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I found two Instagram videos from a local resident who found that 9821 had crashed into a rock wall and was left unattended, with the maxi brake off. The beeping you can hear in the video is from the seat alarm. The bus had been travelling at a high rate of speed (at least 60 km/h along a 1 way narrow road) and had been damaged prior to hitting the rock wall. 

 

Videos copyright brendoslicer on Instagram. 

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8 hours ago, Matt Dunlop said:

I looked over top of the depot from Leigh Road and saw two of those G5 shuttles parked, 2690 and 2692. 

Just so happens that I was taking these photos at the exact same time a bus was stolen at 0642. 

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Looks like these have side lifts and an additional door at the rear, much like many private examples. Thought they were going to be mostly identical to TL units.

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I'm honestly really surprised to see the side lifts - back when I had to take a community shuttle every day back from school on the mainland, even having one person need to use the lift delayed the bus by up to ten minutes. Low-floor shuttles exist, why are they even still building these things with practically no accessibility? It's inconvenient for the drivers, frustrating for the passengers and frankly discriminatory against people who are mobility limited.

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1 hour ago, InfiNorth said:

I'm honestly really surprised to see the side lifts - back when I had to take a community shuttle every day back from school on the mainland, even having one person need to use the lift delayed the bus by up to ten minutes. Low-floor shuttles exist, why are they even still building these things with practically no accessibility? It's inconvenient for the drivers, frustrating for the passengers and frankly discriminatory against people who are mobility limited.

They will only be used for HandyDART service, not fixed-route. From my perspective, the obvious intent here would be to minimize the risk of injury to drivers and attendants from having to push loaded mobility aids that can often weigh 200+ lbs up a ramp. Let the machine to the work. 

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On 5/14/2020 at 2:02 PM, CV92 said:

They will only be used for HandyDART service, not fixed-route. From my perspective, the obvious intent here would be to minimize the risk of injury to drivers and attendants from having to push loaded mobility aids that can often weigh 200+ lbs up a ramp. Let the machine to the work. 

I'm curious about this - a few months ago (pre-apocalypse) I was on the bus and a person in a mobility scooter couldn't get things moving. They asked for help from the driver but the driver (With a supervisor on the bus nonetheless) said "sorry, I can't legally help you." Is this why? 

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On 5/15/2020 at 6:21 PM, InfiNorth said:

I'm curious about this - a few months ago (pre-apocalypse) I was on the bus and a person in a mobility scooter couldn't get things moving. They asked for help from the driver but the driver (With a supervisor on the bus nonetheless) said "sorry, I can't legally help you." Is this why? 

Policy dictates that conventional transit drivers are not allowed get out of their seats, regardless of the reason. Not only because a driver could be injured helping someone, but also because a passenger could be injured because of something the driver does while helping. 
 

HandyDART is obviously a different story as its a door to door service. However, here in Vernon for example, multiple drivers have had wheel chairs roll back on them while pushing someone up the ramp. Going back to lifts will slow down the process, but its necessary to minimize injuries. 

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9 hours ago, Iron said:

Policy dictates that conventional transit drivers are not allowed get out of their seats, regardless of the reason.

My quote was said by a driver who had gotten out of his seat and was standing outside of the front door of the bus to chat to another driver who was on layover at the stop (the driver who said the quote was not on layover).

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6 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

My quote was said by a driver who had gotten out of his seat and was standing outside of the front door of the bus to chat to another driver who was on layover at the stop (the driver who said the quote was not on layover).

Regardless of where the driver is, in the seat or outside the bus on layover, policy stays the same.

That said I will get out my seat and help in rare cases. The last one was someone that was completely baffled by how the bike rack worked, and I didn't want to sit there for 10+ minutes while they figured it out. Even still, I didn't actually touch the bike rack, I just walked them through each step while standing outside the bus. 

It may seem extreme, but drivers get in trouble around this issue far too often. We're human, and drivers typically want to help out when someones in need. But all things considered, its not worth it. 

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33 minutes ago, Iron said:

Regardless of where the driver is, in the seat or outside the bus on layover, policy stays the same.

That said I will get out my seat and help in rare cases. The last one was someone that was completely baffled by how the bike rack worked, and I didn't want to sit there for 10+ minutes while they figured it out. Even still, I didn't actually touch the bike rack, I just walked them through each step while standing outside the bus. 

It may seem extreme, but drivers get in trouble around this issue far too often. We're human, and drivers typically want to help out when someones in need. But all things considered, its not worth it. 

