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9 hours ago, bus is coming 1965 said:

From a Twitter post.

Transit releases 23 routes that could see service cuts: 44, 45, 56, 66, 71, 76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 87, 89, 92, 93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 109, 110, Dart.

Weekend Routes (Temporarily) Cut in August 1997. This was to "save" $100,000 at the time:

56 Aulneau

64 Lindenwoods Express

68 Crescent

72 Dalhousie-Killarney

76 Fort Garry-St. Vital

82 Westwood

83 Crestview

88 Cathedral

95 Morley

90 Concordia

Winnipeg Free Press

August 8, 1997

Thirteen weekend bus routes to be discontinued

6UZXTvO.png

I see a similarity between this years' list and the one from '97. Those routes that are common between the two should be redone or scrapped. They obviously don't produce enough revenue to run.

Will we be going through this same thing in 2037?

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An effort is underway to design a frequent transit network (FTN) for Winnipeg.  The idea would be to replace much of the existing network with a grid of east-west and north-south routes whose daytime frequency would be every 10 minutes.  Here is the draft map, version 1.02.

winnipeg-FTNgrid-v1_02.thumb.jpg.361fd2c1fcda6be23c48f21ca9da22ed.jpg

One of the goals of this exercise is to facilitate electrification with battery-electric buses and charge stations.

Comments?

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4 minutes ago, DavidW said:

An effort is underway to design a frequent transit network (FTN) for Winnipeg.  The idea would be to replace much of the existing network with a grid of east-west and north-south routes whose daytime frequency would be every 10 minutes.  Here is the draft map, version 1.02.

winnipeg-FTNgrid-v1_02.thumb.jpg.361fd2c1fcda6be23c48f21ca9da22ed.jpg

One of the goals of this exercise is to facilitate electrification with battery-electric buses and charge stations.

Comments?

Wow...

if it ever happens, when will that be?

I think maybe 12-14 years minimum...

but I'm not exactly sure...

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On 12/2/2017 at 6:58 PM, DavidW said:

An effort is underway to design a frequent transit network (FTN) for Winnipeg.  The idea would be to replace much of the existing network with a grid of east-west and north-south routes whose daytime frequency would be every 10 minutes.  Here is the draft map, version 1.02.

winnipeg-FTNgrid-v1_02.thumb.jpg.361fd2c1fcda6be23c48f21ca9da22ed.jpg

One of the goals of this exercise is to facilitate electrification with battery-electric buses and charge stations.

Comments?

A great start. I assume this map was deloped with the FTW group.

I wish the map was a bit clearer. The neighbourhood names are fuzzy and the population count is fuzzy. Can a more hi-res version of this map be gotten from the Planning Department of the CoW?

It doesn't have to be connected with faux electric transit by battery. That's another issue altogether.

I don't know all areas of metro Winnipeg. But that most westerly area in the Assiniboia, with about 2,500 citizens. They'll receive no transit service.

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12 hours ago, LilZebra said:

A great start. I assume this map was developed with the FTW group.

I wish the map was a bit clearer. The neighbourhood names are fuzzy and the population count is fuzzy. Can a more hi-res version of this map be gotten from the Planning Department of the CoW?

It doesn't have to be connected with faux electric transit by battery. That's another issue altogether.

I don't know all areas of metro Winnipeg. But that most westerly area in the Assiniboia, with about 2,500 citizens. They'll receive no transit service.

The driving force behind this project is a group that has been working with the Provincial government on electrification.  FTW has been kept in the loop but FTW is busy with lobbying campaign(s) and hasn't worked directly on this.  The concept was taken on Tuesday to a meeting with stakeholders.

Here's version 1.05:

winnipeg-FTNconcept-v1_05.thumb.jpg.a25d979c1ff4b4b54461949a36036a0a.jpg

It's my personal opinion that Winnipeg Transit's network needs a serious review.  It's essentially grown without an underlying plan or concept, or governing principles, since streetcar and trolley bus days. Years (decades) of under funding have made the service planners at Winnipeg Transit experts at "making do" and stretching resources ever thinner across an ever larger urban area. The result has been an increasingly complex, largely low-frequency, poorly connected, meandering pile of uncoordinated routes that makes any journey not on a single route an ordeal.  I found this was reflected in the conversations between the public and the planner at the Eastern Corridor, where each suggestion was replied with "and we could do that too", like we need fourteen variations of routes all operating with random frequencies between 23 and 68.4 minutes...  No concept. No principles. Not even a notion they are responsible for a coordinated network. Just mad skills spreading the shrinking resources ever thinner.

