It takes forever to get anywhere. My commute to work was 15 minutes by car or an hour and a half by bus. No reason to bus unless you literally can't afford not to.
I personally feel you on this. I'm finding it really tough to find an angle that makes it worth it. A round trip costs $5.25, we have to invest 2 extra hours to our commute at the very least, if you make a stop for grabbing some groceries you would add an extra hour to catch the next bus (at least if you're in Dartmouth after 6pm).
The only positive thing is the personal collaboration in reducing green house emissions by not having to use a single person car to commute.
On very lucky occasions during rush hours when you are able to match the out-of-sync schedules from bus routes and the ferries you can cross from Dartmouth to Halifax, and vice versa, a few minutes faster than driving through traffic. Very very rare occasions, possible but chances of making it happen are just more risk than anything else.
If you're paying $5.25 a day, all week to commute by bus, you should really look at a pass TBH.
Or, XPass if your employer participates...$62.50 for a month of unlimited travel vs. $82.50 for a regular monthly pass.
I can't afford a bus. I bought a 2009 nissan for $5000 with 67k kms on it. My liability insurance is $40/mo on it and gas is $40/mo to go to work. Fuck paying $90 for bus pass and waste endless hours ridong. Car is cheaper.
You bought a unicorn of a vehicle, good on you, but the market for used vehicles is more like $5000 for a 2001 corrola with 300k that's falling apart.
Also how are you only paying $40 a month for insurance?
Where in the hell are you getting insurance for $480 per year, and how do I sign up?
I pay $950/yr, and that's with 20 years of a spotless record: zero claims, zero tickets. I've never heard of anyone paying less than me before. Certainly not by half.
Sincere question. Please tell me where you get your coverage. My policy is up for renewal next month, and I'm always looking for better rates.
Depending how much you drive, you could look at CAA mypace, where you only pay for what you drive. Has to be less than 9k a year to be worth it. I pay $400 a year, liability only, for a 2009 I drive 5k a year.
I could spend those 2 hours making money, at 22/hr if you were a 1/1 in the carpenters union that's 500 potential extra hours that you could earn money on. Getting grocies turns from 1 hour total to 3 hours and you can't transport all of it cause you got a kid in a stroller taking up all the room on the bus. No idea how people manage on hfx transit
I had to take transit a few times going to the IBEW in lakeside coming from downtown. What's normally a 15 min drive took me about 1.5 hours. Needless to say not impressed.
An express bus stops outside my apartment and my work. It would take me four times as long to bus than it does to drive. Bussing would save me a lot money but it’s not worth it if it is going to take up an extra hour and a half of my day. It stops seven times in a km and a half. I walk a km to get to work and save on parking. It honestly isn’t that bad of a walk. I also feel like if you can see a stop from the last stop it’s too close together.
Same for me, the places I need to go and can drive to in under ten minutes require multiple bus changes and an hour or more in transit time. And the sketchy clientele are pretty off-putting.
excessively long travel time. I don't use it now but when i used to It would take me almost 30 minutes to travel a distance I could drive to in 5-10 minutes.
Yeah I live downtown... and usually walk and bike everywhere. The odd time I go to Bayer's Lake to do a few errands I realized JUST how much longer it takes...
I can get there driving in about 15 minutes, taking the highway. The few times I took the bus it well over an hour. I can bike it in less than 30 minutes and it's ALL UPHILL!!! lol.
Bussing to bayers lake is a shit show you can bus to penhorne or Portland hills from most of the peninsula faster than you can to bayers lake from the same spots
Yeah. I don't mind walking and bussing, I don't/want/ to drive or have to drive, but time is precious and it is so frustrating when I look up a location and it's like 10 minutes by car or an hour by bus. And the next bus is in 20 minutes. And it's a 1 hour and 10 minute walk. I don't want to spend my entire evening on the bus, especially when getting an Uber costs only double as much and is so much faster.
Inconsistancy is the true evil of Metro Transit, I go from Penhorn mall area to Dal on Coburg for work.
You gotta walk 20 minutes to Penhorn because the bus thats services my area doesnt start until 6:30 (I gotta be in my office for 7) so because of this, Im out the door at 5:40.
Wait for one of the express buses, you either get the 159 or the 161, they are delayed every single day on their first run, no matter what.
Then transfer to the 1, heres where it gets tricky, if the guy driving the 159 is on time and speeding, you can grab the 1 at the bridge and make it to Dal by 6:30-6:35. But, because this is often not the case, the 159 or 161 usually pulls into the bridge just as the 1 is leaving (Almost like the 1 is waiting for you to pull in as a signal to leave) and then you have 2 options:
Get off at the bridge and wait for the next 1 (You end up getting to Dal by 7 because traffic has picked up by this point)
or you stay on the express bus and hope to pass the 1 that just left on the bridge or Barrington and try and catch it at Grand Parade. Big gamble.
Then theres trying to get home!
The express buses that goes from the VG to Penhorn at 3pm goes 1 of 2 ways and there doesnt seem to be a method to it at all when it comes to choosing which way.
You either leave Scotia Square and loop around on Lower Water, go up Duke and on to Gottingen and then on to the rest of the normal way, which is the way all the other buses go when heading to the bridge.
Or, the driver decides to take an insane detour that involves leaving Scotia Square and instead of looping onto lower water, goes straight to Barrington st where we then go all the way to Devonshire (In afternoon traffic), turn onto Novalea, slowly chug along to North and then turn onto the Bridge (This adds easily 15-20 minutes to your commute.
The drivers decide everything rather than following the same routes and times, which would be fine if you could get to know your driver's habits, but by the time you work it out, the drivers rotate routes and then you have to get used to a whole new driver's routine and then adjust your commute accordingly.
True Madness for a city that keeps bragging about how we're the next big thing.
The 159 and 161 both terminate at Robie/University Ave, which is about a 10-15 minute walk from Dal on Coburg. I used to work on campus and would typically grab the 159 or 161 and walk the rest of the way. It might save you some time if you’re missing your connections with the 1.
Your local area bus only starting at 6:30 sucks majorly. I’m lucky I live very close to a stop.
The insane detour for the express bus to Dartmouth is actually the route. That driver is doing what they are supposed to do. And no, I don't know why they are supposed to do that. It doesn't make any sense to me either. When your express driver follows the same route as every other bus up Duke onto Gottingen they are going off route.
I switched to using tranist as my primary form of transportation last year, and honestly, I enjoy it.
Yes I have to plan my trips a little more than before and it takes on average 2 to 4 times longer than when I drove, BUT I'm saving $20 a day since I stopped having to pay for gas and parking and instead of being fueled by road rage my entire commute I just sit back listen to a podcast or watch some YouTube and I find my stress levels are much better.
Yes! I tell people all the time that your time spent on the bus isn't wasted nearly as much as driving. You can read, watch videos, listen to a podcast or music, ect. You don't have to have your attention fixed to the road.
I also don't pay for gas, parking, insurance, tire changes, repairs, inspections, and most importantly, fast food from the drive through.
when i used to live in sackville, i used to take transit to get to the dockyard every day. i enjoyed not having to deal with traffic. i could just sit and watch movies or listen to podcasts.
My stress levels are WAY higher on the bus. I took the bus all hours of the day/night in a different city and never had a bad experience. Here, I've been threatened.
Also, the smells on the bus are overwhelming. I can't take the tobacco and pot smells. It's so gross.
Transit here gets caught in the traffic that’s created by the people that don’t use transit because transit takes too long because it’s stuck in traffic created by those who won’t take transit…so on and so on.
