Calgary Transit

[downbeat]

Schedules for the fall signup are now visible on Calgary Transit's website.

Notably, the extended late-night service span for Route 302 is being shown in the schedules.

[7979 d40lf fan]

50 minutes ago, downbeat said:

Schedules for the fall signup are now visible on Calgary Transit's website.

Notably, the extended late-night service span for Route 302 is being shown in the schedules.

I wish they gave the 167 late night service i have to walk from chapparal to legacy after work some days when i work late cause it does not go past 7:00

[downbeat]

5 minutes ago, 7979 d40lf fan said:

I wish they gave the 167 late night service i have to walk from chapparal to legacy after work some days when i work late cause it does not go past 7:00

Do make sure to call Calgary Transit's customer service line to share that with them! They can't know unless we tell them stuff like this.

[7979 d40lf fan]

2 minutes ago, downbeat said:

Do make sure to call Calgary Transit's customer service line to share that with them! They can't know unless we tell them stuff like this.

I did! I filled a form out and called about it.

[downbeat]

More things I've noticed from a quick look at the schedules:

• Route 1's new rush hour schedules are a little weird, as the new eastbound trips are much later than Route 305's current service span. The new departures operate a whole round trip on the route, meaning peak service is 6:22 to 7:50 a.m. and 3:54 to 5:00 p.m. leaving Penbrooke; 7:49 to 9:17 a.m. and 5:21 to 6:27 p.m leaving Bowness. On the upside, the eastbound trips will probably miss most of the traffic nonsense in Kensington … but they might also miss some of the potential riders too.
• Route 10 will have a 30 minute headway on weekdays and weekends.
• Route 108 has a fantastic headway during the day of just 22 minutes. It's 44 minutes late night and 45 minutes on weekends.
• MAX Teal has unadvertised late-night improvements. Those awkward 35-50 minute headways at the end of the day will be 28-30 minutes in the fall.

[Transit Fan]

5 hours ago, downbeat said:

Route 1's new rush hour schedules are a little weird, as the new eastbound trips are much later than Route 305's current service span. The new departures operate a whole round trip on the route, meaning peak service is 6:22 to 7:50 a.m. and 3:54 to 5:00 p.m. leaving Penbrooke; 7:49 to 9:17 a.m. and 5:21 to 6:27 p.m leaving Bowness. On the upside, the eastbound trips will probably miss most of the traffic nonsense in Kensington … but they might also miss some of the potential riders too.

A little weird is an understatement. I took some time to plot out some time ranges where the Route 1 will have 10-12 minute frequency and a bunch of them just make absolutely no sense to me. That kind of frequency sounded great on paper but the implementation is quite a bit silly in a few cases.

For starters, here is the operating hours of the current Route 305 (3 trips per direction every 30 mins). I have highlighted the peak direction in red.

When I think of peak periods, the 2h window between 6-8am in the morning and 4-6pm in the afternoons come to mind. The 305 falls in line with that quite nicely.

Now here is the time ranges for the new Route 1 schedule. The first time listed would mean the first bus that starts the higher frequency (going to call it HF going forward) service every ~11 minutes while the last time listed would be the last bus before going back to 20+ minute frequency. Again, the peak directions are highlighted in red. To make the comparison to the peak 305 trips easier, i've also bolded the peak directions that would effectively be replacing the 305.

To summarize a few observations going from top to bottom:

• For westbound trips outbound from Penbrooke, that window of HF service is quite good. The afternoon westbound trips operate at pretty reasonable times as well during rush hour.
• Those same trips from Penbrooke continue on to Bowness. Departing from downtown, the window of HF service actually is pretty close to the operating hours of the 305.

Eastbound trips are where things start to get a little uglier.

