Bicycle racks coming to a bus near you

The Mayor wants to see bike racks on St Catharines buses. Now that the new models are out and the whole rack-bus combination will fit in the city’s bus wash (yes, that is what was holding it back), we could actually be seeing these quite soon.

Even as a sometimes-bicycler and an obligate transit rider, bicycling to the bus stop and taking my bike with me seems like an awfully cumbersome way to get around. Granted, it is better than locking up my bicycle at the bus stop, but the size of St Catharines and the nature of the bus network means it would probably be easier to either just walk to the bus or bike all the way to my destination.

But why worry about practicality? I’m still cool with bike racks on buses. Innovative-yet-slightly-cumbersome works for the iPhone, and the kind of people who use iPhones are the kind of people St Catharines needs to attract.

Plus, the last time St Catharines was in the news, it was declared Canada’s Fattest City, so every little bit of good PR and exercise helps.

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Can I also say, for a city in our sorry state, we have some excellent people at City Hall. For one thing, the fact that the mayor gets away with stuff like this without the suburbs calling for his head either means he is some kind of magician or the people of North St Catharines are less Stepfordish than I thought.

And here’s a kicker of a quote from the bike rack article (emphasis mine):

City staff have said all street parking will be banned where there are bike lanes.

A survey of residents in the affected areas showed some want street parking for visitors and holiday gatherings, and Dodge said some of them want a chance to tell council about their concerns.

Jacobson’s report says he understands the residents’ concerns about parking, but streets are for moving people, not for storing cars, and homeowners shouldn’t expect parking to be a right.

(photo credit)

Eavesdropping on GO Transit

Some radio enthusiasts have heard GO people testing their equipment in Niagara Region. Specifically, along the QEW and rail line to Niagara Falls.

Could this be preliminary work for the much-anticipated and frequently-delayed expansion of service to Niagara?

I’m excited, but also afraid they’re setting me up for more disappointment.

A Modest Proposal

Off the top of my head, there are a couple good reasons for bringing GO Transit from Toronto to the Niagara Region.

1. Hitching low-growth urban centres like St. Catharines to Toronto and Hamilton without paving over all the farms in between.
2. Bringing tourists and their precious dollars quickly and cheaply from Pearson to Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

But at the same time, there aren’t hordes of people clamoring to commute to Toronto every morning. There might be after the service is implemented, but the first months to years might be slow. People have to see the connection as reliable and bearable enough to change jobs or changes modes of transport, and that’s not something most people take lightly.

Rather than pegging our GO hopes on a bus to Hamilton, work on which is moves glacially at the best of times, Niagara Region and the province should negotiate GO service throughout the region. There’s no reason GO Transit must remain a Toronto-centric service.

Right now, city-to-city transit in Niagara Region is just a collection of one-off deals for each route. So, for example, St. Catharines runs a bus to Niagara College in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and both Welland and Niagara Falls runs a bus each to Brock University in St. Catharines.

It has been suggested that the region develop an integrated transit system, but this was met with resistance. Integrated transit would make travel across the Region simpler for passengers, but setting one up from scratch would require expertise and capital that the Region doesn’t have.

So why not ask for GO buses to run between Niagara’s cities? We are just as much a part of Ontario as the GTA. Affordable, reliable service between cities grants mobility to the less affluent and the environmentally conscious.

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I can’t finish this thought because the radio is distracting me, but I’m going to publish anyway because I think I’ve made my point.

Improving Transit in St. Catharines

It took 45 minutes to cross the city south to north a couple days ago, and the buses were running on time. That’s 20 minutes from Brock University to the downtown terminal on the 16, a few minutes waiting for the next bus, and another 20 minutes to get to Port Dalhousie on the 1.

The entire journey, by car, should take 15 minutes.

I had quite a bit of time to think about transit in this city:

1. Express Routes

St. Catharines Transit already operates an express bus, the Brock Bullet, between the university and downtown, but only until 10 am. This is a good start, but if the parking lot at Brock is a good measure of how many students are in class, the real crowds are between noon and 5 pm. Service needs to be extended to the entire business day. Not only does this benefit people travelling between downtown and the university, but it would relieve some of the pressure on route 16.

Highway 406 has never, in my memory, been congested. It is like a bus rapid transitway without buses.  $259 million is being spent to build a busway through Mississauga. We have one already built between Brock University, the Pen Centre, downtown, and the new development in west St. Catharines. But we aren’t using it.

2. Direct Routes Around the Periphery

The city’s west end is poorly served by transit. It is an area of recent and continuing suburban growth, but the routes are mostly antiquated. The 15, which connects west St. Catharines to downtown and the Pen Centre, has a long and convoluted route that seems to fold in on itself. Sure, most residences are within walking distance of a bus stop, but it makes for an interminably long ride up and down suburban streets to get somewhere that is five minutes away by car.

The 3 is similarly loopy and connects the downtown terminal with the west end and a new shopping centre on Fourth Avenue anchored by Wal-mart. There is no direct route between the Pen Centre and the Wal-Mart. It is nice that transfers are quick and mostly sheltered from the elements at the downtown, but it would be nicer if there were no transfer at all.

Another problem in the west end is a small section of Louth Street at Wal-mart on which no bus runs. It is not possible to travel the entire length of Martindale and Louth, which are essentially one street, from west St. Catharines to Port Dalhousie. You have to take two buses and transfer downtown.

Maybe nobody wants to travel directly between these two destinations. But without the service, they have no option. There should at least be a transfer point between routes 1 and 15 besides the downtown terminal. People on route 1 have to cross a road and enormous parking lot to get to the shopping centre anyway, so why not bring that bus into the Wal-mart loop?

Although I don’t have personal experience with it, I can see from the service map that there is a similar detour and transfer on the east side of the city between Thorold and Port Weller.

3. Frequencies of 15 Minutes or Less

I understand St. Catharines is not a big, dense city. Some bus routes are probably barely economical running hourly. Many routes, however, are a different story.

According to a study of Mid-Size City Transit in Canada which included St. Catharines, ridership by Brock University students increased 200% with the introduction of a mandatory U-Pass for students in 2004. The routes serving Brock, the Pen Centre, and downtown are apparently the most frequented in the city.

I can say from experience that the bus from downtown to Brock packs people in like sardines at peak hours. Sometimes the bus is so full the driver refuses to pick up people waiting at stops. Usually another bus is sent out to pick up people who were missed on the first pass, but wouldn’t it be better to simply schedule more buses? The service on this route is already the most frequent in the city at 15 minute intervals. I would like to know I can count on another bus coming in, say, 10 minutes than have to cross my fingers and make a wish.

The 122 between the Pen Center and Brock is equally crowded, but it only runs every 30 minutes. It mirrors a section of route 4, but instead of staggering the arrivals of these two buses to create a de facto 15 minute frequency, we get two buses arriving every half hour.

Besides the increased capacity that comes with increased frequency, reliably short wait times for buses can create demand. Maybe more people would ride the bus on Sundays and evenings if service weren’t reduced. When a bus comes every ten minutes, it is more competitive with a automobiles. You won’t get people out of their cars with hourly service, because riding an hourly bus means everything you do revolves around the bus schedule. You are constantly checking your watch, because missing the bus means being an hour late or paying an expensive cab fare.

According to this article, service improvements are on the way… over the next five or six years. I wonder what will be here first: a second bus route with 15-minute service, or GO Transit?

[photo] “Welland Bus Line” by sigma.