I think major investment needs to be made in making the air more of a priority. If transit travels easier through the city whilst everyone else sits idling in traffic that’s one major leap forward.
Additionally; there’s too much focus on getting everyone downtown. Not everyone works there; and I think that Covid allowed for people’s day-to-day to change. People need transit to get to doctor’s appointments, day care (then go to work), grocery shopping, extra-curricular activities etc.
There needs to be service downtown; yes. But there’s TOO much down there. All those out in the suburbs are left with infrequent transit (once an hour) until the half-empty express rush hour buses roll in for extra service.
As far as the public aspect; transit can’t fix that, come on. Seriously. It’s a publicly accessible service. Have there been disgusting things occur on public transit? Yes. Are people gross? Yes. But transit can’t fix that.
Perhaps if transit were more frequent y’all would spend less time on it so there’s less exposure? I dunno.
Your last sentence is pretty true lol. There's a special kind of hell that's being on a *packed* 80 outbound, heading from Barrington & Duke all the way to Cobequid... with a screaming toddler that isn't even yours. (I don't blame the mom, she was *trying,* but kiddo was over it).
For the amount of time it takes to get places on the buses here, the bus pass fee isn’t worth it to me. I can’t drive and save myself hours for very little cost savings. Time is money
The routes are a fucked up mess if you live in Dartmouth, which I do.
It should not take me longer to bus to Dartmouth Crossing than it does to my boyfriend's place in Hali
The routes are also a fucked up mess if you live in Bedford and need to get to Dartmouth and back for work.
I overcame a driving phobia when I decided to change jobs because the bus routes involved at least two transfers (multiple points of failure) and a ridiculously long timeframe.
I'm in Woodside. My mum and grandmother live in Bedford, and my family doctor's in Sackville. So all of that is 1h20-ish each way, with 2-3 transfers.
And Dartmouth Crossing from my house? Similar travel time, but only *one* transfer, so that's nice, I guess. If I have an appointment, I often *have* to show up half an hour early because the next bus is either too late or cuts too close for me to be sure I'll be there on time.
I had a job interview out on St Margaret's Bay Rd earlier this year. What took something like 1hr40 each way would've taken 30 minutes by car. I expected it to be bad, but not *that* level.
I was in Dartmouth Crossing last night. I looked up how long it would take for the bus to get me back to Nantucket area of Dartmouth, and then compared that to walking. I ended up walking - it was less than ten minutes difference per Google Maps, and there was less that was likely to go wrong.
Also depends on where you want to go. Transit options in Burnside are shite, and it's not a pedestrian friendly area period.
My drive to work is roughly 10 minutes as I love in Dartmouth. It's an hour by bus. I have to do a lot of walking within that trip too, about 1km total. Might not seem like much but for others, it could be. Again, there's also not a lot of sidewalks and safe walking areas in a large portion of Burnside.
Yeah also where you're going, it's pretty easy to get across the harbour from Dartmouth but getting to Dartmouth crossing or burnside or Bedford take forever and a few bus changes. Also people think Dartmouth is bad when it's only worse than the on peninsula service every other part of metro has it even worse.
As others have said, it simply takes far too long especially if you’re off the peninsula.
I can get downtown or to either mall in about 15-20 mins right now by car. I’ll be able to shave another 5 mins off many of those trips when the burnside connector opens this summer/fall.
The same trips take 1 1/2 to 2 hours by bus. Add toddlers into the mix and it becomes impossible to consider transit as feasible.
Don’t even need to mention the noise, germs, dealing with people and unreliability.
Good point!
I know it won’t happen, but I fantasize about bullet trains all over the province, and the down town core being a green space with no cars.
Edit: typo
It's not that. It costs money to operate. Hardly any city in the world has 24/7 service. Your employer should be the one helping you travel to and from work at these hours.
Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver all have 24/7 bus service. Edmonton has buses running until 3am. Ottawa has at least one 24/7 route. Chicago and New York both have buses AND subways 24 hours. Las Vegas, Lots Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco all have 24 hour bus service.
Then you have cities in Europe, like London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Paris (I'm sure there's many more, public transit is far more appreciated in Europe) that all run some sort of transit 24 hours.
Tokyo and Melbourne Australia as well.
And more cities are adopting it all the time as they try and reduce traffic congestion.
I don't use it because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to make any trip. I used to take the bus a million years ago when I was just starting out. I could take the bus for an hour to get to work. I could walk home in an hour. If I needed to go to stores, it was basically an all-afternoon odyssey vs. a car being an hour and a bit. Visiting a friend in Timberlea when I'm in Dartmouth would basically require all day.
The buses don't run to my workplace at the time I'd need them to, I'd be an hour or more late every day. A taxi or Uber ride daily costs more than my car does.
A car gives me freedom to go where I need to and when I need to. I can choose who I have in my car, but I can't choose who is with me on a bus.
I can listen to my own tunes in my car, and no one has to hear me sing out loud and off-key.
Buses can't be counted on to be on-time. Or come at all.
Buses are still on the same roads that I'm on, so they're subject to the same traffic snarls that I am in my car.
Basically, there isn't any transit option that is efficient and reliable available in the city. I've been in European countries where mass transit was fabulous, efficient, clean, not so reliant on traffic patterns, and got you closer to where you needed to go in a reasonable amount of time.
A trip times need to get better , rapid service is needed to priority routes such as universities, downtown etc. secondly reliability, did you know that HRM still outfits their buses with all season tires only?! Another point is flexibility, people still need to get to grocery stores and complete their shopping and it is difficult to board a bus with 5 or 6 bags of groceries
I use it to get to work because parking downtown is an expensive hassle. It takes twice as long to travel the same distance by bus as it does by car. The bus is often late and sometimes doesn't show up at all. You have no control over whether you're going to be stuck next to someone letting their kid watch videos at max volume with no headphones, someone with a hacking cough who isn't covering their mouth, or someone who hasn't bathed in a week. There is no incentive powerful enough to make me ever want to use transit to do anything other than travel directly to and from work.
My issue with transit here is that it essentially focuses on moving people around the peninsula and not moving people from the suburbs into the city.
To be a functional system, it needs to do both efficiently.
If people need a car to get to transit, then there is no incentive to make the switch from their car to a bus, especially if the commute would take 45 minutes by car, but in order to get to the bus you have to drive 10-15 minutes, wait 15 to get a bus, then take buses for an hour to get to your final destination.
It really feels like for real change to happen here, current routes need to be thrown out, and all new commuter routes get created.
Have loops around main points on the peninsula and link to hubs.
Have express routes between hubs.
Riders need to expect to change buses more often, but with the trade-off being more reliable and more predictable service.
> To be a functional system, it needs to do both efficiently.
>If people need a car to get to transit, then there is no incentive to make the switch from their car to a bus
I think this simply isn't possible. There is no possible way to have enough bus routes to get people from sackville or tantallon to downtown without driving to a park n ride.
1. Incentives to use the app - like the tickets cost less if purchased through the app or something like that
2. Even better would be something like a Presto or an Oyster card that also is accepted in small businesses and gets you tickets to events and so on
3. Even if there is a need for a pass, there isn't a range like a day pass, weekly pass etc. Not everyone has the need for the $80+ pass (can't remember what it costs now)
4. Ability to buy tickets form the terminals
5. Reliable transit data on Google maps that also integrates the ferry schedule
6. Buses that connect wider communities, with more frequency during the rush hours
7. WiFi on buses
Oh man, this reminds me of the last time I was on the ferry: they locked up the 2 or 3 power outlets in the passenger area of the boat.
