The past, present, and future of Kelowna public transit
Are improvements to the bus system on time or running late?
10/4/11
It sure can be painful waiting for the bus to show up. Photo by Hanss Lujan (The Phoenix)
If you’re like any of the thousands of students who commute to campus every day, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot less room on the buses this year. In this feature we’ll review the state of transit in the Okanagan and the ways it might be improved in the months and years ahead. With a City Council election coming in November, the students at this campus might just get their voices heard a little bit better by candidates attempting to please the voters.
Looking Back
Over the past six years the City of Kelowna and Kelowna Transit have been implementing what is called the Smart Transit Plan—a report released in April of 2005 and designed to integrate the Okanagan Valley from Vernon to Peachland, with Kelowna as the hub. The plan is slated to come into full effect by 2035 and is meant to counter growth up to the year 2021 at which point the population of Kelowna, according to the report, will have grown from 160,000 people within the city and surrounding areas to 226,000.
Although it’s of course relieving to know that the City is planning ahead, the tripling of campus population over the past five years has caused a growth rate significantly greater than what they appear to have anticipated. UBCO’s population currently sits at 7950 students; add to that a few thousand full and part time staff and there is significant demand for transit accessibility to the University. So what has the City done for us?
Since the campus opened in 2005 there have in fact been significant changes to the transit system to accommodate the influx of students. In September 2007 the University, the UBCSUO, and Kelowna Transit agreed to a plan for the Student UPass, similar to the system used by MetroVancouver. This pass currently costs $90 a year and gives passholders unlimited access to transit within the Kelowna transit region. According to the UBCSUO, the UPass has only been acquired by roughly 5900 students, leaving $180,000 worth of UPasses unused. Only two people have opted out of their UPasses; the service is paid for but many students aren’t using it. Of course, roughly 500 students at any given time are on exchange through the Go Global program so that accounts for a quarter of unused UPasses, but not the other 1500.
At Present
However, even without the maximum number of students utilizing the system, there is still a large demand on Kelowna’s main routes. The City and Kelowna Transit have reworked the bus routes to optimize service for access to downtown and the University, taking into account not just the student population but also everyone in the city who uses transit. This has resulted in the reworking of several routes, including the 97X, the 8, and the 21. Prior to last fall, the 97’s route combined the Rutland section of the current 8’s route with the Enterprise stretch of the current 10 and finally the mall-to-downtown stretch of the current 97. Its total run, from UBCO to downtown, was approximately 45 minutes. The new 97 Rapidbus system has only five stops from Queensway to UBCO and runs closer to 25 minutes. Last September when the Rapidbus system was implemented, new stops —featuring pull-out lanes for easy on/off highway transition —were installed along Highway 97 to accommodate the large ridership.
Despite these changes, the rapidly growing student population has begun to strain the bus system. Anyone who has ridden the number 8, 90, or 97 during peak hours knows the human sardine can that is the Kelowna transit system. The transit system is so burdened that stops are regularly skipped because there is no room left on the buses.
4th-year English student and Vernon resident Cory Myraas outlined the issues with the new 90 connector route, saying “The lack of foresight in the Vernon bus system is what is most aggravating. It’s as if they were planned and subsequently executed by someone who has a) never ridden a bus before, b) never used public transit for getting to important destinations at specific times, and c) thinks that having 100 people (50% of them standing) on a bus for 45 minutes [when it has the] capacity of maybe 80 is legitimate.”
Myraas explained that the 90 also suffers from superfluous Oyama and Winfield stops, as well as poorly chosen departure times (such as an 8 o’clock run that remains useless to students with 6-to-9 classes). “Adding a second bus was great,” he continued, “however adding a second bus and taking away crucial times was idiotic. There are no buses back to Vernon between 12pm and 4pm, leaving [any] amount of students stranded and [later fighting over seats] on the bus.”
