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).