Winnipeg City Transit/Rapid Transit

[1ajs]

vid they are turned off at night...

and umm they are kinda needed try standing at a bus stop in -40.................

BTW i would prefer raidiant floor heating in the sheters more then fucking base bord heaters....

[newflyer]

Originally Posted by vid

"I think the addition of heated shelters, especailly in the downtown area is a great addition."

Yes, it's great news for the city's homeless population! A warm place to sleep AND transit service! BO-NUS!

I agree the usage of these shelters needs to be controlled for transit users and not for the desolute.

Calgary has been very effective at keeping vagrants away from the c-train platforms .. I am sure Winnipeg could be at least as effective.

[vid]

Yes, come to think of it, I've never seen a homeless person in a bus shelter. They usually camp out under the viaducts and whatnot.

I have waited in bus shelters in -40° weather before. Once for almost 20 minutes. It's not as fun as it sounds.

[1ajs]

Originally Posted by vid

Yes, come to think of it, I've never seen a homeless person in a bus shelter. They usually camp out under the viaducts and whatnot.

I have waited in bus shelters in -40° weather before. Once for almost 20 minutes. It's not as fun as it sounds.

has done it for over an hour missed the dam bus and had to get to school fuck it was cold... my feet hurt for 3 days after that....

[vid]

Well, that's why we wear boots in the winter.

[Andy6]

I used to walk 45 minutes to the University of Manitoba each morning, all winter. And that was back before Global Warming, when we thought we were entering the New Ice Age.

[vid]

Yes, back when there were no cars or buses.

[1ajs]

new ice age wtf? don't you mean january in winnipeg lol

[vid]

In the 70s, they though an ice age was coming. We'll probably be saying that again in 30 years, and then in 60 years we'll be back on global warming. It's cyclical.

[1ajs]

lol

[newflyer]

Originally Posted by vid

In the 70s, they though an ice age was coming. We'll probably be saying that again in 30 years, and then in 60 years we'll be back on global warming. It's cyclical.

Yes..... and little do we know that the dinosaurs were having the same thoughts... and then

[vid]

"I know that millions of years ago, the arctic was the tropics. How did that happen? Was it dinosaur farts? I don't know!" -Ralph Klein

[1ajs]

the poles shifted....

[j.online]

Originally Posted by newflyer

So since Katz has taken the position of mayor.. he has annouced $143 million in new spending on transit. Obviously many of you slamming him on transit spending is very misplaced. I think the addition of heated shelters, especailly in the downtown area is a great addition. I also really like the idea of having electronic arrival-time display boards at some chosen stops. Overall Winnipeg Transit is getting a big upgrade.

Your comment gets me thinking that you don't ride Winnipeg Transit on a regular basis. A successful public transit service includes 3 basic elements:
1. Reliability that the bus will be there as scheduled.
2. Frequency/Speed comparable or better than the same trip by car. (ie: to get more people/cars off the road, decrease traffic congestion, increase road life, etc, plus all that environmental & health goodness)
3. Affordability for everyone

Winnipeg Transit has a tough time offering 1 & 2 at the best of times, and #3 is about to see its biggest increase in recent memory in a few months. You can add as many fancy new signs & heated shelters, but nothing's gonna change without adding more buses & faster routes on the road. And if I remember reading this years civic budget correctly, for every articulated bus they plan on putting on the road, 3 get retired. Seems to me that the mayor's putting shiny candy on a rotting apple when it comes to public transit.

just my 2 cents.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by j.online

Your comment gets me thinking that you don't ride Winnipeg Transit on a regular basis. A successful public transit service includes 3 basic elements:
1. Reliability that the bus will be there as scheduled.
2. Frequency/Speed comparable or better than the same trip by car. (ie: to get more people/cars off the road, decrease traffic congestion, increase road life, etc, plus all that environmental & health goodness)
3. Affordability for everyone

Winnipeg Transit has a tough time offering 1 & 2 at the best of times, and #3 is about to see its biggest increase in recent memory in a few months. You can add as many fancy new signs & heated shelters, but nothing's gonna change without adding more buses & faster routes on the road. And if I remember reading this years civic budget correctly, for every articulated bus they plan on putting on the road, 3 get retired. Seems to me that the mayor's putting shiny candy on a rotting apple when it comes to public transit.

just my 2 cents.

Right, but it's not as though you're the only person who believes that transit would be more popular if buses came like clockwork every five minutes to every stop. Everyone recognizes that. The problem is where the money would come from to pay the huge cost of implementing such a plan.

[j.online]

Originally Posted by Andy6

Right, but it's not as though you're the only person who believes that transit would be more popular if buses came like clockwork every five minutes to every stop. Everyone recognizes that. The problem is where the money would come from to pay the huge cost of implementing such a plan.

just an idea: run off-peak service with mini-buses that seat only 10-15 people, rather than running a near empty large bus all evening. this alone can save huge amounts in maintenance, procurement, insurance, repair, etc.

no, this isn't an original idea of mine (stole it from similar sized eastern european cities who by this 1 act alone are now expanding their service to neighbouring towns from the increased revenue, in less that 3 years)

anyway, it's just an idea & i'm sure there are more out there. i just don't see much rejoicing in large funding announcements that really isn't gonna help me get anywhere easier or faster. although, i guess i will look a whole lot cooler in those sexy new sheds.

