Despite spending piles of money on accessible transit buses, Fredericton City Council members can’t seem to see the most obvious solution to deal with the shortcomings in their paratransit system.

They again failed to look at the relatively inexpensive option of designating certain regular transit routes as being accessible. How easily can they do this? For the past eight years, Fredericton Transit has been purchasing low-floor accessible buses. They already have enough to guarantee that some runs will only use those accessible buses. This will easily allow them to move the least impaired people onto the regular system while keeping the para-transit for the riders that need it the most.

Yes, it will take longer to load passengers, but remember that 10 out of 30 minutes of a Fredericton Transit bus’s run time is idling at King’s Place or the Regent Mall, so it won’t greatly affect on-time performance.

At this point, about half of the fleet is already low-floor. They could start with route #16, which goes by the medical clinic and the hospital. At some point (the year 2029), the entire fleet will be accessible, but until then, they can slowly add routes to the accessible list as the older buses are retired.

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Municipal elections for Fredericton will be held in May of 2012. The city recently held an “attitude survey” where they tallied up people’s opinions of what’s right and wrong about City operations. That survey would be very valuable to anyone running for council. Having access to the data would help a candidate form a platform.

So who has access to this data? The 13 elected members of council, and nobody else. How fair is that? They get to see the full thing where the rest of us get to see a press release that’s full of spin.

It makes it difficult for new people to get involved in municipal politics when the people at the top make it hard to get in.

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Disclaimer: The author of this blog is not running for council in 2012.

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I have been seeing a lot of discussions about whether people in Fredericton should be allowed to bike on the sidewalks. The reality of the matter is that there is a perception that biking on the street is unsafe and the city won’t enforce the current bylaws (unless you’re Charles LeBlanc). However, many people are upset at the sheer number of cyclists that just fly by them downtown.

I propose a compromise:

Allow bicycles on sidewalks when the following conditions are met:

• The cyclist must give right-of-way to pedestrians and cars entering/exiting driveways
• When coming up on someone, the cyclist must slow down and pass slowly
• Certain areas (such as downtown) will be walk-your-bike zones and will be signed
• Cyclists must choose either the road or the sidewalk and not weave on and off the road

The police/park patrol must actively enforce the new rules or else there will continue to be resistance to bicycles on the sidewalk

 

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And throughout the city, not a tear was shed. (The new building will be much nicer)

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In case you haven’t heard, a gas tank fell off one of the buses the other day, which is causing people to question the maintenance of the fleet. Here are some pictures I’ve taken over the years in regards to maintenance issues with Fredericton Transit. Figure it would be good to have them all in one place.

We’ll start with the mismatched fonts on the rear door. It makes them look bad, but not bad enough to warrant repainting it:

 

Next, we have a seat that’s been repaired with garbage bags. They didn’t even have the decency to use duct tape:

 

If you’re going to stand on the bus, it’s always a good idea to make sure those grab bars are properly attached to the seats:

 

If the destination sign’s a little dark, you’ll sometimes find a hastily hand-written sign in the window:

I’ll keep posting them as I keep finding them. I wasn’t able to get a picture of the leaky windows as it didn’t really show up in the camera. maybe someday, I’ll get video of the rattling and clanging they make when they go over pot holes.

 

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According to this map, Fredericton may be getting up to six new roundabouts. Unfortunately, everything’s pretty vague, so this article is 100% speculation.

1. Kimble & Wetmore. This one probably was the recipient of a lot of complaints as it can be hard to see when turning onto Kimble from Wetmore. It wouldn’t have had enough traffic to warrant lights so they will get a roundabout instead.

2. Two Nations & Cliffe. This area is probably going to grow a lot more, good to get this in before it gets really busy up there.

3. Forbes & Hillcrest. Interior streets within a subdivision. I’m sure they have a good reason.

4. Ascot & Reading (pictured below). Remediation of a subdivision planning failure. If you’ve ever had to drive through this one, you’ll know how awkward it is.

5. Stairs & Reynolds. There’s already one at Reynolds & Brookside, why not have more? This one sees a lot of left turns, so it will fit in quite well.

6. Smythe & Dundonald (pictured below). This will be the most controversial one yet. This will be the first one on a high-volume road. In fact, it will be on two high volume roads. They’ll need to step up the driver education if they want this one to work.

I’ll adjust this page as more information becomes available.

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Tired of looking at these tired, old, shabby railway-era industrial buildings?

