Calgary Transit

[darwink]

That bus in particular had the new all-weathers on the front but the drive wheels still had all seasons.

With most of the weight on the back, they don't foresee benefits from swapping the rear. Maybe some benefits from added control to the front wheels.

Probably the largest single benefit of battery busses designed from the ground up will be better weight distribution dramatically improving performance. Perhaps all wheel drive could even be trialed.

Vancouver swaps all their tires for winter?

Far more days with slush/snow transition leading to caked ice due to compression. Also, more routes with challenging hills.

 

[Mr.Wonderful]

In the long-term, funding advocacy combined with squeezing more for less is critical - most importantly for me, improve the speed of buses so we don't need as many buses (and as many operators), to offer a given level of service. It's the whole "primary transit network" philosophy - concentrate stops spaced farther apart, improve operational practices that reduce dwell times and time-wasting merge times into and out of traffic, realign route designs to avoid time-wasting turns/inefficient bus loops, and inordinately long time points. Basic stuff, but done relentless attacking every inefficient point in the network of thousands of inefficient points.

Holy moly, this so much. There is way too much slack in the schedule for many routes on weekend and late night runs which cause huge inefficiency across the network. If they are going to attack anything first, it should be this. A combination of less car traffic, less ridership (fewer stops to pick up/drop off passengers), and that Calgary Transit doesn't appear to alter their block times for these slower periods, makes transit so needlessly slow. They could definitely eek out some additional frequencies or savings on this alone.

The amount of weekend trips that I have been on where the bus is driving 30km/h for good portions of the route because there is so much slack in the schedule... It drives me mad. Even more blood boiling is when the operator SLOWS DOWN TO GET STOPPED BY A RED LIGHT because they're early and would have to wait at a timing point anyway (of course my ire is directed towards the schedule, not the operator).

 

[whatchyyc]

With most of the weight on the back, they don't foresee benefits from swapping the rear. Maybe some benefits from added control to the front wheels.

They're planning to change all the tires to the all weathers, I think this is just a result of piecemeal replacements as I've seen buses with them only on the rear and articulated buses with them on all 3 axles. But yes as well a lot of winter bus tires are only offered for steer axles

 

[Joborule]

Calgary Transit to end express route bus service by 2027

Calgary Transit is phasing out its so-called express routes, citing a necessary trade-off between underperforming routes and providing wider bus service to Calgarians.

...According to Calgary Transit, eight express routes still remain in the city. Express routes serve various communities in a cluster of stops before travelling without stops for longer distances, usually to the downtown area.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

According to average ridership numbers provided by Calgary Transit, Express Route 70 sees 100 boardings per day. In contrast, routes like Calgary’s 301 / Max Green have more than 10,000 passengers per day.

First, it's terrible communication and PR to announce the closure of a route a month before it stops running, but it's Calgary Transit. Also little disingenuous on CT's part to provide the only comparison being the busiest bus route in the city, especially since the 70 only makes two trips in each direction each day; are they expecting 2,500 people to get on a single bus?

As a comparison: 100 boardings across 4 trips is 25 per trip (the bus is half full or so); given the trip takes 45 minutes, that's 34 or so per revenue hour. Calgary Transit doesn't have a ridership dashboard publicly available (do they even have one internally?), so I looked at the 2024 TSPR from Translink in Vancouver. For a comparison, route 405 is a bus running in the low density parts of Richmond; it has 35 boardings per revenue hour, which places it 128th out of 195, so the 70 would comfortably be in the bottom third. (As another comparison, the Max Green would finish 20th for bus routes in Vancouver, just ahead of the 007, which is an ordinary ass bus that happens to have frequent service and travel down some good corridors -- Commercial, then thru downtown to 4th in Kits and Dunbar.) Not a great route.

However, comparing by service hours flatters express services; the trip from Crestmont to downtown takes 45 minutes, but the bus does not appear in Crestmont nor disappear in downtown. Per Google Transit, it takes 20-35 minutes to go from Spring Gardens to Crestmont to arrive at 7 AM, and 10-20 to go from downtown to Spring Gardens at 8 AM. So the single trip takes 100 minutes (have to use the long end of the times to base a schedule around) to serve 25 riders. At $150/hour as a rough estimate of operating cost, that's roughly $10 per person trip.

I do have sympathy for the person profiled in the article; I have no sympathy at all for whoever forced them at gunpoint to buy a house in Crestmont, perhaps the worst-served community in the city for transit, given that direct transit service was obviously very important to them. (Second worst; I've heard rumours that Valley Ridge was deliberately designed so it couldn't be served well by transit so that the residents wouldn't be bothered by transit riders. Even if it's not true, look at the road network -- it may as well be true.) I can't wait for an article from someone in Belvedere who is furious at how long it takes to get to the mountains.

But speaking of disingenuous (bolding mine):

“If Bus 70 is discontinued, many residents will face significant hardships. The proposed alternative services simply do not offer the same convenience or coverage and would increase commute time to two hours each way—from community to downtown and back.”

 

[lemongrab]

I used to benefit really nicely from an express bus, but the operational challenges must be pretty significant.

The 117 (McKenzie Town), 151 (New Brighton), and 131 (Auburn Bay) are duplicative of the 302 (and shuttle routes), so this is just eliminating the one seat ride.

Similar deal with 62, 64, 109, 116, 142...all feed into Centre St.

Losing the one seat ride is probably a bigger psychological impact than the actual time penalty. Places like Crestmont and Valley Ridge certainly shouldn't have that white glove service