🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <johansen-0605961240360001@d183.portal.ca>, johansen@portal.ca (George Johansen) writes:
 
-> The *major* influx of passengers comes off the Swartz Bay arrivals.  The
-> off-season 640's meet those, and on-season the 404 is extended to the
-> ferry.  In addition, overload busses are provided on Fridays and Sundays
-> during the "on" season.  During heavy traffic, a supervisor is on scene to
-> ensure that meets are met and more service is made available whne
-> necessary.  Also, there is the downtown to downtown service provided by
-> PCL I believe.  It picks up at transfer points on Cambie Street for the
-> ferry.

The ferry-to-bus connections at Tsawassan are not very reliable.  I've lost
count of the number of times I've had to wait half-an-hour or more for
a BC Transit bus.  I've also had problems with the 601s leaving the Ladner
Exchange before the 640 arrives! although this doesn't happen as often
now as it did a few years ago.  The PCL service is not really a good alternative
to BC Transit servec.  First, PCL is considerably more expensive.  Second,
it doesn't connect well to the sub-urban BC Transit routes.  Third, you have
to buy your ticket on the ferry and there are only a limited number of seats
avaliable.  Fourth, PCL doesn't run on all the ferries (although that might
have changed since I last tried to catch a PCL bus on a ferry).  A ferry-to-downtown
with proper connexions to the sub-urban and city routes would probably be
heavily used.

 
-> > Universities:  Transit to UBC and SFU is mediocre, but nowhere near 
-> > acceptable.  
  
-> > 2) Ensure that the buses show up!  Countless times has a bus run been 
-> > cancelled and many people just left standing at the bus stop wondering 
-> > when their bus will every come.  The #49 bus is famous for this.
 
-> No problem.  Simply make sure that each bus is duplicated "just in case"
-> to allow for mechanical failure, human failure or heavy traffic problems. 
-> That way wew can pay people and invest in equipment to stand by in case
-> the scheduled service is delayed.  And if the bus does show up, the
-> standby can go home. Silly. :-(

Mechanical problems and traffic tie-ups are unpredictable and therefore
unavoidable at times, but this doesn't help the people who miss their
once-an-hour connexion because a bus didn't show up.  Some degree of
redundancy is needed to ensure that a reasonable fraction of riders get
to where they are going.  Clearly you can't have a back-up for every bus
in the system, but having a back-up at the major bus loops (Kootney, UBC,
Ladner, &c.) would help, particularly during rush hour.  I realise that
the BC Transit system is short of buses, but having busses fail to show
is one of the most annoying problems with using the transit system.  I don't
mind if I get home five or ten minutes late because the bus was stuck in traffic,
but I do mind waiting forty-five minutes and missing my connexion because
a bus never showed.

Which leads to...
 
-> > 3) GET MORE BUSES!!!!!!!!
 
-> The Ten Year Plan addresses this.

I would also add: build a working rapid transit system.  I realise that
this is a political hot potato (people would rather have roads than
busses, subways, & trains) but with-out some wort of LRT system I can't
imagine the Vancouver bus system significantly improving.
 
-> > 4) Improve university transit service on weekends.
 
-> Increase fares to pay for more service with less utilization?

This is a bit of a chicken-&-egg situation.  I tend to avoid transit on
week-ends because the transit system is cut back on week-ends.  If there
were busses running on a reasonably frequent schedule on Saturdays &
Sundays then I would use them.  As it is, waiting half-an-hour for a
bus that only goes part-way to where I want to go discourages me from
taking that bus.  Again, this is a money/political problem more than
a direct complaint against BC Transit.



 
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