What makes you think that the predominant travel pattern is across Davis and then down Yonge? That certainly doesn't seem to be the case in all of the times I'm up there.
Admittedly I'm not the most familiar with the area, as I haven't visited for a few years until yesterday. What I'm saying is, in Newmarket you have a downtown area, a regional hospital, a GO station, while along the Yonge corridor there's significant population, transit connections and trip generators. And yet these two areas are separated by a transfer at Newmarket terminal even though both Viva routes have the same headways, rather than being linked seamlessly with one route. I could be wrong about the travel patterns, but after this substantial transit investment in Newmarket, we end up with a Viva Yellow that is basically just a short 7-stop shuttle between a bus terminal and a parking lot. Not surprisingly, every Viva bus I saw was either completely empty or almost, which I hope will change in the near future.
And not only that, but Blue is horribly variable/unreliable because of how long the route is. The service along Davis Dr. would be even worse because they'd only be scheduling every, say third bus - and so the headways would be even more erratic.
That's a valid point, however there are future plans to further expand Viva in Newmarket. If you say Viva Blue is too long to extend any further, then is it better to create another new Viva bus route just to service East Gwillimbury GO station?
With Yonge slated to get dedicated lanes and transit signal priority, and given that almost a billion dollars is being spent in York Region on the Viva bus network, I would hope that service reliability will improve despite the long distances that these buses are covering. The Yonge subway extension will also help, so hopefully Viva Yellow can eventually be merged with Viva Blue if travel patterns warrant this.
Just curious, is there a risk that the Spadina and Yonge subway extensions will cause Line 1 to become too long and suffer from unreliable service?
The YRT routes haven't yet been realigned and revamped to take into account the new VIVA route yet. That happens in January. Give them some time.
Good to know. I look forward to seeing what changes are coming next year.
the January changes:
http://www.yorkregiontransit.com/en/serviceupdates/Jan2016.asp
I think they are already represented in the map that was posted above? The changes note that 58 no longer goes to the Newmarket Bus Terminal, and sure enough it doesn't go that far in the map.
I boarded the 58 yesterday from Newmarket Bus Terminal, so actually it still goes there. But probably not for much longer.