[Spocket]

^Actually, they do do that. In fact, they take it a step further with Dart. It's like a two-dollar cab ride as long as you aren't going very far.

Besides, it doesn't really matter what you do in Europe when it comes to public transit because the customer base is always there. In Europe public transit is always going to work. We just don't have their urban density and we're not doing much to solve that problem.

[newflyer]

Originally Posted by j.online

Your comment gets me thinking that you don't ride Winnipeg Transit on a regular basis. A successful public transit service includes 3 basic elements:
1. Reliability that the bus will be there as scheduled.
2. Frequency/Speed comparable or better than the same trip by car. (ie: to get more people/cars off the road, decrease traffic congestion, increase road life, etc, plus all that environmental & health goodness)
3. Affordability for everyone

Winnipeg Transit has a tough time offering 1 & 2 at the best of times, and #3 is about to see its biggest increase in recent memory in a few months. You can add as many fancy new signs & heated shelters, but nothing's gonna change without adding more buses & faster routes on the road. And if I remember reading this years civic budget correctly, for every articulated bus they plan on putting on the road, 3 get retired. Seems to me that the mayor's putting shiny candy on a rotting apple when it comes to public transit.

just my 2 cents.

First thing..... with a name like newflyer .. I can assure you I am a regular transit user.

Second thing ... Winnipeg transit has been in need for a major upgrade for a long time. If you want to attract more users comfort levels need to be increased.

Third thing ... this expenditure includes a budget for new buses. This will add capacity, realiabilty and frequency to the system.

Also note that Winnipeg's new daily transit rates are on par with other major city's in Canada... In fact monthly passes in Winnipeg are still a bargain and a half.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by j.online

just an idea: run off-peak service with mini-buses that seat only 10-15 people, rather than running a near empty large bus all evening. this alone can save huge amounts in maintenance, procurement, insurance, repair, etc.

Why don't they do that? Presumably there's a reason but I don't know what it is. Is there any city in Canada that uses minibuses as a part of a transit system?

Some better planning would help. For example, I grew up near the intersection of St. Mary's and Dunkirk-Dakota, where there are two buses headed downtown (14 St. Mary's and 16 Dunkirk-Osborne). They both end up downtown and usually it doesn't matter to me very much which I get. The problem is that there is no place to wait for both, even though St. Mary's-Dunkirk is the centre of a huge potential transit-riding population of elderly people and apartment-dwellers. So you either pick one or the other, or you have to stand at the corner, looking down both streets to see which bus is coming first, and then run across a busy street to whichever stop is appropriate. They are missing the opportunity to provide a lot of people with service downtown at 10-15 minute intervals (by taking either bus from a single, hopefully heated, location) and instead giving them the opportunity to stand out in the cold waiting for 25-30 minutes for one of the two buses, hoping that you've made the right guess about which will come first. Fixing this would require no additional resources at all, just maybe a little rerouting and planning. But it's been the same way ever since the 16 bus was first established back in the late 70s and it will never change.

I wonder if they would do well to invest in some indoor subway-station like bus stations, with seating and kiosks, in maybe 8-10 places around the city, at "hub" locations such as Dunkirk-St. Mary's (places where there are lots of high-rise apartments and seniors' residences). To most people, it's not really what happens on the bus, or even the condition of the bus, that is the turn-off. It's the waiting for the bus part that's the problem.

[Reed Solomon]

1) I hate those goddamn yellow strips. I saw someone once wrote some graffiti on them once "IQ Test" Which was very accurate, but still, I hate them and it just doesn't work. The busses with the button to open that door also suck, takes too long to open the door.

2) If I'm taking a bus, inevitably the bus I want to transfer to has just passed, and that wouldn't be so bad if the next bus was coming soon, but the next bus is never the one I need. 18 North Main is the worst for this. You get a Jefferson when you want a Riverbend and a Riverbend when you want a Jefferson. This is how it always goes. Leilas barely run at all. Plus busses do not make use of bridges. the 90 Chief Peguis Trail bus? You'd think, hey, it goes across the chief peguis trail.. but no, you'd be wrong. Only the 77 goes across that bridge. Useless.

3) Bus Shelters that stink.. Yes, perhaps not "Homeless" people, but panhandlers and drunks use the bus shelters and they stink. The metal benches are almost always disgusting and I doubt they get cleaned in the winter. And the old bus shelters weren't warm, maybe the new ones will be, but I highly doubt it. Perhaps make it so that bus shelters need a magnetic swipe card type deal to get in. This will keep smelly drunks out because smelly drunks, even if they got a card, always lose things because they're drunk.

4) Busses that stink. Stinky people should not be allowed on the bus. The bus driver should be able to say "Buddy, you stink." or have a "stink bus" that comes and picks up the stinky person and take them somewhere where they can be hosed down. Whats worse is these stinky people never pay to get on the bus. They always hold the bus back because they try to bargain with the bus driver that they have no money which they obviously spent on booze, and they always get on the bus, and they always stink it up, and they 90% of the time ask for a free transfer on top of everything because they dont want to go through the rigamarole of asking the next bus driver for a free ride as well.

5) I hate those metal benches at the bus shelter, but whats worse is bus stops without a bench. Can't they throw a regular wooden bench inside the shelter? geez.