1630 replies to this topic

[vid]

But cutaways and 30 foot buses use pretty much the same amount of fuel and will be travelling the same distance. The only effect you get with a smaller bus is it appearing less crowded when there are less people on it. In addition to that, it screws up the interlining process. 1 Current River doesn't have many people on it but 1 Mainline to Brodie does. A 30 foot bus wouldn't work there. Same with 12 and 7 as they interline to 2, or 3 Jumbo Gardens as it becomes 3 Brodie.

60 feet, 40 feet or 30 feet, running any bus through a sparsely populated neighbourhood in which the only inhabitants refuse to use transit is useless.

And yes, the city needs an artic. We need to get a route that goes from Water St, to Intercity, to Brodie, and back, which no stops between those three places, to take a load off of 1 and 3, if we aren't going to increase their frequencies.

[dj.surf.lfs]

Here's and idea: Replace all rural routes with dial-a-bus service, from Monday to Saturday. They'll serve N/S Neebing, FWFN, as well as added service to McIntyre. Services will be provided by cutaway buses. Express service can be provided to these areas during peak hours if required (unlikely). On Sundays, the cutaways will serve the less used routes like Junot/John-Jumbo or Airport/James, or maybe they can be used to add Sunday service to East End or Balmoral Street.

Dial-a-bus worked on other Canadian cities, so it should work here in Thunder Bay.

P.S. South Neebing will work on Flag Stop system, so no stops will be installed along the route.

[vid]

Monday to Saturday? Why not all days of the week?

And if it's a "call and it comes to you" service, why can't it serve the entire rural area? What about surrounding municipalities? Kakabeka Falls is only 30 minutes away. It's faster to go to Kakabeka from Brodie terminal than it is to go to Current River!

[dj.surf.lfs]

vid, on Mar 14 2008, 04:49 PM, said:

Monday to Saturday? Why not all days of the week?

And if it's a "call and it comes to you" service, why can't it serve the entire rural area? What about surrounding municipalities? Kakabeka Falls is only 30 minutes away. It's faster to go to Kakabeka from Brodie terminal than it is to go to Current River!

You'll need more buses than, in that case. The service area is just too big.

The thing is, TBT can't just add transit services to rural areas outside city limit. It's up to the surrounding municipalities to decide whether they need transit or not.

[vid]

Well in the case of Kakabeka there are tourism opportunities, and a considerable amount of people live along Oliver Road and Arthur Street/Highway 11/17.

--

I added 5 South Neebing. It looks so queer. Hence, pink.



(I was originally going to go with sky blue, but decided people might confuse it with rivers.)

You know what route they should bring back next? McComber!

[dj.surf.lfs]

vid, on Mar 16 2008, 07:59 PM, said:

Well in the case of Kakabeka there are tourism opportunities, and a considerable amount of people live along Oliver Road and Arthur Street/Highway 11/17.

--

I added 5 South Neebing. It looks so queer. Hence, pink.



(I was originally going to go with sky blue, but decided people might confuse it with rivers.)

You know what route they should bring back next? McComber!

I think didn't know what I meant by "Transit can't just add service outside city limit". TBT is a city service, which means that it cannot provide any service outside city limit unless contracted by surrounding communities. In this case, Oliver Paipoonge have to buy its own buses and start their own service, or they'll have to sign a contract with TBT (Or other transporters like Laidlaw).

And I don't know how McComber route went. All I know is that it later became the Junot route (or something like that).

EDIT: The South Neebing route looks like magenta to me.

[vid]

IIRC, McComber was the Junot Route, but instead of going by the curve where Junot becomes River, heading inbound it would turn up Junot, then down Melon, then up Robinson, then on to Rockwood, then River. On the return trip it went down Rockwood to Van Norman, turned right at Clarkson, left down Windemere, left down Robinson, right on Melon and then back on to Junot and continues. It was changed to allow the city to build a new curve where Junot becomes River. (Back in the 90s, cars would slam into those houses on a monthly basis.) They should also bring back the Balmoral. I remember when that was the only bus we got in Jumbo Gardens, back before anything was built down Pioneer Road. (And before the Safeway existed, and County Fair was still the largest mall in town and most of intercity was still a swamp; Superstore was a TV tower and Wal-Mart was a little factory or something?) Ha, remember Keskus?! Good times.

And with the trip to Kakabeka, obviously the city and O-P would co-operate on that. I know they can't just add buses to other communities (Though running 5 to city limits, they're kinda pushing it aren't they? )

Anyway, big news today!

