If you liked The Force Awakens and are wondering what excellent sequel to watch next, you’re in luck. Today we’re launching “Why are the buses late in Halifax? Part 2,” the follow-up to last summer’s blockbuster municipal services video “Why are the buses late in Halifax? Part 1.”
Without giving away any spoilers, we can say the popular hero of the “WATBLIH” series, Byung Jun the Planning Dude, is back. And yes, his nose for experimental fieldwork gets him in all sorts of trouble. (If you define trouble as having a bunch of data to crunch to figure out what exactly is going on with one of the city’s biggest chronic problems.)
In the villain role, Halifax Transit has some serious competition. But you’ll have to watch the video to find out who it is.
If you’re new to the series, you can catch up in, like, five minutes. Here’s Part 1 in all its glory—watch it while you’re waiting for the bus for a meta transit experience.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2016.
Yes. That’s it. It’s me. I cause the buses to be late. Oddly, it only happens in Halifax; not Montreal, not Toronto, not Amsterdam… only in Halifax do I have this effect…
haha, these videos are awesome.
First the good news: The scheduling mis-match that gotime suffers with reality will be substantially improved with the new scheduling system. The new system is also able to accommodate light switching and emergency vehicle right of way. It’s just much more capable of adjusting to the reality of day-to-day travel (breakdowns, rush hours, etc) that the current system struggles with.
Another commentor mentioned Toronto and Amsterdam; these cities use the system Halifax is implementing. It’s a good one.
That said; the route layout could certainly use a more modern hub/spoke model instead of long routes that make it more susceptible to traffic issues.
Bad news: it’s not the passengers issue. I really wouldn’t get too worked up about passengers getting on, or off the bus. The time for these events, vehicle breakdowns, rush hours, etc are taken into account when scheduling the vehicles. You should try scheduling school buses and para-transit! Those passengers take as long as they take; it’s just the nature of the transit business.
Cool trivia: the new system is Canadian made, as is the current system. There are actually only a few big players in the transit scheduling systems that are used around the world, and two of the biggest are Canadian companies. Go us!
It doesn’t happen in Toronto, Charlie Brown? Toronto’s “bunching” problem is famous. (Basically, the same as this: vehicles are incrementally delayed by traffic and other things until, instead of being evenly spaced out, they leave you waiting for 20-30 minutes and then all show up at the same time.)
Like seriously, it’s one of that system’s greatest challenges. It definitely happens in Toronto.
Amsterdam isn’t comparable to Halifax or Toronto, sadly. Europe is in a whole different league than Canada, transit-wise.
The comparison is that of they don’t blame passengers for their tardiness, not the infrastructure. Read my comment again for a better understanding of what I said… I’m also implying that we can do better.
The SGR stop that I use to go home is unpredictably early. This pisses me off, I can arrive 10 minutes early to watch the bus drive away before I get there. Then it is another 35 to 45 minutes until the next bus gets there.
There is no difference between the amount of time it takes to put a ticket on bus than there is putting change in bus actually more time if you have ur change get stuck..an no matter what they do our transit will never be on time or make the right connection with busses.
Why does Halifax Transit change it’s routes ? One example the #51 bus leaves the bridge terminal and heads down windmill rd to Shannon Park then proceeds down windmill rd up to BURNSIDE INDUSTRY PARK. Put does not provide the service 7a week. They stop the bus from going any further than Shannon Park on weekends and holidays when there are people who work in the BURNSIDE INDUSTRY PARK, it just doesn’t make sense. I see too many buses saying out of service and really not enough service is being provided for those parts of the city. The city buses in Calgary start running at 4AM in the morning i know because i used them when i lived there. They keep the route run the same 7 days a week and only change the go time for winter and summer . Halifax Transit needs to come into the 21 ST CENTURY and get out of the 1970’s. This comment was to wake you up HALIFAX TRANSIT and its UNION!
How you can help Halifax Transit make the buses run on time ?
You have to have a round table meeting among a bunch of crackerjack university grads
and you end up with this-
Hand in more guns for bus tickets hahahahahahahaahahahaaa! HRM is DUMB and DUMBER!
The bus was late because not enough criminals handed in their guns for bus tickets last month and now we have three more murders lmao Bravo HRM University Grad Geniuses now called Politicians lol