A tale of fickle, elusive Transit

Update 27/5: Good news! GRT is reinstating the Weber/Guelph stop to serve the midtown area and it will be back up by mid-next week. The Weber/Union stop will remain closed, as it sees additional service from route 8, and was less used than Weber/Guelph. It was also only about 500m away.

There is concern about keeping the 200 on schedule, but it's encouraging to see responsiveness from GRT on this! I guess there was more than one crotchety blogger on the phone with them after all. For those of you who provided feedback about how you were affected, thank you.

Maybe I need to change the ending to this fairy tale...

 



nce upon a time, there was a happy central neighbourhood called Mount Hope. In Mount Hope, being very central (directly between two great cities), Transit was present and available, as you might expect. Some residents in the neighbourhood chose to live there because of this, as they could travel the great Central Corridor through the Cities without needing a Car. 
 
But one day, the Great Road Eating Rail Monster came, and Transit ran far away. And the people of Mount Hope were sad.

A little later, just as sad people in Mount Hope were trying to figure out how to live without Transit (likely by buying Cars to drive the few roads not being eaten), Transit came back again! In a different place, but still reachable to the residents of Mount Hope, and they breathed a great sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, it was not to be for long. One day just a few months later, Transit went away again. The Central Corridor buses were to drive by, with strict orders to not stop for the poor people of Mount Hope. In its place, a different bus would come every now and then, once in a while on Saturdays and never at all on Sundays, and it would take people where it went, which was usually not where they wanted to go. And it would take people when it showed up, which was often not when people needed it, because it only came every now and then, only once in a while on Saturdays and never-- it was decreed, never! on Sundays. This was called "Transit", but the people of Mount Hope were not fooled.

But they were once again sad-- not to mention, confused-- and they started browsing new car ads on the Internet because who can trust Transit that comes and goes? The Great Road Eating Rail Monster would eventually leave, having birthed a beautiful Train. But that Train would see fewer riders, because the people of Mount Hope were all driving the Cars they had to buy to get around while the Monster raged and Transit had proven too fickle and elusive to rely on.

The End.

... OK, so, not a great fairy tale. Let me explain. Once, Mount Hope had good access to transit, as the fairy tell told.

And then:

• The 4, marginally useful at the best of times, was rerouted to cover the cancelled 18.
• When the 200 iXpress detoured over to Weber because of ION construction, it didn't stop anywhere in between uptown and downtown, leaving a lot of riders in the lurch. 
• Simultaneously, route 7 shifted over to Park St., which was great for the Belmont neighbourhood.
• Simultaneously, the low-frequency route 6 turned off Wellington at Weber.
• The Mount Hope neighbourhood has been left high and dry, with only the very occasional route 4, which is a milk run bus with limited service (and no Sunday service.)

But then, the 4 needed to be detoured as well! So to infill the 4 on Weber, GRT added stops for 200 iXpress (which runs every 10-15 minutes and has good Saturday and Sunday service) at Weber/Union and Weber/Guelph.

This gave back good transit access to the Mount Hope neighbourhood.

Now that the 4 is returned to its normal route, the 200 no longer stops at these locations. This is despite the fact it drives right by them, every 10-15 minutes.

The result is awful:

In fact, 200 iXpress travels for an astounding 3.5 km without stopping even once. From the north end of Uptown, all the way to King/Victoria. Certainly, Mount Hope isn't the only area affected by this-- Mary/Allen is, as is anyone in the Midtown area relying on the 200 to get them to points south of Fairview.

But with all these changes put together, the Mount Hope neighbourhood is once again left like an island without transit, unless you count the occasional lonely route 4 bus. And very few people will count this for anything. Frequency matters, and routing matters. GRT has ignored these things when deciding the 200's detour.

In 2015, GRT saw transit ridership fall for the second year in a row. Even accounting for changes to school student busing, and even with new service being added, GRT ridership still fell.

The problem with Mount Hope is just part of a larger issue affecting ridership, and that is the chaos and disruption of ION construction. But unlike a lot of the other aspects of this problem, this one can be solved easily and locally. In fact, the solution was already in place. All we have to do is return to it.

All we have to do is reintroduce stops at Weber/Guelph and Weber/Union for 200 iXpress.

GRT, are you listening?

The art and science of transit stop placement

Man, it's been a while since my last post! I've been busy with the Active Transportation Advisory Committee, still working a little with TriTAG, but mostly taking care of real life. But the march of progress brings new lessons and observations. I have a few things to post about now, but I'll start with what is freshest on my mind.

And that is: we're seeing new transit routes being created, and we're making some mistakes with transit stop spacing and placement. But there's confusion about why they're mistakes. Mistakes are being made because we're treating the entire region with the same standard, without considering that parts of our region, the cores, have more potential riders and potential destinations.  

Our system will benefit more from more closely spaced stops at strategic locations within these dense urban areas than from assuming one central stop can serve an entire core, or that one standard can serve an entire region.

Some background:

The new 204, and Queen St.

 

Regional Council's Planning & Works committee heard from a few delegations on Tuesday about the upcoming GRT improvements. There are concerns about rationalizing existing routes with the introduction of a new iXpress route. But there was also a vocal debate about that new 204 iXpress (travelling along Highland to Queen, through downtown, and out east along Victoria.) In particular, about its stop placement.

 A couple of residents of the Bread and Roses coop at Queen and Courtland took issue with the (apparent) stop placement at Queen and Mill, instead of what looked more logical to them, Queen and Courtland, where there are almost a thousand housing units just in the nearby major buildings alone.

In fact, it got even messier when it was revealed that the "GRT stops" at Queen/Highland and Queen/Mill were actually both 1-way stops, separated by a few hundred metres, a situation which serves nobody well.

In response, staff and some councillors argued that this area is well served by other routes and by the planned stop at Charles St. terminal. But that misses the point that the 204's potential is being undermined.

First, let's talk about GRT's defined goals.

Stop coverage

 

GRT stops are defined to have a 450m effective radius, for calculating what parts of the city are covered by transit. ION LRT stops will have a larger effective radius, on the logic that people will walk further for better service. GRT's "iXpress" stops are also intended to have a larger spacing than regular routes, so that the buses can move faster.

These standards are important because they give GRT and the region an objective measure they can use for planning, and some defense against the reality that quality of service is uneven, and changes will always make some people unhappy. GRT works very hard to make sure routes and stop placements are sensible. Coverage standard is not the only tool in their toolbox, but it's a big one.

The problem is, it's only a tool, and it won't maximize the benefit or performance of transit. And being bombarded by people complaining about the removal, the moving, or even the placement of a route or a stop, planners are still missing important information amongst the noise.

The 204 stop placement issue reveals this. An objectively strong argument is made for putting the stop here rather than there. Region staff and councillors seem ready to dig their heels in against this argument.

