ShonTron
Moderator
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.
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.
