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Unfortunately, there isn’t much to do around there if you’re stuck waiting for another bus. I doubt there’s even wi-fi available. You are within walking distance to a Tim Hortons and some car dealerships. Maybe you could take a test-drive while you wait?

Getting there by public transit is kind of a pain as the service isn’t very frequent. During morning and afternoon rush hours, there’s one every half hour, other than that, you only have one bus every two hours. On Saturdays, it’s every hour in the rush hour and there’s no service on Sundays. Here’s the bus schedule, look for Woodside/Serenity. You’re much better off just taking a cab or finding a friend with a car to drop you off.

Cost of a bus: $400,000 for a regular one, $600,000 for a hybrid.

As with hybrid cars, you need to change the batteries every 6 years. As Fredericton keeps its buses until they are about 24 years old, that means 3 battery replacements (at 6, 12 and 18 years) 3x$66,000 = 200,000

That essentially makes it double the cost over the 24 year lifespan of the bus.  Now, don’t forget that there would be some fuel savings. Unfortunately, under real-world testing, a hybrid bus only got 15% more mileage. (3.86 vs 4.58 mpg).

With a limited budget, that means Fredericton Transit would be able to buy fewer buses if they switched to Hybrids. To compensate, they would need to keep older buses for longer, which won’t be as fuel efficient as a newer conventional bus. They also wouldn”t be able to expand service, which would mean more cars on the road.

The truth of the matter is that hybrid transit buses are just for greenwashing and serve no actual purpose other than scoring political points.

Reference: http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/WVU_FTA_LCC_Final_Report_07-23-2007.pdf

Some might think that $5.2 million is a lot, but compare it to Saint John who recently spent $23.5 million. Saint John’s will be twice the size so divide by 2 and compare to $11.75 million. That’s only 44% of the cost compared to what they built in Saint John. By building it in an industrial area, a lot of money can be saved by going cheap on the appearance.

I was disappointed with this line though: “It’s also proposing to redirect $423,000 from an anticipated bus purchase in 2010 to the construction of the transit garage.” That means the poor riders of Fredericton Transit will have to endure riding on a rickety old Mulroney era piece of junk that won’t be replaced for another year.

Sadly, they weren’t even able to designate one route as being accessible.

Since I have nothing to compare to from last year, I’ll compare to 1999. The good people at archive.org provide us with an old copy of the city’s web site:

http://web.archive.org/web/19991105011430/www.city.fredericton.nb.ca/bus/bussked.html

On average, most routes had this for service:

• 1/2 hour service during the morning rush
• 2 hour service during the day
• 1/2 hour service during the evening rush
• big 2 hour gap
• 1 or 2 night runs

Today, we have:

• 1/2 hour service during the morning rush
• 1 hour service during the day
• 1/2 hour service during the evening rush
• big 2 hour gap
• 1 or 2 night runs

They also added Route 9 and improved Saturday service on some routes.

We’re much better off than we were 10 years ago. It might not look like it above, but that 1 hour service during the day does help a lot of riders. Hopefully we’ll be much better off in 10 years.

Also, look at the paint scheme from 1999, which is better than the 1980 paint scheme.

You can see it by clicking http://www.fredericton.ca/en/TransitWebcam.asp You’ll then need to find the red bus icon and click on it.

Here’s a screenshot in case it doesn’t work for you:

New destination signs

They have replaced all their old fabric scroll destination signs with LED signs. These are great as you can now see which bus it is from 2 blocks away. I even saw a bus with the route number on the back of the bus. They have even replaced the signs on the Mulroney era clunkers (I suspect the sign would be worth more than the bus on those).

The new signs may also be compatible with their GPS and route management system which could change the signs automatically at the end of the route. Some systems have a sign inside the bus that displays the address of the next stop. For accessibility purposes, they can also announce the stops with a robotic voice. No idea if Fredericton Transit is getting either of those. 1 bonus point for improving the passenger experience.

Off-peak price reduction

It has been announced that a pilot project will see the bus fare reduced during non-peak times to 50 cents. This pilot will run until October. I could comment on this, but it has already been said much more eloquently at Wreckage Found Floating. The bus is still free on Sundays

Scorecard on other promised and expected changes

I’ve taken a few key points out of the report and some other places that are key to building a better transit service. These changes will either improve the overall system or increase passenger comfort so which will increase ridership. I’ve assigned a point value to each.

Wi-fi

No update on this. Last word was that it’s still in trial phase. It’s too bad they don’t put a sticker on the door to identify which ones have the wi-fi so passengers can test them. 0/1 points.

Webcam

Whenever I walk by a bus, I look to see if I can see the camera. I have yet to see it. I also don’t see it on the city’s web page despite the fact that it has been promised to be there ages ago. I suspect it doesn’t actually exist.  I am only counting this one because they promised it, not that it is actually all that useful. 0/1 points.

Geolocation

Still no sign of it. 0/1 points.

