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Blue Line/Southwest Transitway


DavidW

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15 hours ago, Taylorover9001 said:

New monitors up and running at Fort Rouge Station, including an electronic billboard, displaying current information, and Phase 2 information. Jubilee Station is unchanged, and the signs at both stops are also unchanged.

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With the new upcoming bus monitors, wouldn't it be nice if they always displayed the number of minutes until the next bus, or at least extend it to 60 minutes (instead of the current 15 minutes)? For example, that next 170 was scheduled to come in 27 minutes, but you wouldn't know that until you did the math in your head.

Tried viewing the new electronic display northbound Osborne Stn. It's a bit of an improvement as the text and numbers are in a larger font. Still can't see the information clearly enough, so I had to take a photo of it and view that.

Hope these displays hold up to our Winter climate.

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16 hours ago, jhood135 said:

Here are some clips I took of buses running on the transitway from about a week ago. Pretty cool to get a preview of what will be in a couple of weeks!

 

Q.E.D. about higher activity. Pretty easy to get a clip nowadays! Usually the only "reliable" time I had was 12:35-12:45 at NB Plaza when the test tracks were running, but even then that was pretty flaky. And I only saw about 3 test buses and maybe 1 or 2 vans/trucks the time I decided to hike the length to Markham on Christmas Eve.

I love the newer warning chimes too. Sounds nice and relaxing. Plaza's can be heard for quite a ways! Except the SB chimes at Chevrier and Plaza, something must've gone wrong with the installation on those. But I guess it's better than Beamont's being broken, which was still the case Wednesday when I decided to have a "socially distant" lunch break that turned out to not really be entirely that way since everybody and their kids and dogs were out on the trail. :/

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1 hour ago, Taylorover9001 said:

The flu doesn't just magically appear, just by being near people. They have to be infected.

Well, I believe viruses can also be literally spread via airborne methods (aka chemtails).

I'm also a huge believer of capitalism. ? Guess in this time period that makes me a "dissident". ? LOL.

And finally, the most effective thing to use to fight off a cold (or "flu-like" symptoms) is to...use Oil of Oregano. Been using it since the last BIG SCARE in 2009 with H1N1.

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22 minutes ago, LilZebra said:

^^^

Maybe because its not in operation yet. Makes sense to me. Chill out man. Its not like its something to be (more) excited about like if it were an LRT. ?

It's just a white coloured... BUS. That's how I see it.

But at this rate, by the time it is in service, they still won't be ready to go. They've updated and prepared every other stop, why not these ones?

If you don't care about transit, then why the hell are you even on this site in the first place? Waste of an account if you ask me.

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To me it can either mean one of two things:

A ) The launch has been put on ice due to the local state of emergency but they're not yet ready to admit it, hence the lack of urgency of getting them up, or

B ) They're going to ride by night and do them all in one big blitz on the night before.

Some more food for thought, I haven't seen any 74-style "new/revised service at this stop" notices go up along 47's service area out east informing people of its marriage with the 160 either. That would seem like a big deal to do considering that in the AM you now have to use a 46 if you want Graham or Balmoral access instead of relying on whatever shows first.

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I expect they'll post all the new routes on the signs the night before. I imagine the concern would be if they put the numbers up now before it's in service, people will get confused and end up waiting for a bus that won't come.

I actually think now may be the perfect time to launch the new service, given that ridership will be low so they can work out the kinks without affecting many people. That was the original theory with launching in April instead of the beginning of the school term - just now there will be even fewer riders. There will be kinks with the new network, and the route scheduling and timing will be adjusted no doubt, and it's good to figure that out without anyone really being impacted. Making a schedule is one thing - putting it into service defines its flaws. All the arrival times, transfer times and route durations are just estimates at this point, time will tell what they actually turn out to be. As well, Vancouver is going ahead with launching its next BRT route today (the R2), so Winnipeg should have no issue launching ours.

The challenge will be how people will react when they do have to use the service again. The good news is that it'll be streamlined to be more efficient, but their routes will have changed on them while they were away. I'm not so worried about the south - the advertising for affected areas has been really good - but I'm worried about the east and their changes to the 47, especially if no signage has gone up yet. The good news is, when all those riders do have to return to their normal lives, enough time will have passed for all map apps to be updated and one would hope there will be some forgiveness with being late to places after being away for so long.

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48 minutes ago, jhood135 said:

I'm worried about the east and their changes to the 47, especially if no signage has gone up yet. The good news is, when all those riders do have to return to their normal lives, enough time will have passed for all map apps to be updated and one would hope there will be some forgiveness with being late to places after being away for so long.

I wonder how much heat WT’s taken for the changes to the 47. This isn’t like South Donald losing the Richmond and Grant routes (which was corrected after five months with the 99) - this is an entire neighborhood losing their one-seat ride to downtown outside of peak hours. That being said, they could transfer to the 11 if they plan to go to Balmoral or the 16, 18, 44 or 45 if they plan to go somewhere on Graham, whereas the 99 represents the only option for travelers going to/from South Donald.

