miWay Transit

[drum118]

Staring May 23 to June 23, Central Parkway Intersection on Hurontario will see the guideway built across it with no left turns for Hurontario St.

Haven't seen signs on Central Parkway yet as to what is to happen on that road for left turns.

Based on the timeframe for work, this is a full closure that it will not only affect route 53, but buses going to/from CP to Kipling or routes. See no info on the site if a detour is in effect and if there is one, the 53 will use Elm to go south with normal routing. The only thing for 53 is the stop at the medical building on Hurontario is now at Fairview some 200m south.

The southbound 2 that has been using the medical stop while CP been out of service will be getting off/on 125m north of CP now.

A partials closure is usually 2 months.

Starting May 21 for at least 2 months, Square One Dr intersection on Hurontario will see the guideway built across both roads starting with Square One Dr. Southbound traffic is being swung to the west with a nice loop swing to/from Square One and may have some impact on southbound routes especially the 103. They are changing the left turn lane onto Square One for northbound and may have an impact on the 103 or be an improvement.

 

[MiExpress]

At last night's transit advisory committee meeting, staff provided a presentation outlining 2024 progress to date and proposed service improvements to be implemented in fall 2024 and beyond.

The full presentation deck is available here. I will summarize some of the key points and then add some of my own data obtained from MiWay.

As part of the 2024 budget, MiWay received 57,000 additional service hours. The majority of these hours have already been implemented, focused on revising schedules across the network for reliability (adding additional buses to maintain frequency) with some minor frequency improvements.

A second mid-year increase was approved, allowing for an additional 57,000 hours which will be more focused on restoring and improving service levels. These will be implemented in fall 2024 and the highlights are:

• NEW route 126 Burnhamthorpe Express running between UTM and Kipling, running during weekday rush hours every 15 minutes
• NEW route 50 running between Winston Churchill Station and Meadowvale TC serving Churchill Meadows and Lisgar; 90 Terragar-Copenhagen to be eliminated and 39 Britannia restructured to serve Meadowvale TC via Winston Churchill
• Significant weekday and weekend frequency improvements on 7 Airport, 11 Westwood, 26 Burnhamthorpe, 35 Eglinton, 39 Britannia, 42 Derry, 61 Mavis among others

A similar significant addition of service hours is projected in 2025 with highlights including:

• Revised Derry corridor service including connections to Finch LRT
• Improved service on Dundas, Derry, Eglinton, Mavis and McLaughlin Corridors
• Improved service levels on routes 38 Creditview, 39 Britannia, 107 Malton and 109 Meadowvale among others

Below I will add some of the data I have compiled that compares 2023 ridership to 2022, and also 2019. MiWay uses Automated Passenger Counter (APC) data and I have been able to obtain the data over the last 5 years. This is intended to be the first of a deeper dive into MiWay 2023 ridership. Some points to remember about the following data:

• Figures are boardings (unlinked trips)
• Data is from the fall 2023 board period (Late October-mid December) and comparing to the same periods in 2022 and 2019
• My data shown is not averaged out for the full year or any variances, it is strictly the above points in time. Therefore, the data points such as percentages will vary vs what is in the MiWay presentation.

System Overview
Saturday and Sunday boardings continue to show significant growth in 2023.

Weekday boardings per clock hour
Midday and Evening boardings continue to grow over 2022 and exceed 2019 (pre-covid) levels; however AM peak lags 2019 levels and PM peak just matches them.

Saturday boardings per clock hour
Boardings exceed both 2022 and 2019 levels at all hours of the service day.

Sunday boardings per clock hour
Boardings exceed both 2022 and 2019 levels at all hours of the service day.

Closed doors (overcrowding) continue to be a significant issue with 2023 recording the highest levels on record and 2024 starting off with similar trends.

Weekday ridership by route, 2022-2023 comparison

Weekday ridership by route, 2019-2023 comparison

Weekend ridership by route, 2022-2023 comparison

Weekend ridership by route, 2019-2023 comparison

Overall, while the investments in service are long overdue and welcome, many MiWay routes still operate at frequencies below what they were pre-covid even in the face of ridership growth. Reallocating buses to other routes and increasing runtimes (but not adding buses to balance) due to congestion are the main culprits. Even with the service improvements, many routes will continue at levels below pre-covid and also fall below established minimum standards. This is more evident when viewing weekday service, but is also a issue with weekend service as well.

Note: The above images were embedded into the post directly to ensure they were legible. Please do not quote the entire post with images included when replying.

 

[Northern Light]

At last night's transit advisory committee meeting, staff provided a presentation outlining 2024 progress to date and proposed service improvements to be implemented in fall 2024 and beyond.

The full presentation deck is available here. I will summarize some of the key points and then add some of my own data obtained from MiWay.

As part of the 2024 budget, MiWay received 57,000 additional service hours. The majority of these hours have already been implemented, focused on revising schedules across the network for reliability (adding additional buses to maintain frequency) with some minor frequency improvements.

