OC Transpo rant

So, I'm starting a new job Monday, but because we haven't got that second car yet I'll be riding the bus. It's under 10 minutes by car and I could probably bike it in about a half hour in warmer weather. So how bad could the bus ride be?

Well, for this particular local route (#160) the brains at OC Transpo decided *not* to have the usual one place where the route starts, another where it ends, with busses running between these two end-points, mostly following the same route on the way back. Instead, the bus does a one-way loop (a rather large one) through all of Morgan's Grant and the hi-tech sector. The result is, if you need to travel within this loop, you can easily get there, but have a devil of a time getting back.

Below is the map of the route. I live at the top-left part of the route (off Halton Terrace, past Klondike. I need to get to approximately Leggett/Schneider, in the Business Park. It's only about a 10-12 minute bus ride on the way there. However I cannot (easily) use the same bus to get back home. I can take it to Teron road, get off, cross the street and wait for the next bus heading back to Morgan's Grant. The recommended method of getting back is to take route 101 back to the intersection of March/Terry Fox, cross the street and take the 60 (or 160, depending on timing) back to Morgan's Grant. It's still under a half hour, but if I miss the connection I could be waiting another 15 minutes or more.

I really cannot understand why it is so difficult to make a route that comes and goes following mostly the same route.

Oh, and even though the route does not have a star and end, if you are looking at bus stop schedules, they still break it down into Morgan's Grant direction and Terry Fox (park and ride) direction. One stop along the large loop is designated the end of the line. In order to do something as simple as figuring out how long it will take me to get to work I have to look at the stop schedule for the Morgan's Grant direction first to see how long it will take me to get to that mythical end of the line; then I have to look at the schedule in the other direction to see how long it takes from the "end of the line" to my eventual destination.

Now, if this loop was small -- a few blocks -- I would understand. But the loop starts at March/Teron and goes all the way to the farthest reaches of Morgan's Grant, crosses to the other side into Shirley's Brook, through the business park, out past the old Digital plant (now Dell) before heading back to March/Teron.

Maybe the easiest way for me to get back is to walk from work to the Gateway Plaza on March Road (there is a Timmy's there) then catch either the 60 or 160, whichever comes first. I just measured it in google maps and it's just a little over 1 km. The only problem is having to cross Carling at Local Heroes during rush hour.

SeawaySensFan wrote:I stopped taking the bus because of what boils down to mis-management of the service.

Imbeciles.

But you're still paying for the service, or half of it, at least.