Transit to increase bus frequency on 22nd Street
Railway delays expected, other routes to be altered, three added
Saskatoon Transit director Jim McDonald is refusing to let trains stop the progress of the bus system.
More specifically, Saskatoon Transit is moving ahead with a plan this summer to increase the frequency of buses along 22nd Street West despite the substantial obstacle posed by railway delays.
Canadian National (CN) Railway tracks cross 22nd just west of Avenue F and the crossing has been identified as among the worst in the city for delays.
The plan for 22nd this summer would mimic what was done on Eighth Street a year ago by increasing frequency during peak hours to seven and a half minutes. Railway delays are expected to affect the timing, McDonald acknowledged.
“That’s one of those unfortunate things that we don’t control the trains,” McDonald said in an interview Friday.
The high-frequency experiment on Eighth Street proved to have a disruptive effect on other routes that connect to Eighth, which is one of the reasons McDonald cites for a slight decline in overall bus ridership in 2016.
McDonald expects fewer changes to west-side routes as a result of the increased frequency on 22nd, although seven routes will be altered and three new routes added.
“It takes a while for people to get used to things like this,” McDonald said.
The change on 22nd will mean fewer routes overall will be delayed at the railway crossing, he said. Bus frequency is slated to increase on 22nd between the downtown bus terminal and Confederation Mall on July 2.
Depending on interference from trains, buses are supposed to arrive at stops every seven and a half minutes from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. Frequency will decline to every 10 minutes during the rest of the day and then drop to every half-hour in the evening, on weekends and on statutory holidays.
The overall scheme is to move Saskatoon to a bus rapid transit system that will feature high-frequency dedicated bus lanes along Eighth and 22nd. That initiative has been priced at about $280 million with the city seeking federal transit infrastructure money to pay for it.
The idea behind the bus-rapid transit approach is that other routes would link to the highfrequency corridor, a so-called grid system. This is proving to be a challenge.
“Saskatoon, in some ways, is laid out perfectly for a grid type of system, but in other ways it’s not,” McDonald said.
The city is holding an information session on the changes at the Confederation Mall on Thursday at 6 p.m.
The city is also studying the costs of building underpasses and overpasses to counter the effects of railway crossing delays. That option will be weighed against relocating the CN and Canadian Pacific rail lines out of the city, which many think is prohibitively expensive.
A 2016 study by the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority (SREDA) showed rail crossing delays cost $2.54 million a year in economic activity through consuming 2,195 days of productivity a year.
That SREDA study identified the 22nd railway crossing as the second worst in the city, with 70 person hours lost each day to delays. The crossing also tied for the longest average delays of six minutes and 34 seconds per train, the study found.
Saskatoon, in some ways, is laid out perfectly for a grid type of system, but in other ways it’s not.