Something has to break, or we're going to be stuck in 1971 forever.  I'm not sure this is the right concept to pursue but it's a conversation starter, and if it takes something like electrification to start the conversation then so be it.

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17 minutes ago, LilZebra said:

Route 7 on the map, generally along Pembina Hwy. between the U of M and P&M.

The downtown terminal may as well be the Concert Hall loop.

Route 7 is supposed to be the Southwest Transitway, so the downtown terminal is probably supposed to be Balmoral Station. It's the one route handed to the concept pre-existing. (It also kind of doesn't fit the overall concept).

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On 12/5/2017 at 10:00 PM, LilZebra said:

A great start. I assume this map was deloped with the FTW group.

I wish the map was a bit clearer. The neighbourhood names are fuzzy and the population count is fuzzy. Can a more hi-res version of this map be gotten from the Planning Department of the CoW?

It doesn't have to be connected with faux electric transit by battery. That's another issue altogether.

I don't know all areas of metro Winnipeg. But that most westerly area in the Assiniboia, with about 2,500 citizens. They'll receive no transit service.

  • There's a lot less service through the downtown with this grid network.  That's good for people who don't need to go through the downtown, but a lot of people do travel to the downtown for work, so that would mean a lot of capacity would need to be provided on the routes operating through the downtown.
  • Some of the routes would be better as feeders, I question Red #1 for instance, that links Charleswood to the Murray Industrial area.  A network of feeder routes (to deliver people in low density areas to the line-haul routes shown in the map) are needed.
  • The routes, as noted by others need to extend further out, they ignore areas at the edges of the map.  I don't think this was intentional, just the result of not using the best map as a starting point.  (To serve areas like St. Norbert that look to have been missed out, like LilZebra noted.)
  • A tool like REMIX (https://www.remix.com/) could be used to assess the coverage area of the proposed changes to service.  The City's VISUM traffic model should be used to determine what level of service is needed on each of these corridors.   Some will need more service (shorter headways) than others to handle the passenger demand.
  • Simply gridding the entire city with frequent service is a starting point for a revisit to service, but it needs to take into consideration other details, such as where people actually live and work (the density maps Jarrett Walker used in his exercise.)  Simply covering the city with frequent service is resource-intensive - we will have some areas with frequent service but few passengers on the buses (if the buses are travelling between locations that aren't resulting in a lot of trips) and other areas will be overloaded (as they are today) if we do not consider this.  For this reason I question some of the routes (Blue #2, #20, #13), I think some of these may have just been included to ensure the entire city is covered in routes.
  • I'm concerned about the length of some of the routes.  I don't know if there are a lot of people wanting to travel across the entire city north to south or east to west (Red #5, Red #11, Blue #14) and long routes can suffer from delay.  It might be best to break these long routes up into two smaller routes if they can't be made reliable along their entire length. (Which is another problem WT suffers from at the moment.
  • There are some places where routes are very close together (Blue 10 and 12 west of the downtown. This is good because these areas have high transit use and are high density, so this is justified.  
  • I like how this routing is less like Winnipeg's current service that puts lots of service onto corridors, but does so without rhyme or reason from a scheduling standpoint (like all the buses on Pembina, all the buses on Portage)

It's good to have ideas put out for consideration like this map, I hope people will think about the concepts and continue to fine-tune them and not be cynical.  The fact that this is being discussed in Winnipeg should be seen as a glimmer of hope.

 

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20 hours ago, DavidW said:

Route 7 is supposed to be the Southwest Transitway, so the downtown terminal is probably supposed to be Balmoral Station. It's the one route handed to the concept pre-existing. (It also kind of doesn't fit the overall concept).

Rapid transit, be it light rail or bus rapid transit often doesn't entirely fit the concept of a frequent transit network.  Different considerations.  This was somewhat discussed in the documentation for Houston's network update.  It's not ideal when these aren't aligned with one another obviously.

