Victoria Regional Transit System

[InfiNorth]

7 hours ago, ygk said:

11 Uplands night route (to UVic) via Cadboro Bay Rd, Bowker Ave, Beach Dr, Estevan Ave, Thompson Ave

When was this last in place?

[ygk]

3 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

When was this last in place?

At least until the late 1990s

[InfiNorth]

Because of the snow, I managed the rare experience of getting a screenshot of every single bus in Victoria. Kind of sad that this is happening again - several year ago during the major one and a half foot snowfall most routes were still operating at least to half capacity and it was a major stress reliever to be able to get on the bus instead of getting in the car and putting myself and others in danger. Not sure why this tiny snowfall is causing BC Transit to virtually shut down while the big snowfall of 2019 had most buses still operating.

 

[Dane]

I think it's the heaviness of the snow causing the issues today.  A lot if it couldn't be and hasn't been cleared because it simply weighs too much. 

 

I just had to drive across town, snow stopped five or six hours ago but roads are still mostly covered. 

[InfiNorth]

I haven't been using the bus much recently, but someone please correct me if I missed something - the bus known as the "5 Willows" was previously the "2 Willows," a variant route of the "2 Oak Bay." I took the 2 (to either destination) a lot during the summer as I help maintain a boat at Oak Bay Marina... so is the five a new number on an existing service?

[ephrex]

11 minutes ago, InfiNorth said:

I haven't been using the bus much recently, but someone please correct me if I missed something - the bus known as the "5 Willows" was previously the "2 Willows," a variant route of the "2 Oak Bay." I took the 2 (to either destination) a lot during the summer as I help maintain a boat at Oak Bay Marina... so is the five a new number on an existing service?

It's the exact same service, just renumbered to prevent confusion.

[ygk]

On 1/23/2022 at 1:08 PM, InfiNorth said:

I haven't been using the bus much recently, but someone please correct me if I missed something - the bus known as the "5 Willows" was previously the "2 Willows," a variant route of the "2 Oak Bay." I took the 2 (to either destination) a lot during the summer as I help maintain a boat at Oak Bay Marina... so is the five a new number on an existing service?

Before 2018, there was a 2 Oak Bay and a 2A Willows. Then BC Transit combined them into 2 Oak Bay/Willows when the routes were extended into James Bay (to reduce confusion?). Now there are again two routes to reduce confusion.

[ephrex]

There is a direction to remove all letters from route identifiers (albeit very slowly, and probably excluding night route "N" identifiers). Other examples of this are the 15 and 70, which both lost the "x" identifier despite both very much still being "express" routes. All other routes with letters in their identifiers are technically on the books to be replaced at some point -- though again that's advancing at a snail's pace.

6/6A/6B: Broadmead-Cordova Bay LATP indicates plans to re-allocate the current 6A/6B alignments to an extended Route 25.

22/22A: Burnside-Tillicum LATP indicates a plan to operate all 22s on the current 22A alignment.

27x/28x: This is much longer out, but Shelbourne is on the books as a potential later-phase RapidBus implementation -- at which time those are almost certainly being renumbered, if they haven't already by then.

I'm not sure if there's anything planned to get rid of Night route identifiers, but those are simple enough to understand, I suppose.

Renumbering "2A" to "2" would have been consistent with that direction, but then it turns out that makes things confusing, who would've thought. At least now it's consistent with other split-tail routes in the region like the 27/28 and the 30/31.

[InfiNorth]

10 hours ago, ephrex said:

27x/28x: This is much longer out, but Shelbourne is on the books as a potential later-phase RapidBus implementation -- at which time those are almost certainly being renumbered, if they haven't already by then.

Not going to lie, but having used the 27x and 28x a number of times while commuting... what a stupid route. It usually gets stuck behind a normal 27 or 28 regardless, and is on a single-lane for most of its route meaning it can't pass other buses. I actually beat a friend downtown three years ago when (just for giggles) we decided to see who would get there fastest if we got on the 28 and the 27X when they arrived at the same time. However... if they decide to implement RapidBus, I hope they bring back the silly 927/928 numbering from the 70's. I hope that one day, the 24 becomes one and the same with the 12 as well, similar to the 25 and the 6A/B.

