Crappy Ontario Transit Comparison

[Doady]

I saw this blog post about the crappiness of Hamilton's transit, I thought it was interesting, especially the chart:

http://www.raisethehammer.org/blog/2...ies_on_display

As noted in the comments section, lack of provincial support might be a factor, so I wanted to expand that chart a little include more crappy medium-sized systems of Ontario, and here it is:

city		pop.	$gross	#buses	riders	hours
winnipeg	647000	138M	545	72	2.00		
victoria	360000	92M	280	69	2.21		
quebec		563000	181M	597	79	2.02		
hamilton	480000	72M	217	45	1.43
mississauga	741000	149M	447	45	1.78		
london		365000	53M	192	61	1.50		
brampton	524000	82M	300	32	1.47	
waterloo	500000	75M	211	39	1.15

As you can see, Hamilton isn't the only Ontario city underserviced by transit, though I guess Hamilton is still a bit more underserviced than the others, at least in terms of the amount of revenue service hours per capita. London is the worst in terms of service hours vs. ridership (i.e. the amount of service doesn't reflect the demand).

Unfortunately I couldn't find all the data for Waterloo Region (Grand River Transit).

All these stats are for 2011, btw. I assumed "gross expenses" meant operating expenses only.

[vid]

Thunder Bay does better than Brampton...

city		pop.	$gross	#buses	riders	hours
Thunder Bay	109000	14M	49	33	1.51

Thunder Bay has the most vehicle revenue hours in its peer group, more than Barrie, Kingston, North Bay, Peteroborough, Red Deer, Sault Ste. Marie, St. John's and Sudbury. Kind of surprising to see us doing better than 4 cities that are larger than us. The 1.51 per capita service hours puts us in second place, right behind Red Deer.

http://issuu.com/tbtransit/docs/tran...dColor=#222222

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[Doady]

They should have compared to Brantford, lol. Seriously, I guess you can't compare to all ~100k cities.

I think Brampton does better than Thunder Bay now. They added a lot of service in 2012 (~8% increase), the ridership grew by 2 million in 2012 (12% increase). But it seems to be declining in 2013. A sign of a recession perhaps?

http://www.brampton.ca/en/residents/...shipStats.aspx

I think with newer/expanding systems like Brampton and Mississauga, the ridership is going to be low compared to the amount of service, because the ridership growth is slower, especially during difficult economic conditions like now.

[vid]

Brampton's biggest advantage over us is the Zum system. We still don't have any form of express transit here, other than an occasional bus (that few people know about) that will make limited stops (if they can spare a driver to run it).

[Doady]

Well, Brampton is bigger, so the size makes express buses more necessary, and viable. For example, Steeles Ave has buses coming by every 4.2 minutes on average, regular and express combined. That kind of service would be a bit excessive for Thunder Bay, wouldn't it? Smaller cities have an inherent disadvantage when it comes to transit, so I guess it's not really fair to comapre them.

[haljackey]

In London, most buses come every half-hour. Some of the busier buses come every 15 mins.

No LRT plans in place... but I bet we would get funding if we had them like K/W did. No vision here lol

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Doady

Well, Brampton is bigger, so the size makes express buses more necessary, and viable. For example, Steeles Ave has buses coming by every 4.2 minutes on average, regular and express combined. That kind of service would be a bit excessive for Thunder Bay, wouldn't it? Smaller cities have an inherent disadvantage when it comes to transit, so I guess it's not really fair to comapre them.

With two downtowns and half of the services at either end Thunder Bay does sort of need an express route between the two.