The city is running the Nextbus system on four routes right now as a trial - 2 Crosstown, 3 Memorial-Northwood, 8 James and 9 Junot. You can view the route selector thinger here and this is the map!

Also, the city has announced that transit fares are increasing. You can read it here.

Oh, and Magenta is a shade of pink. Neebing is also pink but that wasn't my decision.

[dj.surf.lfs]

vid, on Mar 17 2008, 03:46 PM, said:

IIRC, McComber was the Junot Route, but instead of going by the curve where Junot becomes River, heading inbound it would turn up Junot, then down Melon, then up Robinson, then on to Rockwood, then River. On the return trip it went down Rockwood to Van Norman, turned right at Clarkson, left down Windemere, left down Robinson, right on Melon and then back on to Junot and continues. It was changed to allow the city to build a new curve where Junot becomes River. (Back in the 90s, cars would slam into those houses on a monthly basis.) They should also bring back the Balmoral. I remember when that was the only bus we got in Jumbo Gardens, back before anything was built down Pioneer Road. (And before the Safeway existed, and County Fair was still the largest mall in town and most of intercity was still a swamp; Superstore was a TV tower and Wal-Mart was a little factory or something?) Ha, remember Keskus?! Good times.

And with the trip to Kakabeka, obviously the city and O-P would co-operate on that. I know they can't just add buses to other communities (Though running 5 to city limits, they're kinda pushing it aren't they? )

Anyway, big news today!

The city is running the Nextbus system on four routes right now as a trial - 2 Crosstown, 3 Memorial-Northwood, 8 James and 9 Junot. You can view the route selector thinger here and this is the map!

Also, the city has announced that transit fares are increasing. You can read it here.

Oh, and Magenta is a shade of pink. Neebing is also pink but that wasn't my decision.

OMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!

It's a good thing I know there's gonna be a fare increase coming, but it does not say whether can I still use my old bus pass or not. Don't you think it's important to tell people that??? (And I wonder if they're gonna change the 20-ride pass design again)

The NextBus system: It totally sucks. All they give you is the time of your next bus, no maps or anything, it doesn't even say where the buses are headed to. I would rather have a nice transit booklet with all the routes and scheduled info on it than some crappy online nextbus system.

P.S. I wasn't born when Keskus existed. And I know that magenta is a shade of pink. I'm not that stupid.

Countdown: *18 more hours until the first South Neebing trip departs Brodie!!*

[vid]

20 ride bus passes NEVER expire. Ever. I know a few people who stocked up on them in the 90s. They used to be square and the punches were around the border. They probably won't change anything on the 20 ride pass other than the price in the corner. I'd like to see them change the image on monthly passes -- it's been 9 Junot at Water Terminal all year! (113, in the summer. It isn't even a good picture!)

Nextbus does have maps. There is the in-house map, and the routes super-imposed on a google-map. The map can show any routes you want (once they're all on there, that is) and it shows where the buses are, and when you hover over buses it says where they are going. It also lists all stops, and hovering over a stop tells you the time of the next three buses that go there. If multiple routes go to a stop, it lists those as well. You didn't do enough looking around, did you? I've already tried out Guelph's system though so I know how it works.

Keskus closed in 2000 and was demolished in 2001. I have a hard time believe you're 7 years old! And the city already has maps with schedules and times. You can get them on the bus. There is also a larger map that shows where routes are located but they took the good schedules off in 2004 I think. Before then they had the times for stops on the back of the map. It was very nice.

And I informed us all of a fare increase in January. This is just the confirmation.

[dj.surf.lfs]

vid, on Mar 17 2008, 05:29 PM, said:

20 ride bus passes NEVER expire. Ever. I know a few people who stocked up on them in the 90s. They used to be square and the punches were around the border. They probably won't change anything on the 20 ride pass other than the price in the corner. I'd like to see them change the image on monthly passes -- it's been 9 Junot at Water Terminal all year! (113, in the summer. It isn't even a good picture!)

Nextbus does have maps. There is the in-house map, and the routes super-imposed on a google-map. The map can show any routes you want (once they're all on there, that is) and it shows where the buses are, and when you hover over buses it says where they are going. It also lists all stops, and hovering over a stop tells you the time of the next three buses that go there. If multiple routes go to a stop, it lists those as well. You didn't do enough looking around, did you? I've already tried out Guelph's system though so I know how it works.

Keskus closed in 2000 and was demolished in 2001. I have a hard time believe you're 7 years old! And the city already has maps with schedules and times. You can get them on the bus. There is also a larger map that shows where routes are located but they took the good schedules off in 2004 I think. Before then they had the times for stops on the back of the map. It was very nice.