• For eastbound trips departing from Bowness, HF service is now effectively between 8-9am which is quite different from the 6:30-7:30 trips of the 305. Those eastbound Route 1 trips from 6:30-7:30 are probably going to get busier than they are now without the 305 to supplement service during that hour. 8-9am HF service could still be useful for a different group of people but doesn't properly replace former 305 service.
• Likewise, the afternoon eastbound trips differs from the 305 service quite a bit with HF service not starting until 5:21pm which is quite late nearing the tail end of rush hour
• Departing from downtown going eastbound, there is this really odd window of HF service between almost 8:30 to 10am. That said, this might not be as crazy considering more shops and services would start to open around this time in the morning in Inglewood and along 17 Ave SE.
• Lastly, and what I think is the biggest issue is the afternoon trips departing from downtown going east. From 6-7pm, there is an hour of HF service which is completely outside of the definition of afternoon peak hours. The busiest times for both the 1 and MP between 4-6pm will see no improvements at all and then suddenly after 6, there will be a sudden surge of buses that will likely be nowhere near as full as they would've been if they came an hour or two earlier.

If you observe closely, it seems like what they did is pretty much start every new trip from Penbrooke and then have it complete 1 round trip. Once block data is available on T55, it should be able to confirm if this is the case or not (so still just speculation for now). Westbound trips are actually pretty good but having those same westbound trips be the start of all eastbound trips makes those eastbound trips begin service much much later than expected. I'm quite surprised they wouldn't bother starting any trips from Bowness initially or from downtown in the afternoons going outbound.

[7979 d40lf fan]

7 hours ago, downbeat said:

 

 

is there on demand service in livingston/caringston?

[downbeat]

2 minutes ago, 7979 d40lf fan said:

 

is there on demand service in livingston/caringston?

Yes. That was in the announcement for the fall service change, which says near the top: “On Demand service will continue in Livingston and Carrington.”

[7979 d40lf fan]

3 minutes ago, downbeat said:

Yes. That was in the announcement for the fall service change, which says near the top: “On Demand service will continue in Livingston and Carrington.”

Oh! How come it does not show up on transit55? The west demand does.

[BC_YYC]

9 minutes ago, 7979 d40lf fan said:

Oh! How come it does not show up on transit55? The west demand does.

It doesn't show up on Transit55 as it is separately contracted out to Southland who does not use CT vehicles but instead uses Ford Transit vans. 

[downbeat]

1 hour ago, Transit Fan said:

I took some time to plot out some time ranges where the Route 1 will have 10-12 minute frequency

I agree with your assessment that westbound peak service on the route seems to be better timed than eastbound service. I’m imagining this is just a personnel issue: the fall 2023 peak-hour additional service can be accomplished with three or four drivers doing the same number round-trips. I assume they would prefer having perfectly timed trips in both directions but that would necessitate double the number of drivers for the same number of extra service hours. (The accountants would surely love my idea.)

I do wonder, however, why transit planners felt it necessary for these extra trips to go all the way from end to end. They could literally have used the three buses used for Route 305 and have them cover a similar time period on Route 1 but turning around at the Central Library, as the west side is where current Route 1 capacity is somewhat lacking at times. At least in the east, going as far as Inglewood, riders have a number of options apart from Route 1. Going as far as 52 St E, there’s also MAX Purple. (I haven’t used the eastern segment as much in recent times. Is ridership currently high enough to justify 9 departures/hour servicing the transitway at rush hour?)

Also, having used Route 1 a little bit during the p.m. rush over the last year, I’ve noticed it starts getting busy going WB from downtown as early as 3 p.m., when departures using 40-foot buses can get jam-packed. The new schedules don’t address this. Time will tell how the changes actually serve riders but I get the feeling Route 1’s schedule will need a bit of revising in the future …

I don’t mean to armchair quarterback before the changes even happen, but I’m probably more familiar with Route 1 than any other.

 

[7979 d40lf fan]

12 minutes ago, BC_YYC said:

It doesn't show up on Transit55 as it is separately contracted out to Southland who does not use CT vehicles but instead uses Ford Transit vans. 

Oh alright!

