Raise the Hammer

Yes, this is an idiotic system caused by the recent move in stops and general ignorance or outright trolling on the part of the HSR drivers. You're right, someone is going to get hurt.

Did you contact HSR? What did they say?

HSR management too stubborn to move stops to common sense locations. As a driver,a can say, than many many of us arte good people, living and working in Hamilton. We have families, kids, parents, grandparents. We want a pleasant respectable work place, just like every other member of the working public. A small percentage of drivers ruin it for many, just as a small% of passengers make life miserable for us.

This is a city-wide problem. One of the many reasons I almost never use HSR anymore. Most transfer points have their timetables laid out with the connecting buses leaving 1-2 minutes before the arrival of the first buses. And as you accurately describe, 3 buses all back to back with 2 being mostly empty is commonplace on several lower city routes. Then a 10-15 minute wait before the next 3.

That's called a timed-transfer system- it's a normal design feature in transit systems. The 10/15 minute period you're referring is called the "pulse". The idea is to have buses all arrive at a major node at the same time to allow passengers to make connections. In Hamilton, the major node is King/James and MacNab terminal. If you watch during rush hour, all the mountain routes arrive to MacNab within a 5/10 minute window with most of the mainline and crosstown routes doing the same.

The tradeoff of not doing this is that people coming from another bus route end up having longer transfer times. You can see it at the MacNab terminal in the off-peak where mountain routes arrive on alternating pulses. If one bus arrive late it screws things up for those riders, but it's better for the greater good than the individual.

I think the clusters Jason is referring to are clusters of three buses on the same route - the first bus stops at every stop to pick passengers up, and the second and third only have to stop when they are dropping people off, so by the time they get from the east end to mcmaster, they've caught up with the lead bus.

The real solution here is to have higher order transit on the king corridor. I have been taking the bus more than usual lately, and the difference in ridership between king and every other route is astronomical. The king buses are a terrible user experience - almost always over capacity. Everything happens slower as large groups shuffle around the bus to let even larger groups on and off. Everything grinds to a halt if someone with a mobility device - whether a scooter or a walker - needs to get on or off... If someone's presto card doesn't work, the driver has to deal with fare issues... all of these problems disappear when you implement level loading light rail, and every connecting route benefits from no more missed connections.

Let's just get on with it already

Yes, that was my point earlier. Thx for clarifying. Barton and the King corridor are famous for this. Why haven't we yet outfitted the entire Barton/King corridor with articulated buses??

Once upon a stuffed bus, the driver was doing an amazing job trying to stuff everyone on, in order not to leave anyone behind. Someone asked why there wasn't an articulated bus on that route. Turns out the articulated buses are indeed assigned to the highest traffic routes, many of them are on king, and college/university routes. They cost ~ $1mil, so they aren't plentiful to go around.

The lack of ambition to complete LRT is confusing, for many reasons. Including that it would level-up the beeline service while freeing up a bunch of buses, articulated and normal.

Yes to this. And further why not put in a Beeline style route on Barton during the morning and evening rush hours? Seems like a no-brainer although this is the HSR.

Barton is to crammed and is one lane mostly. A B line style bus would just be stopped at every red light and every stop. There is no room to pass.

Articulated buses can actually be slower in fact. More people = more stops. Also, the majority of bus stops are not designed to handle 3 points of exit. It is almost impossible for the driver to see the very rear door,making it tremendously difficult to safely allow passengers to exit.

Just curious if this would change with LRT?

It's almost as if they don't WANT more people to try and take the bus...

They don't. They view it as a service for the poor, not a legitimate transit option to build a city around.

I completely agree with this. It's not seen as a legitimate option. I'm on a bus route which takes me to Hamilton GO Centre quickly and conveniently. But there are very few of "me" on this route, and I know people who would never take the bus in Hamilton. The rider experience is depressing rather than being pleasant or unmemorable.