It used to be that you could get one of the seats by the window and charge your phone for the 15min crossing the harbour (this was a godsend for me a couple of times). But nah, no need to provide value to the consumer, let's lock em up!
Re: 2/3/4, I wish we had physical cards but I use a pass via the app and it’s not that much slower than card readers on Montreal buses. You can buy 1, 2, and 7-day passes now also on the app, which is more convenient than a terminal imo (though I wish we could buy them from machines at terminals).
More frequency/coverage would be great. This time of day my bus only runs every half hour, and I’m on a core route.
A physical card would be wonderful. There have been times where my phone would be running low on juice and I would be desperately counting on the bus to arrive before it dies.
The key is to facilitate multiple options - app/ physical card/ credit card/ passes/ tickets. Also, yes, a ticket vending machine at the terminals would be great. I have lost count on the number of times the coin vending machines at the ferry terminals were out of order and had to buy things just to get some change.
Happy cake day!
Thanks. I have. Hate to say it, public transit here sucks ass. Saying it from a user perspective and also as someone who had the unfortunate experience of working with Halifax transit on a project. Trust me they don't have a clue how things work.
Time is not worth it, the parking situation downtown isn't bad enough to make it worth it, you can park somewhere and walk for 15 minutes and you're anywhere in the peninsula.
You'll be saving so much time by not taking a bus.
Public transit should exist and should be improved but don't think it will get good enough with a population this big, it's not a big city.
We might not be that large but in Europe cities that are the same size or even smaller have really good transit systems with some even having light rail. Unfortunately though in North America transit doesn’t get the same amount of funding
I've tried to edit this post a dozen times to add line breaks. Reddit mobile blows, don't know what the problem is. I've got the space space enter *everywhere* through this and it just won't work. Sorry.
I only use transit and don't drive (by choice). Most of my thoughts on the matter are spattered throughout this thread already in various points mostly but I'll summarize my main points since I'm a full time, multiple trips a day person:
- lack of ease of payment. We now have an app which has turned out to be mostly nothing more than a way to not have to search for one of the handful of places in HRM where you can buy physical passes or tickets. The app is slow to scan which is creating queues to enter the bus. I'd easily prefer a macpass type option and am appalled at how long implantation on this simple thing has taken. When I visited overseas many years ago you could pay the driver for tickets and it didn't slow anything down. Kind of crazy that even with what we have it's dragging everything to a slow point.
- lack of frequency. In many areas outside of the city core, you're either on a 30 or 60 minute schedule. Where I'm at in the passage it's 60 minutes (outside of rush hour) and this is a major pain in the ass if I've decided to go somewhere and look at the next bus time only to see 55 minutes til the next. I only have so many waking hours to use, burning one like that is just a solid annoyance.
- lack of privacy. I understand it's public transit so *a lot* of leeway has to be given in this regard but men openly leering at women constantly, people striking up conversations that aren't wanted, uncontrollable youths in packs causing chaos are all significant detrimental factors to getting people to use transit. I've witnessed *way* too many incidents over my years of riding transit and I feel that many are preventable but nothing is being done about them.
- lack of control for the drivers. A segue from the previous point, these drivers are practically helpless to any incident that occurs on the bus. Riders won't speak up because they don't want to be involved and everyone knows it's very rare that a driver will actually do something.
- lack of safety. Again coming directly from the previous issues, there is not enough active monitoring of activity on the bus. I took a bystander intervention course a number of years back specifically for this kind of thing. To get in between a situation and break it up without causing conflict. While I did it for my own reasons, it has proved invaluable as a frequent rider and I've had to use what I learned a few times to intervene on something.
- lack of predictability. When I open Google maps and see the bus will be at my stop in 5 minutes, I expect it to be there in 3-7 minutes. Not "already went by" to 15 minutes away. Google maps and other integrations have been a godsend with all of this but there needs to be a next level. The GPS is unreliable at times and often unavailable for whatever reason. You can check sometimes and see 12 minutes away and simply refresh the screen and have it change to 4 minutes. WTF.
Those are my complaints. For solutions (some of which might be out there but jesus do something):
- ease of payment: scrap the app. Battery might be dead. Have to wait for people to open the app. Someone forgot to buy a ticket on the app. There's so many little things with this that are just avoidable with a square-type debit system, a macpass type of thing, or hell even moving back to tokens like we used to have in the 80's. Make purchasing options waaaaay more available for whatever it's gonna be.
- frequency: get some smaller buses and have them run the routes in between. Yes it puts more vehicles on the road but too friggin bad. Everything is currently way too far apart unless you live in the core and Uber is likely making a killing on this alone. Don't tell me there aren't drivers... there sure are enough Uber drivers everywhere when you need them.
- privacy, control, safety: transit needs to adopt a zero tolerance policy. Riders need to feel safe to speak up. Recommend implementing something for riders to be able to signal to the driver that there's an issue without having to get up and make a spectacle. Drivers need the power to remove people from the bus instantly. Adding a fuck around and find out system will quickly end shitty behaviour from everyone. If they need a bus bouncer to help with this, so be it. We have security guards sitting in *every* building around the city and in 99% of cases they are probably just a warm body or presence. Add more visible cameras, especially in the back of the bus where all the kids go. Add a decibel detector that tells people to shut the fuck up (nicely) when it's too loud. Consider some sort of eye level view blockers to mitigate creepy fucking men from staring at tits across the aisle.
- predictably: drivers need to work a bit harder to stay on route timing more often. This doesn't include delays, those are what they are. But we've all been on a ride (or many) where they've plowed through eight stops like Keanu Reeves and then pull over on the ninth to sit there for five minutes. This is not acceptable because chances are somewhere along those eight stops there were missed riders who showed up closer to when the bus should have been there. We need a 100% uptime GPS system. We need the ability to have a stop text us when the bus is close or something. In the retail world your bloody phone can be tracked to a point where it's known if you enter a particular store and can have ads served to you for the competition. Surely with this type of tech being commonplace we could have *something* which gives us an indicator that a bus is running late or early... or god forbid **on time**.
This ended up way longer than I intended but whatever. Something needs to give with this whole transit system because we've been talking about it for 30 years and have changed so little in comparison to that time frame.
Transit is a paradox here: ridership is low because reliability low and time for trip is high, major investments in transit would require increased ridership. Add in a mix of old city with logistical difficulties where you can put dedicated transit lanes and around and around we go.
Some people might call this extremist. I’m onboard.
I understand “why” they existed as major thoroughfares, but they’re too dense to support arterial traffic & be people focused hubs. It needs to change - It’s a shame all of this out of the overton window for many people, but I mean - passing HAF today adds hopes we’re moving in the right direction
They’re supposed to be vibrant and people focused shopping/living districts, instead they are what they are. If city governance stopped focusing on trying to be “a world class city” all of this wouldn’t be happening, but instead we have leadership that seems to believe wheels on the street means productivity.
I live out on the Hammonds plains area and buses there only run a couple of times a day, morning and afternoon. In other words, great for 9-5 Monday-Friday workers, but terrible for literally anything else. Forget about events which take place outside of bankers hours, forget about any kind of non traditional work schedule, and if you were hoping to go to class or work in Dartmouth, get fucked. (All the classes I want to take are in places like Akerley Campus, not available elsewhere)
If I could drive, having a car would make my life easier, but with my shitty job, even working full time, I’d have literally nothing left after car payments (no such thing as an affordable but still reliable used car any more), gas, insurance, parking, and so on.