[7979 d40lf fan]

Saw series 8 on redline around 9:15ish the only number i caught was 2325

[downbeat]

More unadvertised service improvements in the fall 2023 schedules:

• Route 82 will have its weekday service span extended to end about two hours later.
• Route 302 will see headways of 12 minutes early a.m., then 20 minutes for the remainder of the a.m. peak, and the 30-minute service gap going northbound in the current schedule is gone. Southbound only: 10-12 minutes in early p.m. peak, then 20 minutes for the rest of rush hour. (20 minute headways northbound in p.m. peak, so no change.)
• MAX Teal will have a 20 minute headway during midday on weekdays, in addition to announced improvement to 20 minutes during peak hours.

Also, MAX Yellow’s improvements are slightly better than advertised: headways during peak times are as low as 9 minutes.

[Calgary transit fan]

4 hours ago, 7979 d40lf fan said:

Saw series 8 on redline around 9:15ish the only number i caught was 2325

I was on 2316 on the red line, which is the south car, coming home from work today

[7979 d40lf fan]

2 hours ago, Calgary transit fan said:

I was on 2316 on the red line, which is the south car, coming home from work today

Nice! I hope it stays on red line for a while.

[agott]

I was wondering, when is CT going to have new arctic buses? I saw Toronto’s new XDE60s, and that got me thinking. The last time we had new arctics was what, 9 years ago?

[R. Meu]

14 minutes ago, agott said:

I was wondering, when is CT going to have new arctic buses? I saw Toronto’s new XDE60s, and that got me thinking. The last time we had new arctics was what, 9 years ago?

Not for awhile, at least according to what has been mentioned in RouteAhead. They didn’t mention too much about the shuttle replacements in the immediate future (ie less than a year from now sort of timeframe) and we know how that’s going now

Back to the artics - Seriously though, we could use replacements and expansion units right now as we speak given the state of some of the older artics right now.

[TimmyC62]

1 hour ago, agott said:

I was wondering, when is CT going to have new arctic buses? I saw Toronto’s new XDE60s, and that got me thinking. The last time we had new arctics was what, 9 years ago?

It's funny. People talking about the Arctic but don't do it on a regular basis often type it as "artic", and I'm always tempted to remark that we're not talking about buses here.

 

Much rarer to see the inverse!

[Gsgeek540]

13 hours ago, agott said:

I was wondering, when is CT going to have new artic buses? 

Based on what operators are being told, possibly never.

[2102]

3 minutes ago, Gsgeek540 said:

Based on what operators are being told, possibly never.

I know you're just the messenger here, but is there a rationale behind this? Does it not reduce labour costs to run more artics? Especially with soem school routes where one artic would work instead they have to send two conventional buses

[Gsgeek540]

47 minutes ago, 2102 said:

I know you're just the messenger here, but is there a rationale behind this? Does it not reduce labour costs to run more artics? Especially with soem school routes where one artic would work instead they have to send two conventional buses

@vicinity wanna take this one?

[CTrainDude]

Artics are high maintenance - literally. They spend a lot of time in the shop and cost a lot to keep on the road.  And obviously take up more space in the shop. 
 

I’m not sure it factors in the decision, but they’re also horrible in winter. 

[Nick B]

Phasing out the articulated bus could very well be doable in Calgary I think, but would require eventual adjustments to the operation that I sure hope CT is prepared to enact if this is true.

Increasing frequency, in some cases drastically, on routes that will begin to see less overall capacity as the artic fleet gets decommissioned over time. Purchasing of (possibly significantly) more 40 foot buses than perhaps originally planned to facilitate said frequency increases. Improving operational infrastructure to accommodate said additional buses. Crewing said buses and infrastructure by hiring, training and retaining additional employees. 

On that note, for pure optics I think they really should at least try to maintain a smaller fleet of a few dozen artics for the BRT (especially MAX) services. Please, please don't even think about ever putting an Arboc on a MAX route...

[7979 d40lf fan]

How come calgary transit does not offer late night service on this one really busy route