[ygk]

On 1/27/2022 at 8:22 AM, InfiNorth said:

I hope that one day, the 24 becomes one and the same with the 12 as well, similar to the 25 and the 6A/B.

Plans for the 24 are to extend it to Tillicum, so the interline with the 12 might be broken at that time

[ephrex]

18 minutes ago, ygk said:

Plans for the 24 are to extend it to Tillicum, so the interline with the 12 might be broken at that time

The 24 does not currently have any form of interlining with the 12. They're referring to longer range plans where Route 25 takes over the Emily Carr and Chatterton alignments of the 6A and 6B. 

That said, I would be very much against either that or the 25 plans. In both cases, the routes end up getting stretched way too long (we're talking over 20 km one way, which is longer than routes like the 7/21 combo, 11, 14, and 50). The longer a route is, the more volatile it is -- it's going to be a nightmare for on-time performance. Never mind anyone wanting to go almost end-to-end will have a much smoother and faster journey taking other FTN routes. The current schedule design where 24/25 operate on a blended headway on Cook Street also either gets screwed, or becomes significantly more inefficient. 

[InfiNorth]

19 minutes ago, ephrex said:

The 24 does not currently have any form of interlining with the 12.

It's more that the 24 ends and the 12 then begins. Altogether, something needs to change about 12. It's a very silly service and runs too infrequently and ends too early in the evening to be easily relied on.

[InfiNorth]

While biking south on Shelbourne yesterday at University Heights, I was passed by a small flatbed with some new bus stops on it in disassembled stacks... coming from the Mt. Doug direction. Where would these have been coming from?

[InfiNorth]

Out of curiosity, why does the 1 on Richardson follow the route it does at the insane infrequency with which it operates? It doesn't add supplementary service along anything other than the Oak Bay loop, and is otherwise a horrendous urban service considering how infrequent it is. Did it used to be more frequent? I know it's been this infrequent as long as I've lived here. Just seems altogether silly.

[ephrex]

11 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

Out of curiosity, why does the 1 on Richardson follow the route it does at the insane infrequency with which it operates? It doesn't add supplementary service along anything other than the Oak Bay loop, and is otherwise a horrendous urban service considering how infrequent it is. Did it used to be more frequent? I know it's been this infrequent as long as I've lived here. Just seems altogether silly.

It used to be (up until about 20 years ago when the spaghetti 2 change came in) an all-day service with upwards of 20 mins peak service, and had been linked with portions of the current route 2 alignment. The biggest chop came in 2003 when service to Willows was taken over by route 2, and its function has largely been taken over by the 7 (which only evolved past a bare bones service in the 90s), and to a lesser extent, the 3.

[InfiNorth]

3 hours ago, ephrex said:

It used to be (up until about 20 years ago when the spaghetti 2 change came in) an all-day service with upwards of 20 mins peak service, and had been linked with portions of the current route 2 alignment. The biggest chop came in 2003 when service to Willows was taken over by route 2, and its function has largely been taken over by the 7 (which only evolved past a bare bones service in the 90s), and to a lesser extent, the 3.

Correct me if I'm wrong, way back when, there were two routes that overlapped along Central Avenue and went downtown via a coastal-ish route and an Oak Bay-ish route. I'd say that in the downtown area, while almost all the services are pretty good, the 1, 3, and 10 really suck a lot and BC Transit never seems to try to increase their usefulness. 

[ephrex]

6 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, way back when, there were two routes that overlapped along Central Avenue and went downtown via a coastal-ish route and an Oak Bay-ish route. I'd say that in the downtown area, while almost all the services are pretty good, the 1, 3, and 10 really suck a lot and BC Transit never seems to try to increase their usefulness. 