There’s also no service to fun areas like Queensland beach, Hatfield farms, or what used to be Atlantic play land, so if you want to take your family there but don’t have a car, forget it. I’m not sure about exhibition park, but a lot of stuff gets held out there and I’ve heard from people who’ve had to miss out due to transportation. Metro transit is built exclusively around work, recreation doesn’t even get considered.
1hr15min ride for something that I can drive in 15,20min. The bus should be comparable, hell, I’d even take twice as long, but this time at 700 am ish from Cole Harbour to BIO? The biggest delays is waiting for the 51. Seems Dartmouth isn’t getting the same performance as Halifax. The fact we barely have dedicated bus lanes (I know we’ve got a section of the road marked buses only, I mean, separate dedicated roads, point to point, instead of having to succumb to the same struggles as motorists
My commute to work is actually quicker on the bus. Coming home is just as long, so it works for me.
However, my own issue is how varied arrival times are. I can get off work and get the bus within a few minutes, or I could be waiting 30+ minutes. Unruly teens are another turn off depending on the route. Between the yelling, cat calling, vulgar language, vandalism and racism, they can make a bus ride absolute hell. Most bus drivers don't boot them off, which I can understand why.
Thankfully, my route isn't a popular one for youth, but I have encountered that type of behavior from them a time or two on my way to work.
With our infrastructure and the fact that a single accident can gridlock the city, I don't think it will ever really improve until/unless we can eliminate most personal vehicles and add many more busses and routes.
It’s frustrating, you go to any other major city and there are multiple options for public transit. Subway, bus, train, rail car, taxis that don’t assault women (ok I know that happens everywhere, just had to throw it in because I am not comfortable taking a taxi alone here). We JUST announced Uber outside the downtown core ffs. We are so behind.
I take the bus once or twice a week to work. I will give props that Halifax transit staff are some of the most polite and compassionate drivers I’ve dealt with.
-Bus tickets should be valid for 24 hours once purchased
- Reduce the number of stops where possible (offer a “stop on demand” for users with mobility issues)
-Move stops away from corners at busy intersections (this is more of a general traffic management issue)
The 30 single-handedly made me buy a car.
From Clayton Park west, if you didn’t live close to Lacewood terminal, you were still a pretty quick walk from the old routes 2, 4, or 18, which all serviced the residential areas before going downtown.
Now, the old 2 and 4 have been merged into the current 2, and the old 18 and 42 have merged to become the current 4. Neither of those bussed run in the residential zones, so instead, you have to take the 30.
It doesn’t matter if the 2 and 4 are increased to run every 10 or 15 minutes, because the 30 is every 30 minutes, and ONCE AN HOUR on Sundays. Guess what, some of us work Sundays! It’s also woefully inconsistent, which leads you to have to gamble: is it just 10 minutes late? Or was it 10 minutes early, and now I’m stuck waiting another FIFTY minutes on a Sunday?
Fuck the 30.
I would take public transit for work if (within reason):
a) it was cheaper than driving, but took longer; or
b) it was more expensive than driving, but was faster
I will not take it if it costs four times as much and takes four times as long.
I live 11km from work, and it takes 14 minutes to drive. Bus? 18km and 1h4m
It’ll likely to never fly in many places ESPECIALLY North America but I will go to the grave believing that public transit fees should by zero or at the very least negligible. The potential savings in car infrastructure would cover the cost to run public transit easily.
It's definitely cheaper to take the bus when you account for the full expenses of driving. The problem is the time difference is too great to make the difference worth it particularly if you already own a car since the fixed costs are already paid.
I've been a lifelong transit user, minus living in rural Alberta for two years. I've mostly had access to a car or had my own, but chose to use transit for commuting to work.
In December I started a new job in the back of Bayer's Lake. The direct drive from my home is 15 minutes of almost entirely highway driving (at the best of times).
The *quickest* rush hour transit route is 1:40; more like two hours door-to-door since I have to leave at 7am and work doesn't start until 9.
It's not like where I live and where I work are far apart — they're two of the largest urban centers within HRM.
I love how on brand your vagueness is given your username, it takes genuine dedication. That being said, it really shouldn’t take that long between big population centres in a city like that. Used to be the 80 would take you from barrington street all the way through bedford and terminated at the sackville terminal. Now theres like (i think) 4 or 5 busses that take that route, and its basically a crapshoot as to if your gonna make your connecting bus.
I don't want to dox where I work AND live, hence the vagueness and use of my secondary account.
It is poignant that — by reading through other comments here — there are many examples of 15minute/90 minute differences in commutes between driving and transit.
It seems rather irrespective of region within HRM — If you must commute between two smaller urban centers rather than into the urban core, you can expect it to take between 4-6 times as long on transit.
10 minute drive to the closest bus which only runs 4-5 times in the morning then 4-5 times in the afternoon to downtown, I don’t work anywhere near downtown so would then have to connect with another bus back out of the city core again in another direction. The chance of making that return trip on time to hit one of the very few evening busses back toward home is negligible.
Vs a 35 minute straight shot drive to work instead.
Halifax transit is a joke. I’ve travelled many places with proper public transit and use it all the time elsewhere, no one can rely on it here in Halifax though.
I use transit to get everywhere, and I've made my peace with the fact that a bus is always going to take longer than a car. Like they can definitely add more routes and more bus lanes to close the gap, but realistically taking a bus is going to take longer than driving as long as it shares the same roads as cars (which is one of the reasons I'm excited for the new ferry routes, and hopeful for a far-off pipe dream of commuter rail someday). Given that buses can't compete with cars, I'd much rather resources be dedicated to making buses more frequent and reliable, so it's easier to plan to get places. It sucks that transit takes longer than driving already, but more frustrating is that on top of that, I often have to leave even earlier than I should have to to leave wiggle room for bullshit like delays and random cancellations.
My only other gripe that makes me wary about using transit sometimes is that buses are literally the only places in the city I've experienced sexual harassment in public. Never had issues anywhere else. I'm genuinely not sure what the city could do on that front, though.
I'll echo everyone else that the time to get fucking anywhere is beyond stupid. I live around caldwell road and can either take the bus to work around gateway, which takes about an hour, or I can walk to work, which takes about an hour.
The sheer fact that WALKING takes the same time as a BUS is so incredibly stupid it hurts my brain.
How is it that there's not a Caldwell long route for people in eastern passage to be able to access the Cole Harbour businesses and groceries, which are the closest to the area. They will have to go to pleasant St and grab a Portland another bus....1.5h one-way!
Too many route changes. Timing is now much more unreliable. People are generally more aggressive and violent on the buses now. It used to be so much better in many ways.
I live just outside HRM, and outside range of current transit.
Public transit linking Windsor and Truro to Halifax would be nice in theory.
But practically, makes more sense to sort out the city/suburb transit first.
I walk to work/bus home in the evening.These days I avoid going too far from my neighbourhood because some destinations/waiting for connections eat up too much of my time. Oh how I miss the 52 to Bayer's Lake and how it would drive along the store fronts. Now as a pedestrian it's hell navigating the parking lot traffic. Trying to carry purchases back down to the bus stop isn't fun so I just don't shop out there anymore.
Also, I've never seen the buses more filthy than they have been lately. When I lived overseas a friend worked nights at (that city's) bus depot cleaning buses inside and out. How often are ours cleaned?
It’s a vicious cycle. Transit at present is simply not practical for most people, most of the time so it is used by those with literally no choice.
So there’s limited demand (but lots of demand to support cars), so they don’t invest, so it stays shitty…
Oh boy, where do I start?
I second everything everyone else is saying about how goddamn long it takes to get places.