Rebranding

No sign of this either. 0/1 points.

Service Advertising

There has been no new advertising, I suspect they are holding off until the rebranding has been finished. 0/1 points.

Route simplification

Maybe September? The new electronic destination signs will make this easy. 0/1 points.

Old on-board ads

Still there (Obsolete and incorrect “Ambulance is now free” ads specifically) 0/1 points.

Sunday Service

There has been no discussion of this at all. 0/2 points.

North side route

There has been no discussion of this at all. 0/3 points.

Improved evening service

There has been no discussion of this at all. 0/2 points.

Accessible route

The consultant’s report suggested that they designate some routes as being accessible as they now have a significant amount of their fleet that are of the low floor variety. I would assume that they would make the run that goes to the hospital be the one that’s designated as accessible. This will reduce strain on the dial-a-bus service that is subject to many complaints of unavailability. This may be announced for the usual route adjustments in September. 0/2 points.

Score

With little in the way of communication coming from Fredericton Transit, we can’t actually tell what may be going on behind the scenes. I’ll re-visit this scorecard once they announce the route changes for September.

Total: 1/16 = 6% = F

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/rss/article/640542

Since I can’t copy & paste the article in, I’ll go over some of the points it makes.

1. Wi-fi – hopefully they put this on all their fleet. I’d be curious to see if it works at the very ends of the runs. Route 18 goes all the way past the Bucket Club, which is far away from their main transmitter near Two Nations Crossing. According to the Gleaner, “wireless fibre” is used to connect the Fred-e-Zone access point on the bus to the main part of the network. As “wireless fibre” doesn’t actually exist, a little research shows that it uses a proprietary technology called iBurst. Hopefully they will put it in their clunkers as well as their newer buses.

2. Geolocation – Hopefully they get all the kinks out of it in Moncton first. It’s nice to have it using Google Maps, but that is kinda useless if you’re at the stop waiting and only have a phone. The easiest way to do this is to have an IVR that you can call on the phone and to tag every bus stop with a unique number that can be entered by the rider.

3. BusCam – Awesome! I hope they hurry up and make it public, there’s so much fun to be had with that.

4. Two Nations Crossing trial extension (wasn’t in that article, but is here) – great news that they aren’t going to kill it right away. Too bad they aren’t willing to extend the hours to run until 10pm.

(photo taken 2009-04-08 on fleet #8992)

I also saw one of those “Ambulance rides are now FREE” ads yesterday (2009-04-08 on fleet #8851).  This comes after the NB Government decided to reintroduce the ambulance fees. This is just another example of an out-of-date ad.

Oh well, at least our buses have a nicer paint scheme (anything’s nicer than pink and purple wavy stripes):

Ugh....

Update: Looks like a driver’s a little lost:

Update again: Here’s one that has 3 lost drivers

The broken destination sign has been fixed, however, I saw another one on another bus that was also broken, but I didn’t think to note the fleet number so I don’t know for sure whether it’s fixed or not. From now on, I’ll be more careful about recording the fleet numbers with any maintenance issues I find.

Speaking of fleet numbers, I’ve decoded them. The first number is always 8, the next 2 are the last 2 digits of the year, and the last one is a counter for the year. SO bus 8994 is the 4th bus they bought in 1999. I’m not sure if the year is the model year of the bus, or the year they got it. Some of them have different numbers inside the bus so they may have got them used from other transit systems.

The consultant’s report that they are constantly referring to suggest that trial runs of new routes should be at least 1 year long.  They seem to be ignoring the advice they paid for with the Two Nations Crossing trial by only having it run for a few months. They shouldn’t just be cherry-picking only the options they like out of it.  They are also ignoring the pleas of the box store workers who are asking that the bus run until 10pm so they can finish their shifts and take the bus home. Hopefully they won’t give up too soon and declare the run a failure without giving it a proper trial.

Speaking of the consultant’s report, not much else has been done with it, other than asking other levels of government for more money for a new garage and sub-terminal at the Regent Mall. Where’s the extra advertising, re-branding and route number / schedule simplification?

Speaking of improvements, why aren’t they promising any with the UNB universal pass? The students are going to vote on having to pay an extra $100/year for some vague hints that the transit system will be slightly less useless in the future. For STU, they were given the details of the service improvements before they went to vote.

How long has it been since Aliant transferred their wireless division to Bell? I think it’s been a while, however, there are still Aliant Mobility ads inside the buses. I suspect that they leave them up even after the contract has expired so the ad panel doesn’t look too empty. If you want to save on your advertising budget, just run an ad for a month and Fredericton Transit will leave it up for years.

They repainted some of the buses and they no longer put “Fredericton Transit” across the doors. Now they don’t have to worry about using the right font when replacing the doors.

Why don’t they join forces with other local transit agencies and bulk purchase? Surely there’s a price break when you purchase 20 units at once? It seemed to work with road paint. They could even do something as simple as keep a centralized parts repository.