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kevlo86

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The spring schedules are now visible on the Calgary Transit website.

One correction I must make right away to my summary from a few days ago: The frequency adjustments for Route 1 are for the entire day, every weekday. So from March 16, it'll be ~13 minutes am/pm peak, 20 minutes weekday midday and 26 minutes weekday evenings.

With no corresponding changes for Max Purple, there will be uneven spacing of buses along the 17th Avenue S.E. transitway most of the time on weekdays. (Why is this so difficult??)

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21 minutes ago, downbeat said:

The spring schedules are now visible on the Calgary Transit website.

One correction I must make right away to my summary from a few days ago: The frequency adjustments for Route 1 are for the entire day, every weekday. So from March 16, it'll be ~13 minutes am/pm peak, 20 minutes weekday midday and 26 minutes weekday evenings.

With no corresponding changes for Max Purple, there will be uneven spacing of buses along the 17th Avenue S.E. transitway most of the time on weekdays. (Why is this so difficult??)

The same things been a nightmare with Winnipeg & their SW Transitway for years - buses within a few mins of eachother, and almost 30 min gaps in between. Mostly due to wanting to start the buses at their points at certain times & ending them by certain times as well. Not including traffic, or problem passengers, or crushloads holding up the bus continuously... 

Almost makes me wonder, if it would just be better to short-turn the MP directly at 52nd (or another suitable turning point) & turn it around, to make the schedule gaps less expansive. That or staggering the 1 a little bit? It's clear CT won't just branch the MP off to Penbrooke or something, or remove the 1 & use an MP "express" (serving all local stops Penbrooke - 17th, and from 52nd St to East Hills, then MAX BRT stops only after it reached 17th Ave) which could reduce the Route 1 headaches... even though it would solve alot of problems and free up resources, so why not just stagger the route timing? Or actually create some diamond lanes or Transit-only lanes through Inglewood, to bypass this?

Reminds me... so if the Green Line is going to be low-floor LRT, with just heightened curbs... that gives me an idea actually.

Why not use the low-floor designed Green Line, not just for LRV's but ALSO for BRT, to help avoid congestion? Considering the issues of the 1, MP and transit in Inglewood/Ramsay/etc, with the lack of space and room for transit-dedicated lanes... maybe the LRT and BRT could share the same line & infrastructure, to forever bypass the traffic jams and always being almost 40 minutes late? 

Thoughts? And before anyone mentions $$$, its not that financially prohibitive to build a road and some traffic lights amongst the LRT tracks - especially if it resolves major transit headaches for the East and SE of Calgary. If Europe and the States can do it, and if Calgary and Edmonton are doing that right now (example: 7th Ave, new Edmonton LRT, Toronto streetcars, etc etc) - can a shared BRT/LRT "Green Line" work for urbanized Calgary?

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1 hour ago, downbeat said:

The spring schedules are now visible on the Calgary Transit website.

One correction I must make right away to my summary from a few days ago: The frequency adjustments for Route 1 are for the entire day, every weekday. So from March 16, it'll be ~13 minutes am/pm peak, 20 minutes weekday midday and 26 minutes weekday evenings.

With no corresponding changes for Max Purple, there will be uneven spacing of buses along the 17th Avenue S.E. transitway most of the time on weekdays. (Why is this so difficult??)

Well, I totally didn't see that coming. They did in fact balance out the midday schedules between the two routes but now there's all sorts of overlapping schedules during peak hours. After having looked over the two schedules, it's not completely awful but there are times where both routes are scheduled at the exact same time or within 1 or 2 minutes.

The evening schedules are actually not too bad. At 25 and 26 minute headways, the spacing between them is about 10-15 minutes throughout the evening.

You know what would really solve some of these schedule adherence issues though? Actually giving buses proper signal preemption along the major transitway intersections. One could argue that it can be disruptive during peak hours with buses in both directions at such high frequency but it seems like a no-brainer during midday or evening periods.

 

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After taking a further look, I can't help but feel like the route 1's schedule may be padded out a little too much. Here's an example during morning rush hour.

image.thumb.png.05e0e988b4984c090b9421217b7e96ba.png

Technically, yes, non timepoint times are just estimates but let's just assume for a second that it does in fact take both routes 10 minutes to get to 52nd St. Somehow, it takes the MP 3 less minutes to get to 9th Ave Station. For that 7:05 trip, assuming that drivers actually wait for the full amount of time at the 9th St timepoint, the MP would be 5 minutes faster despite both routes arriving at about the same time at 52nd St. For trips where the route 1 sneaks ahead of the MP and ends up picking up the bulk of passengers, that could be interesting.

For reference, the current time between Penbrooke Terminal and 9th St SE is 28 minutes and the new schedule is about 32 minutes. I do know a lot of operators tend to just ignore the 9th St timepoint if they're only a minute or two early. I usually take the MP in the mornings which is currently scheduled 4 minutes after each route 1 at the 9th St stop and there never seems to be a route 1 in front of us that is consistently running late.

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4 hours ago, armorand said:

Or actually create some diamond lanes or Transit-only lanes through Inglewood, to bypass this?