I agree that this is an issue, but as has been pointed out, this is a citywide problem. The layover situation is worse on the mountain and suburbs, where the yawning headway makes transfers a grind. (Especially on weekends.) At least the main trunk line is serviced by several east-west routes with considerable overlap throughout the lower city. (Even on weekends.)

I've noticed that for high-frequency routes in particular the drivers don't give a hoot about meeting their transfer because it's assumed there will be another bus within the next 5 minutes. The 2, for example, runs every 8 minutes at rush-hour.

Of course, this attitude would make sense if it weren't for the whole "20-minute-wait-and-then-three-buses-in-a-row" problem.

My wife takes the bus twice daily to get to the university and home again, from downtown. She works 8:30-4:30, Monday to Friday. She leaves the house about an hour or so before work starts. She grabs the bus at the base of the escarpment and transfers at Jackson Square. She then usually transfers at Longwood, and then on in to work. She sometimes will hop off a stop early to get to a bus with less capacity. She has noticed, htough, that if she leaves anywhere from 5-10 minutes later than normal, the bus at Longwood gets overwhelmed with university students. Same thing when heading home.

Perhaps the HSR needs to review the patterns in the morning, especially near major population areas like Jackson, Longwood, etc? Perhaps look at trying to get something near Longwood where it's more like a bus terminal rather than right on the street? I don't know the answer to that.

As for the drivers "trolling", I don't think that's the case. Most are nice but it's like any customer-facing job: a few bad apples ruin it for all drivers. My wife has lots of stories about drivers bending over backwards for people on board, but just as many about drivers who don't seem to go out of their way even to help an elderly person find a seat. I think another issue that drivers face is the constant "adhere to the schedule" mantra, where they are monitored by supervisors for tardiness, etc.

Last summer at Hunter and James, where many southbound routes line up and the stop can get a little crowded, a bus with plenty of capacity hurried past the stop and failed to pick up passengers.

It was already a bit tiring transferring daily from train to bus at Aldershot.

Anyway getting left at the side of the road was the final push. While not everyone can do this, in my case, two weeks later I had converted an e-bike. Five months in, I'm up hundreds of dollars in saved Presto payments, but GO + HSR is still there if needed. But it's more convenient door-to-door to just bike.

As for the drivers - I have met all kinds over the years. Some simply wonderful and happy with their job. Others grouchy and immature. One downright childish. Some visibly tired but remaining courteous and professional. As is the case anywhere - many personality types mixed together. Most are good people and do their best in what I'm certain is a challenging environment at this time.

Comment edited by mikeonthemountain on 2014-01-31 12:11:48

I too find cycling to be faster, easier and more convenient than HSR. And I have a much, much shorter commute than Mike. I live in Durand and work on Parkdale. Taking HSR would involve two transfers. YIKES!!

The new Cannon Street bikes lanes will be a big help.

Another simple change, that I suggested during the HSR service review a few years ago, would be to limit the number of depressing public service ads running inside the bus and make a better attempt to market the interior space based on the large number of high school, college, and university students who take the bus every day (a prime advertising demographic).

Riding the bus you are forced daily to confront a line-up of worthy, but depressing, social and health problems: various serious chronic diseases, needle exchange programs, zero tolerance for violence, anti-smoking, anti-graffitti, bed bugs, gambling addiction, alcoholism, violence against women and children, lead pipes (leading to grey futures for sad children) etc.

These issues may all be worthy, but it is depressing to be seen as a target audience for every debilitating disease and social problem under the sun. Even worse, many of these ads are deliberately sensational and aim to elicit a strong emotional response.

And, interestingly, these ads only ever appear inside the bus. If these are really such important issues why are we devoting space that advertisers don't want to them, and only reach the small proportion of the population that takes the bus?

Limit the number of public service ads, and either leave the space empty or include poetry or art like other systems do. Passengers are paying customers and should be treated with respect, not as a captive audience for depressing ads that no one else will run.

