Guelph Transit Update (and it's much better)

[ShonTron]

Cross-posted to Spacing Wire:

Guelph Transit changes in September will inconvenience most transit riders. For years, Guelph Transit has run a simple radial bus system that was easy to use. Buses run every 30 minutes, all day, every day, until 11PM Monday-Saturday and 8PM Sunday, and all buses would meet downtown, making transfers easy. Bus stop signs along the route simply say the times past the hour the bus would arrive. Recent changes included running a perimeter route that complemented the radial system and improvements to the major transit draw of the University of Guelph.

But urban sprawl on the edges of Guelph (which grew by 8.3% to a population of 115,000 between 2001 and 2006) and increased traffic has made it harder to provide schedule adherence and guarantee the connections at the Downtown Guelph hub at St. George’s Square. Bus routes are extended to serve new subdivisions, and more traffic lights and traffic contribute to the problem.As Guelph sees it, the solution is to cut service levels to every 40 minutes when ridership is the greatest – in the morning rush hour, and from 1PM to 7PM.

In an article in a local paper, Guelph Transit is partly justifying the changes in order to not rush some passengers: "Our aging and disabled population often feel stressed and hurried to embark, disembark or make their transfer to a connecting bus."

Guelph Transit says that decreasing service will improve the ability of elderly and disabled persons to use transit. But reports of overcrowding on some routes and the confusion caused by moving a way from a simple scheduling system that varies by the time of day are counter-arguments to this explanation.

A large portion of Guelph Transit’s ridership is made up of students who attend University of Guelph, the local Conestoga College campus and area high schools. Guelph offers frequent services (15 minutes or better) between downtown and the university. But reducing service to all the other routes that feed into the university will diminish the overall network and could result in long waits at the downtown transfer point.

There are solutions. Back in 2005, Guelph ran an experimental 15-minute service on most routes in the peak period to boost ridership. Therefore one idea would be to run buses every 20 minutes instead of every 30 minutes at peak periods, addressing increased travel times as well as actually providing more service in the peak. More complex solutions would be to reconfigure the route structure from a radial to a grid system, or separate some of the longer routes into more manageable circuits. Yet another would be to run buses in outer areas into secondary hubs. But the easiest and cheapest solution for the City is being taken.

 

[doady]

The article is misleading: from what I understand, no service is actually going to be taken away. The amount of buses on each route stays the same but the frequencies are decreasing because bus routes are taking longer to complete.

It would be easier for Guelph Transit to maintain current frequencies if they combine or interline certain routes, so that they can just add one bus for 2 routes instead of adding one bus for each route, which is just too much extra buses. Switching to a grid system or creating secondary hubs is not necessary and are probably bad ideas anyways since Guelph is too small.

 

[ShonTron]

The article is misleading: from what I understand, no service is actually going to be taken away

I strongly disagree - it is effectively a service decrease. Once you get below 30 minutes, I think local transit starts to quickly decline towards uselessness for many people.

Peterborough and Cornwall (both smaller than Guelph) did the same thing switching from 30 to 40 minute service - it's the easy way out of a more complex problem requiring a smarter solution, though interlining is a good idea.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Once you get below 30 minutes, I think local transit starts to quickly decline towards uselessness for many people.

Not if the buses run like clockwork at 30 minute intervals...20 minute frequency is much worse and more useless than 30 minutes if the buses are unreliable. Are Guelph's buses reliable, can they stick to the schedule, etc.?

 

[ShonTron]

It's going from 30 to 40 minutes in the peak periods, not from 20 to 30.

I think the schedule was reliable enough until recently, where some routes (but certainly not all) were having some trouble arriving at the downtown point on time, especially as the bus routes continue to be extended to serve more and more sprawl on the fringes.

 

[doady]

Yeah that isn't good. I thought it was just some routes.

MT has had a lot of this problem too. For example, weekday service on 39 Britannia was recently reduced from 30 minutes to 34 minutes, and 42 Derry saw rush hour frequency decrease from 20 minutes to 22 minutes and Saturday frequency decrease from 45 minutes to 48 minutes.

In these cases, higher ridership and overcrowding are the main cause for the delays and reduced frequencies, not sprawl.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Travel time variations and dodgy connections may suck, but people will tend to put up with that if it comes in the middle or at the end of their trip...reliablility matters most at the beginning of trips. Can John and Jane step out of their house to catch the 11:30 bus without daily panicking? Will they be standing in the rain like idiots for some random duration between 1 and 40 minutes? The farther out towards the end of a line they are, the more reliable (theoretically, if they're sticking even remotely to the schedule) the first part of their trip should be...I guess that's one perverted benefit of living out in sprawl.

