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1 hour ago, Thewinnipegtransitfanhuang said:

They could add more buses on the 11 that runs from downtown to polo park only like how the 11 runs on sundays but I don’t know how that could work considering the 11 is already really frequent at weekday evenings 

That would not help the fact that a lot of (maybe even most of) these passengers stay on past Polo Park. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it was standing room only between Polo and Assiniboine Park on that one last night. Even then, there were few available seats between there and where I get off. So would increasing the frequency help the people who get off at or before Polo? Yes. Would it help the (many) people like me who go further? No.

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2 hours ago, SirAndrew710 said:

That would not help the fact that a lot of (maybe even most of) these passengers stay on past Polo Park. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it was standing room only between Polo and Assiniboine Park on that one last night. Even then, there were few available seats between there and where I get off. So would increasing the frequency help the people who get off at or before Polo? Yes. Would it help the (many) people like me who go further? No.

21 Grace Hospital all-day runs might help with that. It could also cut a few minutes off any Westwood branches as well, making service West of that a little bit faster.

1 hour ago, jhood135 said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-region-transportation-plan-1.5455026

Soooo, they’re gonna be studying regional public transportation...

Steinbach, Headingley, Selkirk and St. Paul (west/east) obvious candidates. 

Next up? Stony (prison visitor ridership?), Stonewall, the Oaks, Niverville, Ste. Adolphe... 

Unless demand from the Interlake or Portage La Prairie is a factor, those with significant populations (Steinbach > Niverville > Winnipeg) or ridership potential of a P&R (Assiniboia Downs/Headingley along with East St. Paul) would probably be first on the list.

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1 hour ago, armorand said:

21 Grace Hospital all-day runs might help with that. It could also cut a few minutes off any Westwood branches as well, making service West of that a little bit faster.

It might help with the issue of sky-high 21 ridership that I mentioned earlier, but we’re talking about evening service here. How would it make sense to have 21 Grace Hospitals help the 11? It would make no sense forcing the people who go past the Grace to take a slower bus.

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44 minutes ago, SirAndrew710 said:

It might help with the issue of sky-high 21 ridership that I mentioned earlier, but we’re talking about evening service here. How would it make sense to have 21 Grace Hospitals help the 11? It would make no sense forcing the people who go past the Grace to take a slower bus.

Run the 21 every 20 minutes, from the Grace to Downtown until 9pm. 10-11pm on Jets/Bomber/concert days. Problem solved.

Just enough frequency & express, to reduce the crushloads on Portage & also provide higher incentive for St. James (one of THE highest riderships in the city, when you don't include the 82 and 83), to take WT & reduce traffic on the roads. Especially on the crucial ones like Portage & Ness.

Also, Ronald/Portage already exists as a 11/21/22/82/83/98 transfer. Would it really hurt that much, to transfer from 11 to 21 and vice versa, when people have been doing that with the 22 and other routes, for decades?

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13 minutes ago, armorand said:

Run the 21 every 20 minutes, from the Grace to Downtown until 9pm. 10-11pm on Jets/Bomber/concert days. Problem solved.

Just enough frequency & express, to reduce the crushloads on Portage & also provide higher incentive for St. James (one of THE highest riderships in the city, when you don't include the 82 and 83), to take WT & reduce traffic on the roads. Especially on the crucial ones like Portage & Ness.

Also, Ronald/Portage already exists as a 11/21/22/82/83/98 transfer. Would it really hurt that much, to transfer from 11 to 21 and vice versa, when people have been doing that with the 22 and other routes, for decades?

The 22/21 transfer makes more sense (i.e. if someone coming from west of the Grace needs to get off at, let’s say, Assiniboine Park, which the 22 does not observe). To me, what would make more sense is running the 21 and 24 until 9, 10, or even 11, then have the Portage West corridor served by the 11 for the last three hours or so of service. If ridership’s still crazy high along that section of Portage, maybe go to the rush-hour arrangement of Grace Hospitals and 22s until around 8, then have 21s run all the way out from then to 10/11 and 11s from then to the end of the night.

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14 hours ago, ConnorsCompShow said:

Hell would freeze over before we got context aware regular service.

Service to St. James is better than it is to some (particularly newer) areas of the city, but quite a bit worse than it is to others. Particularly at night when the 11 is the only route that comes out here. I understand the feeders not having express counterparts as is the case in the East and South Ends, seeing as ridership on the 83 and especially the 82 is non-existent at times, but the service that is provided at other times is inadequate. Even though Route 21 headways are reduced from 11 minutes to 7 after 2:00, that still isn’t enough. Every outbound 21 after noon is always packed. I wonder if there’s been any consideration to starting the 22 earlier in the afternoon. Why do Routes 22, 25 and 67 not start running for the afternoon until 3:30 when every other suburban express route (except the 137) starts at 3? If anything, the 22 in particular should start earlier than the rest.