The 90 is certainly not the only overcrowded route; just three weeks into the school year a woman passed out on the 97 from campus. UBCO student Chloe Lockerbie relayed the event: “We all got on the bus at 3:30, and as usual, it was packed. All of the windows were closed and the air conditioning wasn’t running and by the time we got on to the highway it was pretty stuffy. Just before the Wal-Mart stop a woman at the front started to make noises and collapsed. I don’t know what happened to her after that because the woman beside me dropped to the ground. She got up soon after and said she got really dizzy. The driver turned on the air conditioning after that.” With conditions this severe during the autumn it will be interesting to see if conditions improve during the winter. Some have proposed the use of the double-decker buses on the 8 route, but the stops have been built to facilitate the standard buses, so sizing up is likely out of the question.
Looking Forward
Returning to the long-term Smart Transit Plan, there do seem to be provisions for increased demand on the system. The report states that “In the intermediate to long range, 5-15 years from now, it is proposed that transit service will increase in frequency and extend comprehensively to evenings and weekends. Specifically, in the long term, the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit, i.e. the 97 Rapidbus) service would be increased to ten minute headways in the peak, twenty minutes midday and Saturdays, thirty minutes in the evening, and sixty minutes on Sundays.”
The future growth section of the plan also details strategies to increase community shuttle service to every thirty minutes at peak and every sixty during midday, evenings and weekends. This would constitute a dramatic increase, since current community bus routes usually have forty-five minute intervals at peak hours, up to three hour breaks during midday, and little to no evening service. Broadly stated, the 2010 to 2021 section of the plan proposes to “increase frequency of service on BRT and town centre connectors, extend community bus services to growing neighbourhoods.”
Even assuming the ambitious goals of the Smart Transit Plan are implemented, there’s no telling how soon. The plan was drawn up in 2005 and slated to reach its end-phase in 2021. There have been notable improvements since 2005, which could indicate that plans are moving along smoothly—or could instead indicate that change will now slow down, and that the next phase of improvements is a long way off.
Despite the lofty predictions of the long-term plan, enacting real change in the Kelowna Transit System may prove to be something of a catch-22. Outside of the university and Rutland area, the local public transit system is not especially well used compared to similar-sized cities. Despite the fact that Kelowna is now the third largest metropolitan area in the province, 2006 statistics from Going the Distance: Commuting Patterns in BC indicated that 89% of Kelowna residents drove a car to work (compared with the provincial average of 79%). These stats are of course from before the population explosion at UBCO and expansion of bus routes, but keep in mind that the Going the Distance report was published at around the same time the long-term transit plan was established.
Ideally, the long-term strategy would function to solve these problems of low ridership, but local attitudes and problematic urban planning hamper public transit’s capacity to appeal to the majority of Kelowna residents. The catch is of course that low ridership downplays the need for increased service, inadequate service fails to attract new riders, and the process becomes a vicious cycle. While the City, the Province, and Kelowna Transit talk extensively about increased and improved service, how likely are they to follow through if, several years down the road, many routes are still noticeably underused?
So far, several short-term additions have been proposed. The primary one consists of extending 97 Rapidbus service into West Kelowna. Funded by the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, the $43-million project will add three new 97 stations to the West Kelowna, at Westside, Boucherie Center, and Westbank Center. Beyond that, the expansion will add new downtown stops for the 97 and outfit existing stations with real-time digital schedule displays.
Real-time updates would be useful to riders, but seem wasted on the stops for the reliable and frequent Rapidbus (rather than, for example, the serially late 8). The funding breakdown has the Government of Canada kicking in a maximum of one-third of the cost, with the Province providing $24 million, City of Kelowna adding $4.1 million, and West Kelowna contributing land.
So that’s what we have to look forward to. As things stand at present, the city is debating a referendum on campus to increase the cost of the UPass. The current price is $90 a year, and any proposed increase would still be a considerable discount to regular riders, but with at least 1500 students not even getting their UPasses is the increase really necessary?
Kelowna will be holding its City Council elections in November; for those readers who are permanent residents of Kelowna, now is the time to get your voices heard on the transit issue. Politicians running for office will want to get an active voter base from the students at the university, and those who promise improvements for transit just might get it.
