A Battle For Time

Upon further research into the City of Kelowna’s future plans for public transit, I came across a couple interesting points which relate to transit systems ongoing battle with the private automobile. The city is implementing what they call a “trunk and branch” approach to the development of their transit system. The “trunk and branch” method is simply a system where local community bus lines are used to service the suburbs and transport its passengers to the major bus lines which service the core areas of the city. The concept is quite simple and somewhat effective in linking the suburbs to the core but for most the private auto still provides service which is much quicker and non-stop. The issue of quick and effective service has become an ongoing issue for public transit systems and its biggest obstacle in obtaining greater rider-ship, so what is the city doing to tackle this issue? There have been a couple ideas put on the table by the city in hopes of reducing ride times; these include Queue jump lanes, left turn modifications, and traffic signal priority. Queue jumps lanes allow transit busses to jump ahead of traffic which form at major access points like the bridge across Lake Okanagan and at major intersections. Left turn modifications are simply designated left turn lanes for busses, as we all know it takes a bus more time and space to make a left turn across a major intersection, these lights would make this task faster and easier. Lastly traffic signal priority allows for extended “green light” time so that busses can get through high density intersections quicker. When reading about the above improvements I was instantly impressed but when I read a little more I came to the realization that these improvements made little difference. On average the “priority” modifications reduced travel time by three minutes on most routes, this is just simply not going to cut it. If the city hopes to increase its rider-ship by drawing people out of their cars and onto the bus more drastic measure will be needed.

All information can be found at http://www.bctransit.com/regions/kel/pdf/kel_2004.pdf