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The number of overlapping routes on Portage Avenue doesn't matter to whether or not it's an appropriate corridor for articulated buses. Transit would have to look at overloading across the whole service on the corridor, and make a determination whether or not additional capacity is appropriate.

The complexity of the service pattern on Portage, with locals, expresses, and super-expresses, and buses that branch off or terminate at various points from Polo Park to St. Charles makes studying overcapacity problems significantly more multi-variable. The complexity also hides problems.

Maybe they should just sweep it all away in favour of a frequent LRT on a traffic-free reservation. ?

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14 minutes ago, DavidW said:

The number of overlapping routes on Portage Avenue doesn't matter to whether or not it's an appropriate corridor for articulated buses. Transit would have to look at overloading across the whole service on the corridor, and make a determination whether or not additional capacity is appropriate.

The complexity of the service pattern on Portage, with locals, expresses, and super-expresses, and buses that branch off or terminate at various points from Polo Park to St. Charles makes studying overcapacity problems significantly more multi-variable. The complexity also hides problems.

Maybe they should just sweep it all away in favour of a frequent LRT on a traffic-free reservation. ?

While the draft Transit Master Plan certainly has its issues, turning Portage into a BRT corridor seems a smart idea, at least on paper, as it would simplify the route, as all buses would terminate at Unicity, and would more likely than not see the 60-footers primarily, especially if it ties into the SWRTC. With the current setup, I hear “‘Do you stop at Grace Hospital?’ ‘No, take the Westwood.’” or “‘Do you go to Wal-Mart?’ ‘No, take the St. Charles or the 24.’” quite a bit. However, even when you factor out the complexity of Route 21, WT is often hesitant to make necessary changes when they need to be made. Until the TMP is implemented, and that’s assuming it will be at some point, we may never see any changes along Portage.

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As someone who doesn’t use the Portage corridor that often, it is confusing to figure out which route I have to get on to get to certain places, at certain times of the day. I can’t wait for the day Portage becomes a Rapid Transit corridor, I personally think it’s the perfect candidate for LRT looking into best ways of growing ridership in the future, but I’ll settle with BRT over nothing.

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https://globalnews.ca/news/6449139/regional-transit-edmonton-capital-region/

https://www.edmonton.ca/documents/PDF/Accelerating_Transit_in_Edmonton_Metropolitan_Region.pdf

Creating a regional transit authority, just like Winnipeg is looking at right now is being put together. Edmonton, St. Albert and Strathcona and 13 other nearby municipalities to join their transit into one to eliminate overlapping of routes and will save $3.5 M per year for the government (provincial and municipal?).

They are naming it a Regional Transit Services Commission.

Knowing that when Calgary and Edmonton "sneeze", Winnipeg catches "the cold". similar to Winnipeg Metro Region, Edmonton Metro Region, Calgary Metro Region naming convention.

I'm hoping they call ours Metro Transit, as a nod to the old name from the 1960s.

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16 hours ago, jhood135 said:

As someone who doesn’t use the Portage corridor that often, it is confusing to figure out which route I have to get on to get to certain places, at certain times of the day. I can’t wait for the day Portage becomes a Rapid Transit corridor, I personally think it’s the perfect candidate for LRT looking into best ways of growing ridership in the future, but I’ll settle with BRT over nothing.

Some of the major stops have “route finders” posted at them to make figuring out which route to take a little easier, but they don’t mention branches, only routes. Simply put, the 11 doesn’t go past Polo when the 21 is running, and the 21 doesn’t go past the Grace when the 22 is running. Some of the other details (i.e. only the Westwood branch of the 11 and 21 goes into the Grace, only the St. Charles branch of the 11 and 21 go to Unicity but that branch of the 22 does not) are not as easy to remember. I was pondering whether getting rid of Westwood and Crestview and letting the 82 and 83 handle those areas would be a good idea, but the stops along Rouge are greater than 400 meters from the nearest 82 stop and service to the Safeway at Cavalier and Portage would also be lost.

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Yikes, this explainer from the CBC really doesn't sound that good at all. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-rapid-transit-analysis-1.5457171

In my opinion the whole 6 RT lines by 2030 vision put forward by Bowman wasn't ever viable. Especially not for Portage where it'd be glorified diamond lanes as it is today, which work just fine. At the TMP session at Kildonan Place a while back I spoke with Shawn Nason about what he thought about an eastern transitway, and if memory serves right, he said it'd be an okay idea, but took a Rand Paul like stance of "where's the money for it?". He does have a point though, especially with the back and forth going on between the province just to get general funding. The eastern study and the TMP were and still are two separate things, so here's to hoping that the eastern line does get built and that they just don't say "forget it, TMP is better". It's a shame that the original old St. Boniface idea was jettisoned because that's the best possible route, hug the CN line elevated off the ground, either keep hugging next to it or replace Thomas Ave, then hug CEMR out to Transcona Blvd. If anything, as long as it got built to either Peguis (forgetting about a "Costco Station"), or to one of the overflow Club Regent lots or Owen, I'd be happy, because Regent afterwards is just like Portage where everything is fine. So fine in fact, that the diamond lanes that were there previously were discontinued.