In the case of the 1 and 3, the 7 has largely taken over the role and now operates near FTN levels.

The 10 just carries air -- because of the current through-route concept, it gets the same service level that the 3 does, and is way overserved as a result -- though this will be changing next service change.

[InfiNorth]

15 hours ago, ephrex said:

The 10 just carries air -- because of the current through-route concept, it gets the same service level that the 3 does, and is way overserved as a result -- though this will be changing next service change.

Is it getting collapsed more or getting grown more? I would really personally want a better service on Bay, personally.

[ephrex]

3 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

Is it getting collapsed more or getting grown more? I would really personally want a better service on Bay, personally.

Interlining is being broken to be able to match service levels to ridership. The 10 is getting heavily chopped as a result -- it hardly picks up anyone along Bay St so there's no justification for even current service levels.

[InfiNorth]

3 hours ago, ephrex said:

Interlining is being broken to be able to match service levels to ridership. The 10 is getting heavily chopped as a result -- it hardly picks up anyone along Bay St so there's no justification for even current service levels.

I hate to be that person but how long will it take transit agencies to figure out that if people don't want to use a horribly infrequent bus service... the solution isn't to make it even more infrequent. This is supported by years of research. Where are the service hours being reallocated?

[ephrex]

37 minutes ago, InfiNorth said:

I hate to be that person but how long will it take transit agencies to figure out that if people don't want to use a horribly infrequent bus service... the solution isn't to make it even more infrequent. This is supported by years of research. Where are the service hours being reallocated?

I believe there was a decision to transition the entire medium duty fleet to CNG buses -- which are only available out of Langford. The hours are going to the extended pull trips and to improving the 3.

[InfiNorth]

1 hour ago, ephrex said:

I believe there was a decision to transition the entire medium duty fleet to CNG buses -- which are only available out of Langford. The hours are going to the extended pull trips and to improving the 3.

Once the 10 is reduced to almost nothing, doesn't this mean that there won't be any mid-town cross-town bus services? The next crosstown service is the 26, although the 4 offers somewhat of a crosstown service as well along Hillside. 8 kind of counts I guess.

[ephrex]

30 minutes ago, InfiNorth said:

Once the 10 is reduced to almost nothing, doesn't this mean that there won't be any mid-town cross-town bus services? The next crosstown service is the 26, although the 4 offers somewhat of a crosstown service as well along Hillside. 8 kind of counts I guess.

That demand is largely captured by the 4, 14, and 15 anyway. In any case, the specific pattern isn't exactly something sustainable with a smaller transit system anyway -- longer term plans have the 9 penciled in for eventual FTN conversion but that's also not happening any time soon. More direct crosstown services are really things that are only viable in larger systems.

[ygk]

14 hours ago, InfiNorth said:

Once the 10 is reduced to almost nothing, doesn't this mean that there won't be any mid-town cross-town bus services? The next crosstown service is the 26, although the 4 offers somewhat of a crosstown service as well along Hillside. 8 kind of counts I guess.

The 26 used to be called Crosstown

There’ll also be the future FTN 40 Dockyard/UVic via Admirals-McKenzie

[InfiNorth]

9 hours ago, ygk said:

The 26 used to be called Crosstown

There’ll also be the future FTN 40 Dockyard/UVic via Admirals-McKenzie

Yes! The 26 started in 1976 running along what they referred to as the "edge of the city." I am curious as to what its routing was, as I'm not sure if McKenzie followed its current alignment at that time. 

The 40 can't arrive soon enough. Gordon Head to the ferries is brutal right now, the 39 is horribly infrequent (remember that one year where it was briefly on the FTN?) and the 26 drops you at UpTown, which is a horrible place to catch a bus to Swartz bay since the 72 and 70 follow different routes. 

I mean, like four times a day you can use the 51... I caught the once-daily contra-AM to get to work today. Wish that ran more often. It was even pretty busy.