#grtfail

Today is the third time this term I’ve walked from the University of Waterloo to Fischer-Hallman Rd and Keats Way.

The Grand River Transit, in their infinite wisdom, has scheduled evening buses headed from a large university to an area heavily populated by students at one every half an hour. This term, that has been proving grossly inappropriate. The load level on the buses I’ve taken ranged from high, through very common instances of crush load, onto downright dangerous.

Beyond the obvious problem of lack of comfort, this also slows the system down and makes buses late as they sit at the stop for two or three minutes trying to squeeze people on. “Passengers must remain behind white line” and the driver’s visibility to their right and through the right mirror turn into cruel jokes.

I cannot blame the drivers for this. Most I’ve encountered were beyond nice in trying to fit as many students as humanly possible. But still people get left behind.

This will only get worse as the weather gets increasingly seasonal and more people opt to try and take the bus rather than walk or bike. As term goes on, more people will also study until late and try to take one of the evening buses.

There is an obvious solution, and that is to run more buses. The conventional way is clearly to schedule every 15 minutes from 9 to 11 PM or midnight as required by load. If necessary, make these the already established short run from King St to Highland Hills. Hope there will be some people will show up early as possible and be rewarded with a less crowded ride, and then the “main”, previously scheduled run will no longer be critically packed.

To avoid the bureaucracy associated with officially creating new runs, GRT could just run double for buses that pack in reliably. For simplicity, run the extra bus on a King-to-Highland routing, just make sure the short turning bus arrives at UW ahead of the one doing the whole route. GRT is familiar with the concept, and they’ve been doing it along Keats Way in the mornings after the load got truly ridiculous, though still haven’t quite nailed it. They also obviously have buses necessary, as 9 PM is far away from any peak. The only reason I can think of as to why they haven’t done anything is because they don’t know of the problem, but I find it hard to believe the drivers wouldn’t report it.

Alternatively, listen to my tongue-in-cheek advice and buy a couple of Ikarus 280s from Moscow or Warsaw. Not the highest tech, but they do fit a lot.

GRT is in an interesting situation here. In winter 2007, UW undergraduate students voted in favour of a negotiated bus pass agreement. The deal was at pretty cheap ~$45 a term (four months) for a pass mandatory for all students. Previously, an opt-in pass was $140 a term or so. At an average well over 10,000 undergrads per term, this is pretty serious commitment for GRT, and they’ve delivered some improvements.

Nevertheless, at least with the services I am familiar with (along Keats), they are toeing the capacity line during mornings and evenings, not the least because of some interesting decisions. In the morning rush, they’ve moved up a route 29 run that used to go through a few minutes before the route 12 and relieve the load a little. Now the 29 is relatively underused while a pair of 12s pack in like sardines. Why? So that the 29 could cutely interline with the newly established route 31.

Further service improvements might be hard to justify since due to the mandatory pass, they would result in very few or none extra income, but here’s an extra snag:

“Do you support a Universal Bus Pass (U-Pass) at a cost of $41.08, plus an administration cost of not more than $9.50, subject to increases due to inflation and student demand, to be paid by each full-time undergraduate student per academic term, scheduled for implementation in September 2007, and which will be reviewed in three years?”

The term shall commence on or before September 1, 2007, and continue in effect for a period of three (3) years (the “Initial Term”). Extension of the Initial Term shall be conditional upon written agreement of all parties by March 1, 2010.

Both quotes are from the Feds’ Universal Bus Pass at the University of Waterloo report (PDF, 261 kB). The referendum question used the rather unspecific “reviewed”, but in my mind it is entirely possible that there will be a student-wide referendum, if not out of Feds’ initiative then forced by petition. The timing required indicates this would probably be during the winter term.

I don’t care about having to walk occasionally; I can do it, in fact I probably should do it more often, and so far I’ve yet to suffer the fate in truly inclement weather. Others might disagree, by choice or by necessity; safety issues with walking home alone on late evenings come to mind. When heading to class, a packed bus skipping your stop might be an annoyance; to a test, a problem; to an exam, a disaster. Excessively bad service, especially in winter, might end up causing the university and GRT to find themselves apart once more, and that would be most unfortunate.

5 Responses to “#grtfail”

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rajesh Kumar and Jarek Piórkowski, Andrew F.. Andrew F. said: Excellent analysis by @qviri on why the GRT sucks on Keats Way http://bit.ly/1OKzxu (via @meetrajesh) Why are we paying $50/term to be left? […]

  2. Chris says:

    I do agree with you in total that the GRT service is lacking during peak hours along Keats Way and that this causing many students to be left behind.