What do they need to consider?

Trip Generation?

 

Transit stop placement needs to consider the potential for trip generation. And this analysis is already being done. In the example above, there is clear potential for trip generation at Queen/Courtland, but the location is being discarded because it fails other tests: coverage overlap with the terminal, for one. Route overlap too, which is really coverage again because the coverage question isn't where do you want to go, but can you get to anywhere at all.

Our downtown cores are big trip generators. Transit is most attractive when it stops close to a potential rider or their destination. Adding stops closer together within a downtown makes transit more attractive to a lot of people.

Modal Shift?

 

A delegate made a strong point about the many current car users who live in the immediate vicinity of Queen and Courtland, and how strong transit presence and convenient stop placement in that location will have a big bottom-line effect on the region's efforts to increase the modal share of travel by transit.

This point is so far unaddressed by Region staff, who largely see the location as sufficiently well served by transit without assessing the quality of that transit versus the trip generation potential of that location.

Again, to satisfy the coverage goal, it doesn't matter where you can get to, or how frequently, as long as a bus going anywhere shows up nearby at some point. This is the reality for much of the region's suburban areas which are hard to serve with transit. It is a poor defense for a major urban node.

If the region can provide quality, frequent, convenient iXpress transit service to a large number of current drivers and potential riders, the potential for ridership increase may outweigh the incremental impact of an additional stop.

Travel within downtown?

 

The potential for transit use within a downtown core, in particular Kitchener's quite substantial downtown, is being completely missed in this discussion. By assuming all transit users will gravitate to a central terminal, GRT is actually making it extremely difficult to cross from one end of our downtown core to the other.

The effect of this is actually turning downtown edges into transit deserts. There's so much service at the terminal that routes, especially iXpresses, don't need to stop nearby. Except that those living on the outer edge of a dense downtown are presented with a long walk, despite the fact there is much more potential for transit use there than along most of the rest of the route.

And if you want to get to the other side of downtown, you're out of luck. You could walk to the terminal, assuming you can find a bus that will stop near where you're going. Or you could try a local route that does stop frequently enough, but then pay a layover time penalty at the terminal. Or you could play transfer roulette.

If the region wants to make more of our downtowns accessible by transit users, it needs to stop assuming "one big central point" is all a downtown needs.

What about ION?

 

Despite LRT positioned as rapid transit with wide stop spacing, ION planners have, curiously, placed a higher stop frequency within the city cores of Waterloo and especially downtown Kitchener. Notably, they have added stops that its predecessor, 200 iXpress, does not have.

In Uptown, a new Allen stop joins the Waterloo Town Square pair. In downtown Kitchener, we have Victoria, Young/Gaukel, Frederick/Benton, and Cedar where only Victoria and the Charles St. terminal exist as stops today. And Victoria was added to the 200 only recently.

ION planners recognized the need to serve downtowns with multiple stops and to target destinations. Regional transit staff need to take a similar approach with iXpress.
  

Scaling stop spacing based on density

 

Density provides transit ridership through increased trip generation. Promixity to good transit service also drives ridership. Good transit service is partly driven by route speed, which is negatively affected by the number of stops along the route, so that is a major tradeoff. For most of its history, GRT has actually had too many stops on its routes, slowing down buses, raising costs and making its service less compelling.

But in attempting to deal with this problem, the region wants to treat all places the same. Stop spacing over 1km apart makes for rapid buses through our suburbia, and is an acceptable tradeoff between service quality and availability. But stop spacing at this scale within an urban core doesn't just affect downtowners, but also the potential suburban users who may head there.

We need to look at density when placing stops. We can't assume an entire downtown will be served at one central point, because there are so many potential riders who live on the edge of that dense core who transit will fail to attract, and also too many potential riders elsewhere who are destined for parts of downtown that are too far from that central point.

Every stop slows down a route, obviously. And everyone wants a bus stop on their doorstep, with a rapid trip in between. Clearly you can't add stops everywhere.

But does it make sense to treat a dense urban cluster of apartment buildings, with multiple seniors' residences and other attractions as a place with the same transit need as a suburban hinterland of single family homes on widing avenues? Can we afford to ignore the ridership potential of parts of our downtown cores presented with poor access to transit that runs right by their front doors?

Practical Outcomes

 

iXpress buses represent the bones of our new transit network as they link up with the ION spine. Like ION, they need to provide good cross-town service. Also like ION, they must serve the downtown cores well.

Instead of simplistic coverage goals, we need a metric that will balance overall access to transit with high quality service for the most people and destinations. 

For iXpress, that may mean switching to a 500m stop spacing standard within the boundaries of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge cores. There's so much to do in these places, so many attractions, and a large and growing number of people. In these places, transit should be compelling and convenient.

Remember, high density areas are high generators of both trip origins and destinations. Serve them well, and you'll get a lot more riders for your transit service dollar.

Avoid making the worst of a bad situation

 

There's an addendum here, if you're still reading this polemic.

That 204 stop at Mill? The one that turned out to be a single-direction stop with the other 300m away? This is awful. Don't do this.

Splitting stops is sometimes necessary, but always bad. Human Transit talks clearly about how split routes turn potentially useful transit into "symbolic transit", i.e. they look like good lines on a map but they don't serve anyone well. Split stops are just about as bad.

Consider the situation of St. Mary's hospital. The 204, tragically, does not serve the hospital directly (something I urged planners to consider.) But that's OK, right? There's a 204 stop 400m away at Highland. Unless you're heading the other direction, in which case it's over 700m away. You're better off taking a different bus, or a taxi.

The same goes for the hapless residents at Queen/Courtland. 350m to the "Mill" stop near the Iron Horse trail is objectively not so bad, but 650m to its companion stop at Highland is pointless: you may as well use Charles Terminal (while it's still there.)

Nobody wins with a split stop situation like this. Bad enough that it gave the impression of better coverage than was already there, an unfortunate communication gaff. It also gives the impression of useful service to a wide area, where in reality very few in the area will find the route useful. Only people who live between these two one-way stops will find them useful, and there just aren't as many of them. Certainly not as many as you'd find in around a sensible two-way stop location placed at a densely populated intersection.

Budget Pain and Bad Decisions

This is a tough year for budgeting, and the mantra must be "everybody feels the pain". While I, personally, would willingly sustain a higher tax hike to keep moving forward, many disagree. Council had to strike a balance between the two. Certain regrettable, but understandable moves have been made, like the delay of the long-awaited Spur Line trail ($3M in capital savings).

Other decisions are less understandable.

The "200 iXpress" is the kind of transit success story that is the wet dream of municipalities struggling with road expenses. It has grown in ridership from a couple of thousand a day when it launched seven years ago, to over 14,000 a day last year. Ridership has driven repeated frequency improvements, from half hour to 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and these frequency improvements in turn have driven ridership growth. It's a virtuous cycle, and a beautiful example of the critical importance of frequency in transit.

