There's a Hole in the Plan

The change in routes and arrival times to Guelph Transit this week has not come without the usual frustrations and complaints. Not surprising really, the perfectly viable and easy to understand 15-minute service has been traded in for a more confusing 20-minute schedule that's harder to follow and will more than likely make it just as difficult for some commuters to make their transfers.

But then I noticed this at the bus stop on the south-bound 2B route at the corner of Paisley and Imperial:

See the problem? If you're hoping to depart from this stop promptly anytime between 1:30 and 2:30 or between 5 and 6 pm, you are, as the kids say, S.O.L. After 1:35 pm, the next bus south to Stone Rd isn't until 2:20, or 45 minutes later. And if you miss the 2B at 5 pm, you'll have to wait till 5:40, or 40 minutes, for the next bus then. But that's okay,, who would want to travel from the heavily residential west end to the busy commercial south end at those times of day? (I mean who besides people trying to get to the mall and area for the afternoon or evening shifts. Or really anyone traveling from point A to point B for any other imaginable reason.)

When the new schedule was introduced, one of its features was intersecting points along various routes where one could transfer buses in order to get to where they're going without transferring downtown. But the focus with this change has been making sure buses make their transfer times downtown, and it doesn't even address the more problematic issue, which is when buses consistently fail to make transfer times during the half-hour schedules.

On my to-do list is a rather large piece, a report card if you will, about Guelph Transit and how it functions as a service. But this is a big job with multiple points of consideration. This point, however, I felt could alone: Transit needs to get over the downtown centric model. It no longer makes any kind of sense for all the buses to be downtown at the exact same time. The more Transit makes a priority to get people everywhere on time, and not just downtown, the easier it's going to be for the City's big ideas and vision for Tranist to be implemented.

More to come.