And I informed us all of a fare increase in January. This is just the confirmation.

I didn't move to Thunder Bay until 2005, so I don't really know when Keskus closed. I thought it was in the 90's...

And I know about the route map (I was the front cover for the 2006 edition ), I wish they were more detailed and make it a BOOKLET with the actual schedule on it instead of just the frequencies. And they don't have individual maps either.

[vid]

They do have individual maps!

They are on the bus!

They are blue!

The old maps had schedules, they took it off to make the maps smaller. (The old ones were at least 30% larger, they didn't fit in pockets.) They also took off the inset map that showed evening route changes.

A ridership was low to nil on South Neebing. http://www.tbsource.....asp?cid=105831

It isn't going to survive is re-evaluation.

[dj.surf.lfs]

vid, on Mar 18 2008, 07:46 PM, said:

They do have individual maps!

They are on the bus!

They are blue!

I meant a BOOKLET that has ALL the route schedules and maps all in ONE. I bet TBT doesn't have that yet.

Got to ride the S Neebing route yesterday... It was soooo boring. The driver was only doing like 40km/h and 70km/h on hwy 61. Waay too slow. No one on the bus except me and some other guy.

[vid]

And that other guy was probably on it for the same reason you were. The novelty of being able to catch a city bus in the bush.

And no, TBTransit doesn't have a booklet with all the maps. To compromise, I carry a map for each route in my backpack. It isn't as hard as you'd think. I have a special pocket just for things like that.

[dj.surf.lfs]

Here's some photos from my trip on the South Neebing bus from yesterday.


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The South Neebing bus at Westfort.

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On Mountain Road. The bldg on right is the Tournament Centre. Behind it is Mt Mckay.

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One more shot.

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EXTRA: What's wrong with this photo? Oh it's sooo easy.

[Orion VIII]

I take it the driver enjoyed your company!

[dj.surf.lfs]

Orion VIII, on Mar 19 2008, 05:49 PM, said:

I take it the driver enjoyed your company!

Actually, the driver was scared to hell and he was looking at me like I was going to hijack the bus or something

[vid]

Of course the driver enjoyed his company. He was the only one on the bus!!

While you were off diddling with a driver in the bush (ha! That sounds naughty!) I was on a 1 Westfort with 50 people, transferred to a 3 Water with about 30, and on the way home was on a 3 Airport with at least 40 then transferred to a 1 Westfort with 25. Carrying about 20 pounds of groceries I couldn't even sit down!! Oh, but at least South Neebing has a bus!!!!!

And I don't know what's wrong with the last picture, of than it's a do-nothing bus to nowhere that barely justifies its existence. At least people use it. Sometimes.

Another route they should bring back: 5 County Park. I still remember the automatic phone message: "Times for FIVE Counteeeee Park......... Via.. BALSAM.





Next stop.............. AT.



FIVE. FOUR tee FIVE"

(Spaces to replicate how the computer talks. It's hilarious, it really is.)

[general682002]

DJ.SURF.LFS, on Mar 20 2008, 09:25 AM, said:

Actually, the driver was scared to hell and he was looking at me like I was going to hijack the bus or something

Gee, that driver had nothing to do since it's a quiet town.

[dj.surf.lfs]

vid, on Mar 20 2008, 05:24 PM, said:

Of course the driver enjoyed his company. He was the only one on the bus!!

While you were off diddling with a driver in the bush (ha! That sounds naughty!) I was on a 1 Westfort with 50 people, transferred to a 3 Water with about 30, and on the way home was on a 3 Airport with at least 40 then transferred to a 1 Westfort with 25. Carrying about 20 pounds of groceries I couldn't even sit down!! Oh, but at least South Neebing has a bus!!!!!

And I don't know what's wrong with the last picture, of than it's a do-nothing bus to nowhere that barely justifies its existence. At least people use it. Sometimes.

You really are clueless. And for your information, I've been on a Neebing bus with at least 10 people on it.

I wish there were still high floors left, it'll make the countryside routes more interesting. I miss the Orion V and the tilted seats at the front

[vid]

Sit at the back? You know, where the floor is higher??

I don't obsess over every little minutia regarding bus transit. I'm sorry. Thunder Bay Transit has the highest per-capita wheelchair usage in this country, so from a business perspective, high floor buses are regressive.

(Though the last time I was on an Orion V, the driver got everyone bananas from Renco.)