A typical busy day for iXpress

The 200 is a route that has been noted as seeing not only high peak volumes, but healthy off-peak ridership. Because many (if not most) of its buses are standing-room only for at least part of its route, it must be financially a star performer. It sees strong student ridership, obviously, but also strong "choice" ridership from people who recognize a good service and will adopt it over other alternatives.

And it serves a route that will become rail-based in less than five years. An ambitious step by the region in search of a better way for its citizens to move about.

In the face of this blistering, searing success, last night regional council voted to cool things down. For July and August, iXpress frequency will drop back from 10 minutes to 15. This move will save the average household a whopping $1.46. (estimate TriTAG)

There are two negative consequences we must consider from this move.

Virtuous to Vicious 

 

The justification for lower frequency is lower summer ridership. There lies the temptation to "optimize" the line for these months, to trim a few hundred G's from the cost of providing the service. But that justification ignores the effect of frequency on ridership. We're breaking the virtuous cycle in place, and possibly running it backwards. 

Reduced frequency will reduce ridership, because the service is not so attractive. For some, it will not be there when they need it, without looking for a schedule, and this will turn them off. This, in turn, will offer justification to further frequency reductions if you are looking for short-term cost cutting measures.

We've seen this penny-wise, pound-foolish tendency before: bus wraps.

 
The region has stated in master plans and megaprojects that it wants to not only increase transit use but multiply it. It needs to keep its eyes on this goal, but budget pressures this year have caused its attention to wander. After implementing plans that will increase household tax levies by $20 a year, why put the success of those plans at risk for the price of a Tim's medium coffee?

Capacity

 

Another justification for lower frequency has been put forward (pp.76-77):

In July and August 2012, during the midday period, iXpress trips experienced peak passenger loads greater than 35 approximately 3 times per day (4% of trips) and did not experience loads greater than 60 passengers (maximum capacity).

(...)By reducing the frequency of service from 10 minutes to 15 minutes on Route 200 iXpress during the midday in July and August, 24% of midday trips would exceed the GRT off-peak service standard of a full seated load (35 passengers). In some cases buses would leave passengers waiting for the next bus. This would occur on average twice a week (0.5% of trips).

In fact, as I understand it (from Councilor Mitchell's tweeted clarification) the approved cut was in fact all day and staff indicated that buses would leave passengers behind twice a day.

In other words, at the one point of the year where iXpress is providing enough capacity to not fail its passengers, council has decided to "optimize" service so that it provides an acceptable level of failure.

No rider left behind?

This is deeply troubling on two counts. Firstly, unreliability is one of the most costly flaws in transit, that has a disproportionate effect on turning people off using it:

One statistic in the study stands out in particular and should give transit agencies pause: More than half of the riders said they had reduced their use of public transportation specifically because of its unreliability. Most of them didn't just make fewer trips overall; rather, they switched to other modes of transportation to fill the void.

These words should freeze councilors' hearts. But the second troubling evidence is that council seems to discount this deliberate unreliability as an issue. They seem to believe there is an acceptable level of service that involves leaving people behind every day.

These would-be passengers will get a clear message that the region has little regard for its transit users. And they will abandon transit, if they can.

Silver Lining

 

It seems as if council has lost the plot. When the pressure is on, the region's long term strategy to shift itself towards a more sustainable (i.e. affordable) future model is put in jeopardy by short sighted penny-pinching. But all is not lost.

I would expect that the consequences of council's decision should be obvious and easy to demonstrate. In fact, the councilors who voted for this cut should be prepared to get an earful from the transit users denied service. There should be no surprises, or ambiguity about cause and effect. We should see ridership negatively affected, complaints increase, and no small amount of public ire directed towards this decision.

And then we can remind council of their goals, the LRT system they have hung their hat on, and that their small cost-cutting victory of today is putting their large victory of tomorrow at risk. I hope we will see good sense eventually prevail. Neither council nor the people of Waterloo can afford to damage the conditions that will make LRT successful, the same conditions that have doubled transit ridership in the last ten years.

If nothing else, we will be shown that, when attracting people to transit, there is no room for an "acceptable level of failure".

Waterloo Route Shakeup!

Edit 2013/02/23: GRT has released a "preferred option" proposal. You can read about it here.

Edit 2012/11/10: GRT has now released its official options and I have revised this article to use the new images and corrected for details that have changed since the council submission.

Big changes coming to GRT, mainly within the city of Waterloo. The establishment of the 202 "University Avenue Express" and the extension of 201 iXpress require some rethinking of existing routes. The region is looking for public input on a number of options at public consultation centres being held in November. Are you going?

It has taken me a while to process the east Waterloo options. And to my disappointment they still haven't been properly published. Everything below is pulled from the region's Planning and Works agenda document (warning: big PDF), starting around page 115. You can now see GRT's official options here. Note that they differ slightly from the P&W agenda.


There are three "east" options being presented.

In all options, the 201 Fischer-Hallmann iXpress is extended past the university to Conestoga Mall, and then on to Northfield & University. The University iXpress also terminates here, but how it gets there is different.

Also, 6 and 35 are "crossed": they swap their downtown endpoints, 6 goes to Uptown and 35 goes to Downtown. In doing so, they are much straighter than before, which helps them act as better grid participants. Presumably 6 will be linked to the western 5 route at Uptown, as 35 was before.

The Contenders

Option 1

Option 1 is probably the simplest. The University iXpress left-turns at Bridge St. Apart from the 6/35 swap, eastern routes remain largely unaltered (12 is tweaked.)

Strengths:

• Bridge St. is well served, at least between Northfield and University.
• 35 is now an (albeit slow) north/south route.
• The future "minor node" at Northfield and Bridge is very well served, with access to it for much of the northeast area. (Disclaimer: I work here and this is personally important.)

Weaknesses:

• Duplication of iXpress between Northfield/Bridge and Northfield/University
• There are three ways to get from Northfield/Bridge to Conestoga Mall. Seems excessive.
• 12 is almost completely pointless in this configuration. Only a fraction of possible trips on the 12 are not provided by other routes, faster and more frequently.

Option 2

Option 2 really shakes things up. The University iXpress stays on University. 35 is (partially) straightened out. 31 shortcuts along Bridge St.

I see this option as intriguing, but flawed.

Strengths:

• 35 starts to resemble a legitimate grid participant along the east side.
• 6 (presumably cross-linked to the 5 on the west side) is a nice east-west grid line.
• An intriguing new route for the Lincoln neighbourhood.
• Less iXpress duplication.
• A more useful 12; Weber St. north of University finally sees some service.