[vid]

A bus every 4.2 minutes would definitely be excessive, but the current maximum frequency on our busiest stretch of 15 minutes (spread on 3 routes; 8 buses per hour but always two at a time) is clearly inadequate. We could easily support 10 minute service on that route. Introduction of an express bus with limited stops would allow us to maintain bus frequencies without having the overcrowding that we currently deal with. I don't know about Brampton, but in Thunder Bay, it is not uncommon to be on a bus with 45+ people all crammed in. A couple of our routes really suffer because the constant stopping due to high passenger loads prevents buses from reaching timing points on time, and recent system overhauls giving those routes an extra 2.5 minutes to reach their destinations haven't been as successful as planned. Our buses are combating high passenger volumes and crowded roads (all of our roads are four lanes or smaller, unlike Brampton, and don't handle heavy traffic very efficiently).

The area with the highest frequencies, around our mall (which is between the two downtowns) actually does have traffic jams. Several intersections back up into each other and it can take as much as 15 minutes to clear them, which sounds minor but it's actually quite extreme when you consider it only takes that long to get from one end of the city to the other when traffic is light.

Originally Posted by haljackey

In London, most buses come every half-hour. Some of the busier buses come every 15 mins.

Thunder Bay is 25% as large as London, but that is the exact same system we have.

[Jacob]

Windsor as of 2010 (hasn't changed much)

pop. 217 249 #buses: 104 riders: 28.4 hours: 1.18 budget: $28million

I couldn't find data for Windsor from the earlier mentioned sources so i used their own website

[vid]

Operating expenses will be in the city's budget.

[Jacob]

it's about 30 million now, as they received about a $2million boost this year to buy AVL. that means about $28million, $12million of which is paid for by the city.

We don't have an express bus system either. I was at a track meet last week at the university and i had to bus back to south Windsor. The fastest driving route would be 10km and take about 15 minutes. I had to take 2 buses, neither of which i had to wait more than 5 minutes for, but it still took an hour and a half to get home. if i was coming from the other end of the city, it would have taken nearly 2 hours.

[ssiguy]

When I've been in London, the buses {atleast the ones that radiated from downtown} seem to come along a lot more frequently than every 15 minutes.

[Doady]

I added Waterloo. I couldn't find exact number for population and expenses, but they are close enough. The rest of the numbers are exact.

Originally Posted by vid

A couple of our routes really suffer because the constant stopping due to high passenger loads prevents buses from reaching timing points on time, and recent system overhauls giving those routes an extra 2.5 minutes to reach their destinations haven't been as successful as planned. Our buses are combating high passenger volumes and crowded roads (all of our roads are four lanes or smaller, unlike Brampton, and don't handle heavy traffic very efficiently).

The area with the highest frequencies, around our mall (which is between the two downtowns) actually does have traffic jams. Several intersections back up into each other and it can take as much as 15 minutes to clear them, which sounds minor but it's actually quite extreme when you consider it only takes that long to get from one end of the city to the other when traffic is light.

Sounds like the schedules do not give the buses enough time. Roads here in GTA experience traffic congestion too, obviously. And even the express buses need to be scheduled to account for traffic congestion and other delays. No matter what, the schedule needs to reflect the actual speed the buses travel at.

I looked at the schedule for 3 Memorial, and first problem I noticed was there doesn't seem to be any scheduled time at all for drivers to layover at the terminals. There needs to be time for the buses to layover at the terminals (e.g. 5 minutes), to allow them to catch up to the schedule if somehow they are late.

Also, I see that the running time in each direction for 3 Memorial is 30 minutes (i.e. the buses are scheduled to travel between both ends of the route in 30 minutes), and the frequency is 15 minutes (so that's 4 buses). If the buses are unable keep up with their schedule on a consistent basis at certain times (rush hour?), then the running time needs to be increased to account for the actual travel times and prevent the buses from running behind schedule. Unfortunately, this means that more buses will need to be added to the route (increasing cost), otherwise the frequency will decline.