 

[ShonTron]

MT is terrible for cutting back service to stupid, non clock-face frequencies (try planning a trip transferring from a bus that comes every 22 minutes to one that runs every 38) for "schedule adjustments" (which is the euthanism MT uses these days).

BT made the same boneheaded mistakes with several routes in 2005, but actually reversed some of these, partly by reconfiguring routes to make them work better, or by adding a bus or two. Though even there, there are routes that run either every 40 or 45 minutes (good luck if you rely on a transfer between them!).

A proper transit system should have logical headways that are divisible - 60, 40 (or 45, but not both), 30, 20, 15, 12, 10 (and below 10, it doesn't matter).

 

[doady]

I don't think that transferring from a 15 minute route to a 20 minute route is really that easy either. Officially, a bus might come every 20 minutes but it is never exact, especially for MT with all its overcrowding problems. To make headways "logical" for MT, either too many buses would have to added and taken away, or service just decreased, and I don't they can afford to do either.

Guelph is also trying to make transfers as easy as possible and with logical headways but i think their solution will probably just make the reliability problems worse.

 

[ShonTron]

Looks like Guelph has fixed its mess, 10 months later. The result is better service.

Guelph Transit improvements

 

[urbanfan89]

Now if only they can introduce service to KW region, it will be pretty good.

 

[RoyalJames]

Effective September 3, 2017, Guelph Transit schedules, routes and stops will be changing. Guelph Transit have created new schedules to put buses in areas in the city where they are needed, and to help keep them on schedule. They have renumbered and renamed routes to reduce confusion. They will add routes, make changes to several existing routes, add new bus stops, and remove bus stops that were not being used very often.

Full Details here: http://guelph.ca/2017/03/guelph-transit-service-changes-effective-september-3-2017/

 

[RoyalJames]

This week’s surprise announcement of proposed Guelph Transit changes that would vary bus frequencies depending on the route, as well as creating five new routes and altering most bus routes in some way, appears to be a rather bold gamble at city hall.

Guelph Transit has been scrambling since January 2012, when it introduced a combination of new routes and new bus frequencies that left a lot of riders unhappy.

It has gone through two general managers since then, with a third, Mike Spicer, having occupied the post only since November. Statistics on Gueph Transit’s share of overall trips in the city, presented to council last month, indicate its share has been headed downward.


As well, all aspects of Guelph Transit are to be scrutinized starting this fall through a full service review at city hall. And the bus system also continues to be a political football at city budget time each year — in December, council voted 7-5 to save money by cutting peak-period bus frequencies again this summer, for four month starting in early May.

Against this challenging backdrop, we can only wish Guelph Transit the best of luck as it tries again to right the ship.

Source: Guelph Tribune

 

[wolfewood]

As a former Guelphite, the move towards more grid-based routes is definitely nice to see. That said, the real answer to Guelph Transit's issues is so incredibly simple - increase frequencies beyond 20 minutes on routes that aren't just university bound. That will never happen with the vocal anti-tax crowd in Guelph and on council who can't countenance voting for an increase in taxes beyond the absolute bare minimum necessary to keep the city from falling apart. So instead everyone will bitch and moan about how terrible Guelph Transit is, blow money on countless studies to find "efficiencies" and stick their heads in the sand whenever "taxes" is offered as a solution.

It's incredibly frustrating to look back at Guelph and its local politics because I do think the city has a ton of potential which is wasted on these lazy, provincial councillors who are content to let the city continue its slow slide into a bedroom community of Toronto and KW-Cambridge.

 

[steveintoronto]

As a former Guelphite, the move towards more grid-based routes is definitely nice to see.

Couldn't agree more on all of your points. That they've gone through two transit managers in the last few years is indicative of a chronic problem, through at least two administrations leaning in opposite directions. It's not even the political bent in Guelph (which is a discussion in itself, the New City Hall still being the open-sore elephant in the room, not to mention their chronic worship of the saviour "new library" when what they have is perfectly fine...it's the *mindset" of Guelph. When I first arrived, and was trying to get my 'thumb on the pulse' I had a number of informed persons state" "This is the largest hamlet you'll ever live in". Another who became a good friend stated: "This is Middle-Earth"....which also encompassed the positive aspects of Guelph.

But the buses? Ohhhhh....When they finally adopt the "spine" concept, which they now claim for September (we'll see, this concept goes back through two managers, the last one Meagher, being excellent but frustrated) they might actually make it easier to get around the place.

What hasn't served them well, and against the protestations of only one Councillor, Bell, was the vast amount of money piled into "Guelph Central" which impedes the rational flow of transit in the City, and replaced a perfectly functional, albeit drab Gray Coach terminal. Guelph has a serious managerial record for infrastructure.

Excellent for Yoga and frat parties though.