View Larger Map

Pretty soon you won’t be. If this passes council, and the developer is actually able to build it, it will soon look like this:

But wait, there’s more. Phase 2 will include a row of townhouses which will fill in the rest of the lot:

The apartment building will also have 64 units of underground parking (1 per unit), and four penthouse suites. This is a high-quality development that will add density to the area and will hopefully reduce some of the issues in the nearby “student ghetto”. Hopefully the city will ignore the NIMBYs and allow this to be built.

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Many people have been tired of looking at the old TRA building on Queen St. which currently looks like this: (that picture was from 2 years ago, it actually looks much worse now)

One group hopes to replace it with this:

TC Land Holdings (who are somehow related to PlazaCorp, the strip-mall developer) have filed an application to build this 32 unit apartment building on that site. Some might say that 32 units is a bit small, but the actual lot isn’t that big:

As you can see, it pretty much fills the entire lot, leaving only enough space for 14 parking spaces. There will be another 26 spaces located on the first floor of the building. Due to flooding concerns, there won’t be a basement.

Hopefully the project won’t get derailed by soil conditions (or the fact that it’s built on an old dump). This will be a great addition to the downtown and will bring in some much-needed residents. Some density advocates would wish for a larger building, but considering the technical issues, I think this is the best anyone could do.

Planning Advisory Council members will be voting on this on Wednesday, April 20th. It will then have to pass council at a later date, probably in May.

Update: Building is under construction. Here is the website that has some leasing information: http://www.westpointebytheriver.ca/ The prices aren’t listed, but the extra “e” on “pointe” implies that it will be expensive.

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Been a while since anything about Fredericton Transit has shown up on this blog. In August 2008, Dillon Consulting released their report with 18 recommendations to be completed in the next five years. We’re halfway through the 5 years, let’s see how they did:

(from page 117 of report)

1. ADOPT TRANSIT SERVICE STANDARDS – NO
2. New Route to Two Nations Crossing / Cliffe Street – FAILED
3. Service Frequency Improvements to maintain a minimum hourly service on all routes during their normal hours of operation - NO
4. Modification of Route 216 to service Knowledge Park Drive - NO
5. Increase service on Route 11 with introduction of a UNB U-Pass. - NO
6. ESTABLISH NORTH SIDE TRANSFER POINT AT ST. MARY’S STREET AND MAPLE STREET - NO
7. INCREASE AND IMPROVE SHELTERS - NO
8. DEVELOP AN ENHANCED TRANSIT MARKETING PLAN - NO
9. ADJUST FARES – YES
10. EXPAND U-PASS - NO
11. EXPLORE EMPLOYEE TRANSIT PASS PROGRAMS - NO
12. CONSIDER NEW INDUSTRIAL SPECIAL TO ALLISON/GILLIS AREA - NO
13. DEVELOP APPROPRIATE BUS TURNAROUNDS - NO
14. EXPAND AND MODIFY KINGS PLACE TERMINAL - NO
15. RELOCATE REGENT MALL TERMINAL - NO
16. INITIATE REVIEW OF TRANSIT GARAGE/OPERATIONS CENTER – YES
17. INITIATE DIAL-A-BUS REVIEW – YES
18. INCREASE ACCESSIBILITY OF BUS SERVICE - NO

Out of eighteen action items, they successfully did three of them. That’s a grade of 16.67%. Of the three things they did, adjusting the fares actually raised revenue, the new transit garage was mostly Federal stimulus dollars and the dial-a-bus review cost $46,000. They also attempted to remove service to Silverwood, that plan was cancelled after much public outcry.

Fredericton City council has shown that they like to talk about being green and sustainable, yet can’t actually spend money on being green and sustainable. Many of these action items won’t cost much to implement, yet they don’t have the initiative or will to do them. The next municipal election is in 2012.

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There has been quite a bit of talk about sandwich boards being an issue in downtown Fredericton. Some people find them annoying, others consider them a hazard, yet most people just ignore them. Here are some examples of signs and how they are placed:

Here, we see three of them placed right next to the building, generally out of the way, only partially intruding onto the width of the sidewalk. Most of the sandwich boards are like this.

 

This one is particularly bad as it is really short. If you aren’t looking where you’re going, you could very easily trip over this one. People who text while they walk are most at risk with this one. Note the footprints in the snow and see how that sign goes right over the ones on the edge.

 

This one was the worst one I saw, it’s right in the middle of the sidewalk. Yes, it’s a wide sidewalk, but does it really have to be in the middle?

 

This is the best one I saw. It’s out of the way between a telephone pole and a tree. The store owners solved the visibility problem with balloons.

The simplest solution is to make all the sandwich boards go in the space between the sidewalk and the street. That way, they’re out of the way and the store owners will still get some visibility.

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