  • feeder/local, (coverage service, connects to frequent network, low volumes)
  • frequent network (high volumes, backbone of the system, frequent service and ideally optimized to travel on the road network efficiently and reliabily)
  • rapid transit. (carrying the highest volumes, similar in many ways to frequent service network but highest level of service, highest capacity, dedicated corridors, limited disruption from other modes.)
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It's in the news that Executive Policy Committee of City Council has amended the 2018 City budget to eliminate the proposed transit service cuts.  The fare increase is still in the budget but the reductions in bus routes are avoided.

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On 12/7/2017 at 8:30 AM, horseman said:
  • There's a lot less service through the downtown with this grid network.  That's good for people who don't need to go through the downtown, but a lot of people do travel to the downtown for work, so that would mean a lot of capacity would need to be provided on the routes operating through the downtown.
  • Some of the routes would be better as feeders, I question Red #1 for instance, that links Charleswood to the Murray Industrial area.  A network of feeder routes (to deliver people in low density areas to the line-haul routes shown in the map) are needed.
  • The routes, as noted by others need to extend further out, they ignore areas at the edges of the map.  I don't think this was intentional, just the result of not using the best map as a starting point.  (To serve areas like St. Norbert that look to have been missed out, like LilZebra noted.)
  • A tool like REMIX (https://www.remix.com/) could be used to assess the coverage area of the proposed changes to service.  The City's VISUM traffic model should be used to determine what level of service is needed on each of these corridors.   Some will need more service (shorter headways) than others to handle the passenger demand.
  • Simply gridding the entire city with frequent service is a starting point for a revisit to service, but it needs to take into consideration other details, such as where people actually live and work (the density maps Jarrett Walker used in his exercise.)  Simply covering the city with frequent service is resource-intensive - we will have some areas with frequent service but few passengers on the buses (if the buses are travelling between locations that aren't resulting in a lot of trips) and other areas will be overloaded (as they are today) if we do not consider this.  For this reason I question some of the routes (Blue #2, #20, #13), I think some of these may have just been included to ensure the entire city is covered in routes.
  • I'm concerned about the length of some of the routes.  I don't know if there are a lot of people wanting to travel across the entire city north to south or east to west (Red #5, Red #11, Blue #14) and long routes can suffer from delay.  It might be best to break these long routes up into two smaller routes if they can't be made reliable along their entire length. (Which is another problem WT suffers from at the moment.
  • There are some places where routes are very close together (Blue 10 and 12 west of the downtown. This is good because these areas have high transit use and are high density, so this is justified.  
  • I like how this routing is less like Winnipeg's current service that puts lots of service onto corridors, but does so without rhyme or reason from a scheduling standpoint (like all the buses on Pembina, all the buses on Portage)

It's good to have ideas put out for consideration like this map, I hope people will think about the concepts and continue to fine-tune them and not be cynical.  The fact that this is being discussed in Winnipeg should be seen as a glimmer of hope.

 

I really think this particular map is only a conversation starter.  I believe that at successful network redesign process requires lots and lots of input data and proper data analysis. I'm also not sure a grid fits with Winnipeg. Perhaps a hub-and-spoke network would fit better. Are their other design concepts that should be considered?

Some random points...

Fewer routes through downtown does not directly imply less service. Once a route needs more than the ideal frequency it should get higher order transit.

A basic principle of an ideal grid is that in one transfer you can reach any destination point. Hence each north-south line should intersect with each east-west line. That gets hard to do with Winnipeg's asymmetrical layout. There's certainly no point extending route 1 north through rural areas to meet route 2, or south through equally rural spaces to intersect with route 22. A high frequency link across the Assiniboine River between Assiniboia and Charleswood does seem like a missing link though.

I think what the author was trying to do with this concept map was to ask that if infrastructure (charging stations) needs to be installed to implement battery-electric buses, should it be installed using the current (historical, accidental, byzantine, un-concepted, uncoordinated, unconnected) route network, or is this an opportunity to plan a more modern, thought-out new network? Can better service result?

The Province as part of its carbon pricing/climate plan has committed itself to 100 battery-electric buses. Implementation falls to Winnipeg Transit.