Weaknesses:

• 31 is a monumental waste. It provides some minimal value along Lexington and that's it (and there isn't much along that stretch, either). Short-cutting it up Bridge makes no sense: whose time are you saving? The people trying to reach Conestoga Mall, who could take 201 or the new Lincoln route instead?
• 35 is half-heartedly straightened out. Its remaining neighbourhood wander diminishes its value as a way to get up and down the east side by adding substantial delay (close to 10 minutes.)

There is one small change that makes this option a lot more compelling: swap the Eastbridge detour from 35 to 31! Now you have a less useless 31, and a more direct 35. Everyone wins.

I would like to see 35 continue to adhere to 6's old Wellington St. route, too. That would help it remain useful to me, personally, as well as the rest of the Mount Hope/Breithaupt neighbourhood which is not well connected to the East side at all in this arrangement. One big change from the original council packet is that 35 serves Wellington like the 6 does.

Option 3

Option 3 puts 31 in the configuration it should have had in Option 2. 35 is bent and spindled past recognition. 12 is cut short

I'm not sure which of Options 1 and 2 are the Good and the Bad, but Option 3 is definitely the Ugly. This is a disaster for anyone trying to get up and down Bridge St.

Strengths:

• Nothing that Option 2 doesn't already accomplish better.
• Demonstrates the routing that Option 2's 31 should have.

Weaknesses:

• Complete failure to provide a north/south grid route on the east side.
• Big degradation of service for the Bridge Street corridor, accessibility to the Bridge/Northfield minor node.

Additional Thoughts on All Options

The new University iXpress provides a nice east-west route through the university district and it will be very valuable in either of its two proposed routes. In one configuration, it provides the Bridge St. corridor with good service. In the other, it ventures into the less developed University East area, but in doing so it might be a more "legible" route.

Of course, by doing that, people might start to ask "Why not make it University Avenue all the way across?" And why not? Combined with a sold Erb/Bridgeport limited-stop route through Uptown, we might have something viable. But that's not in the cards...

If we run the University iXpress up "around the horn" instead of Bridge St., it opens up a compelling routing for the 35 as an east-side north-south connector. But it needs to be more direct than Option 2 shows, sticking to Bridge and Lancaster all the way to Wellington or Victoria. (Though the short Auburn Drive detour at University is reasonable.)

While I would love to see 4 bus routes converge at Bridge and Northfield, and keep my current bus route to work, I have to say that Option 2 is probably the best starting point. Swapping Eastbridge detour duties from 35 to 31 is a no-brainer.

But what about what is possible, but not presented? TriTAG member Duncan Clemens has put together his vision of a restructured route network in this google map. He has some of the same ideas: Use Bridge and Lancaster as a corridor. Make 31 pick up the Eastbridge neighbourhood slack.

Hopefully the PCC will provide opportunities for some of these good ideas to bubble up to the surface. And hopefully we'll end up with something globally useful, and not deformed by competing self-interest.

Bridge/Northfield and the Poor Pedestrians

Addendum: After sending this letter I did receive a response. Most of the pedestrian concerns are addressed, including sidewalk access along the fronts of the development and to the bus stop/path access, and pedestrian refuge at that point-- provided by the developer.

It's still a very suburban development that in some places pays lip service to vibrant streetscape concepts, and there will be difficulty at the Labrador intersection, but the worst concerns for pedestrians are addressed.

I work very close to a proposed mixed-use development at Bridge and Northfield. As I'm a transit user as often as I'm a driver or cyclist, pedestrian access in the area is very important to me. And it's awful: impossible intersections, missing sidewalks, no lighting.

I'm hoping that the development will bring with it some improvements to the intersections and pedestrian infrastructure (like, you know... sidewalks) but I'm trying to drive the point home with Waterloo city council none the less.

The following is from a submission I put together this holiday morning:


To whom it may concern,

I work at a business near Bridge St. and Labrador St. in Waterloo. I am writing to express my support for the amendments to allow development of a mixed-use node at Northfield and Bridge. At the moment, this part of town has almost nothing commercial to support the many people who work and live in the area, and plans I have seen of the development are, if not perfect, at least working towards the goals of higher density and infill development.

As a driver, transit user and cyclist, I urge council to take into account transit, pedestrian and cycling access in this area when looking at the developers’ plans and the infrastructure needs they generate.

Most urgent is pedestrian access: there is no suitable pedestrian access to Northfield or Bridge along this property, despite the presence of GRT stops and pathway connections to residential neighbourhoods. The intersection at Bridge and Labrador is now extremely busy at rush hour, with dangerous left turns and aggressive drivers making Bridge almost impossible to get across for those on foot. The proposed development will only make this worse, so these problems must be addressed before the development is complete.

On transit, there are two GRT bus routes which serve this intersection now (31 and 35, connecting from Conestoga Mall to U of W and Uptown respectively) and in 2013 GRT plans to implement and extend 2 iXpress routes through this location, providing express access to much of the city of Waterloo and connections to future LRT.

Because of this, city council should push for more density and reduced parking for the buildings at this site. We don’t have a lot of open space to infill and this is a great opportunity to define an anchor for this area. It should not be wasted.

I have attached a map and photos to demonstrate some of the problems I have seen in the area. If the city addresses these problems promptly, this development would be a major benefit to the area. Without that support, however, I see the increased traffic becoming a major threat to my personal safety whether I am on foot or in car.

 View from Bridge St. bus stop, looking towards Labrador and Northfield.

Congestion on Bridge cuts visibility, and forces left turners from Labrador to turn blind onto Bridge. They routinely use the median as a merge lane. Southbound traffic often dives into the paved shoulder to avoid.

This makes pedestrian crossing at Labrador almost impossible, and crossing at the bus stop location necessary (but still dangerous.)

This intersection would see additional traffic from a new development and needs to be upgraded. Pedestrian access to the development needs to be addressed.

Between a rock and a hard place

Did you know that Guelph Transit revamped its entire route structure on January 1st? I have been hearing tidbits about the pain that this redesign has caused, and the Mercury chronicles the changes with articles [1] [2] [3], editorials and oh! the opinions! [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Here in Waterloo region, we should pay attention. Grand River Transit will face the need to revamp part or all of its network over the next decade. With twice the ridership as GT and active expansion in routes and ridership expected, GRT needs to move away its current hub-and-spoke design, and towards a decentralized, grid-based system.
 
Reboot the System


There are two big strategies to cutting out existing bus routes. Guelph has demonstrated one: go cold turkey and simply shift buses around, and damn the consequences.

A second strategy is to starve existing routes by first providing more attractive service. This is one of the ideas behind the GRT express bus plan: a roughly grid-like network of limited-stop buses, with LRT along the corridor of heaviest demand, which will run regularly, at decent frequency, and provide quicker cross-town travel. These will draw riders away from some of the lower-frequency neighbourhood wanderers we have accumulated over so many years, allow those resources to eventually be shifted.