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1 hour ago, ConnorsCompShow said:

Info signs are powered up at Beaumont, at least the WB half. Right now it seems the web developers are testing it out with the end of Markham Station. Shelters got unlocked too.

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At my tall height I couldn't read the electronic print at the lower right corner of the screen when I saw the one posted NB Osborne Stn. last week. The print is too smal, but its non-essential information anyway. A 6 year old could read it though.

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8 hours ago, ConnorsCompShow said:

Info signs are powered up at Beaumont, at least the WB half. Right now it seems the web developers are testing it out with the end of Markham Station. Shelters got unlocked too.

MVIMG_20200406_121154.jpg

I saw these signs at the ACTA conference in Calgary back in November - definitely a step up from the often-crashed orange LED's...

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21 hours ago, ConnorsCompShow said:

Info signs are powered up at Beaumont, at least the WB half. Right now it seems the web developers are testing it out with the end of Markham Station. Shelters got unlocked too.

MVIMG_20200406_121154.jpg

Any idea if Transit is planning to replace the info signs along Phase 1? Those new info screens look pretty sweet. 

 

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4 hours ago, Viafreak said:

Any idea if Transit is planning to replace the info signs along Phase 1? Those new info screens look pretty sweet.

They have it at Fort Rouge Station. LilZebra said one was at Osborne.

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On 4/6/2020 at 11:45 AM, jhood135 said:

I imagine the concern would be if they put the numbers up now before it's in service, people will get confused and end up waiting for a bus that won't come

That's what these are for.

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If they can put up metal signs with 649, BLUE, etc. on them, and say what the old routes are until April 11th, or that the stop isn't operating until April 12th, then why not do it with the plastic ones too?

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BTW, any idea why "BLUE" is always on the right, not the left? It looks really weird IMO. Even when there is another route, like the 60, I would expect it to say "BLUE  60", but it says "60  BLUE" instead. That's a great way to promote BLUE, put it after the 60. This isn't like the 137, 160, etc, which had to come last, to keep everything in numerical order. It's okay to put BLUE at the beginning.

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6 hours ago, Taylorover9001 said:

They have it at Fort Rouge Station. LilZebra said one was at Osborne.

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That's what these are for.

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If they can put up metal signs with 649, BLUE, etc. on them, and say what the old routes are until April 11th, or that the stop isn't operating until April 12th, then why not do it with the plastic ones too?

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BTW, any idea why "BLUE" is always on the right, not the left? It looks really weird IMO. Even when there is another route, like the 60, I would expect it to say "BLUE  60", but it says "60  BLUE" instead. That's a great way to promote BLUE, put it after the 60. This isn't like the 137, 160, etc, which had to come last, to keep everything in numerical order. It's okay to put BLUE at the beginning.

The plastic flags are getting changed saw few today along Donald and smith that have 65 and 66 added now 

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As of approximately 6:10 AM, Phase 1 will have been in service for 8 years, when the first 170 turned off of Main towards Harkness. On April 8th 2012, I was in my first year of high school, the Jets 2.0 just finished their first season, Windows 8 was still in development, Winnipeg Transit didn't have any Xcelsiors, and the 44 didn't go to Kildonan Place. Now we're just 4 days away from Phase 2 opening. So, so close!

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As at 11 am today, I saw:

  • Southbound Harkness new e-signs being installed. Northbound has e-sign
  • Both Southbound and Northbound Jubilee still have amber-orange signs
  • Osborne Southbound and Northbound both have new e-signs.
  • Southbound and Northbound Fort Rouge have new e-signs

Puzzled why Jubilee has old signage, but it was installed in June 2015 so maybe WT is waiting for equipment to depreciate in value before replacicng them.

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23 minutes ago, LilZebra said:

Puzzled why Jubilee has old signage, but it was installed in June 2015 so maybe WT is waiting for equipment to depreciate in value before replacicng them.

It's possible Transit just hasn't gotten around to it yet. Transit has been slow in getting certain things ready (like the plastic stop signs...).

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9 minutes ago, Taylorover9001 said:

Assuming you're talking about 10070, that's a plastic flagpole sign. So why would you expect for the sign to be replaced?

Not Warsaw itself (I didn't peek at the southbound side since I was in a truck heading north), I mean the ones like NB /Nassau, /Daly.

Now that I've had a look at Street View, those two were blank for the longest time, so it seems they just stuck all-new labels on those. Doh. But even further up at Donald/Wardlaw, it's been totally blanked out for sure since the stop will cease to exist after this weekend.

Closer to downtown there were a lot of blank pegs where all the 100s used to sit, and BLUE's been stuck on them. I wasn't able to get a good picture but I'll try if nobody else is able to, though it kinda looks MacGyvered on in a way at Main. The one thing missing is NB Main/St. Mary for 47+160, there isn't even a temporary sign up yet.

1 hour ago, vivablue5215 said:

398 got the new Blue decals. I mean, it's not white and plain looking anymore, but it's not much at all.

It's currently doing a 36 run up to the Maples. If anyone's out there..you know what to do!

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