Last week Jeff O wrote in The Rec about GRT proposing another fare increase. The fare just went up last July.

Here is some of the information from the article:

• Grand River Transit is proposing the third fare increase in four years
• The proposal would make the four-year increase 14 per cent
• ‘Less than 4% of commuters took a bus to their job in 2001′
• Compared to 6% in London, 8% in Hamilton
• One in three riders is a student 18 or younger.
• Two out of three transit users are renters.
• Almost half live in households with incomes below $25,000.
• One in three lives in a household without a car.
• Local taxpayers now pay 60% of Grand River Transit costs.

Now, I have ridden transit a fair bit and some has been good and a lot has been bad.

This is the good:

• Some bus drivers take care and line up the exit doors with breaks in the snow bank.
• Some drivers are friendly and smile.

This is the not as good:

• There is often no answer at the automated telephone schedule. Do machines take coffee breaks?
• It is only a schedule and it tells only tells you when the bus is supposed to stop not when it will. Is its time wrong or are the buses way off schedule.
• Most drivers act like I am not there. I have to ask for a transfer.
• The on-line schedules are in PDF.Can’t they present them in a more accessible format?

Once Ernesto and I were catching the bus to a football match. When we looked at the schedule at the stop, it didn’t list the time we were expecting. I said ‘I must have misread the schedule,’ and we started walking because we had to get there. The bus passed us walking soon after that. Either the bus was 25 minutes lat, 20 minutes early, or the posted schedule was wrong. All are unacceptable.

Using the bus is inconvenient enough that I have chosen to walk 4 miles rather than use the unreliable bus.
Once these girls were waiting at the bus stop to go to the inter-city bus station. I advised them to take the express because it would get them there faster and was scheduled to stop in three minutes. We waited 17 minutes for the express and three regular buses passed us before we got on the next regular bus because the express had still not arrived.