induced demand: riders switching from other E-W bus routes to the faster M-Line/99 combo, or ex-drivers who switch to SkyTrain.
We also only know the numbers for westbound ridership; anecdotally speaking, the eastbound buses at UBC are nowhere close to only 50% capacity.
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Well, we can either believe in the 50% get off before Arbutus number or not.
Either the 99 is crowded all the way through, or it's roughly twice as crowded between Commercial-Broadway and Arbutus. It can't be both. It's not as though there's a huge amount of replacement at Macdonald or Alma, most of the riders between Arbutus and UBC are riders from the Broadway Corridor.
I absolutely agree that induced demand will bump up the transit numbers on the 99 between Arbutus and UBC, but are we really expecting it to bump up 2x? That's why I said it might make sense to go from 3 minute headway to 5 minute headway, not a full 50% reduction.
Purely anecdotally, I have never had to wait multiple busses at UBC to get on a 99 (Though my university years are behind me
). That's just standard operating procedure at Commercial-Broadway.
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Regardless of everything, I really hope they just build the goddamn thing out to UBC already in the next extension. I'm just playing devil's advocate for what they theoretically could viably do.
EDIT: On second thought, the Broadway extension is probably going to cannibalize a decent amount of the existing E-W bus traffic and incentivize UBC students to live in East Van/Burnaby. I could see the Arbutus - UBC congestion becoming very close to the Commercial-Broadway-Arbutus congestion in the very near term.