It's sad that we have such a litigious culture that people aren't allowed to help people. Thank you for being a great driver and helping out with a walk-through - the first time I used a bike rack, when I was 13, I got screamed at by the bus driver and he refused to explain what I was doing wrong but I couldn't figure out how to raise it up (I hadn't been the first person on the rack). I'm a teacher, and we have our own set of "don't get involved" rules that are explained by "it's not worth it," so I understand where you're coming from. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

A friend of mine is moving to Saanichton, which is great because the 72 brings him straight downtown or out to Sidney every half-hour. Then I checked in on what other buses he could catch and got looking at the buses through Brentwood Bay, which I have only ever taken once. What I'm wondering is why the routing through Brentwood Bay is so abysmally stupid. Why do both routes serving the Verdier-Brentwood-Marchant loop only serve it in one direction, when it's not a service that you can just ride around the loop on (like the 63) but instead have to spend an extra forty minutes on the bus going out and back to get back to the stop you wanted to actually go to? Why does the 75 go in a big twisted loop around Stelly's? From the ferry, it's a breeze to hop off and right onto a bus headed to Victoria, but on your return journey you'll have to walk over a kilometre to get to the ramp... I mean, the 75 is a whole other kind of special mess on its own without even considering the other buses' routing through Brentwood Bay. What is going on here? Am I nuts and missing some crucial thing that requires the buses to be virtually useless to Brentwood Bay residents? Is this just one of those "coverage" things where BC Transit wants to pad their service area stats so they send some underused routes on loop-de-loops? I took the 83 for fun back in the times of old before the plague, and while it was a packed bus all the way from Sidney to Royal Oak, not a soul got on or off in or around Brentwood Bay.

Honestly, it's one of those things just makes me irrationally angry. Why did they do this? 

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4 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

A friend of mine is moving to Saanichton, which is great because the 72 brings him straight downtown or out to Sidney every half-hour. Then I checked in on what other buses he could catch and got looking at the buses through Brentwood Bay, which I have only ever taken once. What I'm wondering is why the routing through Brentwood Bay is so abysmally stupid. Why do both routes serving the Verdier-Brentwood-Marchant loop only serve it in one direction, when it's not a service that you can just ride around the loop on (like the 63) but instead have to spend an extra forty minutes on the bus going out and back to get back to the stop you wanted to actually go to? Why does the 75 go in a big twisted loop around Stelly's? From the ferry, it's a breeze to hop off and right onto a bus headed to Victoria, but on your return journey you'll have to walk over a kilometre to get to the ramp... I mean, the 75 is a whole other kind of special mess on its own without even considering the other buses' routing through Brentwood Bay. What is going on here? Am I nuts and missing some crucial thing that requires the buses to be virtually useless to Brentwood Bay residents? Is this just one of those "coverage" things where BC Transit wants to pad their service area stats so they send some underused routes on loop-de-loops? I took the 83 for fun back in the times of old before the plague, and while it was a packed bus all the way from Sidney to Royal Oak, not a soul got on or off in or around Brentwood Bay.

Honestly, it's one of those things just makes me irrationally angry. Why did they do this? 

Give the route another ride out there and you'll see pretty quick why the buses only route one direction through the Verdier loop. IIRC it was bi-directional at one point but as service levels increased that became problematic. Also, buses only route one way on that segment of the route, but is served by buses going both directions. Both inbound and outbound 75s route through Brentwood Bay. Inbound at all times, outbound during the weekday PM peak.

During times when the outbound 75s don't route to Verdier, many passengers hop off at the top of the hill and transfer to an inbound trip if there is one coming within a short while. If it's a longer wait, most will walk as it's all downhill. I will say that there could definitely be some work to the scheduling to make this connection more reliable, but that would require additional service hours especially for the weekends. In the meantime, for the commuter who heads home when the outbound Verdier trips aren't operating, they at least don't have to walk up hill. 

In my mind, the contemporary reasoning for differing inbound and outbound routing around Stelly's would be to set the buses up to allow service to both the ferry and the village. Not sure if there's additional historical context on this one. If 75s routed bi-directionally around Stelly's, you would lose service to either the Fairgrounds and Stelly's main entrance, or to Brentwood Bay Village. If they significantly ramped up service to the 75 and/or extended the 81 or 83 to downtown, you could maybe start playing around with this routing a bit more, but that brings me to my last point...

From what I understand there is general satisfaction with the design of the 75, 81, and 83 amongst the locals that use it (and they are very well utilized). However, there is definitely the desire for additional 75 Saanichton via Verdier trips during the PM peak and higher service frequency on the 81 and 83. 

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15 hours ago, SomeIslandKid said:

 Some of the problems with the 75 stem from some very poor road design it seems.