These already exist: the peak-direction parking lane on 9th Avenue in Inglewood turns into a reserved bus/taxi/bike lane during rush hours. (WB lane in the morning; EB lane in the afternoon.)

4 hours ago, Transit Fan said:

You know what would really solve some of these schedule adherence issues though? Actually giving buses proper signal preemption along the major transitway intersections. One could argue that it can be disruptive during peak hours with buses in both directions at such high frequency but it seems like a no-brainer during midday or evening periods.

Yes! I WANT the bus to disrupt regular traffic. The BRT should be above regular traffic lanes in the transportation pecking order. I thought that was the point of spending multi-millions of dollars for the BRT system. I can't remember if I've said this before, but it seems to be a bit of a waste to build a beautiful transitway only to have buses wait in its reserved lane because they don't have proper priority at intersections. It almost makes me question why we spent so much money on this dedicated infrastructure.

2 hours ago, Transit Fan said:

I can't help but feel like the route 1's schedule may be padded out a little too much.

As a frequent user, I can tell you with some certainty buses are often early at the locations where I use the bus — sometimes pushing 10 minutes early. But sometimes, they are right on time or very close. (This is during off-peak hours, by the way. All bets are off during rush hour!)

Also of note for Route 1 in the spring schedule change: weekend late-evening westbound frequency drops from 25 to 30 minutes after 9:30 p.m. or so. This is too bad, especially on Saturday.

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Route 14: New weekday morning and afternoon peak trips have been added, and times have been adjusted to improve schedule adherence.

I should have included this one in my earlier summary. The change is quite the improvement as well. For the Bridlewood half of the route, frequencies go as low as 4 or 5 minutes during peak hours. Headway is currently 7/8 minutes.

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Route 303 (MAX Orange): Two weekday westbound trips have been added to morning peak times and one eastbound trip has been added to afternoon peak times, and schedules have been adjusted. 

Effectively, peak-hour frequencies go as low as 12 minutes westbound in the morning, and as low as 13/14 minutes eastbound in the afternoon.

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Route 304 (MAX Yellow): Frequencies have been increased to run […] every 25 minutes on weekends.

There is no evidence of this in the online schedule. The information currently available (I picked Saturday, March 21) shows the same 27/35 minute service being offered in the current weekend schedule.

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Route 306 (MAX Teal): Two weekend late night trips from Douglas Glen Terminal have been added and one late night trip from Westbrook has been added.

There is no evidence of this in the online schedule either. Last buses to depart both endpoints on Saturday, March 21, is 8 p.m.  (The weekday span improvements are listed, however.)

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2 hours ago, downbeat said:

Yes! I WANT the bus to disrupt regular traffic. The BRT should be above regular traffic lanes in the transportation pecking order. I thought that was the point of spending multi-millions of dollars for the BRT system. I can't remember if I've said this before, but it seems to be a bit of a waste to build a beautiful transitway only to have buses wait in its reserved lane because they don't have proper priority at intersections. It almost makes me question why we spent so much money on this dedicated infrastructure.

I totally agree - if theres no room through Inglewood though, maybe a paved and shared BRT/LRT Green Line section, would create that desperately needed right-of-way for Calgary Transit, void of cars as well?

Because that might actually be the best solution across the board - fully shared BRT/LRT row from Downtown to approximately Inglewood/Dover, plus Green Line connectivity too for ridership, massive TOD potential as well, along with being able to have extremely high frequencies of CT between Downtown and lets say... Dover. Just think about it - the Green Line LRT would already operate every 5-15 minutes right? So at Inglewood, if they threw in a few D60LFR's and rerouted the MP onto that shared Green Line (among other routes - Route 24 perhaps)... theoretically, frequency would be so high, and transit connections to all residential, employment and services would be of such a high quality as well - that it might be possible to wholly abandon the car in Inglewood, along 17th Avenue and in some of the industrial areas along Barlow too, even. Transit TOD potential as well. If theres lets say... a LRV or bus departing Inglewood for Downtown every 2-3 minutes at peak, and every 5-10 mins right up until the end of service, transit oriented development would be massive & so would cost recovery for the city, via taxes, less cars on the road, etc etc. 

Just an idea, but if its already low-floor LRV's with adjusted sidewalks & platforms much like those in Calgary and Winnipegs BRT, then why not dual-use the transitways for BRT/LRT & reap the benefits? Especially for Barlow and anywhere along the MP & Green Line, ripe for TOD and higher density land usage? Plus it would also help CT get people onboard considerably as well. Why be stuck in Inglewood traffic, when you could just chop off $300 to $600/month in car expenses (depending on payments, insurance  gas etc) - and switch for a CT pass for a station with insane levels of LRT and BRT service? It may be a massive selling point, not only for the government and CT, but also for the Inglewood NIMBY's and property developers as well, along with industries/employers along and nearby the Green Line. 

Win-win for everybody?

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1 hour ago, armorand said:

Yikes...

Checked the bus times from 52nd St Station, MP running reasonably according to the displays & the one that i just missed while waiting to cross the street... but Route 1? I must be seeing things... 

