Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
Keep in mind that a big reason for some of the crowds we have right now has to deal with reliability issues rather than how they ideally plan it. Even the slightest mechanical error in the early morning hours has the potential to mess up the timing between trains and then perpetuates a cycle that leads to massive overcrowding for the entire duration of the rush hour.
I typically catch the train at Dalhousie between the hours of 7:30-8:00AM. On days that I read on twitter that there's been a minor service glitch that has been 'resolved' even an hour or more prior to me catching the train, it seems to push the 'train every 5 minutes' schedule into a 'train every 8-12 minutes' schedule. This is ultimately the difference between standing comfortably and being able to have enough space to read a book, and standing shoulder to shoulder smelling your adjacent nieghbors 'BO' while having no room left for additional passengers past Brentwood station. Thus far this fall these kinds of days where you're getting to your destination 10-15 minutes later than usual on a Tokyo-style packed train have been occuring at least 1 to 2 times a week. I fully expect that once we get the first serious blast of winter this will be almost an everyday norm, as it was last year.
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Good point Cowboy.
I also beleive in our numbers crunching, we didn't account for the "Park and Ride" crowd, whether there is an actual Park and Ride or not. People have been using the neighbourhoods / Wal Mart / Safeway parking spaces for a long time now, and I don't anticipate that will change - rather, I think it would increase. The entire 33rd to 37th st. SW area is also getting a massive redevelopment, which will increase the density, and thus, ridership numbers, as those new residential towers get built over the next ten years. Thank goodness for the four car solution, but I can see five cars being needed within 20-30 years.
Also, even in Dalhousie, that's still seven stations out from downtown. Even though ridership may be a smaller number for the West LRT, Westbrook station is going to essentially be the equivalent of Lions Park station, at which point if the train is not full already, it will be near full on those bad days.