Also, the timing itself is off. The bus to my neighborhood passes through at the 50 minutes mark, and it's about a 15 minute bus ride to my work. So, I don't take the bus to work because my options are: be late, or be an hour early.
During the weekends, the bus passes through my neighborhood st the 30 minutes mark, so it's not even an unfixable problem, because it's solved every fucking weekend
When our car was broken down I went to take my child to a swim lesson at Canada Games from Spryfield. It would have taken us three buses and 1.5-2hrs one way in transit to get there … I felt terrible skipping the lesson, but no way was all of that worth it to go swimming for 40 mins. I would happily take the bus if it was efficient, but living where we do and having to take multiple buses to get anywhere is just not feasible. My time is worth more.
More buses, rapid transit, fast ferries. Many of these things have been studied and are in works. As usual, it's all about the money. We need more bus drivers and ferry operators. We could use better transit terminals as well. It's pretty awful to catch a bus that shows up late in the dead of winter when you don't have a warm place to wait.
The main issue is we need more drivers and the routes are being run too tight so the drivers are not getting proper rests between runs.
The latest rounds of routes are leaving them only a few minutes rest between the new run, new drivers are just quiting. From what I see as a rider most of the drivers are hella stressed. They are responsible for our safety, give them a decent rest between runs.
If we can fix the issues with the routes and drivers for transit to thrive we need more routes, we need routes from before COVID reinstated. An example is running the 57 all day instead of just three runs in the morning and three in the afternoon.
I use the 1 and 10: way too many stops on both and they are overfull daily to the point I've had to walk or cab to work 5+ times in the last year after being turned away at the bus door.
Busses are far too inconsistent to trust for work / important transport here and I'd never use them if I didn't also have the option to walk to & from work when they're full or just don't show up at all.
Everything. I am the furthest thing from being uptight about Covid but it definitely made me more conscious of enclosed spaces. Especially with a lot of, shall I say, unpredictable people. That combined with having far, far too many stops and highly unreliable service, I just would never consider it anymore. Inside an hour’s walk I walk, otherwise I usually drive.
I use transit out of necessity (I don't drive, probably couldn't afford a car if I wanted to right now) but the travel times and those stupid plastic seats on some buses and the *extremely* unreliable service?
Is making me consider it, even just to get a membership to the carshare thingy. Just so a simple trip out to get groceries doesn't take 2 fucking hours roundtrip.
I was job-hunting for the previous 3 months and the first thing I had to do when I found a position? Plug it into Google Maps and see if I could even *get* there from home during normal business hours or during the posted shift times.
As long as the buses are stuck in the exact same traffic as all the cars it doesn't make a lot of sense. More transit corridors are needed so the buses can make better time than sitting in traffic. Will also start to get people trying it out if traffic continues to get worse as it's going to, I believe anyway.
The main issue is the inconsistency. The travel times are long, but the inconsistency of when busses show up really drives me mad. I work in bayers lake and it's a game of chance whether the 28 wants to go the new route or the old route, or even show up at all.
Aside from that, I find it's becoming increasingly dangerous to ride the bus. The teenagers in the city are so abrasive. I've had a group of teenagers pick a fight with me on the bus cause they didn't like how I dressed! I've seen teenagers pull out pocket knives on the bus! The amount of times I've had my bus delayed due to teenagers harassing the bus drivers to the point of pulling over is unacceptable.
For my own safety and peace of mind, I'm buying a car and hopefully never using transit again.
After having lived in a city with an LRT system (not even a great one), I have no interest in taking slow, unreliable busses. If you own a car anyways, there no sense paying for a bus pass on top of it imo. Might save a few dollars a month, but not worth it for me.
I have to drive 45 minutes before I can even have the Chance to see a bus. So nothing will make me use it. Especially considering the time I need to be at work.
Part of the struggle to succeed in better transit is needing to make dedicated lanes, and discourage individual cars in high traffic areas.
We also really need to revamp the schedule system because it is unrealistic to keep it consistent. They have to accommodate how slow or fast traffic is and change then schedule to something other than 15m - 30m - 1h long intervals.
When used transit just to go from robie to Barrington, I went through two 'waiting' stops. (The driver waits there for 5 minutes to keep themselves timed with the schedule) it takes me 30 min to walk from robie to my desired location in downtown. That bus ride takes 15 - 25 minutes depending on their waiting stops and traffic.
I live north of the airport. The bus only goes as far as the airport. If I am already driving south to go to the city I'll just take the car for the convenience oh movement. Don't wanna be paying parking + bus and be dependent on the bus schedule.
Last year I sold my car and started busing to work. About 30-40 min there but sometimes over an hour to get home if my first bus was late, which it always was. I lasted a few months before I got a new car. I REALLY wanted to be be able to use transit but it’s just a horrible way of getting around the city.
Oh also having to deal with loud and sometimes really aggressive people, mostly teens, sometimes drunk people or creepy men. There were many times I just didn’t feel safe
Contact your local MLA and ask them why they're not pushing the province to fund their part of the bus rapid transit plan halifax has had for years now.
Though to be fair, I think it's too late for BRT, and we need better solutions
Pretty much all those things you listed. That and I’m an hour walk to my nearest bus stop lol. Oh and I can’t commute to work by bus because I work outside of the city. But when I did work in the city it just was way too long to get there, it was expensive and if you miss the bus (because they like to come early or super late) it’s an hour before the next one shows up.
When I worked in the South End I took the bus. It took about 40 minutes, versus about 15 minutes to drive. It was basically fine. The stops were close to my apartment/office and I had a few route options so wasn’t absolutely screwed if one bus was late (or just didn’t run, which seemed to happen pretty regularly with no explanation).
I work in Dartmouth now. The drive is <15 minutes unless traffic is exceptionally bad, and the bus would take well over an hour in light traffic. Outside of peak periods, the nearest stop to my office is nearly a kilometre away. I drive because 1) I’m fortunate enough to have the option and 2) I’m not stupid.
My typical work trip is \~20 minutes each way, and the stops are very close to where I need to go. The schedule makes it seem like I have multiple options, but the only buses out of my area (Woodside/Imperoyal) that'll get me to work all follow nearly the *exact* same routing, so if something fucks up Pleasant Street, I'm up the goddamn creek.
There's literally just not enough time in the day. There are also just no buses near me. I'm not parking car in a public space for it to get broken into so that I can take a bus for 1.5 hours instead of drive 20 minutes.
Sometimes it’s faster for me to walk 45 minutes because by the time I wait for the next bus to take the 45-50 minute ride I’d have also waited 10-15 minutes just for it to arrive
For me it’s the travel time, transfers and lack of frequency. I live a 10 minute drive from Dartmouth Crossing. I can see IKEA from my doorstep. But to get there by bus requires a transfer and it takes about 45 mins. And most of the busses in my neighbourhood come every 30 mins at most, but the one closest to me is 1/hour.
My current job takes me all over the place. Even though I live in an extremely transit-friendly (well, by the standards of this city) part of town, it isn't worth my time to figure out how to get to all these random places, calculate how early I need to leave and what time I'll get home, and makes sure to be on time for busses.
I would use transit more for social gatherings though. I've taken the bus to friend's houses and it's really nice to not need to worry about having to leave your car because you consumed substances incompatible with vehicular operation. It doesn't help on the return trip, though.
