Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach
It's not just the SkyTrain that makes Vancouver's transit better though. The bus system is so many light years ahead of anything we see in Calgary it's not even funny.
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Oh god, I disagree with this so much. Sure, there's more routes, more schedule density etc. But they also do things that should be completely unacceptable. Far more frequently than in Calgary I have had busses just completely not show up. Other times, they're so overcapacity that they just skip pick-ups entirely (I have had four busses in a row skip picking me up, as the only person at a stop, on a cold wintery day - it's rage-inducing). If you're lucky enough to be on the bus, you get the intercom telling you to move to the back, as if you'll magically be able to manoeuvre back to exit when you need to despite the bus being completely full of people, which you can't. Not having space to move around in the bus ends up either causing schedule delays or people missing their stops if they're not yelling "back door" loud enough.
Sure, it's got some good things going for it, but they seem to be completely incapable of responding to demand appropriately. I have called customer service and had them be completely unaware of missing busses, never mind being able to send a replacement to fill the scheduling gap. I don't know if the drivers aren't communicating that they aren't running enough capacity, or they are but nobody does anything, but either way it seems like underservicing busy routes is totally normalized here.