Still, Guelph reveals a problem that we will also face: in a community that is underserved by transit, any attempt to rationalize routes will cause pain. The reason for this is that existing transit users have trip needs that already cluster along our existing routes. Those who have simple trip needs that could be easily served by a grid network may not use transit simply because the current network doesn't provide.

Crazy Eights

So in shifting towards a more efficient, intuitive network that can draw greater ridership, there will be pain for existing users. GRT Route 8 [pdf] is an interesting example to look at. This is an impenetrable double-loop passing through the downtown terminal, and even after almost 20 years, I still need to refer to the route map-- or more recently, blindly rely on Google Maps' directions-- to have any idea if it will get me where I need to go. It has bizarre mid-loop terminations at certain times of the day, leaving confused riders stranded.

And yet, it serves certain corridors where nothing else does (Weber St. in Waterloo, and the Belmont Village corridor, to name a couple) and happens to provide direct trip options for both of these areas to the University of Waterloo and Laurier. So despite its incredible unintuitive opaqueness, it's fairly popular among existing transit users. Even with better bus service (12) along Westmount, and new University Avenue express in 2013, fixing a route like the 8 is daunting because it will leave dense areas along Weber and the entire Belmont Village area unserved.

Horse precedes Cart

Making this kind of network alteration palatable to transit users will require that they are presented with useful options first. To do that, we must provide more service, overlaying the new routes on top of the old, before we can reallocate the old routes' resources.

More service will require more funding, and the expectation that fare-box recover will lag as a result of higher subsidies. In fact, any reasonable transit growth strategy will probably see low fare-box recovery rates until new ridership catches up to the very system improvements that attract them!

Tough Love?

So if existing transit users' needs are the "rock", regional council's recent decision to aim for 50% fare-box recovery presents a "hard place". And our transit planners are stuck between them.

I know I've harped on this senseless, counterproductive decision before, but it smacks of politics winning out over the region's needs. The region still says it wants to triple the transit share of an ever growing number of trips within two decades.


But after making a series of high-profile moves to improve transit, council decided to smack transit around a little as if they were scared to show too much favouritism to one particular child. To "keep it in its place".

It will only hold us all back.

Today, I'm driving.

I thought I'd describe the situation today as an example of how our transit network fails even for someone who is fairly committed to using it.

I have a trip to make today. I have a dentist appointment at 4:10. Funny story: I picked a dentist, doctor and chiropractor based largely on their location and accessibility.  All three have since moved: the dentist from near Belmont Village to Sunrise Centre, the doctor from King & Stirling to down to Fischer-Hallman and Westmount, and my chiropractor from its location a short walk from home on Union to inconveniently half-way between home and work (but close to neither.)

So far (especially in the case of my doctor) I am reluctant to find better-located replacements.  And today, I must venture from work (Northfield and Bridge) to Sunrise Centre (Fischer-Hallman and Ottawa).  This trip used to be totally impractical by anything but car, but now I can get there from the opposite corner of town thanks to the new 201 iXpress, with a connection, in less than an hour.  Go go gadget Google Maps:


View Larger Map

For a trip like this, it's pretty impressive to make it in under an hour, though if the Expressway is light, that trip still takes half an hour or less by car: I usually plan on having a car when I need to make this kind of trip.  But, given that Erin has an out-of-town need for the car tonight, I was prepared to pay the extra half an hour travel time.

Unfortunately, travel time is not just time spent on the bus.  I've demonstrated that I'm willing to spend more time getting there if I don't have to drive (and I believe that many people would accept a longer trip time-- to a point-- if they can avoid paying for the car needed to make the trip, or if it somehow helps them avoid some other aspect of driving, like congestion, which our current bus network cannot.)

If you click through to the actual directions you will see the best option to arrive in time for my 4:10 appointment: leave at 2:50pm, arrive at 3:46.

Frequency matters. In this case, route 31 serves up what is usually considered a minimally acceptable 30 minute frequency.  You should consider that on average, waiting time for this bus is half of the frequency period: 15 minutes, and this is part of your travel time.  You may be able to plan around the bus's schedule a lot of the time, but situations like this show you could be waiting not at your departure point, but at your destination.  Not to mention that when things go wrong (a bus runs early or doesn't show-- not unknown for me here at Northfield and Bridge!) you are stuck for a long wait.

Human Transit has a great article on the critical importance of frequency in the uptake of transit, for which my situation serves as a good illustration.  This is why GRT's expanding frequent express bus network cannot arrive soon enough, and I eagerly look forward to the new and extended iXpress routes that are planned to serve Northfield and Bridge in 2013.

In fact, an extended 201 iXpress may mean that in the future, I won't have to worry about the distance to my doctor and dentist from work as it will serve as a direct route with fairly frequent (15 minute) service.

But today, I have to drive... and Erin will be late as a result.

As an addendum: I would not even consider this trip if the connection order (31 to 201) was reversed.  Attempting to connect to a 30 minute bus is fraught with time-wasting hazard, thanks to the noise introduced by the arrival time of the first bus, no matter how frequent that first bus is.  This is a point I've tried to make clear to transit planners in town... connections are okay, but only if the routes themselves are frequent. If connections allow for a higher-frequency network, then they should be preferred.  But connections on a low-frequency network are death.

It's the System, stupid!

I could have called this article "Dissecting LRT Procurement Options", but I figured this might grab your attention.  "Procurement".. what a snoozer, huh?  Snore.

Bear with me, and you might be surprised.  But I'll warn you, this is a long one!  Here we go:

 Region staff are promoting, essentially, a privatized LRT system within Waterloo Region through a "Public-Private Partnership" (or 3P).  They have put together nice bulleted lists of why some privatization is good, but more privatization is better, and all privatization? That's the cat's meow.  You can sift through the gory details here.

But I'll try and boil it down for you.

Gimme a D!... Gimme a B!

There's a number of procurement options, which include a private company (or more likely, consortium) taking on various parts of the procurement and operation of our LRT system.  Each of these parts is referred to by letter, according to the guide below-- most of which should be self-explanatory:

• Design
• Build
• Finance - securing short-term financing during construction
• Operate - System operation on a 30-year contract
• Maintain

So DB is Design-Build.  A company is contracted to conduct both final design and construction of the system.  DBFOM is Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Maintain: A company or consortium sees the system from the very start, and ends up running it, employing drivers and maintaining its own vehicle stock.  A few options in between like DBFM, DBf, DBOM... also "DBB", which is Design-Bid-Build, where the Region does its own design and then seeks a builder. (I guess that should be just "B".)

Region staff believe DBFOM is the way to go.  They view it as a way to transfer construction and operation risk to the private company, insulating us all from construction cost overruns, and the difficulties of maintaining, staffing and operating this line.

I respectfully disagree: I believe private operation works against us.


Where does this train lead?