Horseman, you've mentioned VISUM modelling software. As I understand it Transit purchased this software several years ago but has yet to employ it in its intended capacity. Do you think Winnipeg Transit has the manpower (or willpower) to actually take on a review of its network? The last 30+ years strongly suggests not...

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On 12/8/2017 at 6:28 PM, DavidW said:

I really think this particular map is only a conversation starter.  I believe that at successful network redesign process requires lots and lots of input data and proper data analysis. I'm also not sure a grid fits with Winnipeg. Perhaps a hub-and-spoke network would fit better. Are their other design concepts that should be considered?

Some random points...

Fewer routes through downtown does not directly imply less service. Once a route needs more than the ideal frequency it should get higher order transit.

A basic principle of an ideal grid is that in one transfer you can reach any destination point. Hence each north-south line should intersect with each east-west line. That gets hard to do with Winnipeg's asymmetrical layout. There's certainly no point extending route 1 north through rural areas to meet route 2, or south through equally rural spaces to intersect with route 22. A high frequency link across the Assiniboine River between Assiniboia and Charleswood does seem like a missing link though.

I think what the author was trying to do with this concept map was to ask that if infrastructure (charging stations) needs to be installed to implement battery-electric buses, should it be installed using the current (historical, accidental, byzantine, un-concepted, uncoordinated, unconnected) route network, or is this an opportunity to plan a more modern, thought-out new network? Can better service result?

The Province as part of its carbon pricing/climate plan has committed itself to 100 battery-electric buses. Implementation falls to Winnipeg Transit.

Horseman, you've mentioned VISUM modelling software. As I understand it Transit purchased this software several years ago but has yet to employ it in its intended capacity. Do you think Winnipeg Transit has the manpower (or willpower) to actually take on a review of its network? The last 30+ years strongly suggests not...

I'm glad there's discussion going on, I think you're right too -- that this map is intended to be a conversation starter.  It is time that an overhaul was contemplated.

I wasn't trying to imply less service to the downtown.  Like you say, the downtown would need a very frequent service and likely a higher order of service.  However, what would be different to now is that less transfers would take place in the downtown between routes, less people would have to travel downtown if their final destination isn't the downtown. Right now the downtown feels like it is overloaded at times, too many buses doing a slow elephant walk down Portage and down Graham.

Right now, Winnipeg's service is somewhat a radial system.  The issue is in the downtown, where all those converging routes and transfers between routes overload the setup that is in place.  A grid is less prone to this problem, but the downtown segment does need to keep the buses moving because a lot of travel in Winnipeg is destined to the downtown.

Winnipeg could be a grid -- it's not a perfect rectangle, but it's perhaps better for grid operation than some cities, like most cities, it could be somewhat a blend of a grid, feeder routes and maintain some radial service.  

With things like provincial commitments, it is one thing to say it is going to happen, but it will take co-ordination between the Province and the City to make it happen.  A lot of details have to be resolved before 100 electric buses will be rolling along city streets.

Transit's looking at how to start making use of the VISUM network.  Note though that a city-wide overhaul is a big project for a VISUM model, it could take some time to look at the iterative work that would be needed to complete this.

Realize this isn't a thorough response to your notes, DavidW.  I enjoy thinking about what the network could look like.  It will be a challenge though to implement it.  I look forward to continuing to discuss with you, and Curt (the author of this map.)

 

 

 

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The Rapid Transit network map from the 2011 Transportation Master Plan might be another way to think about what would make sense for use in Winnipeg for a Frequent Transit Network.  If you look at the combination of both the BRT routes, and routes identified as "quality corridors", it creates a grid network over the city.  If these were frequent, reliable service with high-capacity vehicles and ideally had upgraded protected lanes (above and beyond the current implementation of diamond lanes) and signal priority throughout, then we'd be getting somewhere.  Right now we are far from this.

Some additional segments would need to be created, I could see Chief Peguis for one being added, regional service towards CentrePort once that develops, etc.

Other service could then provide feeders / microtransit to link people to stops along these routes from lower density areas. This would be more like Calgary's system.