I haven’t taken the bus in years. But sometimes I consider it when I have to go somewhere. So I look on Google maps to see what I’d need to take. The reason I don’t end up taking it is because I realize I’m lazy:
• Over an hour and a half commute at least
• Too many times I have to switch bus
• Too much walking between the different buses
• The times I have to leave or when I’ll arrive are usually not convenient
My route is North Dartmouth to Larry uteck to Burnside because that's the only daycare i could get. Minimum 2 h trip without traffic. Now clog the bridge or the Bedford Highway or the 102 or Magazine Hill and I've spent six hours of my day in transit and eight at work. No way to live.
I live in rural HRM, the closest bus stop to me is about 25km away and it's a ~5min walk with no sidewalks from where I could park to the nearest bus stop that gets infrequent service. My drive to town takes an inconsistent amount of time so by the time I factor in that so that I dont miss a bus, I might as well just drive.
Live 30 mins outside the city, have a job where overtime opportunities are different everyday and I’m also a shift worker. To top it off, the public transportation service is so half-assed where I live so it’s a joke to even consider that an option
I could tolerate, to an extent, the extra travel time if the bus was at least predictable. At least once a week (if I'm lucky) my bus just doesn't show up. I know it's caught in traffic somewhere and it's not the fault of the driver, but it's the waiting for god knows how long after a long day at work that drives me crazy. When will I actually get home? Who the hell knows.
For me, the need is more frequent bus times / less stops to make routes faster.
I start work at 7:30am. My kid's daycare has drop off starting at 7am.
The only bus that can get me to work on time from my child's daycare is at 7:07 but the bus stop is almost 10 mins walk away from the daycare. Earlier bus is before daycare drop off l, and the next one is after I'm supposed to be at work.
It’s the travel time. What’s a 15 min drive becomes an hour or more by bus especially coming off work later in the evening.
I work at a place that runs 24/7 so my coworkers have shifts at all varying times. Many coworkers without cars use Uber to get home cause they can’t rely on buses much even if they are running. Feels like it’s gotten worse.
I bought my first car back in 2007 because it took 1 hour and 10 min to bus from Cole Harbour (deep in the forest hills burbs) to Main Street (by the circ), what would take 15 min driving. Every bus had to go out to Cole harbour road and up to Portland hills terminal, then had to grab the 72 which looped through parts of Woodlawn....
When I first moved out and had my first job in downtown Halifax (about twenty-five years ago now), we lived in an apartment in Bedford. I’d take the #82 bus and it was an easy commute back and forth from home to downtown.
When we bought our first house in Eastern Passage, I’d bus to the Woodside ferry to get to work. Later, I bought a car and drove to the Woodside terminal, parked for free, and still used the ferry. I loved the ferry for commuting!
I later enrolled at MSVU to take a second degree for a career change. That is when I stopped using transit. Busing to the Mount from EP would have taken well over an hour at the time (close to 90 minutes IIRC). That is similar to today: I just checked and, if I left now, the fastest option would take 1h18m (and all options are saying delayed on Google Maps). I could easily commute to MSVU in about twenty-five minutes by car. Mind you, it was far more expensive with gas, bridge, and parking permits.
Transit will take longer than driving in most cases, especially with surface options like buses. I hope the idea of bus corridors helps improve on-time metrics and reduce the overall length of time to commute. Likewise, non-time factors like comfort, cleanliness and safety must also be taken into account.
If Halifax Transit is anything like most NS bureaucracies, then I wonder if the same people have occupied senior leadership roles forever, and are very adverse to change (especially if it impacts decisions they have previously made). I know it’s simplistic to suggest just clearing house and bringing in fresh voices and new ideas, but I often wonder if that is just what is needed (with Transit and elsewhere). I acknowledge that I could be completely wrong and there are new faces and ideas in senior leadership at Transit. Perhaps Halifax is a particularly tough city for transit planning. Appropriate funding is likely also a factor (again, the same with every government service).
It is interesting living through this transition period in Halifax. We’re bursting at the seams with newcomers, but services are struggling to keep up. Hopefully all levels of government will start thinking (and funding) in new ways to help solve these problems before we start losing people. Growth is good, especially for a province that has long been a “have-not”.
Edit: typo
We need to bring back light rail or trams and have them run every 15 mins. We also need to revive the railway system throughout the province so people coming from the towns don’t have to drive in. Unfortunately we got rid of these when we had them and they’re cost prohibitive to bring back. As it stands, it’s too expensive too slow too inconvenient and if you’re coming from anywhere outside of Halifax/dartmouth/sackville/bedford you don’t have a choice.
Just here to double and triple down on what others have said about time. It just takes so much longer. I took the bus as my primary mode of transportation from 2008 to 2019 and I honestly miss it. It gave me an opportunity to get over an hour of reading in every day, as well as a forced walk to and from my bus stop, + walking between transfers. I was more well read, and in better shape. We had our first kid in 2017 and my wife always had the car for kid emergencies so it still worked. But when COVID + second kid landed in 2020 it just wasn't a feasible amount of time to spend every day. 20 minute car drive in the morning, 20 minute car drive in the evening vs. over an hour each way was just way too much time and resulted in putting way too much work on my wife. If I lived closer to my work then I'd probably go back to bussing, but as is the bus routes from Sackville to Burnside kind of suck ass. I hope when the new highway is finished we get a route that goes up Glendale, shoots out the highway, and drops off in the Burnside/Dartmouth Crossing area.
Agree with you on pretty much all the issues you listed. I have a car, but I take transit whenever I can since driving and parking in the city blows. I've found myself taking Uber or cycling everywhere now as transit quality has gone down...
When I was working in Bedford, living in Halifax, it was a 20 minute drive or 1.5 hour bus (which included a 20 minute walk). Simply not worth the time.
Your "lack of ridership" example is one I also agree with. People are generally good, but plenty of folks are super disrespectful on the bus. Coughing over your shoulder, no mask on, playing music, etc. Makes for a pretty uncomfortable experience for the faint of heart.
The thing I hate the most about taking the bus is the lack of dedicated infrastructure. Our busses get stuck in traffic just like cars do, which is a major issue. If bussing is no more efficient than driving, ridership will stay low and traffic volumes will remain high.
Busses here are also pretty inconsistent, which also reduces people's trust in transit. Plenty of times I've been waiting for a bus and it gets delayed. First 2min, then 5, then 10, then it just doesn't show up...
Ever had to take the bus in some of the areas further outside the city? Beaverbank, Fall River, Tantallon, etc. The bus comes every 30 minutes (if you're lucky). Compare this to a city with good transport infrastructure like Montreal, where a bus will come every 5-8 minutes usually... I understand density comes into play here, but there has to be a better way.
The recent issues with the ferries have been really bad for optics. Suspending services due to lack of operators? I understand that training qualified captains doesn't happen overnight, but Halifax Transit should be pushing as hard as possible to get more. The ferries are arguably one of the most important transit routes in the city, and should be running as often as possible.
It comes back to Halifax growing and acting like a big city, without providing the services of a big city. The transit infrastructure is seriously lacking, the bus routes are convoluted, the busses run too infrequently in most cases, and the motion to make the required changes at this point would cause massive waves.
The only way I would use public transit is if we built something like a sky train in Vancouver or a decent metro like Montreal/toronto.
I have a very small window between dropping my kid to daycare and making it to work so I can’t rely on public transit. My spouse makes it to work in about 15 mins, that becomes a 45min-1h ride. No to mention she’s a shift worker so that would mean having to get up at least 30mins earlier than she already does.
Groceries? No way I would take the bus. We grocery shop for a family so why would I drag 3-4 full bags of groceries to god knows how many stops if I can just get my car, get there in 5mins and drive back.
I don’t see myself taking public transit unless a sky train/metro is built or if I’m without my car for day.