    I do however disagree with your statement about Route 29. I take the 29 everyday in the morning and I think your assumption that it is “relatively underused” is misinformed. I live west of Fischer-Hallman closer to Erbsville along Keats Way, and this is the 4th term I’ve lived at this location (since Winter 2008). I have noticed a huge increase in ridership in the 29 so much so that I often do not get a seat the mornings now. During my first term living at this location I was usually the second or third person on the bus. This is a very large difference in ridership and shows that students have expanded their area for off campus housing that GRT is largely unaware of this, or just don’t care.

    Lets hope for all our sakes that we can get the word out about this because the winter is coming fast and more people will be attempting to take the buses.

  3. Tara says:

    I’ve seen similar problems with the #9. Last winter, I spent a lot of time almost being late to class because the bus would just drive right past me in the mornings since it was full. Since the buses ran every 15 minutes, I usually tried to take the bus prior to the one that I had to take. Many times, I overheard the bus driver calling in somewhere to say that the bus was overfull. And eventually, GRT figured this out and sent two buses at a time with most morning routes.

    They seem to have forgotten this or perhaps it’s just that they can’t predict the weather, just like we can’t, so it’s difficult to know on which evenings the buses with have heavy ridership.

  4. Chris, with regards to the 29, I still think it’s relatively underused… when compared to the 12. I’ve actually started taking the HH:11 (at UW) #29 to to get to HH:30 class, and while it does get crowded, sometimes very crowded, needless to say it’s not up to “two buses and still skipping stops sometimes” level of the 12 runs a few minutes later.

    As a side note, your information about the amount of students west of Fischer-Hallman is a nice example of induced demand.

    Tara, I’ve heard comments about the #9 too. I wonder if buses from the east or south (#7, #8) are any better. I don’t even want to know what the buses that have to deal with both Laurier and UW students look like.

    One of the more frustrating aspects of this issue to me is the haphazard approach the GRT is taking w.r.t. this problem. I appreciate that sudden, seasonal student demand spikes are not the easiest thing to deal with, but they’ve got the data — even if the operator doesn’t call in and say she’s full, they beep in every passenger, so counting is trivial. This is the third fall of the UW U-Pass, so they even have something that might resemble historical data if they wish. And yet, the best they can come up with is a double bus, sometimes, not always? Yes, the doubling up can work, and sometimes it works, but they could do it so much better.

    The #12 schedule which sees the bus get to UW around HH:17-19 makes sense, for a single run. To deal with too much passengers, they send through two buses at the same time and in practice they arrive around HH:22. This is obviously not enough, unless they are fine with regular crush-load-and-beyond conditions (and even if, passengers aren’t fine with that). The #29 which used to arrive at HH:14 or so has been moved up, because students like to get up earlier so much.

    If they want to keep the #29 interlined, fine, have that arrive at HH:11. Then properly schedule a #12 to King, reliably passing UW a few minutes after, at HH:15. If you really want to, have two extra #12 runs, one past UW at HH:14, another at HH:18, and then the full-run to Conestoga at HH:21. If that’s too much of #12, or they don’t have enough buses to run to King and back, make one a #29.

    That way, the first buses don’t have to wait for every late passenger, people who have class further away from University Ave can take earlier buses to allow time to walk and vice versa, and hopefully the full-run bus doesn’t leave behind people who are going beyond the universities (this was actually a big problem for a friend of mine who worked in north Waterloo a couple of terms back).

    Same deal going back in the evenings: add in a short run 5 or 10 minutes before the full-length. You’ll pick up the early birds and eventually more people will start showing earlier to avoid the crush.

    … This is working up into a proper rant :D.

  5. Tara says:

    The #8 can be bad, depending on which run you catch. The ones that run just from University to Charles and back continually (the additional ones that are added in to make them every 15 minutes) are pretty good at being on time. The ones that run from Fairview to University though can run behind schedule more easily since the route is fairly loopy down in Kitchener, whereas in Waterloo, the route is much straighter. I definitely found the #8 to be more reliable back when I lived around Erb & Westmount than the #9 has ever been.

    For example, every Sunday I take the same #9 bus to curling and every Sunday, it is almost 10 minutes late. It saves me enough time that it is quicker to wait the 10 minutes than to just outright walk, but it’s still so frustrating.