This is not and never will be a bus town. More empty buses to be subsidized or fewer buses to be subsidized at the same cost? Count the passengers on every bus? Wait! Let’s hire a firm to study that at how many thousands of dollars? It’s how we do things in this ‘burg. Carry on.

Support, provide, conduct, begin, increase, develop, plan, continue. Wait til I get my jacket and tie. I can do this. For a fee. No time limits please.

I can’t figure out how another 13,000 people living in PG 25 years from now means they need to have 67 extra buses?????

Let’s say 10% of the population uses the bus. 10% of 13,000 people would be 1,300 divide by the already existing bus fleet……….huh? couldn’t they fill some of the already empty seats I currently see on most buses?

Sure there could be a need for more buses to add to the routes that actually do get filled these days, but that’s may 10-20% of the routes. I really doubt it would take an additional 67 buses to achieve this!!

Maybe BC Transit figures the car will be obsolete 25 years from now………..haha yeah right!!

Hire Translink to open a branch office here. What could go wrong?

This is all about job security.

I seriously doubt that even 10% of people in Prince George ride the bus. Its a rare site during the day to see more than six people is a bus.

In addition we are talking number of rides, so to go downtown and back would be considered as two rides.

Assuming the population increase was correct, and the number of rides was correct for 2030, then we would be looking at.

5.4 million rides divided by 365 days per year, equals 14,794 rides per day divided by 12 hours = 1232 divided by 67 buses = 18 passengers per bus, per hour.

Consider that the average load for a bus is 48 riders (not including standing room) one would have to wonder why they would need additional buses.

These are usually pie in the sky reports to give the impression that all is well in the world of Government entities.

With the exception of a few routes at specific times of the day, very few people ride the bus in this town. It’s been that way as long as I can remember. As Harb said, PG is not a bus town.

As a bus rider, I can say witha uthority that you are all full of it. You know little to nothing about what you speak. I am especially excited about future rapid transit lines and a better transit hub downtown.

@curmudgeon: So all the empty busses I see running around town are an illusion. Thanks for clearing it up.

You know it’s funny, I think there’s a lot of extra streets in Prince George we could get rid of – I almost never see anyone driving on them!

Yer logic sucks. Ride a bus for 30 minutes, then get back to me.

curmudgeon. Do you ride buses all over town, or do you have a specific route you take each day??? I am out driving around town at various hours of the day 7 days a week, and I can tell you that 90% of the buses I see have six or less passengers in them.

Sooo. Would you be kind as to explain where all these bus users are?? Tks

I ride transit almost every day. Tho some buses are empty at certain times all are used throughout the day. In fact, several times people were left at bus stops b/c the buses were too full to fit them in. Buses are well used in PG, despite what people think. A good community has a range of options for all people and good usable transit is part of that.

I take many different routes – downtown, cross-town, sort-haul and long-haul. I know the ridership numbers.

Transit ridership jumped 12% from 2011 to 2012, and 2013 likley continued the trend. With the snofall and bad roads, there have been a lot more people on the buses.

In 2012, there were 2.2 million rides that year – 6,000 rides a day or 7,200 rides a day if you take out stat holidays and Sundays, when the buses have little to no service.

Would you like me to go out an count all 7,000 rides today or should we rely on your keen powers of perception? You only see what you want to see, and while you;d like to consider youself an expert – you are not.

i would have to agree with curmudgeon. i rode the bus regularly as a student and still do so once in a while, on various routes, and don’t think i’ve ever seen 6 people on a bus for more than 2 stops. the problem here with everyone’s observations are that it is anecdotal evidence, which is means very little. johnny says he sees empty buses running all the time, but he doesn’t ride the bus. curmudgeon and I say that empty buses are rare, and we actually ride them. who’s more right? who’s more wrong? i think if we were to compare ridership 20 years ago to ridership today, we would see that PG is much more of a bus town than it ever has been. of course, we’d need to see hard numbers. in 20 years, it stands to reason that ridership will only increase, with rising fuel costs.

Hire an accounting firm for about $20,000 dollars to really find out how many people do ride buses and to find out who’s fibbing. Hey! It’s only our tax dollars. Just put it on our $111 million dollar tab. We won’t even notice the interest increase on that.

The riderships numbers are automatically generated by counters on the buses whe you pay your fare or swipe your pass. If you wanted it, you could probably request ridership numbers for any route, on any day, at any time of day.

curmudgeonscurse…Your $20,000 dollar cheque will be in the mail. Your hired. Ha ha ha .

If some of the Buses were to run 1 or 2 more trips in the evening-week day and weekends I think a lot more people would use the Bus–As it is now-if you go Downtown to a Show or Hockey Game you are stuck downtown as the buses have stopped running by the time the event is over-so you use you car or get a cab.
MORE TIME RUNS NEEDED.

curmudgeon: “Yer logic sucks. Ride a bus for 30 minutes, then get back to me.”

And you say my logic sucks. lol.

Anybody who wishes to know what happens on each bus route could try riding the bus. Some routes are busier than others. The 88/89 gets packed full, the 46/47 is sometimes deserted. It was no different when I lived in Vancouver. Downtown buses were packed, suburban buses not even close. It’s a normal transit scenario on a smaller scale.

I don’t know if there’s a better way to plan the routes to increase ridership. It’s not my area of expertise and I doubt I have all the information to make that call. For very low ridership routes, smaller community buses might be considered. The proposed rapid and frequent transit lines look very user friendly to me though. Kind of wish they had those already…

How does a 10% increase in pupulation equate to a 250% increase in ridership?

I agree with MWK and doogood in that I’m not sure how they project ridership to more than double with only a 25-30% increase in population. They are obviously counting on a more rapid acceptance and thus usage of transit than what has historically been the case. That seems incredibly optimistic IMHO.

As for observing empty buses, I agree that it is pretty anecdotal. You have to have the system in place before people will ride and there are going to be non-peak times or certain routes where ridership is lower. Heck, I see buses that only have a handful of people on them in downtown Ottawa when people are getting off work. Others are crammed so tight that you have to wait for a 2nd or 3rd bus in order to get on. It’s just the nature of the beast and transit authorities have to be proactive in managing routes as needs and trends change.