This doesn't resolve why it doesn't just go in both directions through the area (particularly the dumb Stelly's loop).

 

11 hours ago, CV92 said:

Also, buses only route one way on that segment of the route, but is served by buses going both directions. Both inbound and outbound 75s route through Brentwood Bay. Inbound at all times, outbound during the weekday PM peak.

That's a good trick, given that there are no stops on the inner side of the loop. Verdier, for instance, has stops only on the North Side, and Marchant only on the south side. Maybe once upon a time it was different, but not now. Only Southbound buses route through the residential area past the ferry terminal.

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29 minutes ago, InfiNorth said:

This doesn't resolve why it doesn't just go in both directions through the area (particularly the dumb Stelly's loop).

 

That's a good trick, given that there are no stops on the inner side of the loop. Verdier, for instance, has stops only on the North Side, and Marchant only on the south side. Maybe once upon a time it was different, but not now. Only Southbound buses route through the residential area past the ferry terminal.

I elaborated in my earlier post why the 75 doesn't route run bi-directionally by Stelly's. The 81 is bi-directional through through Stelly's. 

To clarify what I said above, on weekdays, there are northbound buses that route through the residential area past the ferry terminal. It goes the same direction as the southbound buses through the Verdier loop and then doubles back on itself through Wallace and West Saanich. These are denoted by the destination sign display "75 SAANICHTON EXCH VIA VERDIER"

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1 hour ago, CV92 said:

I elaborated in my earlier post why the 75 doesn't route run bi-directionally by Stelly's. The 81 is bi-directional through through Stelly's. 

Sorry, I need to be more specific about the Stelly's point: I'm talking about the stops on Wallace Drive that have no counterpart. Why route the bus on Wallace at all? There is literally one stop (at the school) and that's it. On the same "block" with on Stelly's X Rd you have three stops. Also, thanks for clarifying about the Northbound buses - I get what you mean now. Cheers.

To the person who left the report on the 75 on here, I just checked out Hagan Rd (where it claims it's too narrow for the bus). Doesn't seem that different from Cromar where the North Saanich bus goes... which, I mean, is a whole other can of worms that I don't want to open right now. My point stands that the spaghetti of routing through Brentwood Bay is inefficient and not intuitive. I'm very thankful we live in a time when you can just put your destination into Google Maps, because trying to figure out the Brentwood routing of the various routes without an actual detailed map would be rather difficult.

17 hours ago, SomeIslandKid said:

 Some of the problems with the 75 stem from some very poor road design it seems.

Where do you find such documents? I would love to read more of these things to get a sense for the reasoning behind services in Victoria (and elsewhere in the province).

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10 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

Sorry, I need to be more specific about the Stelly's point: I'm talking about the stops on Wallace Drive that have no counterpart. Why route the bus on Wallace at all? There is literally one stop (at the school) and that's it. On the same "block" with on Stelly's X Rd you have three stops. Also, thanks for clarifying about the Northbound buses - I get what you mean now. Cheers.

To the person who left the report on the 75 on here, I just checked out Hagan Rd (where it claims it's too narrow for the bus). Doesn't seem that different from Cromar where the North Saanich bus goes... which, I mean, is a whole other can of worms that I don't want to open right now. My point stands that the spaghetti of routing through Brentwood Bay is inefficient and not intuitive. I'm very thankful we live in a time when you can just put your destination into Google Maps, because trying to figure out the Brentwood routing of the various routes without an actual detailed map would be rather difficult.

Where do you find such documents? I would love to read more of these things to get a sense for the reasoning behind services in Victoria (and elsewhere in the province).

Are you talking about Wallace between Stelly's X and W. Saanich? It goes that way so that it can service the stop in Brentwood Bay Village. If the southbound trips routed via Stelly's X and also Verdier, it would lose the W. Saanich and Wallace timing point, the only stop in the village area. That stop is a major destination for passengers coming from Saanichton and beyond. Many passengers bound for the Village area and the Verdier loop take the 72 (from the north and south) to Saanichton and transfer to the inbound 75. 

I don't dispute that the route is unintuitive for a new user. With major expansion resources I agree that there is room for change. Presently however, it is quite well used and because of that I would caution against making any sweeping changes to the 75 until such resources are available. Right now, there just aren't enough hours allocated to the 75, 81, and 83 to streamline things without inconveniencing and/or stranding a significant portion of the existing ridership. The fact that it doesn't look pretty on paper is not justification in and of itself to significantly alter a well-established and well-utilized route. 

