The long-awaited upgrades and improvements to Corner Brook Transit are expected to launch tomorrow. Check out the new improvements and see if they’ll help you get where you need to go (and what happens if these improvements don’t result in increased ridership) below.
Expanded Schedule
All of the details about the new service can be found here, but here’s the gist of it:
Extra hours have been added on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings, expanding the service to 10pm. Routes 5 and 6 will operate hourly between 6pm and 10pm.
Saturday service has been added, with Routes 5 and 6 operating hourly between 8am and 6pm.
Routes
Despite a call for expanded routes and areas of the city without access to the transit service (particlarly the Sunnyslope area), the transit routes have not changed. You can see the new print schedules here (pdf, 3.5mb) and here (pdf, 3mb) for an outline of the routes but the City hasn’t taken the hint that large pdf’s are difficult to use, so the easiest way to figure out your route is still to use our Transit Map using Google Maps.
However, the City has made an incredibly smart step by becoming a partner with the Google Transit Partner Program. This will allow Corner Brook Transit data to be displayed on Google Maps. So if you go to maps.google.com, you’ll be able to see where stops are, where the routes go and when the next bus is scheduled to stop there. You can see this in action by looking at cities like Halifax on Google Maps.
More about routes below.
Creating an Intelligent Transit System
One of the most trumpeted changes to Corner Brook Transit is that they will be creating an Intelligent Transit System. Well that sounds awfully fancy, so what does that actually mean? Here’s the breakdown:
- You will be able to visit NextBus.com to find out when the next bus will be at a particular stop. If you visit the site from a smartphone (iPhone, Android phone, Windows Phone, Blackberry, etc.) then it will be able to determine your location using the GPS in your device and tell you when the bus will be at the stop closest to you.
The NextBus service uses GPS devices in the buses to figure out an accurate time of when the bus will actually be there and is not based on the posted schedule. - Using the same NextBus data you will be able to call a phone number, enter an extension specific to your bus stop, and it will tell you when the next bus will arrive.
- Digital signs will be placed at the hospital and at Grenfell Campus to display when the next bus will arrive.
None of the “Intelligent” services are active yet, but the Corner Brook website says they are coming soon.
New Website
…okay, they didn’t create a new website. BUT, I registered cornerbrooktransit.com and pointed it at the Transit section of the sometimes-difficult-to-navigate City of Corner Brook website, making it a small bit easier to find information when you need it.
…and all of this means…?
When you step back and look at all of the changes, there are some good steps. The integration with Google Transit is great because when people from away look at Corner Brook on Google Maps they will be able to see that a transit system exists. It also makes it easier for users to find the information they need. Oh, and it’s FREE for both users and the City. Free is good!
When buses run relatively infrequently (every half-hour or every hour, depending on time and route) it makes sense to have a system that will give you an accurate guess as to when the next bus will be coming by. It could mean the different between leaving for the bus now or leaving in a half-hour. The NextBus system is a good idea (even if nobody really knows the number of smartphone users that use Corner Brook Transit).
The Saturday service and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evening service is definitely a good step. If people are students or are working 9-5 type jobs, they only have evenings and weekends to run errands. I’m not sure how much help the relatively infrequent every-hour service will be, but I guess it’s a step in the right direction.
All this is great, right? Let’s take ANOTHER step back (we’re two steps back now) and take a look again. All of these changes are really only good for people that currently use Corner Brook Transit. They make it easier to access information about the system (which was a big complaint, so it had to be done) but these changes do not make it easier to get where you need to go. Without expanding the routes the system doesn’t reach anyone new and therefore can’t really increase ridership.
…so what if numbers don’t increase?
What happens if we don’t increase ridership? Well since this is a Transit Improvement Trial, if numbers don’t go up I suspect drastic cuts will be made, with the whole system probably on the chopping block.
Unfortunately, when you have a system that hasn’t changed in twenty-odd years and a city that has changed dramatically in that time, it takes more than throwing money at it to make it work.