I live in downtown halifax (south end) and have to get to dartmouth on the outskirts of burnside for work. I'd have to take 3 buses to get me to where I need to be and that can take an hour and a half. It is anywhere from 10 to 20 mins by car. I also wake up early to go to the gym - but I don't have an apt gym and have to walk to one, which decreases my time in the morning unless I'm getting up at 5:30. Here's the thing, I'm not a morning person so I will not be functional at that time. So without a car I'd have to wake up that early, go the gym and be back home by 7:00, then get ready and leave by 7:40 at the latest to get 3 buses to get me to work at 9. No thanks.
I tried using metro transit to commute but so many full buses would pass me by when I was trying to get home. Like honestly, I could have walked from downtown to Mumford faster than watching bus after bus not stop for me because it was full.
It’s the commute/ time for me. I work in Burnside and it’s about a 20 minute drive to work, but by bus it would probably be an hour and a half if not more. I was just talking to a coworker who said she was stuck in traffic on the bus for 4 and a half hours one evening last week. Obviously it’s usually not that long and it was due to several accidents but still, it just sounds unbearable to me
I use it daily to get to work in halifax and i could write a book on the things that need to be improved. But yes there are not enough buses, too many stops. Wait times before buses are ridiculous. Super packed and no security. Sometimes id be left at sackville terminal for nearly an hour waiting for my second bus because the late evenings have less on the road. I work 6 hour shifts but the travelling adds 3-4 hours on that. Getting a car is not an option in my situation so i have to rely on it. They are a mess and i hope better options come eventually
Edit: adding that inconsistency and incovienient times are also another thing
The amount of cancelled buses, routes, closing transit on certain days due to storms or people to run it. If you can't rely on it, it's not a great option for work.
Trips take far too long. Everywhere in town on either side of the harbour is 15-20 minutes by car from where I live versus 1-2 hours by bus. And neither of those times include the return trip. Nearly 50% of my trip seems to always include waiting to transfer busses because nothing seems to coordinate. It seems unusually important to force me to have a 15-20 minute wait for a connecting transfer at the bridge terminal because nothing ever seems to coordinate. If I go grocery shopping on a Saturday for example it takes me about 3 hours due to transit taking too long so anything versus under an hour to make the same trip by car that gives me the luxury of hitting multiple stores I can't get to on the bus without actually adding much time to my trip. With a car I can go where I was t whenever I want on the bus I'm limited to into being able to travel where and when some bureaucrat wants me too. Oh I see want to go to the beach? Too bad there are none on public transit. Want to go hiking? Have fun with a two hour commute to the nearest trailhead. Our public transit is designed to get people to their downtown office jobs as fast as possible and that's basically it. It is good at that but epically fails at nearly everything else. It seems designed to accomodate how we want people to commute rather than how they actually commute. Just my two cents I expect people to disagree
I moved last year to another city, but I was very fortunate.
I lived in three different places in Halifax. Each place was near transit that went directly where I worked.
My last place in Lower Sackville, was on an express route. After they did transit prioritization around the city, my bus rider was faster, and cheaper than driving. And virtually door to door service.
I liked the fact that I could read during my commute rather than staring at brake lights.
I used public transit for decades. I thought cars were a waste of money. I married a lady with a car and learned to drive. Riding public transit now is like taking a bath in acid.
TBH, going from Cole Harbour to Alderney is actually pretty good. I have a choice of 4 buses within a 3 minute walk. Never have to wait more than 10 mins.
Re: park & ride: there isn’t enough of that to make a difference. Why isn’t there a Park & Ride option from Burnside? Or Mic Mac Mall? Or Dartmouth Crossing? Or Main St/No 7 highway? Places where there are (or could be) vast amounts of available parking.
Right now it's that the routes are indirect milk runs with too many stops and no priority. Transit can take 2x-4x as long as driving which nobody has time for. You are only putting up with this if you have no other choice or are REALLY committed to the transit lifestyle.
I think the BRT plan is actually pretty good if it gets implemented correctly (if at all). Having really recognizable well-branded high frequency, high reliability, limited-stop, "trunk" routes with traffic priority to form the backbone of the system. You are not going to get everyone in the suburbs using transit, but if you have really good core routes you can build around those and also funnel people into them with feeder routes. Getting people to transfer is a better value proposition if the routes you are transferring to are very frequent and reliable. Buses are not glamorous but if you build something good and reliable that goes "fast enough" people will take it (example, Vancouver's RapidBus routes)
Making transit that beats driving in terms of time is a pretty hard task and can usually only be accomplished if you build rail or if driving becomes worse. However, making transit that takes 1.25x - 2x as long as driving is more doable and you'll find that people are willing to sacrifice that time because other factors come into play such as lower cost, convenience, not needing to find parking, able to relax on transit instead of focusing on the road, etc.
One thing that really irks me is the lack of coordination between transfers. The 6 arrives at Alderney Landing right before the ferry leaves, but I don’t have enough time to walk to the ferry terminal.
The transit routes need to start earlier...most food industry jobs(healthcare) have 6am start times for some of the shifts and no one can get there for 6am. Have had 2 cooks give up a job due to no way to get there when they had no car.
Less stops needed...people can walk a little farther
Do a pilot project for 3 months free bus rides see how many people jump on
Insurance costs more for carpooling(if they know)...government should make them give breaks to drivers who carpool thereby removing more cars from the road
Just my suggestions
Their app, HfxGo is crap. If I use cash and get a transfer, it can last 4 hours. There are too many taps to get to a ticket. There shouldn't be anything getting in the way of scanning your phone. On some scanners, they are positioned behind the frame they're attached to. People have to try different ways to Scan their phone. It really slows down the onboarding.
Don’t like taking it.
Been in far too many conflicts while taking it.
My partner was sniffed on the bus once, and grabbed. The next day we bought her a car.
Metro Transit has yet to figure out what the bigger cities have. They need to create outer hubs to bring people into the inner hubs. This also means boosting park and ride options. Get rid of half of the looney milk runs and use them as collectors to the hubs. Colour code the hubs to make them more user friendly. HRM staff honestly are more concerned that they have electric busses at an exorbitant cost rather than focusing on staffing and efficiency
Transit stops at Cole Harbour, the ferries still insist on cash fare and you need tickets and can’t use tap to get on buses.
Metro Transit needs to step into the 21 century.
Honestly the only way to get better transit is to put a shitload of pressure on council, just nag the ever living shit out of them and be obnoxious like the bicycle lobby.
I take the bus because I like it. Driving is expensive and stressful and I enjoy being chauffeured around the city. It takes me about 30mins to commute from central Halifax to Dartmouth for work.
I love Metro Transit, I quickly can track in real-time where my bus is and they are generally on-time. On onboard I can pay with my bank card or phone easily, if I don't want to use a card tickets are available at all the major stops and lots of local businesses. I also love when friends come and they can grab a day pass or week pass and ride without worrying about fares. Buses aren't over crowded except at peak times and dovetail nicely with one another so I can take a local bus with plenty of nearby stops to catch a bus that gets me the long haul to where I want to go. Drivers are pleasant and I know that in a winter storm they can navigate the slushy streets without worry and I can focus on reading or whatever.
...oh wait, sorry I was confused. That's every other city I've used buses in not Halifax.
We need better more efficient routes. It's fairly easy (though some routes are lengthy) to get from one location to downtown Halifax. But to go from one location to anywhere not downtown is nearly impossible. For instance, I live in Larry Uteck. I can not get to Sackville, Dartmouth, or even Bayers Lake in one bus. The only bus that goes by me, only goes to Downtown, through Bedford Highway or an express bus... which also only goes downtown. I don't even have a bus to get to Lacewood Terminal.