A second mid-year increase was approved, allowing for an additional 57,000 hours which will be more focused on restoring and improving service levels. These will be implemented in fall 2024 and the highlights are:

• NEW route 126 Burnhamthorpe Express running between UTM and Kipling, running during weekday rush hours every 15 minutes
• NEW route 50 running between Winston Churchill Station and Meadowvale TC serving Churchill Meadows and Lisgar; 90 Terragar-Copenhagen to be eliminated and 39 Britannia restructured to serve Meadowvale TC via Winston Churchill
• Significant weekday and weekend frequency improvements on 7 Airport, 11 Westwood, 26 Burnhamthorpe, 35 Eglinton, 39 Britannia, 42 Derry, 61 Mavis among others

A similar significant addition of service hours is projected in 2025 with highlights including:

• Revised Derry corridor service including connections to Finch LRT
• Improved service on Dundas, Derry, Eglinton, Mavis and McLaughlin Corridors
• Improved service levels on routes 38 Creditview, 39 Britannia, 107 Malton and 109 Meadowvale among others

Overall, while the investments in service are long overdue and welcome, many MiWay routes still operate at frequencies below what they were pre-covid even in the face of ridership growth. Reallocating buses to other routes and increasing runtimes (but not adding buses to balance) due to congestion are the main culprits. Even with the service improvements, many routes will continue at levels below pre-covid and also fall below established minimum standards. This is more evident when viewing weekday service, but is also a issue with weekend service as well.



Note: The above images were embedded into the post directly to ensure they were legible. Please do not quote the entire post with images included when replying.

Excellent post!

Let me add to it:

I'm with @MiExpress here.

This is a real, tangible improvement. Particularly for select main corridors, and especially in the off-peak/weekend time frame.

Good to see a note about improving 24-hour service as well.

****

Needs to be better though.

One more major service expansion of this scale (2024 and 2025 combined) in 2026 would probably bring most services to where they need to be.

They really do need to work on more precise/even headways and clock-face schedules for anything less frequent than 15M

 

[SubHuman]

I rode a Miway bus recently for the first time in a couple of months, and had to stand because of the ridiculous bar thing that does absolutely nothing except make people stand when they could be sitting.
https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/miway-transit.6833/post-1941963
Have they ever explained where this came from, or why it's still there? Do we know for certain if this nonsense arose from some silly lawsuit (did Daffy Duck "slap 'em with a habeas corpuscle")? There's still no way it could make any sense. Wouldn't it be just as likely, maybe more likely, that some person might sue if they were standing and fell down if the bus had to stop suddenly?

 

[drum118]

I rode a Miway bus recently for the first time in a couple of months, and had to stand because of the ridiculous bar thing that does absolutely nothing except make people stand when they could be sitting.
https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/miway-transit.6833/post-1941963
Have they ever explained where this came from, or why it's still there? Do we know for certain if this nonsense arose from some silly lawsuit (did Daffy Duck "slap 'em with a habeas corpuscle")? There's still no way it could make any sense. Wouldn't it be just as likely, maybe more likely, that some person might sue if they were standing and fell down if the bus had to stop suddenly?

My favor put down for the city as we are the only system in the world that I have ridden on to do this over a lawsuit.

The city figures this is the best option to save them from other lawsuits. By having more riders standing opens the door for lawsuits. I have no knowledge what happen in the first place or who caused it in the first place and pure dumb doing so.

The way some drivers drive, it surprising there haven't been more lawsuits to date.

 

[SubHuman]

I did a search to try to see if anything like this has ever been seriously recommended. To my surprise, it has.
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/FTA_Report_No._0021.pdf

Crashworthiness Evaluation of Mass Transit Buses
...
• Standing passenger safety

- Side-facing seats are strongly recommended against, for the protection of both the seated passengers in them and standing passengers... Side-facing seats provide direct exposure to standing occupants from those occupying the seats and allow more space to build up impact speeds.

- Similarly, it is strongly recommended to remove rear center (aisle) seats, removing the danger to standing occupants from being struck by those seated in them during a crash.

I'm still skeptical of how valid this is in practical reality. The report is from 2012, and if side-facing seats are unsafe, the TTC and whoever builds their vehicles certainly seem to have ignored any such recommendation.

 

[drum118]

I did a search to try to see if anything like this has ever been seriously recommended. To my surprise, it has.
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/FTA_Report_No._0021.pdf

I'm still skeptical of how valid this is in practical reality. The report is from 2012, and if side-facing seats are unsafe, the TTC and whoever builds their vehicles certainly seem to have ignored any such recommendation.

Given that there is no less than 500,000's plus buses in service daily worldwide, every manufacture must know something that report doesn't know for not making the changes. Supplier will make changes as requested at an extra cost for anyone who wants a change from the standard design.

TTC use Orion that will be gone in the next few years with Nova Bus replacing Orion as well NFI. NFI may replace the Nova Bus if the plan to sell it and service Quebec only happens. The US has Gilles as a 2nd supplier and BYD being a 3rd one. Europe has far more suppliers than NA with a number being bought up by larger companies.

NFI is the main player in NA now