The future sounds computer-generated

I had noticed lately some of the new buses in St Catharines came equipped with LED boards up front for announcing stops. I thought it would be some time before they had all the buses upgraded to implement audio and visual announcements of bus stops, as mandated by the OHRC [pdf]. Either the transit commission upgraded all the buses very quickly this afternoon or they’re taking a gradual approach.

Whatever the case may be, I can tell you from personal experience that at least one bus in St Catharines now speaks and displays the name of each upcoming stop. Hooray for progress!

Even for someone with myself with decent hearing and vision, it proved to be handy because the bus was crowded and from my standing position I couldn’t really see where we were at. But I could hear it!

It could be worse

Give yourself a pat on the back, St Catharines. The fruit of some tangential googlings this evening:

St Catharines Transit, serving some 150,000 people, moves 4.6 million passengers each year.

IndyGo, the transit operator in Indianapolis, a city of 800,000 people, moves 9 million passengers each year.

Schedules up at Pen Centre

I’m pleased to report that there are full bus schedules and maps of the city posted in all the shelters at the Pen Centre.

The next-best thing to frequent buses is knowing you can retreat into the mall for 15 minutes without missing your bus.

Two is not a trend

But from now on I’m taking the train.

Man knifed in chest aboard Greyhound – Toronto Star

Frequency: An important failing in St Catharines

Why are the buses in St Catharines full of students and the elderly? Because they have a lot of free time on their hands. Steve Munro:

Frequent services attract riders simply by existing, whereas infrequent services get only those customers who can afford to make an appointment for their transit trip and suffer the impact of off-schedule service and missed connections.

It is small comfort that when non-students and non-retirees get what is likely their first experience riding modern buses in St Catharines, it will be the best service the city has ever seen – and will likely not see again for another year.

PEN CENTRE PARADE SHUTTLE
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Forget about the hassle of parking on parade day. Catch a free shuttle bus from the Pen Centre to the Pen Centre Grande Parade. Each rider will receive one ballot for a chance to win some great Pen Centre prizes!
Buses will run from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Every 10 minutes depending on traffic.)

I mean, I’m pleased they’ll be exposed to the new, clean, air-conditioned, accessible buses, but the shuttle service is three times more frequent than most other bus routes in the city.

Even I, a student with plenty of free time, don’t venture far from route 16 and its glorious 15-minute headway. I can’t imagine anyone with a job and children choosing to ride the bus if they can afford to drive.

In praise of frequent service

School’s back in session and that means two things in St Catharines.

1. A dramatic spike in the number of people charged with public urination (fine: $365).

2. The Brock-Glenridge bus returns to 15 minute service!

Nothing makes my day quite like walking to the bus stop without first consulting the schedule. There’s always a bus on the way! Not even public urination can top that high.

Improving Transit in St. Catharines (II)

The minutia of of the St. Catharines Transit Commission warranted an article in the Standard on Wednesday. The Commission has apparently underestimated the number of students riding Route 16 during rush hour, which leaves some residents waiting by the side of the road for the next bus. So now two buses will leave Brock at 4 pm when there had been only one.

Dull, I know, but there are some greater issues which I can use this article as an excuse to talk about.

First, the Commission doesn’t seem to know how many people are riding its buses. Besides anecdotal evidence from drivers or complaints from the public, how do they determine which routes have too little service? Or, more rarely, too much?

Second, Route 16 is not providing enough service, at times, along Glenridge Avenue. Route 16 is running with half the frequency as during the Brock fall/winter semester, but with far less than half the student population of the school year. If it is leaving people behind now, how does it fare under the pressure of thousands of students as well as year-round community members?

I maintain that alternatives to the main Route 16 are necessary to get people moving along Glenridge Avenue. Right now, Route 16 serves people travelling short distances quite well. Wherever you need to go, there is a bus stop nearby. At the same time, frequent stops slow the bus down and, in my experience, it is pretty rare for the bus to reach the end of the route by the scheduled arrival time.

Sending out two buses at once solves the immediate capacity problem, but I think it is a wasted opportunity.

One possibility, which I have outlined before, is the expansion of express service on Highway 406. The Brock Bullet from downtown to Brock University is an excellent start. This diverts long distance commuters off Route 16 and frees up space for people with shorter trips. Unfortunately the Bullet doesn’t run all day, so it cannot be depended on in the afternoon. Perhaps, if there is not enough demand for all day express service between downtown and Brock, an intermediate stop could be made at the Pen Centre, with the added benefit of now having an express bus to the city’s largest mall as well.

We take high gas prices for granted these days. If riding the bus didn’t take such a maddeningly long time to get places (sharing far too much personal space with strangers) I think people would be more inclined to give up some of their weekly car trips for a bus trip. Improve travel times, improve travel conditions, and ridership will follow.

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.