For example, if the running time of 3 Memorial is increased to 35 minutes, plus an additional 5 minutes of layover, each way, it would result in the frequency of the route being reduced to 20 minutes. To make up for this, they could add more buses to the route increase the frequency back up, or they could add an express variant which would have a running time of 25 minutes, plus 5 minutes of layover, each way. Using 3 buses, this new route would also have a frequency of 20 minutes. 20 minute regular service combined 20 minute express service seems okay. (this is just an example, I'm not even sure this is Thunder Bay's busiest route or if it even experiences delays)

Reduced bus frequencies due to increased running time is a common phenomenon pretty much anywhere I think. It happens constantly in Mississauga, for sure - just last month MiWay reduced the Sunday frequencies for 22 Finch and 42 Derry from 40 minutes to 45 minutes. It wasn't a service cut, it was just increased running time. The buses became slower, so they had to reduce the frequency. Though in this case, since it was Sunday, I'm guessing the buses were slower simply because of higher ridership rather than congestion (more people waiting at stops means the buses have stop more often, and/or spend more time at each stop to let people on).

But whether it's due to traffic congestion and increased ridership, the buses are going to slow down, and the frequency will need to be reduced. That's just a fact of life. That's why there's such thing as BRT: a transitway takes care of the congestion problem, and regularly-spaced BRT stations combined with all-door boarding schemes reduce the time it takes to let passengers onto the bus.

[vid]

3 Memorial is the busiest route, and experiences the worst delays, so you got the route right.

The one thing that you're overlooking about Thunder Bay's system is we have a situation where all buses arrive downtown at the same time, and leave at the same time, which is supposed to let people from any bus route transfer to any other bus route. A bus going from one downtown and back has as much time to complete its trip as a bus going from downtown to a suburb and back. Naturally, the one going to the suburb has a 5 to 15 minute layover, while the one going downtown can't make its connections. Even running times were increased from 20 or 40 minutes to 22.5 to 45 minutes, but that small increase has made little difference.

They did update the schedule times based on what the buses were doing before, but they buses never arrive at those times, either.


Now the other challenge with increasing Thunder Bay Transit's running times: 3 Memorial is also 3 Airport, 3 County Park, 3 Jumbo Gardens, and 3 Northwood. In the evening, 3 Jumbo Gardens becomes 13 John-Jumbo Gardens, and 3 Airport merges with 8 James. Both 8 and 13 are connected to route 9 which is also connected to route 11. 3 Memorial has to meet 1 Mainline at the mall to facilitate transfers from one route to the other, since they run parallel (this gives those who live on one route to move laterally through the intercity area by transferring to another route) but in practise that hasn't worked for several years.

So, by increasing the running time for "one route", you've actually affected 9. In the 1990s, interlining was heralded as a way to reduce the need to transfer from one bus to another for most travellers. Now, it has put us into a situation where altering anything about the transit system throws the entire thing into disarray. Route 7 was given a small extension and increased daytime running time from 30 minutes to 45 minutes to fit it in; it had to be completely severed from route 2/12, it could no longer interline with that route.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

When I've been in London, the buses {atleast the ones that radiated from downtown} seem to come along a lot more frequently than every 15 minutes.

The 2 Dundas, 6 Richmond, and 4 Oxford East all come very frequently at peak times, sometimes only 5-10 minutes apart.

If you want crappy transit, try Kingston. They've invested all sorts of money in modern buses, but most routes run only every 30 or 60 minutes. Two overlapping routes on Princess Street are staggered so that there's service along that street every 15 minutes. Bus service at Queen's University is extremely limited; that has been cited as a reason why the concentration of post-secondary students is so high in the neighbourhoods surrounding Queen's (the median age in the area around Queen's is 22.6, compared with London's Fleming Drive neighbourhood where it is 39.4). Kingston's buses also almost never follow the schedule; the bus that goes by where I work typically comes 5-8 minutes before it is scheduled. I bought a car less than 2 months after I moved there, the bus service was so bad.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by vid

A bus going from one downtown and back has as much time to complete its trip as a bus going from downtown to a suburb and back. Naturally, the one going to the suburb has a 5 to 15 minute layover, while the one going downtown can't make its connections. Even running times were increased from 20 or 40 minutes to 22.5 to 45 minutes, but that small increase has made little difference.

