TOareaFan
Superstar
^ignoring all the under 10 minute frequency routes into Brampton?....I guess just like all the GO transit users 
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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
crs1026
Superstar
Many subdivisions have sub-arterial roadways that would challenge a 40-footer but allow something tiny to pass. So you might not be able to offer service to every back street, but you cut the walking distance in half or more from the arterial road's stop.
It would be interesting to study just how close a stop has to be to one's doorstep before people lose interest in walking to it. The ideal would be that the service stops at everyone's door, but as you point out that might lead to some very tortuous routing. My hunch says, suburbanites aren't that hardy when it comes to walking in weather.
However, in those backstreets, and assuming that with smaller ridership there won't be that many stops to slow things down, one might allow a much closer stop spacing. On any particular run, the vehicle may blow by many stops, but there may be a balance somewhere between "stop at my driveway" and "sorry, I can't stop here, it's not an approved stop" that is close enough to "to the doorstep" - which may be a very different stop spacing than the policy on arterial roads.
(North American 9m buses still have the "cube" of a 12m bus - and the same noisy diesel engine. Buses don't have to look like that, nor do their clearances have to be that big. I'm told that the planning threshold for adding buses or routes in the 905 can be as low as 10-13 fares per hour per bus. GO's threshold I am told is even lower, because rides are longer so generate more revenue per fare. These thresholds are premised on much fuller buses on the main routes, so that the break-even point averages out. Add too many low-ridership vehicles, and the equation obviously slips into the red. Nevertheless, one doesn't (and shouldn't) demand 40 new riders before adding a run.
I also wonder whether we should be examining existing subdivisions with an eye to removing two or three properties in the interests of linking streets in a straighter line. Yes, it has an expropriation cost and a density cost....but....it can be done. How bad do we want this change?
- Paul
TOareaFan
Superstar
This idea (like, perhaps, the subdivisions you are trying to solve) is going around in circles....if the answer to "too many stops, too tortuous a route" is "ridership will be low so there won't be many stops"...then aren't we saying it will have minimal to no impact on transit use to GO stations or, in the alternative, we would need a simply massive amount of these mini buses darting in and out of many subdivisions but not covering too many streets at a time to have any impact at all.
As for how far someone in the suburbs will walk to a bus stop question....I have no idea and I am probably the wrong guy to ask (I live in the most suburban environment..ie. end of a court that backs onto a golf course.....and I walk 382m to my bus stop (which is slightly shorter than my walk from Union at the other end)....while I am not the only person making that walk, there are not hundreds of us either.
crs1026
Superstar
Pardon me if I drag this out by coming at it another way - with a case study. Here's a Google Earth view of the catchment area for the Clarkson GO station. I picked Clarkson because I don't have views on the current situation - but it has a nice big parking garage.
I hand-drew (pardon the shaky mouse) the Miway routes that connect to Clarkson GO. You will note that for the most part, the residential areas (green) don't get local services, so one has to walk to the main streets to find a bus.
There are two routes (29- blue, and 14 - red) that arguably already function as local feeder routes....but.....the rush hour headway for these is 25 minutes on one and 35 minutes on the other.
To me, this says - it's a long walk to the bus, but a nice short drive to the GO. No surprise that people avail themselves of that option. The solution has to be to bring transit closer to the doorstep.