Let's take a moment to remind ourselves why we have LRT coming to Waterloo Region:

• Population is exploding.
• The cities will choke on traffic and sprawl past their borders unless they intensify and reduce the percentage of travel by car.
• Our goal is to move transit from less than 5% to around 14% of trips by 2031.  (Though more is better.)
• LRT has greater capacity, attracts greater ridership, and promotes intensification.
• The current plan is to put LRT along the "spine" in Kitchener and Waterloo, and provide express buses and Bus Rapid Transit to Cambridge and along the major routes.
• The long-term plan is to expand LRT to Cambridge.

For transit to meet its goals, it must be effective and attractive.  It needs to get people where they need to go, in reasonable time, at reasonable cost.  If it fails, we will not reap the intensification effect, and we will pay a punitive cost in road expansion to meet the demands of drivers who have no alternatives.

So we need to place transit in a position to succeed.  The core of the system may be LRT, but buses will still, largely, be left holding the bag anywhere off the main line.  To move effectively, riders will need a well-integrated transit system as they shift from bus to train, route to route.

We already have obstacles to good integration in the form of compromises in LRT line length (cutting Cambridge out of phase 1) and in station placement (route splitting in Uptown-- discussed here at length-- and in Downtown, and a criminally poor station placement around the University of Waterloo that seems to go out of its way-- literally-- to make connections harder.)

So given a goal of making our transit system effective and attractive, we need to take a critical eye to the Region's idea of privatization.  Privatization is not about making a good system, it is about mitigating risk at the expense of a good system.

And unfortunately, for our goals: it's the system, stupid!  It needs to work well as a whole. It needs to grow.  It should be intuitively obvious that privatizing part of the system will detract from the whole.


Everything in Moderation

The Region hasn't built an LRT system before, so we're probably in a position to benefit from someone who can design and build us up one before we start drafting our own detailed construction plans.  And you know what?  That's cool.

But the Region also has no experience running an LRT system, and this is one of the reasons why privatized operation is attractive.  However, if we're aiming at growing LRT later, and making it a part of a well-integrated system that responds to ridership growth, the Region needs to learn by doing.



Suspect Logic

Let's talk about what staff sees that is so attractive about privately operated LRT:

Cost and Risk: A private company will have to shoulder risks of construction and operation.  The Region retains ridership risk, but is insulated from operating expense and complexity.  A private corporation will keep costs down by being more efficient.
The Reality: Private sector efficiency requires competition.  Competition is not found in a 30-year monopoly.  Ultimately, if things go bad, private companies come back hat in hand for greater subsidies-- or they walk.  This was demonstrated in Melbourne.


Line Quality: A private company that will operate a system will design one with efficiencies that will make it better.  Over time it will run it better.
The Reality: The system will be designed to do precisely what we spec it to do now, with no eye towards the future.  Contracts designed to tie payments to metrics, make sure the private company "owns up" on performance, can have unintended side effects like buses that speed and refuse to pick up passengers in Auckland. Operation will aim to maximize profit, not transit availability or frequency. An LRT line to be operated privately will be built to extract subsidy out of government first and foremost.

Experience: A private company will have more experience operating a system.  They can better handle a small system's pool of drivers for scheduling vacation.
The Reality:  When it comes to staffing, six weeks of YRT/Viva strikes (and counting!) suggest that maybe private handling of staffing isn't a strength.  And when things go south, the local government has a figleaf to hide behind instead of solving the issue. It sits saving $70K a day in withheld operator fees and stonewalling its angry citizens. Veolia and First Transit, the involved companies, have combined profit of over a billion dollars a year around the world: they can afford to wait, to bring a recalcitrant union in line. Meanwhile, York Region chokes.

Also, it's unlikely that vacation scheduling is some kind of critical advantage we need to pursue.  Besides, a private company is hardly going to fly in drivers from other cities to fill its Christmas-time roster gaps.

Finally, hire consultants to advise on system startup.  A good consultant is a wonderful thing: brings ready experience when you need it, and goes away when you are done.


Forgetting ourselves, and forgetting Cambridge

The transit system of Waterloo Region is a work in progress, with some ambitious goals to transform how we move and the shape of our community in the coming decades.

We need to be committed to growing that system, and that requires full control over its most critical aspect.  Having LRT at arm's length makes every schedule adjustment, bus realignment, and policy change subject to the whims of a company whose goals are very different from ours.

Private operation will also make negotiation for expansion all the harder.  Staff almost admits this: they suggest "choice for integration and expansion" will be "impacted".  I would say that we would have abandoned control of our own fate in creating an effective, attractive transit system.  We will make it harder to expand and adapt the whole system for the public good.

Cambridge, are you listening?  How do you see a hand off of a half-built LRT line to a private company affecting its completion?


Not alone in fearing 3P

London (UK) had to take back control of its own privatized tube in a privatization that backfired when it came to "cost reduction".

This transit consultant points out that efficiency only comes from competition, that integration with 3P pieces is hard, and that a private operator's focus on revenue can come at the expense of service and ridership.

The Public Transit Coalition explains why they oppose privatization in Toronto, nailing the high points.  And here are fears about private LRT in Toronto.

Here is a good deconstruction of the seedy underbelly of the successful, but crippled and costly Canada Line in Vancouver where the operator underbuilt the line to save itself money.


The Fallacy

Here's why private operation of city transit generally doesn't work: It's not profitable.  It's not meant to be.

Most transit systems are subsidized.  Privately operated systems are only viable if they receive a subsidy for operation.  They aren't motivated by the desires of the government providing the subsidy in any way that isn't clearly spelt out in contract.

So governments try to codify their desires in contract.  But transit is complex, and that makes for very complex contracts.  You can only write clauses for what you know, not for what you may learn in the future. 

A transit system, like a road network, is best when provided as a public good.  If we are dissatisfied with it, ultimately we can take action at the political level.  A private transit system, on the other hand, is operated as a cost centre, and if we are dissatisfied in it, all we can do is... not use it.

And that would be missing the point.

GRT Business Plan 2011-2014

GRT held a public consultation on its business plan for the next three years at Regional HQ last night.  I made my way down, appropriately enough, by bus.  The event was not well attended, unfortunately... but I drink this stuff up, so I was happy to be there to bend a few ears and to learn what I can.

You can read the business plan at GRT's website.

The Good

By 2013:

• University Avenue Express, providing a link from Boardwalk to the Northfield/University RIM complex, via Erb, Westmount, University and Bridge.
• Extension of the 201 iXpress out to Conestoga mall and to Northfield/University.

Together these create two legitimate cross-town routes in Waterloo and establishes new links to the main line and future LRT.  (And personally they benefit me and my workplace by adding two express route stops at Bridge and Northfield.)


The Bad

The three-year plan is fairly modest.  The approach is to establish new routes every two years (2013, 2015..) and to bolster existing service on the other years (2012, 2014..)

