Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
So much of what you said is the "problem" as I see it with Calgary Transit's philosophy; they will not add any service unless there is a demand for it. However the public doesn't use Calgary Transit outside of the M-F 9-5 commutes because the service isn't offerred.
Look at the merging of the 92 and 416 bus routes. Now if somebody in Elgin wants to take the bus they are looking at a 45 minute ride from Anderson; something that takes 15 minutes in a car.
So I think the city and CT should increase service; and do it long enough to allow people to change their habits. As opposed to waiting for people to start using crappy service; and then look at improving it. I can't think of any other form of "customer service" where this model works; provide crappy service and once enough people want to use the crappy service, improve your infrastructure and staffing to make it decent service.
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A lot of this has to do with what they have to work with, namely budgeted annual transit hours. It was planned to have an increase of something like 250 000 over the next 3 years, but during the City budget reductions in 2009, hours were actually cut by 21 500 hours. Operationally, a lot of those cuts took the form of reduced runs on mainline bus routes during midday, some late night feeder route reductions and some reconfiguring/combining of routes. The cuts were supposed to be just temporary and the increases over the long term were still going to happen, but that hasn't materialized yet.
With the limited number of hours it becomes a balancing act between providing runs on currently-high-demand mainline and C-Train routes and also providing service to newer areas. Unfortunately a lot of the newer areas can eat up a lot of service hours since their layouts relegate transit service to taking circuitous routings that can make the service unattractive. Yet, you still have to provide some service to the area.
Altogether though, you're right. I'd like to see more of a "build it and they will come" approach rather than a "come and we will build it" one. Increases to transit service hours are necessary, not cuts as seen last year.