9 comments
Strong Bad on Oct 4, 2011 at 1:32am
Nothing to do with this particular article, but whoever designed and approved the bus "shelters" for 97X stops along Highway 97 deserves to get sent to a Justin Beaver's concert as a punishment. Maybe that sounds too harsh for them, but they truly deserve this kind of punishment.
Why would anyone come up with the idea of using wire mesh walls for the bus shelters? Kelowna is said to be warmer than Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary or other Canadian cities in the winter, but the temperature do drop to the point where you would end up losing your feet if you walk around the town without wearing proper shoes. I hate standing over 30 minutes for the 97X bus in the winter, when -15C chilly wind is penetrating through the nice, fancy mesh wall of the bus "shelter."
Toronto and other Canadian cities have partially enclosed bus shelters made out of glass walls, not with stupid wire mesh. They are not like those posh heated shelter at UBCO, just a simple bus shelter with the glass on four sides. Oh, that is insightful. Even the unenclosed bus shelters in Vancouver or Victoria is made out of glass or wood, not with stupid mesh.
Obviously, whoever designed and approved the bus shelters for RapidBus have never visited Kelowna in the winter or never had an experience of waiting for the bus in the winter.
Michele Rule on Oct 4, 2011 at 2:45pm
Excellent article. Every time I visit the university, transit is the number two issue students want to talk about (after housing!). I'm happy with the progress we've made so far and look forward to continuing to provide improved service. One of the stumbling blocks is the ability of the city to react quickly to needed changes because the control of schedules lies with BC Transit. This is something that we have been working on at the political level and we have brought forward a model that would keep the funding as is but allow our own staff to do scheduling changes as necessary. Here's hoping the province will listen! Thanks
Michele
PS - the reason behind the mesh is graffiti and vandalism - it's too bad that many have to suffer because of a few bad apples.
Barry Harvey Patterson on Oct 4, 2011 at 3:09pm
We really want to get control of what happens to Harvey Avenue. Can you vision a direct bus link from West Kelowna to the University ? HOW? During this Nov.19 election, elect Councilors who will request the Provincial and Federal Governments to release Harvey Avenue to Kelowna control. Take a look at John Woodworth's vision in the blog listed here.
Barry Harvey Patterson on Oct 4, 2011 at 3:13pm
The blog does not seem to appear when submitting. So here it is: http://harveyavenuekelownabc.blogspot.com
Jake Marks on Oct 6, 2011 at 12:29am
Graffiti? Were letting people freeze so some loser doesn't put paint on something. Not worth it. 97X needs two more stops, if anything.
The number 8 needs a lot of attention. There should be a Rutland-UBCO and a Mission-UBCO (like the 4) not a one size fits all thing.
The bus departure from UBCO times need to better fit the END of classes, not times like X:45 or X:15.
Mike on Oct 6, 2011 at 11:00pm
In addition to more routes, they need to have better connection times. For example, the Lakeshore bus arrives at Queensway three minutes before the 97x leaves at almost half the morning bus. 90% of the time either the 97 leaves early or the 1 arrives late and you end up missing the connection.
Omnomnom on Oct 7, 2011 at 6:53pm
8 is never on time. The #8 route should be UBCO to Orchard Park only and Orchard Park to Okanagan College should have another independent route (new #5 College or whatever).
I see that the demand for the section between UBCO and Orchard Park is higher than the OP and OC section. Also, people do not usually ride #8 to the end. Most passengers from UBCO/Rutland will get off at Orchard Park and the new passengers heading to OC would fill the bus instead.
It would be more efficient because the city can allocate more buses to the busier section and the bus arrival and departure time can be adjusted to match the class time at UBCO "AND" OC, not one of them. Also, shorter travel distance = more time reliability.
I don't see the point of keeping #8 as a long distance route, especially after the introduction of #4 UBCO/Pandosy Express.
Omnomnom on Oct 7, 2011 at 6:59pm
Test
Is this a possible bug?
Steven on Oct 13, 2011 at 7:13pm
Great article. Keep it up! You should send this article to the city council and the transportation department along with the comments here.
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