Quote:
Originally Posted by Bassic Lab
To be fair, overcrowding causes different levels of frustration and, location wise, you'd be lower on the scale than many. There is a difference between the affects of overcrowding on riders near the end of the lines and those in the inner suburbs and inner city. There is a difference between taking the train at Crowfoot and taking it at Brentwood. The SLRT also sees worse crowding than the NWLRT. These issues even affected reliability for people, waiting for multiple trains to pass until one had room to board was becoming a far too common occurrence during the ridership peak in 08.
It's been a very long time since I experienced a peak direction C-Train commute but my most recent transit commute had similar issues. It involved the #3 to downtown with a transfer to the NWLRT. Days where I managed to board the first bus to arrive were, despite the sometimes extreme overcrowding, significantly less frustrating than the days when the first bus passed without allowing additional riders on.
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The #3 downtown route is high-frequency but could use a BRT without a doubt. I did a little experiment: I started counting back in May the number of times in a two week during the morning rush hour where I could actually get on. I live in Mission and just going downtown to the LRT so I start walking when the bus is full as I am only going 10 min walk. Here is what I found
2/10 i got on the first bus, both as the very last crush load to board.
4/10 i got on the 2nd bus to come, after walking a few stops
2/10 i got on the third bus to come (includes 1 time I took the 17 as the third bus
2/10 i made it the whole way to the LRT with greater than 3 buses and no stopping
The issue is not frequency (like most of CT routes), its capacity and reliability. in the same 10 min stretch for 2 weeks in the morning, I always had at least 1 bus go by or stop, sometimes as many as 4. But it seems to be an obvious problem to fix, it is not like CT is struggling with justifying low ridership on this route, it must be aware of the volumes and should act accordingly.
That is why I am excited there is talk of a BRT route down Elbow in the past, hopefully it happens.
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