GO transit doesn't feel the need to fill their vehicles with these ads and I expect, especially with their new emphasis on customer experience, they would refuse to.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2014-01-31 15:11:37

I live in Hamilton but take Burlington Transit to work everyday. I find it strange that Burlington Transit operators can (easily, from my perspective) use their radios to ask other BT bus drivers to wait for people who want to transfer, but the HSR doesn't do this. Something I've been wondering about lately.

I think the thing is that the transferring mayhem in Downtown Hamilton is so heavy that it's too complicated for them to bother. I studied at Guelph, and it has a simple minimalist approach: every half-hour all the buses rendezvous downtown and they're pretty good about all leaving in sync, so transfer is fine.

Here in Hamilton where we have oodles of routes all out of sync with each other, I assume the HSR just finds it too complicated to figure out. Plus, waiting for one passenger slows down the whole route and slows down all the passengers. Every delay bunches more buses together and leads to the "half-hour-nothing-three-in-a-row" problem.

Bus scheduling is hard. I mean, the HSR isn't successful by any reasonable metric and they need to do a heck of a lot better, but I respect the fact that they have a hard job.

I'm not sure what you're talking about- the MacNab Terminal has a regular timed-transfer pulse during rush hour where all Mountain Routes arrive to allow for an easy transfer. Mainline and Crosstown routes generally work with it, however the mainline routes specifically aren't meant to it since they have such a higher level of service (this is normal transit network design)

In the off-peak, the MacNab terminal has two pulses where half the buses pulse at the same time (roughly half on each of the West 5th Access and Jolley Cut).

A couple very simple ideas that would help enormously:

• Another bus only lane on James from York to Hunter
• A bus only lane on John from Hunter to King (we don't need left turn lanes at Jackson)
• King St bus only lane should go from the Delta to Paradise
• Main St can easily house a bus lane from Cootes to the Delta

It's time for some express routes in Hamilton. I'm sure folks can come up with various options, but here's a few:

• 403express: via 403 starting at Ancaster Business Park, stop at the Meadowlands (a park and ride should be developed here), exit Aberdeen with stops at MIP and McMaster.
• QEWexpress: start at above mentioned park&ride in Meadowlands, stop on Upper James (sheltered A-Line stop should be coordinated at Linc), stop at Limeridge Mall (park and ride should be developed), exit Dartnall with stops at Anchor (Carmens), Meadowlands East, head north on RHVP, stop at Queenston (B-line stop), stop at Barton (GO park&ride), QEW to new power centre w/ GO Station, to Eastgate Sq (Centennial has room for widening for bus-only lanes)

Keep in mind that along the 403, Linc and perhaps even Red Hill there is room for buses to have the right shoulder as transit-only lanes. These would be true express routes connecting massive portions of the city, and linking up massive portions of the city with the A and B-Lines.

http://r2.cygnuspub.com/files/cygnus/ima...

Before anyone gasps at the cost to implement these ideas, consider we are more than willing to toss $50 million for a completely unnecessary clover-leaf at Hwy 5&6.

Personally I believe that the above mentioned bus lanes, park and rides and express routes would see a massive surge in transit ridership. I know people who live downtown and use transit to trek out to the Ancaster Business Park everyday. What a painful trip that curently is. Yet we have direct freeway access.

Comment edited by jason on 2014-02-01 00:20:15

We’ve got that nifty map of the hypothetical BLAST system. Presumably there’s a reason someone put those lines on a map at some point, so why don’t Lines L; S; and T exist as express bus lines?

I like your thoughts. Bus lines on the expressways and the 403 would make a lot of sense. In most cities, this would probably already exist. Middle-class office workers deserve good transit service, too, so it only makes sense that places like Ancaster Business Park and McMaster are connected with subdivisions on the mountain and elsewhere. The fact that they’re not is a symptom of the Hamiltonian mentality that transit is for poor people.