- Paul
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Megaton327
Senior Member
Yeah, this is really a matter of relative convenience and comfort. I'll go over my own situation at Aurora GO:
Using transit, I'm very lucky to have a GO-connecting bus route that's only a 2 minute walk from my front door, however that route has an off-peak headway of 30-70 minutes. It enters the station bus loop for all 5 morning trains southbound and the middle 5 trains northbound, but provides an on-street connection requiring jaywalking during the day for connecting to buses and for the first northbound evening train, and doesn't even run for the last northbound evening train around 7:30 (if I miss the second-last train home, I can still take the last train only 35 minutes later but I guess I have to call a cab home from the station?). So, it doesn't run evenings, it operates as a dial-a-ride service Saturdays, and doesn't run at all on Sundays; we now have all-day two-way service roughly every hour and 15 minutes on weekends, and that would be inaccessible to me using local transit, I have to either park at the station or drive downtown. From my home, I have to head to the stop early to make sure I'll catch the bus in case it's early, and the sidewalks are not always plowed very well during winter, and there is no shelter at the stop. The bus takes 15-20 minutes to get from my home to the station depending on traffic, takes 20-25 minutes to get home from the station, vs. driving taking 5-10 minutes (almost always less than 10) in either direction, reliably. The bus is almost never on time at my local stop, it's sometimes early and usually 5-10 minutes late but being 15 minutes late or more on rare occasions has happened. I absolutely cannot rely on it to get me to a given train on time, so I must wake up ~30 minutes earlier and plan on taking an earlier train, so that either A) the bus is late and I can still take the next one or B) I take the earlier train and waste half an hour downtown; I cannot use it to take the last train because I could easily miss it and have to take a GO bus which could add 1.5-2 hours to my trip easily, if not more, during morning rush hour. Coming home in the evenings, the bus idles in the loop for about 10 minutes after the train has left, leaving me to stand in the cold or heat, then finally comes to the stop and sits another 5 minutes with its door open, barely providing much more heat/cooling, before finally leaving, making my homebound trip take 30-40 minutes total instead of 5-10 minutes by car.
Also, regarding whether I even take GO at all vs driving downtown, parking is full by the time the 3rd of 5 southbound trains depart in the morning; if I want to take the last 2, I can't, I have to drive instead of wake up early and take the 3rd train. Midday, some spots free up due to people returning by bus earlier than the evening trains, but not reliably--I have about a 50/50 chance of finding parking at certain hours, so I have to leave home early assuming I might have to give up and drive downtown instead; at that point, I'm much better off just driving downtown, driving downtown off-peak typically takes me 45-60 minutes vs ~1h15min parking and taking the GO bus, assuming final destination Union in each case, given the time for going to my station, finding parking, waiting for the bus, the trip down, and disembarking, vs. departing my home directly for downtown. Not to mention I'm often going somewhere other than Union, in which case driving saves me even more time vs having to walk or taking the TTC.
I love taking GO downtown, parking at the station, but even taking GO is a significant waste of time for me (not to mention that I drive an electric vehicle so I get HOV access by myself, create zero emissions, and pay very little to charge it vs gas prices, and it almost never needs maintenance). I still do it because I love trains, and pragmatically they provide me time to do work or at least read a book vs. wasted time driving, I can't read/work on the bus but it'll still less stressful not having to be responsible for driving so I prefer to do it. But, make no mistake, GO is (except rush hour train service vs driving) significantly slower and more expensive for me than driving, and if I take transit the wasted time expands rapidly to absurd levels.
For me to take local transit to GO instead of parking, in the cases where I even bother to take GO instead of drive all the way, it needs to provide faster trip times, be more reliable, depart the station coming home much sooner after I've gotten off the train instead of sitting there, be more frequent off-peak, provide frequent weekend service...it falls so far short of being practical that I can't imagine the investment required for YRT to make it work for me, and that's with me living a 2 minute walk from the bus stop.
TOareaFan
Superstar
To be clear, my position here is not (and has not been) that in all cases local transit is a convenient way to get to the GO......I have simply (or complexly, I guess) be saying we really have to look at the examples where it is very convenient and look at what impact it has on the modal share and wondering out loud if we will ever get to the point where people, in large numbers, choose transit over the car to get to the GO station. I have been using the example of the DT Brampton station because a) I am most familiar with it and b) it has multiple, comfortable, cheap, frequent and convenient transit routes feeding into it from all directions.....it is also one that is a bit parking short......yet it only manages to get to 10% transit share of the people using the station....a number which, btw, I would have guessed lower just by observation.
Northern Light
Superstar
^ignoring all the under 10 minute frequency routes into Brampton?....I guess just like all the GO transit users
I didn't ignore them.
I'm well aware of Main/Hurontario and Queen East.