Yeah, run times aren't fixed, they fluctuate based on the time of day and even the direction. If one direction of a route is slower than the other at a certain time, then the schedule just needs to account for that. If the route is 15 minutes long leaving downtown and 25 minutes long going toward downtown, then just make those trips 15 and 25 minutes long, and that's still 40 minutes total.

Originally Posted by vid

Now the other challenge with increasing Thunder Bay Transit's running times: 3 Memorial is also 3 Airport, 3 County Park, 3 Jumbo Gardens, and 3 Northwood. In the evening, 3 Jumbo Gardens becomes 13 John-Jumbo Gardens, and 3 Airport merges with 8 James. Both 8 and 13 are connected to route 9 which is also connected to route 11. 3 Memorial has to meet 1 Mainline at the mall to facilitate transfers from one route to the other, since they run parallel (this gives those who live on one route to move laterally through the intercity area by transferring to another route) but in practise that hasn't worked for several years.

So, by increasing the running time for "one route", you've actually affected 9. In the 1990s, interlining was heralded as a way to reduce the need to transfer from one bus to another for most travellers. Now, it has put us into a situation where altering anything about the transit system throws the entire thing into disarray. Route 7 was given a small extension and increased daytime running time from 30 minutes to 45 minutes to fit it in; it had to be completely severed from route 2/12, it could no longer interline with that route.

Oh, my bad. The map showed the routes as different colours, so I never noticed that interlining/branching.

3+3J+3N, that's 75 minutes long. When there is such a long route like that, it is no wonder the buses get behind schedule, especially during rush hour (there is rush hour in Thunder Bay, right?). For example, if there is a delay for 3, then 3A/3C/3J/3N will also get delayed, and vice versa.

Longer bus routes are more unreliable. And if there is no scheduled layover, then that's like a 18 hour long route (or however long the route is in service).

3/A/C/J/N should probably be split up (and scheduled some layover time in the process). Route 1 Mainline is also excessively long. If it's all about coordinating arrival/departures downtown, why bother with interlining there at all, especially if it makes the buses unreliable and screws up coordination? If 3/A/C/J/N is behind schedule, that's screwing up coordination anyways.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Doady

Yeah, run times aren't fixed, they fluctuate based on the time of day and even the direction. If one direction of a route is slower than the other at a certain time, then the schedule just needs to account for that. If the route is 15 minutes long leaving downtown and 25 minutes long going toward downtown, then just make those trips 15 and 25 minutes long, and that's still 40 minutes total.

The problem with that in Thunder Bay is our polycentric layout. There are only a few streets that see heavier traffic in one direction at rush hour. Most streets, especially the ones with the most crowded buses, have the same passenger load in either direction.

Originally Posted by Doady

Oh, my bad. The map showed the routes as different colours, so I never noticed that interlining/branching.

They just changed that a few months ago, they used to be all orange.

Originally Posted by Doady

3+3J+3N, that's 75 minutes long.

3/A/J and 3/C/N are both 120 minutes long. The route starts at one of six locations; the letter branches are each 45 minutes in and out, and they're connected by a 30 minute trip across town on route 3. The entire loop, from point A to point A again, is 195 minutes.

Originally Posted by Doady

When there is such a long route like that, it is no wonder the buses get behind schedule, especially during rush hour (there is rush hour in Thunder Bay, right?). For example, if there is a delay for 3, then 3A/3C/3J/3N will also get delayed, and vice versa.

Bus breakdowns are also a serious issue, a bus breakdown on the north side of town could impact service across the entire city. Toronto tried a similar interlining system with its subway in the past and it was a disaster. We are dealing with a similar situation here.

In theory it isn't a bad idea, and with layover times there is no reason you can't use the same bus to run a different route once it reaches it terminus, but we don't really have layovers.

Originally Posted by Doady

3/A/C/J/N should probably be split up (and scheduled some layover time in the process). Route 1 Mainline is also excessively long.

