SirAndrew710

Here’s hoping dispatch cleans up their act and starts putting LFRs and XD40s on the all-day work by then. How many more new 400s have been delivered?

My experience is that even when we’re not in the midst of a global pandemic, the 24 is oftentimes a lot emptier than the 21. The Portage Ave express routes always seem to be pretty busy as well. A Calgary bus on an all-day 21? That doesn’t often happen during a regular schedule period.

Not to mention that the 66 doesn’t run out to Unicity on Sundays, so if a Charleswood resident wanted to go to Wal-Mart on a Sunday morning, they’d have to take the 79 to Polo and wait up to half an hour for an 11 St. Charles or a 24 when it would be a quick ride on the 66 otherwise. At least in the afternoon, there’s some semblance of timed transfers between the 79 and 24. With regards to the 16, it doesn’t run to Island Lakes at all on Sundays, so it would be a long walk to Southdale Centre to catch a 16 (unless you want to arrange a DART pickup from Beaverhill and ride it as far as Lakewood and Vermillion). I wonder why it wouldn’t suggest riding a 19 to Cottonwood and Drake and grabbing a 16 there.

True, though social distancing rules apply off of buses as well. It could be worse. It could be Sunday service.

Farthest east I’ve ridden that one is Main but I can see any bus longer than 30 feet having issues with the Rosh Pina turnaround. I’ve ridden 40-footers on both the 1 and 2 and while the 1 had no issues, the right turn from EB Broadway to SB Garry on the 2 was difficult. What can dispatch do to ensure the 88, DARTs, etc. only get D30LFs and how do 40-footers end up on traditional 30-foot routes such as 1 and 2 anyway?

I’m surprised they’d replace it, seeing as social distancing is still important. Cases may be down, but the virus isn’t gone.

I’m surprised to see a 40-footer on that route.

What I mean is that there’s no 11 All Seasons. The 40 does share much of its route with the 11 (as is the case with the 59 and 55), but travel to entirely different destinations.

May as well sign 21s and 22s as 11s by that logic. Likewise for other express routes. Though some express routes have different destinations than their local counterparts, and some don’t even have a counterpart (such as the 40 or the 59). I wonder if the code for 18 North Main-Leila is still programmed into the Luminators.

My guess is the number on the “express” 24s is probably still highlighted, though a driver may as well punch 2402(?) instead of 2412 when headed outbound. It’s operating non-express either way.

Would there be anything on the sign differentiating the 24 and 25? (apart from the route number?)

And yet the 35 and 36 get them and the 33 could probably use them. However, on the two occasions I’ve ridden the 33, I’ve been in a seat by the time the bus has reached McPhillips and I don’t recall there being too many people still standing by the time it hit Mountain. Maybe there’s less demand for the 34 just because it doesn’t get to McPhillips the same way as the 33 and makes fewer stops along the way to the Maples.

That’s weird, seeing as almost all 30s come on and off the 34 normally. Though a lot of 59s (and 54s) came off the 60 and 161 previously, so no extra rush-hour 60s and the discontinuation of the 161 mean they have to pull those buses from somewhere else, I guess (why not the 35 and 36?).

I wonder if they’re looking to determine which routes to dispatch a future order of artics onto.

Seeing as I’ve modified almost every route that runs to and from the Charleswood/Tuxedo area, I figured I’d try to make a network out of some of them. This is what I came up with. The main route in and out of Charleswood would be an extended 18, which would provide high-frequency service between Charleswood, Tuxedo, River Heights, Little Italy, the Village and Downtown. Due to differences in branch lengths, buses would run between Unicity and Riverbend and between Westdale and Garden City. To offset the increase in service along Roblin, the Moray branch of the 67 and 79 would be reinstated, and to offset the increase of service to Unicity, every other 66 that runs to Charleswood would terminate at the Grace as outlined above. All rush-hour 66s would terminate at the Grace with service to/from Unicity provided by the 18, 98 and a second branch of the 65. While it does look like a lot of buses would flood in and out of Charleswood, they would follow three different paths to/from downtown.

If you’re referring to the Luminators, as simple as punching, for example, 1101 instead of 2101 or 2201. If you’re referring to the next-stop display, I don’t know. Going off of TransitFeeds, it looks like they won’t.

Based on my experience with that route, it could. Every Portage corridor route except 25 and 67 could use them on certain rush-hour runs.

Putting them on those routes is something they should think of. The 21 especially has a tendency to fill to a crushload at U of W and at rush hour, you don’t know when the next one will show up. It’s a similar story with the 98. Sidewalks are non-existent in most of Charleswood and so the stops themselves are buried in ditches. Every time I’ve taken that bus, it’s been to connect with another bus (usually the 79), to run an errand or for fun, so I myself have never used the stops on Eldridge or Rannock, but if you are to board there, I guess all you can do is hope the driver sees you down there.

I don’t see why Route 662 ridership wouldn’t be high enough to warrant artics seeing as the 72 got them almost exclusively. The main reason the 162 and 170 didn’t get 60-footers is because the landing pads in St. Norbert can’t support them. Seeing as the 91 still gets mostly D30LFs even though the DART service no longer exists, my guess is the ridership phenomenon you mentioned is why they didn’t lengthen those landing pads. Slightly unrelated, I wonder if there’s any plan to replace the D30LFs with anything. They’re approaching, if not past, retirement age but there’s still a need for smaller buses on the three remaining DARTs and some feeders (82 and 98 come to mind) are able to survive with them even at rush hour.

I’m surprised to see that the new 47, 662, 671 and 672 don’t get them. According to a quick search on TransSee, even 60 doesn’t get them as much as it used to, though that may be because WT wants to use the XD60s on the BLUE line as much as possible and most of the D60LFs are still out of service.

The wiki says that some of the 500s are already gone. The Calgary buses serve their purpose and work well on express routes, given how fast those buses are, and I would like to see the D60LFs stay around for a while longer, because now that Phase 2’s open and has a near-monopoly on the XD60s, we don’t have enough artics. Agree with this. I would also hope that when more do come in, we start to see them on more routes, rather than just the 60 and the BLUE line. The 36 should absolutely get them back if things return to normal in time for the start of the school year. In terms of routes that don’t currently get them, 11, 18, 21, 22 and 33 need them and 14, 24 and 55 could benefit from having them as well.

I have observed that it’s been mostly LFRs and Xcelsiors that have them. I also noticed that the 200s got shields later than the newer models.

That being said, the 67 might be the better option. I rode the 18 from Cathedral to Edgeland over the afternoon rush a while back, and it felt like it took longer to get through the Village than it did to get down Corydon. Even the section along Main didn’t feel much longer than the section through the Village. Though the 67 still has to deal with congestion on the St. James Bridge. That being said, there’s probably less traffic out and about, so it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Except the 18 won’t run out to Assiniboine Park until 10 AM, so that won’t be an option at the morning rush. Still, at the afternoon rush, you can choose whether you want to take the 18 or 67, or take one of the countless other Portage corridor buses to Polo and transfer to the 79.

Not to mention the 67. With Saturday service levels meaning the 18 will run to the zoo and the 79 will run at rush hour, that portion of Tuxedo will be spoiled for choice at the PM rush (schedule for WB Corydon/Shaftesbury seen below)