However, collectively they miss a big chunk of the catchment area.
I noted that:
Brampton is somewhat better; but route 24 as a feeder is still 30m service even in peak periods; 52 is 20m more or less.
In other words only 2 routes meet a decent standard; and perhaps, btw them, service 1/3 of the potential ridership zone.
We're the other routes feeding that station at the same level; and the one or two mostly likely transfer routes likewise (say Kennedy); then I think the argument is more convincing.
Northern Light
Superstar
This!
I said much the same just a bit earlier.
Thereafter the key to getting service 'closer to home' in some areas is not one of running buses down endless cul de sacs, but rather creating additional main streets.
That's expensive.
I'm not talking six-lanes here, just one each way, but that provide a continuous link over several km in a roughly straight line.
But there is a need for a few more streets to fill out the 'suburban grid' in places.
Major streets can not be all 2km + apart.
Great Minds and all that.........
I said much the same just a bit earlier.
Thereafter the key to getting service 'closer to home' in some areas is not one of running buses down endless cul de sacs, but rather creating additional main streets.
That's expensive.
I'm not talking six-lanes here, just one each way, but that provide a continuous link over several km in a roughly straight line.
But there is a need for a few more streets to fill out the 'suburban grid' in places.
Major streets can not be all 2km + apart.
Great Minds and all that.........
TOareaFan
Superstar
routes from all 4 directions....from the west the combination of 1 and 561...from the south 502 and 2, from the north 502 and 2 and from the east 1 and 501.....pretty much all other routes in the city intersect one of those routes...the actual catchment area for this station is really not that large...to the North and west, MT Pleasant becomes a more convenient station (especially for drivers) and the south and East Bramalea does the same (since those two have less issues with parking there is actually a bias towards drivers going to those stations which should make it even easier for transit's share, on a percentage basis, to grow).
Obviously we disagree....but I think it is one of the best served stations by local transit in the system....and it captures 10% of the users.
wopchop
Building Toronto
Check out Oakville GO (see link, page 41). 57% Auto Driver Mode Share. And Oakville Transit ain't nothing to write home about. Mind you, that document is from 2013 and ridership stats from before the parking garage opened, so I'd be curious to see how that has affected things.
Curiously, this same document says that Auto Driver Mode Share for Brampton is 54%.
(For what it's worth I've questioned the accuracy of this document in the past)
TOareaFan
Superstar
First time I have seen that document......and it eases my mind and makes me wonder where those numbers in the wiki document came from? The basis for my concern was that with pretty good transit Brampton was at 10% transit and 80% car....if the car is actually 54% then transit must be significantly higher than 10%.....not what I observe at all but may just show the weakness in anecdotal/observational analysis.
denfromoakvillemilton
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The eye test isn't for everything...
wopchop
Building Toronto
Honestly, I believe that there are a lot of issues with the document and I do question many of the numbers.
One example would be Long Branch GO;
- They project 100 riders by 2031, with 50% growth from 2011.
- It has 282 parking spots with 100% utilization
- It has 38% auto driver mode share
These numbers simply do not make sense to me.
Or even Oakville
- They project 6,000 riders by 2031, with 59% growth from 2011
- 57% auto driver mode share
- 2814 parking spots with 97% utilization
So ... 2011 ridership is presumably 3540. Let's say 97% of the 2814 spots are taken .. if each car has 1 occupant (let's low ball it), that means 77% of the current ridership is from automobiles, no? Unless they are trying to say that 20% of the cars (around 562 cars) were hanging around there for more than 1 day, which as a local resident, I can say is certainly not true.
TOareaFan
Superstar
no but it would be interesting to know why the wiki page (yeah, I know it's wiki but the numbers came from somewhere) and that GO report differ so much. Is the transit share at Brampton 54% or 10%? Those are wildly different numbers.The eye test isn't for everything...
denfromoakvillemilton
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Agreed. I wonder if the different number come from Brampton Transit or the City of Brampton. Could you also show me where it says 10% percent on wiki, I cannot find it for some reason.