Screenshot_20200227-113908_Maps.jpg

This issue is also seen on transit55. It's a bug in the schedule adherence data that they publish. Buses arent actually running that late. It does make it tough to track the ones that actually are late though.

It's been broken for the 1 since the start of this signup.

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On 2/26/2020 at 2:48 AM, armorand said:

paved and shared BRT/LRT Green Line section

No.  You have one bus breakdown and all of a sudden, you've got thousands of riders in both buses and trains that are blocked.  Recall when buses break down on 7th Avenue fouling the C-Train tracks and you've got yourself a situation where _everyone_ is mad.  They routed Route 1 and a bunch of other routes off of 7th Avenue precisely to eliminate the potential for ruining the majority of Transit ridership through the core.  Plus I don't doubt the fact that bus drivers try to not drive on the tracks for traction reasons.

Also, LRT right of way maintenance becomes a massive headache when you have pavement on it.  Lastly, costs of doing paved LRT become far more expensive than standard track laying.  Hence, you wouldn't even get stage one for the same money that we're possibly getting now.

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11 hours ago, Jon Calon said:

lso, LRT right of way maintenance becomes a massive headache when you have pavement on it.  Lastly, costs of doing paved LRT become far more expensive than standard track laying.  Hence, you wouldn't even get stage one for the same money that we're possibly getting now.

So true. As a result of doing paved track on the NLRT in Edmonton, for no reason other than aesthetics, that helped push the decision towards CBTC for the signal system. Now with that being terminated, they are installing a signal system and cutting concrete out of the paved sections. 

KISS. 

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FYI: Block/key information for the next schedule change is now visible on Transit 55.

Also, I still can’t find any evidence of these weekend service improvements on MAX Yellow and Teal. Are they a mistake on the transit website?

B73841FE-E547-4341-9F87-7BF0690C2AB2.jpeg

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9 minutes ago, downbeat said:

FYI: Block/key information for the next schedule change is now visible on Transit 55.

Also, I still can’t find any evidence of these weekend service improvements on MAX Yellow and Teal. Are they a mistake on the transit website?

B73841FE-E547-4341-9F87-7BF0690C2AB2.jpeg

I have found the extra Max Teal trips for sure; however, you're right, according to the blocks, Max Yellow will not see a frequency increase on weekends

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2 hours ago, Blake M said:

I have found the extra Max Teal trips for sure; however, you're right, according to the blocks, Max Yellow will not see a frequency increase on weekends

I see extra MAX Teal trips on weekdays …. but not weekends. Am I doing something wrong?

(Don’t see the MT/MY weekend changes on the schedules, either.)

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Not just the frequency increase, but the spacing between timepoints is still the same for MY on weekends. Not sure if it's an error but it would be weird to chop off time during peak hours and all day on weekdays but still leave tons of time between timepoints on weekends.

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22 hours ago, Transit Fan said:

Not just the frequency increase, but the spacing between timepoints is still the same for MY on weekends. Not sure if it's an error but it would be weird to chop off time during peak hours and all day on weekdays but still leave tons of time between timepoints on weekends.

I've noticed that to be a trend with transit. Weekday times are heavily scrutinized, but sometimes weekend run times remain the same for years. The max orange and i believe max teal schedules for Saturday and Sunday have remained the same since November 2018. Same thing with routes like the 33, the weekend schedule has been the same for probably a decade

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6042 is hovering around Somerset station. I wonder if it's going to fill in for the 153 as a sole bus.

So 8253 came off the 38 to help the 153 and I see a VP bus on the 56 in place of an SG shuttle run. Wth is going on tonight lol. Lets pull 1046 on the 99 while we're at it ? 

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59 minutes ago, yvarushin said:

6042 is hovering around Somerset station. I wonder if it's going to fill in for the 153 as a sole bus.

So 8253 came off the 38 to help the 153 and I see a VP bus on the 56 in place of an SG shuttle run. Wth is going on tonight lol. Lets pull 1046 on the 99 while we're at it ? 

3 buses finally on the 153 — including 6042. 

06C001FD-601F-4C00-92DC-F3BB45EAC93C.jpeg
If I’m reading the block info correctly, these buses were redirected to serve Route 153 after completing their day’s work on other routes. (They would normally have been headed for the garage.)

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8 hours ago, downbeat said:

Apparently trouble on Route 99 as well ...

 

 

 

 

Is this actually possible? Like can dispatch actually forget to dispatch buses? I know they're short shuttle drivers right now but would they actually forget to send out six buses?

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58 minutes ago, Blake M said:

Is this actually possible? Like can dispatch actually forget to dispatch buses? I know they're short shuttle drivers right now but would they actually forget to send out six buses?

I was talking to a shuttle driver last night and she said that she got a message on her CAD that several shuttle keys were not sent out due to a "dispatch problem".

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10 hours ago, TechSpotlight said:

I was talking to a shuttle driver last night and she said that she got a message on her CAD that several shuttle keys were not sent out due to a "dispatch problem".

Somebody call in sick, at the dispatch centre...?

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