Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion

[DKaz]

If 60 students on $25/mo UPasses fill up a bus 20 minutes each way 22 days a month and they pay $25 a month, it's basically break even with the operating costs of that bus, assuming $100/hour.

However, a majority of riders are full paying passengers. You're basically helping to utilize more of the space. And rememeber, $25/mo regardless of whether one uses the service or not. For every 100 students paying into the UPass program, 75 may actually use the service regularly or occasionally.

For all these reasons, I have absolutely no problem with the UPass program.

[andasen]

Originally Posted by DKaz

If 60 students on $25/mo UPasses fill up a bus 20 minutes each way 22 days a month and they pay $25 a month, it's basically break even with the operating costs of that bus, assuming $100/hour.

However, a majority of riders are full paying passengers. You're basically helping to utilize more of the space. And rememeber, $25/mo regardless of whether one uses the service or not. For every 100 students paying into the UPass program, 75 may actually use the service regularly or occasionally.

For all these reasons, I have absolutely no problem with the UPass program.

But with the exception of mid day the bus will only be relatively full for half its trip then be barren when if shuttles back up/down the mountain to get the next group. And then it is running an articulated bus until it stops running around 12:30 when all it really needs after 7 is a normal bus.

[nname]

Originally Posted by DKaz

If 60 students on $25/mo UPasses fill up a bus 20 minutes each way 22 days a month and they pay $25 a month, it's basically break even with the operating costs of that bus, assuming $100/hour.

However, a majority of riders are full paying passengers. You're basically helping to utilize more of the space. And rememeber, $25/mo regardless of whether one uses the service or not. For every 100 students paying into the UPass program, 75 may actually use the service regularly or occasionally.

For all these reasons, I have absolutely no problem with the UPass program.

Well...

• The U-Pass is actually $30 a month
• The operating cost of the bus is actually closer to $120/hour now
• For the service hour, you have to add the deadheading, layover, recovery time, which is about 30% extra
• Most of the peak load are unidirectional, which means the bus must go deadhead back or run almost empty
• The calculation does not take transfers into account

But still, the overall cost recovery of the system is only 53%. Bringing more people into the system would make the less used routes more viable especially during the off-peak hours, as the peak university load comes just after the am rush and just before the pm rush.

[nname]

Originally Posted by andasen

But with the exception of mid day the bus will only be relatively full for half its trip then be barren when if shuttles back up/down the mountain to get the next group. And then it is running an articulated bus until it stops running around 12:30 when all it really needs after 7 is a normal bus.

I'm not sure which route you are referring to. For SFU, well, the 135 definitely need articulated bus all day - the Hastings-Downtown portion would need that. The 145 is busy as you'll be surprised to see pass ups at 10pm even with the articulated buses. Although the load drops substantially after 10pm, would it really worthwhile to swap bus just for the last 2 hours? The 143 are mostly run with regular bus early morning and in the evenings. It swap buses with the 97 and 701 after the morning rush and before the afternoon rush, so that the trips with the highest demand on all three routes are served with the larger buses.

[DKaz]

What struck as interesting is that traffic going out of Vancouver is almost as heavy as traffic going into Vancouver. If they can make transit more attractive for the reverse peak direction commuters, that would really solve the deadheading problem. It also shows how effective transit really is at taking cars off the road.

[Zassk]

Originally Posted by andasen

But with the exception of mid day the bus will only be relatively full for half its trip then be barren when if shuttles back up/down the mountain to get the next group. And then it is running an articulated bus until it stops running around 12:30 when all it really needs after 7 is a normal bus.

You're projecting the SFU scenario on the whole U-Pass program, which is unrealistic. Most U-Pass holders are at UBC and Langara and a handful of other large institutions located on arterial routes, whose bus routes are well-utilized all day in both directions by both students and non-students.

