Family Day Will Mark Beginning of One Hour Holiday Transit Service

Back in December during budget deliberations, city council passed a motion to make stat holiday service run on a one-hour schedule for the 2016 calendar year. That schedule will go into effect for the first time on Family Day, February 15, and Guelph Transit is hustling to get the word out so that everyone can make the transition in time for the holiday a week from Monday.

UPDATE: Guelph Transit has released it's updated service schedule online. Click here. 

If you go on the Guelph Transit website right now, there's nothing there announcing the change, but one Transit official I spoke with said that Family Day will most definitely see the beginning of the new schedule. "This means it will be one hour service, with new stop times for every route," said Crystal Kaminski, Coordinator, Sales and Market Development of Guelph Transit in an email. "As we speak I am revising all the web schedules to reflect this change. The revised schedules will be ready by Friday (possibly earlier)."

Kaminski also said that all 700 bus stops in Guelph are presently being updated with the revised stat holiday schedule, which will still operate between the hours of the normal Sunday schedule from 9:15 am until 6:45 pm, but buses will be doing routes every hour instead of every half hour. What does that mean though?

Let's use the Route 4/York Rd. bus as an example. The #4 will leave Guelph Central Station at 9:15 pm, and when it returns to Central at 9:45, it will begin the Route 10/Imperial Rd. route. Now on a typical day, the #4 becomes the #10, and the #10 becomes the #4, basically two buses running the same figure eight every half hour, but on the one hour schedule, it will be just one bus doing both routes. As a result, you can catch the #4 at 9:15, 10:15, and so on, once an hour until 6:15; and then catch the #10 at 9:45, 10:45 and so on, once an hour until 6:45. Kaminski conceded that for some bus passengers, this may mean having to wait half and hour downtown to complete one's journey.

Kaminski is optimistic that the stat holiday schedules will start to be available online tomorrow, and be posted for all routes by the end of the week. Check out the Guelph Transit website for updates as they become available. The one-hour service will only affect bus routes on Family Day, Good Friday (March 25), Victoria Day (May 23), Canada Day (July 1), Civic Holiday (August 1), Labour Day (September 5), Thanksgiving Day (October 10), Christmas Day (December 25), and Boxing Day (December 26).