 

network.png

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3 hours ago, horseman said:

The Rapid Transit network map from the 2011 Transportation Master Plan might be another way to think about what would make sense for use in Winnipeg for a Frequent Transit Network.  If you look at the combination of both the BRT routes, and routes identified as "quality corridors", it creates a grid network over the city.  If these were frequent, reliable service with high-capacity vehicles and ideally had upgraded protected lanes (above and beyond the current implementation of diamond lanes) and signal priority throughout, then we'd be getting somewhere.  Right now we are far from this.

Some additional segments would need to be created, I could see Chief Peguis for one being added, regional service towards CentrePort once that develops, etc.

Other service could then provide feeders / microtransit to link people to stops along these routes from lower density areas. This would be more like Calgary's system.

 

network.png

There are provisions in the plans for the western extension of Chief for Park and Rides. I would imagine the route that would go along there would be the 77. Right now the 77 uses Chief between Henderson and Main. As of the fall schedule change, the only segment of Chief part of a Transit route is the segment between Henderson and Gateway. The segment between Gateway and Lag is part of the 85 North Kildonan.

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I'm concerned with the idea of putting high-frequency transit over roads like Chief Peguis or Bishop Grandin.  They are designed for car flow, with no frontage addresses, few "side-age" addresses, sparse pedestrian crossing opportunities, and often no sidewalks. They don't really "serve" the areas they pass through, they only serve the traffic whizzing by as close to non-stop as possible. Winnipeg has no genuine freeways but these sorts of arterial streets are Winnipeg's pseudo-freeways, and you don't run high frequency local services on freeways (or "freeways").  (But you can run express buses on no-stopping streets).

I agree, for example, that the St. Vital Bridge and Bishop Grandin Boulevard (BGB) represent an obvious traffic corridor in our city, but they should be avoided as much as possible for high-frequency local bus service.  That's why in version 1.05 of the grid-map above route Blue 22 (BGB corridor) runs mostly on Meadowood and other streets parallel to BGB.

Kenaston Boulevard (between the CNR main line and Scurfield) is uncategorizable example, featuring ditches and no sidewalks, few pedestrian crossing opportunities, and yet lots of commercial shopping. What I want to do with Kenaston is install sidewalks along both sides with frequent pedestrian access to the commercial and frequent pedestrian crossing opportunities, and then run high-frequency transit on it. Since there is no magic wand that builds sidewalks, I can see why the 78/Kenaston dipsy-doodles this-way and that trying to serve the area, because running straight down Kenaston wouldn't.

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It’s a challenge when you want frequent and reliable but also need/want to dipsy-doodle to serve every destination on side streets, that’s why I’m starting to favour a combination of both on-demand micro-transit feeding a limited-stop frequent network.  The frequent network might have to make more use of the less pedestrian friendly streets. Ideally there’s be sidewalks everywhere to fix up the less friendly streets.

WT doesn’t  have (will never have) the resources to make low-density-serving routes high frequency. It would be nice to have but a recipe for empty buses.

 

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On ‎2017‎-‎11‎-‎26 at 1:38 PM, DavidW said:

Installation of a heated shelter at the stop at the Outlet Collection mall is underway:

winnipeg-CWTSoutletcollection-2017nov25.thumb.jpg.4c1b0a793d6940bcc5bfcbc855234bc2.jpg

(25 November 2017)

The mall gets approximately hourly service towards downtown (route 84 to Fort Rouge Station) and from downtown (route 84 to eastern Lindenwoods). The "option B" access by transit is the route 78 (Polo Park - via Kenaston - UofManitoba) stop at IKEA, about a 10 minute walk away from the mall. This seems remarkably little bus service for such a large indoor shopping mall.  The whole big-box retail park on both sides of Sterling Lyon Parkway is very sprawled out and exceptionally difficult to serve via transit. I sort-of want the 78 to serve the mall stop too, except that I already dislike how the 78 Kenaston dipsy-doodles this-way and that off Kenaston and adding more meandering would only make it worse.  I guess the only hope for better transit service to the mall might be the large multi-building apartment complex under construction immediately west of the mall.  Maybe a couple thousand more residents will lead to more frequent bus service...

what i'm thinking is that they could route the 18, 39 or 64 through the outlet or the 95 from shaftsbury park because it's so close 

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