However, the original RTMP projected a more aggressive establishment of express routes, with University Express in 2012 and follow-on routes in 2013-2014.  But this cutback was expected: part of making the LRT tax hit more palatable was reducing the funding growth needed to provide this service.

In the long term, this is costly-- with LRT established, the support network won't be as mature as it should be.  In the short term, this delays the introduction of new service.  In the medium term, well... it's complicated. More on that later.

Also disappointing: while Saturday and Sunday iXpress service is being improved, there is no late service and no news of extending the 200 iXpress' hours. I've been hoping to see a link from Cambridge to Kitchener later than 9:15pm, but it's still not in the offing.

Speaking of Cambridge, not much love from GRT in the next three years.


The Ugly


I have to call this ugly, because I can't figure out if it's truly good or bad.  Again, it's those medium term consequences...

GRT is presenting a fare increase structure.  Instead of factoring in an annual 2% inflation increase, GRT is presenting options for 5%, 7% and 9% (!!) fare increases with the aim of not just keeping up with cost of operations, but to change the balance of funding between fares and property tax, with a goal of 50% cost coverage from fares.

TriTAG has some strong words against this.  GRT points out in defense of this that average fares (across all modes) are lower than average for comparable systems, and increased revenue will help drive faster growth.

On the other hand, it'll put a headwind on ridership growth, and strain on the most vulnerable GRT users.  I'm not happy about that.  Theoretically we could improve GRT's low-income support program to address the latter issue-- according to a TriTAG rep, this program is behind in dealing with applicants.  But we're in a war for the hearts and minds of commuters who don't yet take our transit system seriously, and in swaying potential riders, there's no argument like success (and the last ten years have been very successful for GRT.)  Continued growth in ridership is paramount.

And yet... I keep worrying that LRT will be a political football in 2014, when we go back to the polls.  There may be value in showing that our transit service is taking steps to reduce its burden on the tax base.  Forget for a moment, dear enlightened readers, that good transit will save hundreds of millions in road expansion costs... Put aside that those same roads are heavily subsidized, or that self-sustaining profitability is not the goal of a transit system anywhere.

Increasing fare coverage of cost may be bad for transit growth and bad for transit users, but it could be ammunition against those whose goal is to minimize transit costs and kill LRT no matter what the long term consequences.

Yup, that's politics.  And that's why it's ugly.  In the balance, I don't know what's right.

Battle Won, Whither the War?

n Wednesday, Erin and I gave away our Ignite tickets because we knew that if we went, our hearts wouldn't be in it, and our eyes would be glued to our phones watching the Twitter feed out of Regional Council.

So, instead, we gave away our tickets and walked down to Regional Council, to watch a little bit of history. And we got that: we got the long, drawn out speeches, the numbing due process, the anticlimatic transition from looking-good to foregone-conclusion to it's-passed, and we had a wonderful time!

Now, it is two days later, LRT is still half a decade away, and it's time get back to our regularly scheduled lives.

Or is it?

I think it's safe to say that I've discovered a passion for a certain set of urban issues. Having taken an increasingly public stand on this major issue-- letters to the local newspaper, letters to our councilors, an opinion blog that's drawn a little attention and even stepping up in front of council to have my say-- it's nice to see this particular battle won and it's nice to relax a little. But I don't want to disengage.

So, I have a passion for... what? Urban planning? Transit? What aspect of this LRT issue drew me out of my shell so effectively, that will drive my future motivation?

The issues of how people move around our city are what interest me the most, but that describes the "what" and not the "why". I think the reason why these issues engage me is that I have a vision for the kind of place I want to live.

In this vision, destinations are nearby and people move freely. "Nearby" doesn't mean everything is up the block, but rather that you can get anywhere you need to go conveniently without assistance or planning. Being able to do this without using a car is critically important: cars have their uses and, but they are expensive and they take away from our freedom more than the freedom they give: I never feel more unencumbered than when I leave my car behind.

I would ask you to think about that for a moment. A car usually allows you to get to your destination quicker and more conveniently than any other mode of transportation, but in doing so you are so shackled to the car that you can't just go somewhere else without it. You park the car, and in doing so, you enter into a contractual obligation to return to that spot, for it is the only way you can leave.

You are also never free from the concern about what happens to your car. It could be stolen or damaged, or it could be ticketed. If you've traveled with passengers, you are probably responsible for their return as well. You can't have a drink without worrying whether it inhibits your driving ability. You usually can't leave your car parked somewhere overnight. So taking a car defines your schedule, your responsibilities, and your behaviour.

It's interesting that most people experience a sense of freedom when they get their first car, but that is often because they deal with inadequate transit, or cities that have sprawled because of car use, to the point that you can't interact with it the way you want without a car.

So to me, if you must have a car to get to your destination, you cannot move freely. Nor is anything nearby , because you live on an island where the sea can only be traversed by your car. Granted, the trip may be short, unless your car is broken or the wife has it or there's no parking or gosh traffic sure is heavy at rush hour or you have no license, in which case your destination is effectively unreachable.

When it comes to the freedom of moving around this city without a car, we really end up with only a subset of our urban area where this is possible. Transit does cover most of our city, but it's designed to provide a minimal level of service to a maximum amount of people for minimum cost. And moving away from that is going to take a long time-- LRT will not solve it in and of itself, any more than the stud frames of your house help keep the snow and wind out on their own. LRT is meant to massively reduce resistance to movement along its route, extending the area that people can tolerably reach, be it by LRT alone or by some combination of train with bus, bike and walking. And because of the way we are laid out as a city, LRT provides capacity in the zone where car-free movement will build, and build, and build. It does, however, need its supporting network of express and neighbourhood buses.

But I digress. Months of LRT proselytizing takes its toll and the LRT debate has seen a lot of points taken out of context.

I see Waterloo Region becoming an area where enough of the cities become accessible to car-free movement, and as a result, sustain a critical mass of car-free life. And that has secondary benefits: urban form becomes driven by needs that are not based on the car, and evolves to better suit people instead. Everyone, not just the automobiled elite, enjoys an independence of movement. Demand may make housing more expensive, which means more apartments and less detached homes, but people enjoy a better lifestyle because they spend much less on simply getting from one island to another.

And it forces people to deal with others face to face. A car and a suburban home allows us to abstract away the entire world, and when we rage on the road, it's because we don't perceive other drivers as real human beings. I'm certain this promotes a worldview that puts self ahead of everything, no matter the cost.

Finally, without question, a car dependent place is ugly. The infrastructure and land use patterns that support the car is physically repulsive to me.

