co-hosted by Rachel Caroline Derrah
If coffee doesn’t quite spark your brain on Mondays, get your juices flowing with Spacing Atlantic’s musing of the week. We pose a question – you think, write, comment, share philosophies, facts, ideas or opinions. We will summarize the discussion and provide musings of our own. Don’t be shy! Comment away ..
Do you live or work on a Metro Transit route that is facing service reduction? How do you think this will effect you and your community?
Photo by Lawrence Plug
5 comments
While I see the financial benefits of closing down the “Senior’s Route,” I don’t think that it’s in the best interest of the senior’s community to do so. Rather than end all 3 “manor” routes, there could be one bus that services all the stops on those routes to offer senior’s who live in those Manors the opportunity to go to the mall, grocery store, or pharmacy without having to take a taxi or walk a distance to an alternate bus-stop. For some seniors, the expense of a taxi is unfeasible, and oftentimes, walking to the nearest stop is difficult, especially with baggage and a walker. I wish the city would produce innovative solutions for the best interest of its citizens, especially for senior citizens whose needs are, time and again, un-compassionately ignored.
Firstly, I would like to know what the author of the musing means by service reduction. After looking at the service adjustments document on the Metro Transit website, there are no actual service reductions except for the #3 route. There are a number of adjustments being made were some early morning departure times are changed and/or added. Also, I have been reading here and other news sites, that this will be hard on the seniors. What seniors? The reason the route is being eliminated is because no one is using it. And why are they not using it? Because there are more direct and frequent routes then the bewildering routing and frequency of the #3. For example, in the South End there is a seniors residence where the #7 stop is actually closer than the #3. In the end. people in Halifax just complain without the fact and they never want anything to change.
This may not be a popular opinion, but I am glad to see reduced service or elimination of underused routes. Buses that run nearly empty provides very few benefits to anyone not riding that bus – it is expensive and not at all environmentally friendly to run an empty bus. Resources are limited and this is the start of a route restructuring that will provide more service where it’s needed and less service where it isn’t being used. Equally important, Metro Transit’s current route structure is a mess – lots of duplication, few easy and useful transfers, few cross-town routes and low frequency on all routes except for the 1 and the MetroLink. Unless you live in some parts of the Peninsula or use the bus to reach downtown during peak hours the current set up leaves a lot to be desired. Considering that these service cuts (and significantly more new service and service improvments) are part of a 5 year strategic plan that will start addressing these issues I’m confident that the short term pain of the service reductions will be worth the significant improvements to the whole system. This is not a service reduction at the system level, there is more service being added, and more will follow. There is money, cautious political will and a strategy to improve our transit system significantly.
Just to clarify Ken B, I (the author of the musing) was referring to buses #63, #65, #30, #330 and ofcourse the #3. For full details of the adjustments you can visit http://www.halifax.ca/MetroTransit/news/documents/ScheduleAdjustmentsAugust2010.pdf . Thanks for your comments, we will do a synthesis of all these musings at the end of the month, so keep posting!
I think it is time for Haligonians to change. We need to start developing walkable neighbourhoods where we don’t need to get into a car or hop on a bus to get groceries. We need to rethink our idea of “city”.