[st7860]

Originally Posted by nname

I'm not sure which route you are referring to. For SFU, well, the 135 definitely need articulated bus all day - the Hastings-Downtown portion would need that. The 145 is busy as you'll be surprised to see pass ups at 10pm even with the articulated buses. Although the load drops substantially after 10pm, would it really worthwhile to swap bus just for the last 2 hours? The 143 are mostly run with regular bus early morning and in the evenings. It swap buses with the 97 and 701 after the morning rush and before the afternoon rush, so that the trips with the highest demand on all three routes are served with the larger buses.

the 145 is so busy because scheduled frequencies in the evening drop off too quickly

[twoNeurons]

Pretty easy to compare the UPASS bus utilization... see the summer utilization of said routes and the bus service reduction.

[andasen]

Originally Posted by nname

I'm not sure which route you are referring to. For SFU, well, the 135 definitely need articulated bus all day - the Hastings-Downtown portion would need that. The 145 is busy as you'll be surprised to see pass ups at 10pm even with the articulated buses. Although the load drops substantially after 10pm, would it really worthwhile to swap bus just for the last 2 hours? The 143 are mostly run with regular bus early morning and in the evenings. It swap buses with the 97 and 701 after the morning rush and before the afternoon rush, so that the trips with the highest demand on all three routes are served with the larger buses.

Sorry I thought I had said the 145, if I hadn't I appologize. But with that, I need to speak from personal experience as one who has taken the 145 at all sorts of hours, even when a scheduled bus comes and you have to wait a half hour for the next one I have never once experienced being passed up after 8 pm. The only time I could see the late night ridership causing pass ups to happen is during exams for the last 145 of the night.

Originally Posted by Zassk

You're projecting the SFU scenario on the whole U-Pass program, which is unrealistic. Most U-Pass holders are at UBC and Langara and a handful of other large institutions located on arterial routes, whose bus routes are well-utilized all day in both directions by both students and non-students.

I wasn't projecting the SFU scenario onto the whole U-Pass system, I was suggesting that if there was an issue with the the system it would most likely be most apparent with the 145 given that its entire purpose is to service the mountain and the very one-way nature of its ridership at many hours.

[Zassk]

The 145 is a special case, period. It will be an inefficient route whether the U-Pass exists or not. The 145 is an essential service and I don't think we should use it to draw any conclusions about the overall system.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Zassk

The 145 is a special case, period. It will be an inefficient route whether the U-Pass exists or not. The 145 is an essential service and I don't think we should use it to draw any conclusions about the overall system.

The value of looking at the 145 is that it is almost exclusively university students, which makes the effects of U-Pass very apparent. You can compare ridership before and after U-Pass, and if you scale the results by enrollment in the corresponding years that should give you an excellent idea of exactly how much a ridership change was caused by U-Pass.

That's a lot harder to do on routes like the 99 because there's so much other, non-UPass ridership.

[nname]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

The value of looking at the 145 is that it is almost exclusively university students, which makes the effects of U-Pass very apparent. You can compare ridership before and after U-Pass, and if you scale the results by enrollment in the corresponding years that should give you an excellent idea of exactly how much a ridership change was caused by U-Pass.

That's a lot harder to do on routes like the 99 because there's so much other, non-UPass ridership.

The 145 now also serves the residents of Univercity. The most recent early morning improvement is actually targetting those residents instead of university student (other than the ones who stayed overnight, who will leave the school at 6am weekday morning!?), so the route itself is also gradually becoming a mix used route rather than U-Pass specific.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by nname

The 145 now also serves the residents of Univercity. The most recent early morning improvement is actually targetting those residents instead of university student (other than the ones who stayed overnight, who will leave the school at 6am weekday morning!?), so the route itself is also gradually becoming a mix used route rather than U-Pass specific.

The counterflow ridership during rush hour is probably a way to gauge the relative volumes of students vs. residents. Much harder to do on the 99 since there's a large volume of non-student traffic traveling in the same direction. But it would be easier to do once the Compass Card can be used to analyze the start/end points of individual trips.

[queetz@home]

Well this is interesting....

http://www.cloverdalereporter.com/news/157088965.html

Metro Vancouver mayors had no legal leg to stand on in April when they voted to rescind a property tax increase for TransLink that was originally passed last fall as a backup measure to finance transit expansion.