At the same time the Louise is in dire need of replacing, so it'd be a perfect catalyst to kill two birds with one stone. Something that could make both the car and bus experience better at the same time would be something a lot of people would be happy to get behind.

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12 hours ago, LilZebra said:

^^^

Bartley is well-known in these circles to be anti-rail and pro-BRT. Maybe he has some vested interest in the project. Or he just likes buses.

Bartley's biases aside there is an overwhelming belief in Winnipeg and Manitoba that Winnipeg is very small town. The modern advances made in other cities are just not possible here. (Even though Edmonton was 450,000 in 1974 when the LRT decision was made there).

The decision makers long ago decided LRT was crazy talk for Winnipeg, and it wouldn't surprise me if even busways are now being dismissed as more "crazy talk".

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And to add to that, Winnipeg was once considered  "the Chicago of the North" between the 1880s and 1912. Soon after was WW I and then the 1930s Depression.

Winnipeg lost her way and it wasn't until Lakeview Sq. and the Convention Centre (1970-1974), the Manitoba Centennial Centre (1968-1970), Richardson Bldg. (1969) period that we took a bite out of modern city living.

Winnipeg's first Express bus route (Portage) began in  November 1957, tweaked in '60 along with introduction of the Ness Exp. After that, besides the "green" McPhillips Exp (when?) another "green" Portage Exp., Winnipeg didn't get more Express bus routes until the 1980s (Grant, Osborne/Dakota, McMeans, Southdale...).

That was considered "big city" stuff.

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While on board 630 this afternoon I noticed that the route information (“Route 25 to Unicity, via Polo Park”) was played through the speakers on the bus rather than through the exterior speaker over the door. This isn’t the only bus that’s like that, I’ve noticed this on 635 and 273 as well, with the latter case being unusual because none of the D40LFs have exterior speakers. Does anyone know what causes this phenomenon to occur?

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On 1/31/2020 at 2:30 PM, jhood135 said:

I understand (somewhat) if the ads cover the windows. I don't understand if the wraps are cut around the windows. No other city has made this decision - Translink in Vancouver just spent tons of money wrapping all their new artics in a RapidBus livery. Would that have been banned in Winnipeg under this new rule?

Mississauga was the first to kibosh ad wraps over the windows, for those reasons.

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http://www.atu1505.ca/index.cfm?action=article&articleID=C451E124-6979-4BFD-9EC0-EF88BC0DD9ED

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-transit-surplus-budget-spending-1.5462928

The Transit Union is calling for any and all Transit surplus funds be reinvested back into equipment and more frequent services. Saw a very brief news item tonight on the 6 pm CBC Manitoba newscast. The cumulative surplus since 2009 is $180 million.

Are they saving up for rapid transit subway or something? Why not put this back into WT service?

 “We’re hearing on a daily basis from our members and our riders that Winnipeg Transit is not meeting the needs of a growing city,” said Romeo Ignacio, President of the Amalgamated Transit Union 1505. “With the City proposing to cut from a system that is already on life support, it is incredibly disheartening to hear that only $25.7 million from a ten year surplus of $180.2 million was actually used within Winnipeg Transit.”

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49 minutes ago, LilZebra said:

http://www.atu1505.ca/index.cfm?action=article&articleID=C451E124-6979-4BFD-9EC0-EF88BC0DD9ED

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-transit-surplus-budget-spending-1.5462928

The Transit Union is calling for any and all Transit surplus funds be reinvested back into equipment and more frequent services. Saw a very brief news item tonight on the 6 pm CBC Manitoba newscast. The cumulative surplus since 2009 is $180 million.

Are they saving up for rapid transit subway or something? Why not put this back into WT service?

 “We’re hearing on a daily basis from our members and our riders that Winnipeg Transit is not meeting the needs of a growing city,” said Romeo Ignacio, President of the Amalgamated Transit Union 1505. “With the City proposing to cut from a system that is already on life support, it is incredibly disheartening to hear that only $25.7 million from a ten year surplus of $180.2 million was actually used within Winnipeg Transit.”

Corruption much? 

No wonder service never improves... where does this money disappear to? They should do a full audit.

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Remember that Transit receives an operating subsidy every year, so an "operating surplus" wouldn't be left over cash so much as Transit needing less subsidy than budgeted.

I would expect any Transit "operating surplus" in a given year would therefore go to general revenue (where the operating subsidy is coming from) to be redeployed in City spending that year or the next. It's not like there's a pile of several years worth of cash sitting around unspent.

I think the problem is that Transit senior management is proud of squeezing service tighter and tighter to keep undershooting their operating budget year after year. Instead I think they should be embarrassed and ashamed by the terrible service they are delivering to the public. And not only should they be spending every budgeted dime on better service but they should be fighting for more.

(This is what you get when people who wouldn't be caught dead on a bus [never mind depend on it daily] run the bus system...)

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