Reports intended for public consumption will be posted either on the Transit Future page or the Transit Commission packages. Links to both pages are below. 

https://www.bctransit.com/victoria/transit-future

https://www.bctransit.com/about/funding-and-governance/victoria-regional-transit-commission/meetings

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12 hours ago, CV92 said:

Reports intended for public consumption will be posted either on the Transit Future page or the Transit Commission packages. Links to both pages are below. 

https://www.bctransit.com/victoria/transit-future

https://www.bctransit.com/about/funding-and-governance/victoria-regional-transit-commission/meetings

Thanks for the links - I didn't know about the meetings archives, knew about Transit Future. I was mostly curious how you whipped out a document specific to the 75 so quickly, since even with the link I still can't locate that document. 

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1 hour ago, InfiNorth said:

Thanks for the links - I didn't know about the meetings archives, knew about Transit Future. I was mostly curious how you whipped out a document specific to the 75 so quickly, since even with the link I still can't locate that document. 

For speed the answer's memory mainly, it was from the November 2019 meeting so it wasn't that long ago. I usually look at every document, though tend to quickly skim the financial reports lol. They actually run a modified version of the 75 for the Saanich Fair in addition to the normal one that takes Stelly's Cross Road instead of Wallace downtown. Or at least I think they do, I tried catching it last year but the one we wanted never showed up so me and my friend ended up walking to Wallace/Stelly's Cross and a normal 75-31 showed up first so who knows maybe the other came slightly after, maybe it didn't, but whatever I got to have fun people watching on the way back so all's well that ends well. Might've made for a worse transfer to the 50 though, but eh I made it eventually.

Personal antidote aside, the difference between Wallace and Stelly's Cross road seems minimal with how the service is set up. Both roads are primarily flanked by farmland, with Stelly's being in the middle and serviced equally well by both. It looks like Stelly's has a paved possibly lit path mitigating some of the problems walking between the 2. The last houses before the fairgrounds along Stelly's Cross road are within a 10 minute walk of the nearest southbound stop and Wallace shorter to Northbound ones. It's a wild service pattern, but also it seems like it kinda just somehow works so it doesn't seem like it's the highest regional priority to fix aside from maybe running northbound service through the Brentwood Loop again, but that requires Brentwood to update some road designs.

On 5/28/2020 at 2:46 PM, InfiNorth said:

I just checked out Hagan Rd (where it claims it's too narrow for the bus). Doesn't seem that different from Cromar where the North Saanich bus goes... which, I mean, is a whole other can of worms that I don't want to open right now.

Not to open that can too far, but does the 85 actually run 40ft buses? Or is it just community shuttles and 30 or 35fters? It also seems like the the kink in the road at Clarke might present problems having a bus whip around it. Also I uh can't find a route that travels down Cromar, the 85 is a street over on both Downey and Wain, which appear wider and with more defined lanes than both Cromar and Hagan. Fair enough mistake to make, but Cromar isn't a sign of any inconsistency re road sizes acceptable for a BC Transit bus.

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2 hours ago, SomeIslandKid said:

Not to open that can too far, but does the 85 actually run 40ft buses? Or is it just community shuttles and 30 or 35fters? It also seems like the the kink in the road at Clarke might present problems having a bus whip around it. Also I uh can't find a route that travels down Cromar, the 85 is a street over on both Downey and Wain, which appear wider and with more defined lanes than both Cromar and Hagan. Fair enough mistake to make, but Cromar isn't a sign of any inconsistency re road sizes acceptable for a BC Transit bus.

I've only taken it once and driven by a bus on the route about four times, every time is a Nova. You're right about the routing - I screwed up. Regarding narrow roads, the 14 goes up Highland Road every once in a while with a 40 footer, doesn't it? (that was a joke)

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23 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

I've only taken it once and driven by a bus on the route about four times, every time is a Nova. You're right about the routing - I screwed up. Regarding narrow roads, the 14 goes up Highland Road every once in a while with a 40 footer, doesn't it? (that was a joke)

The Peninsula "shuttle" routes can have any bus on them, there's no limit on weight or width. The only route that has to have a smaller (35-foot or smaller) bus is the 53 Atkins.

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1 hour ago, Matt Dunlop said:

The Peninsula "shuttle" routes can have any bus on them, there's no limit on weight or width. The only route that has to have a smaller (35-foot or smaller) bus is the 53 Atkins.

That's because of Lombard, right? What about the 64?

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38 minutes ago, InfiNorth said:

That's because of Lombard, right? What about the 64?

Lombard is out in Metchosin, anything can go on that route. It's because of Atkins road by the railroad tracks, it's too narrow and also has a weight limit (I believe 10 tons?). 

East Sooke can have any bus on it except decker. No restrictions. Usually the afternoon 63/64 is a 40-foot bus now. 

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