TransLink Commissioner Martin Crilly made that point in a recent Mayors Council meeting, saying he could not allow the perception to remain that mayors could at any time revoke a legally binding supplement they previously approved.

But Crilly's view that the retraction is not valid does not necessarily mean the tax hike and the bus service upgrades are back on again.

[st7860]

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Tran...215/story.html

More than $500,000 was spent on special televisions at five SkyTrain stations — but most of the screens don’t even work, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Jordan Bateman, B.C. director of the federation, said Tuesday that a Freedom of Information request to TransLink indicated the cost of the screens and their installation in 2009 was $523,444.

The bulk of the money, $393,032, came from a federal grant to improve transit security.

While installation and power was part of the program, the funding works out to more than $40,000 per screen.

The screens in question are not the monitors that show news blurbs, weather and the time of day on SkyTrain platforms. Instead, the Station Entrance Emergency Information Panels [SEEIP] were intended to replace sandwich boards used to communicate information to commuters when the SkyTrain gates were locked during emergencies.

But when Bateman did a tour of the five stations last week, only four of the 13 screens were operating — all at Stadium Station.

Screens that were supposed to be at Scott Road, Edmonds and Commercial-Broadway were no longer apparent and the ones at Lougheed Town Centre were not working

[Darren Tate]

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Red...618/story.html

So The City continues to discourage driving and force people to take transit... Did Translink not announce cutbacks a while back? Public transit here is already atrocious, that's why I gave up and bought a car. Is anybody running the show REALLY serious about improving public transit? I would gladly give up my car if transit wasn't the mess that it is now.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Darren Tate

So The City continues to discourage driving and force people to take transit...

As I understand it the regulations regarding parking spaces were modified in response to dropping utilization of condo car parks, not the other way around. People who live near good transit facilities often choose not to own a car. They're not being forced into it.

This obviously isn't true across the entire lower mainland, but it certainly applies in the downtown peninsula where most trips are taken by transit or walking.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Darren Tate

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Red...618/story.html

So The City continues to discourage driving and force people to take transit... Did Translink not announce cutbacks a while back? Public transit here is already atrocious, that's why I gave up and bought a car. Is anybody running the show REALLY serious about improving public transit? I would gladly give up my car if transit wasn't the mess that it is now.

I'm not sure your rant has much to do with that article.

The city is no longer requiring the developer to provide parking for every unit, so they can choose how many parking spot to build, leaving the pricing and profit margin up to market forces.

I can only tell you from personal experience as I rent out a parking spot in a downtown building, the price of a monthly parking spot has been flat for the last 10 years, while the price to rent a suite to live in has gone up significantly.

[DKaz]

Yup. My wife and I carpool to work and we rent a space from a chiropractor who runs his own business and living very well who chooses not to own a car. He uses car sharing programs instead.

[Darren Tate]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

I'm not sure your rant has much to do with that article.

I don't think 4 or 5 sentences constitues a rant. The article is not related to transit issues, but the big picture I see here is that of decreasing incentive for car ownership without any tangible improvements in public transportation. Why is that such a hard connection to make? Not everyone lives AND works downtown, there are plenty of reverse-commuters living downtown who would be screwed if they had to rely on public transit.

My "rant" is coming off the heels of recently announced transit cutbacks, and from having to listen to some smug mouthpiece from Translink tell CBC radio that—despite the cutbacks—our transit system is still "world-class" compared to other cities—like Toronto. Please, anything looks good when compared to a turd. It's pretty safe to assume that the folks who make the high-level decisions at Translink DO NOT TAKE PUBLIC TRANSIT, but who can blame them? Oh and a bus-driver friend of mine mentioned that these execs gave themselves bonuses and/or raises recently. That's not hard to believe.

I don't know what you pay to rent out somebody's spot downtown, but the last time I checked they go for around $100/month—if you're lucky enough to get your hands on one. I used to work downtown and paid an obscene amount of money for monthly parking, thanks to Translink's 35% parking tax. So although I was no longer taking the bus, I was still helping to fund the service so other bus riders could enjoy rush-hour pass-ups like I used to. That's right, I'm just another taxpayer doing his part to fund the status quo at Translink.

Ranty enough for you?