Route 1 Mainline is longer than any bus route in New York City.

Originally Posted by Doady

If it's all about coordinating arrival/departures downtown, why bother with interlining there at all, especially if it makes the buses unreliable and screws up coordination? If 3/A/C/J/N is behind schedule, that's screwing up coordination anyways.

It wasn't always like this, the system used to work. That's why it's being rebuilt.

I think they may be planning on stopping the interlining between buses. They've already reduced the amount of interlining between route 8 and 9 at the mall, and separated route 7 from 2 during the day, so I think we'll eventually see the suburban branches of the Memorial route separated eventually as well.

It was kind of odd that more than half of our bus routes had the same name and number. Also, they use only two destinations for the entire route, so a bus in County Park will say 3 Memorial Northwood almost an hour before it actually gets to Northwood. It doesn't say it goes downtown or to the mall. Route 9 Junot-Intercity takes longer to get to Intercity than routes 1 and 3 because it goes through the suburbs first, but it makes no mention of that in its name.

[Jacob]

In Windsor, the major problem with our transit system is that it just takes SOOO LOOONG to get anywhere. The major crosstown routes are on streets with incredulously high numbers of stops and frequent stop lights; I don't understand how people use these routes for commuting. I do like that the 1C and 2 come every 15 minutes, which is being changed to 10 in the fall because they get very full at peak travel times. A few express buses mixed in there would be really nice.

[vid]

Winnipeg has a good express bus system, where regular routes connecting downtown and a suburb often have an express equivalent during rush hour that will serve the neighbourhood with local service, then go straight downtown stopping only at transfer points and employment nodes. They also have the BRT, which is a small line but effectively by-passes a busy street and reduces travel time to the university and southern suburbs.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by vid

The problem with that in Thunder Bay is our polycentric layout. There are only a few streets that see heavier traffic in one direction at rush hour. Most streets, especially the ones with the most crowded buses, have the same passenger load in either direction.

I was just responding to your example of ingoing and outgoing buses on a certain route having different speed at certain time. I wasn't saying Thunder Bay should do that all routes, I'm not familiar with the system or the city.

Originally Posted by vid

3/A/J and 3/C/N are both 120 minutes long. The route starts at one of six locations; the letter branches are each 45 minutes in and out, and they're connected by a 30 minute trip across town on route 3. The entire loop, from point A to point A again, is 195 minutes.

The branches are 45 minute round trips, while the 3 is 60 minute round trip. 45+60+45 = 150 minutes round trip, or 75 minutes in each direction.

Originally Posted by vid

Bus breakdowns are also a serious issue, a bus breakdown on the north side of town could impact service across the entire city. Toronto tried a similar interlining system with its subway in the past and it was a disaster. We are dealing with a similar situation here.

Subway have their own ROW so they don't have as much problem being longer since they are less prone to delays. But even subways have limits I guess. I actually don't remember anything about this Toronto subway interlining experiment at the moment, seems vaguely familiar.

Originally Posted by vid

It wasn't always like this, the system used to work. That's why it's being rebuilt.

Yes, I remember seeing a map of the proposed system somewhere here before (before I made this thread).

Originally Posted by vid

It was kind of odd that more than half of our bus routes had the same name and number. Also, they use only two destinations for the entire route, so a bus in County Park will say 3 Memorial Northwood almost an hour before it actually gets to Northwood. It doesn't say it goes downtown or to the mall. Route 9 Junot-Intercity takes longer to get to Intercity than routes 1 and 3 because it goes through the suburbs first, but it makes no mention of that in its name.

Thunder Bay's system is kind of confusing for me. Maybe it should be easier to understand (like the numbering of the routes and stuff).

Buses here also display final destination regardless of how long it takes gets there (plus sometimes a major stop inbetween). I think saying the final destination helps to indicate the direction, which can useful even if riders are not going there (and the direction itself is also displayed on the sign)