So I see reduced car dependence as a way to transforming the environment around me. I wouldn't call myself an environmentalist though-- I haven't even touched upon air quality and health and all that jazz. I've been happier in places with worse air than KW (as unlikely as it sounds)-- downtown Toronto, where I had all the freedom that a metropass and a subway station around the corner provides, or Hong Kong, where as a teenager I could cross the city on my own for virtually nothing. The freedom of those times is indescribable. And certainly, those are metropolises, and Waterloo Region is not... but then, building a suitable transit system and changing our places to benefit non-automobile users are steps to take on the way to our becoming a major city, not things that must wait until we are.

So the things that help our environment edge away from its old, car-dependent form into a more human-friendly one, those are what drive me.

Why I Support LRT

Normally I let Chris do the transit-talking around here, but I have a little story of my own to tell.

I started my post-secondary education at the University of Waterloo in September of 1995. For various reasons, I lived at home for my first two years of school. Home was Cambridge. Unfortunately, I had neither a driver's license nor a car to drive. Sometimes my dad would drive me to school, sometimes I could catch a ride with a friend. But more often than not, I had to get to UW via public transit.

At the time, the entity known as Grand River Transit didn't exist. In order to get from my home in Cambridge to the University, I had to deal with three different transit systems (Cambridge Transit, Trentway-Wagar, and Kitchener Transit). On days where I had an 8:30 class (which was usually three days a week at least) I had to get up at 5:30am, and I would still arrive on campus 15 minutes late for class...and that's if I was lucky enough to make all my connections. It was physically impossible to get to campus on time for an 8:30 class. I missed lots of classes entirely because the bus transfers didn't work out. And then I still had to do the whole process in reverse at the end of the day. If I had a night class until 10pm? Forget it, I had to leave early in order to not miss the last Trentway bus of the night.

Needless to say, this lifestyle took a huge toll on my sanity, my sleep schedule and my marks. When Grand River Transit was created, I cheered long and loud, even though I was no longer a regular transit rider by that time. When the iXpress service was created, I cheered even louder. If only that had been in place during my early student days!! So now that we are facing the decision time for the next "big stage" of transit improvements, I think back to that time of my life, living with a fractured transit system that didn't work. Many people say that our existing transit system, with all the improvements added since the mid-90's, doesn't work. So let's make a transit system that works!!

TriTAG's points on RT station placement are worth reading

Having watched the RT plan's proposed go-live date slide already from 2015 to 2017, I've been reluctant to criticize the routing compromises that exist in the plan, on the theory that a good plan now is better than a perfect plan that delays everything.

A chat with a friend who is very active in TriTAG undermined that notion, as he believes there will be an opportunity to refine the plan before it goes into the final accelerated EA phase. TriTAG have posted their thoughts on station placement and while I was already familiar with their ideas for Uptown Waterloo, the points they make about stops in the University area are extremely compelling because I realize that as a non-student commuter I will be directly affected by them.

It prompted me to pitch an email at the Rapid Transit team, which I'll repost here as it speaks for itself.

Dear Rapid Transit Team,

I've just read TriTAG's comments on station placement and I really have to add my voice to theirs. Previously my attitude has been that the LRT plan, as it stands, is more valuable than a better plan that takes longer to put in place. However, TriTAG makes some compelling points, specifically about station placement in the University/Columbia/Tech park areas.

The placement of a station at Seagram Drive and on Ring Road at UW has the benefit of serving Laurier (marginally) and UW (well). It does not, however, serve a grid-based network that everyone not going to those two locations will require.

Take my situation. I currently commute to Northfield and Bridge from my home near Grand River Hospital. Currently I accomplish this using the 35, a substantial walk followed by a direct but extremely slow and infrequent bus. Door to door is about 45 minutes, vs. 20 for car. As such I only take transit two or three days a week.

With Rapid Transit in place, as well as GRT's proposed new routes, this will be a classic connection from RT to express that transit advocates have been pointing to as why RT benefits more than just those traveling along it. With 15 minute timings on the express route and a frequent RT (train, hopefully), I could connect at University from one to the other and have a trip time that is a lot more competitive.

...except it wouldn't work! The RT stops completely fail to connect at University Avenue. Instead it throws in a 400 metre disconnection from either Seagram or University. According to TriTAG, WLU is insisting on a Seagram stop, whereas a stop right at University is virtually the same distance by foot, and also connects to many buses that would provide a quick hop to/from WLU. To accommodate Seagram, grid connection possibilities at University, at Columbia and at Bearinger are all knocked out of kilter.

I have a term for this: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Please reconsider your station options to promote the transit system as a whole, and not simply to cherry pick a few key spots at the expense of general usability.

Sincerely,
etc.

The story so far...

Erin and I have debated setting up this blog for a little while. As they have for others, recent events have prompted us to move from silent semi-apathy into a more involved, and more vocal stance.

We both have our own particular areas of interest and concern when it comes to what we want to be vocal about. There is a strong local bent to many of those topics, though, and that lets us weave with a common thread. We have some ideas of where to take this, but as always the proof will be in the pudding. For every blog with even a couple of dozen readers and regular posters, you probably need both hands to count the dead-on-the-vine abortive attempts that didn't meet up to their optimistic First Posts.

The problem with starting a blog up is that it's hard to just jump in and start blathering about the topic-du-jour in midstream, with no context. So, I'll use this post to explain my context.

Not long from now I'll have to admit that I'm no longer in my mid-thirties, and it doesn't seem like very long ago that I was engaged in the same numerological dogfight with my twenties. One thing that has come to me in the last decade is the understanding that the future really does exist: I know it does, because I'm living in it. So preparing for the next batch of future weighs more heavily on tail-end-of-mid-thirties me.

The number one issue that brought me out of my shell and prompted things like attending slightly self-conscious rallies, or writing quixotic annoying-the-pig letters to the Editor and pleas to my regional councilors, is the current debate on Rapid Transit. We can discuss the details later, because a fair percentage of the embryonic posts in my head deal with how we get around our fair Tri-Cities. But I can sum up my overall stance as follows:

1. Waterloo Region needs a Rapid Transit solution for its central corridor, and a more robust express transit network to connect that corridor to the areas surrounding it.

2. Of the options for Rapid Transit that have been presented, I am strongly supportive of the Light Rail based alternative for a number of reasons, the most compelling being the ridership projections which make Bus Rapid Transit look unsuitably short-sighted.

There's a ton more to it than that. I'm resisting the temptation to start diving down any of the rabbit holes that surround those two points like some sort of Dodgsonian minefield. Instead, a little primer on some of the other topics that have my attention as well:

• Active transportation-- primarily cycling and walking, both of which I do a lot of,
• Local economy and the high tech sector (which has buttered my bread for the last thirteen years),
• Community theatre,
  
• ...And whatever other shiny something prompts me to start writing of a given day.

I have some other interests too, less locally scoped, like programming, birding and home brewing-- all of which are fair game.

So now that I've got the preamble out of the way, it's time to start making pudding!