The new Bridge Terminal will open on schedule, on August 27, the same date the revised fall transit schedule starts. Construction on the new terminal was apparently way ahead of schedule, so there was some hope that it would have opened as much as a month early, but crews are still working on the interior of the new building, which isn’t expected to be completely until about the middle of August, says city spokesperson Tiffany Chase. It made no sense to open the facility for just a week, then change all the schedules, so the early opening idea has been abandoned.
Here are some of the details of the new terminal.
Orientation. The terminal stretches the entire length of the block—about 700 feet—between Nantucket Avenue and Thistle Street, just behind the Sportsplex parking lot, and just below the Dartmouth High football field and what’s left of the urban wilderness park along Nantucket.
Bus Bays. The new terminal will have 16 bus bays, with the following set-up:
Routing changes. There will be small changes to routes 10 and 87, as follows:
Pedestrian access. People in the neighbourhood uphill from the terminal will be able to access the terminal via a pedestrian bridge that starts at both the Nantucket and Thistle ends of the terminal and curves over the eastern set of bays and a bus parking lane. The pedestrian bridge leads to the top of the terminal building—to the three “lantern” looking structures; the middle one is an elevator, and the two outer ones are stairwells, all leading down into the terminal building.
The pedestrian crosswalk from the Dartmouth Shopping Centre across Nantucket, which had been signalled by a flashing yellow light, was replaced this week with a red light activated by push button. That light will not be synced with the Wyse Road lights, explains Chase, because the red is activated each time a pedestrian pushes it, and it only remains red for as long as a “normal person” can cross the street.
The crosswalk somewhat up the hill, which has been primarily used by Dartmouth High students crossing over to MacDonalds, now leads to just above the start of the pedestrian bridge. There are no plans to move that crossing to directly meet the bridge, nor to change the light to a full-stop red.
There is a newly built stairway of about four steps connecting the new terminal to the Sportsplex parking lot.
Washrooms. The new terminal will have a separate area for drivers, with their own washrooms. The public area will also have washrooms—the women’s room will have three regular stalls and one accessible stall, and the men’s room will have two urinals, one regular stall and one accessible stall.
Custodial services. HRM facility services is responsible for keeping the washrooms and the rest of the facility clean. Very likely that chore will be contracted out.
Kiosk. The terminal includes a kiosk, but the city still has not put operation of the kiosk out to tender, so the terminal will open with no retail operation. It still hasn’t been decided if the kiosk will be of the coffee vendor variety, or simply general retail. Likewise, the city isn’t committing to the kiosk operator being required to sell bus tickets and passes; in the past, I was told that such a sensible, rider-friendly requirement would compete with the Shopper’s Drug in the Dartmouth Shopping Centre.
New traffic light. There will be a new traffic light installed at the corner of Thistle Street and Wyse Road, which now becomes a major departing point for buses.
I’ve been promised a sneak preview of the terminal before it opens, and will post pictures as soon as I can.
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2012.
Too bad about the terminal possible not selling tickets and passes, but it’s not a huge deal. It might pose an slight inconvenience to people who have to go across the street, but you also have a deal with Shoppers to work out and there’s no sense in miffing them for, really, no reason.
Never know, the vendor might request to sell tickets and passes, no doubt that would be a valuable market and a great way to get people to stop at the retail location.
Glad to see a new terminal. The old one sucked when it rained and was a little sketchy at night.
Overall good.
16 bays for buses: immediately I pictured all 16 filled at once and the buses leaving at the same time; every 30 minutes. I’d like to see the routes changed to better reflect user convenience.
I hope this terminal does not have the same fate as the Mumford terminal. Last time I was there, the store was closed down as were the washrooms.
While it would be nice to have ticket and pass sales there, I could do without them AS LONG AS there is a change machine. Overall I’m pretty excited about the new terminal!
Metro Transit needs to get past the whole paper-based ticket/pass system anyway.
It’s time to look into an RFID-based system, with prepaid options to subscribe to a monthly plan (to replace passes, with the ability to opt-out of premium services in exchange for a lower price), and/or hold a dollar balance (to replace tickets, and to make up the difference for one-off access to premium services when subscribed to a lower-tier monthly plan), with built-in automatic accounting of transfers within a fixed interval from initial boarding.