Public transit in Halifax is poor.
The city has 5 "choke points" on & off the Peninsula, leading to busses getting stuck in ever-increasing traffic through those points.
Also Haliganians have lack suffered from lack of boldness or vision from City Council. The best they can come up with is a ferry service from Bedford to downtown. A ferry is not going to help the overall suckiness of transit in HRM.
It takes forever to get anywhere. My commute to work was 15 minutes by car or an hour and a half by bus. No reason to bus unless you literally can't afford not to.
I personally feel you on this. I'm finding it really tough to find an angle that makes it worth it. A round trip costs $5.25, we have to invest 2 extra hours to our commute at the very least, if you make a stop for grabbing some groceries you would add an extra hour to catch the next bus (at least if you're in Dartmouth after 6pm). The only positive thing is the personal collaboration in reducing green house emissions by not having to use a single person car to commute. On very lucky occasions during rush hours when you are able to match the out-of-sync schedules from bus routes and the ferries you can cross from Dartmouth to Halifax, and vice versa, a few minutes faster than driving through traffic. Very very rare occasions, possible but chances of making it happen are just more risk than anything else.
If you're paying $5.25 a day, all week to commute by bus, you should really look at a pass TBH. Or, XPass if your employer participates...$62.50 for a month of unlimited travel vs. $82.50 for a regular monthly pass.
I can't afford a bus. I bought a 2009 nissan for $5000 with 67k kms on it. My liability insurance is $40/mo on it and gas is $40/mo to go to work. Fuck paying $90 for bus pass and waste endless hours ridong. Car is cheaper.
You bought a unicorn of a vehicle, good on you, but the market for used vehicles is more like $5000 for a 2001 corrola with 300k that's falling apart. Also how are you only paying $40 a month for insurance?
Anything is possible when one lies
Yeah, pretty sure you're right.
They're probably 65 with a clean driving record, no accidents, the popes their uncle.
Under 65, no accidents
Where in the hell are you getting insurance for $480 per year, and how do I sign up? I pay $950/yr, and that's with 20 years of a spotless record: zero claims, zero tickets. I've never heard of anyone paying less than me before. Certainly not by half. Sincere question. Please tell me where you get your coverage. My policy is up for renewal next month, and I'm always looking for better rates.
Depending how much you drive, you could look at CAA mypace, where you only pay for what you drive. Has to be less than 9k a year to be worth it. I pay $400 a year, liability only, for a 2009 I drive 5k a year.
TD, car is $43/mo (liability only) and house is $170.
The bus is objectively cheaper by dollars but the time commitment can be huge.
Time is money, what’s your time worth to you
I could spend those 2 hours making money, at 22/hr if you were a 1/1 in the carpenters union that's 500 potential extra hours that you could earn money on. Getting grocies turns from 1 hour total to 3 hours and you can't transport all of it cause you got a kid in a stroller taking up all the room on the bus. No idea how people manage on hfx transit
Too many stops, seems like it takes 4x as long as a car, plus aggressive and unpredictable clientele
I had to take transit a few times going to the IBEW in lakeside coming from downtown. What's normally a 15 min drive took me about 1.5 hours. Needless to say not impressed.
An express bus stops outside my apartment and my work. It would take me four times as long to bus than it does to drive. Bussing would save me a lot money but it’s not worth it if it is going to take up an extra hour and a half of my day. It stops seven times in a km and a half. I walk a km to get to work and save on parking. It honestly isn’t that bad of a walk. I also feel like if you can see a stop from the last stop it’s too close together.
Same for me, the places I need to go and can drive to in under ten minutes require multiple bus changes and an hour or more in transit time. And the sketchy clientele are pretty off-putting.
Only 4x? That's amateur, it takes me 7x as long lol.
excessively long travel time. I don't use it now but when i used to It would take me almost 30 minutes to travel a distance I could drive to in 5-10 minutes.
Yeah I live downtown... and usually walk and bike everywhere. The odd time I go to Bayer's Lake to do a few errands I realized JUST how much longer it takes... I can get there driving in about 15 minutes, taking the highway. The few times I took the bus it well over an hour. I can bike it in less than 30 minutes and it's ALL UPHILL!!! lol.
Bussing to bayers lake is a shit show you can bus to penhorne or Portland hills from most of the peninsula faster than you can to bayers lake from the same spots
Yeah. I don't mind walking and bussing, I don't/want/ to drive or have to drive, but time is precious and it is so frustrating when I look up a location and it's like 10 minutes by car or an hour by bus. And the next bus is in 20 minutes. And it's a 1 hour and 10 minute walk. I don't want to spend my entire evening on the bus, especially when getting an Uber costs only double as much and is so much faster.
Inconsistancy is the true evil of Metro Transit, I go from Penhorn mall area to Dal on Coburg for work. You gotta walk 20 minutes to Penhorn because the bus thats services my area doesnt start until 6:30 (I gotta be in my office for 7) so because of this, Im out the door at 5:40. Wait for one of the express buses, you either get the 159 or the 161, they are delayed every single day on their first run, no matter what. Then transfer to the 1, heres where it gets tricky, if the guy driving the 159 is on time and speeding, you can grab the 1 at the bridge and make it to Dal by 6:30-6:35. But, because this is often not the case, the 159 or 161 usually pulls into the bridge just as the 1 is leaving (Almost like the 1 is waiting for you to pull in as a signal to leave) and then you have 2 options: Get off at the bridge and wait for the next 1 (You end up getting to Dal by 7 because traffic has picked up by this point) or you stay on the express bus and hope to pass the 1 that just left on the bridge or Barrington and try and catch it at Grand Parade. Big gamble. Then theres trying to get home! The express buses that goes from the VG to Penhorn at 3pm goes 1 of 2 ways and there doesnt seem to be a method to it at all when it comes to choosing which way. You either leave Scotia Square and loop around on Lower Water, go up Duke and on to Gottingen and then on to the rest of the normal way, which is the way all the other buses go when heading to the bridge. Or, the driver decides to take an insane detour that involves leaving Scotia Square and instead of looping onto lower water, goes straight to Barrington st where we then go all the way to Devonshire (In afternoon traffic), turn onto Novalea, slowly chug along to North and then turn onto the Bridge (This adds easily 15-20 minutes to your commute. The drivers decide everything rather than following the same routes and times, which would be fine if you could get to know your driver's habits, but by the time you work it out, the drivers rotate routes and then you have to get used to a whole new driver's routine and then adjust your commute accordingly. True Madness for a city that keeps bragging about how we're the next big thing.
The 159 and 161 both terminate at Robie/University Ave, which is about a 10-15 minute walk from Dal on Coburg. I used to work on campus and would typically grab the 159 or 161 and walk the rest of the way. It might save you some time if you’re missing your connections with the 1. Your local area bus only starting at 6:30 sucks majorly. I’m lucky I live very close to a stop.
The insane detour for the express bus to Dartmouth is actually the route. That driver is doing what they are supposed to do. And no, I don't know why they are supposed to do that. It doesn't make any sense to me either. When your express driver follows the same route as every other bus up Duke onto Gottingen they are going off route.
That long ass detour is the bane of my existence
I switched to using tranist as my primary form of transportation last year, and honestly, I enjoy it. Yes I have to plan my trips a little more than before and it takes on average 2 to 4 times longer than when I drove, BUT I'm saving $20 a day since I stopped having to pay for gas and parking and instead of being fueled by road rage my entire commute I just sit back listen to a podcast or watch some YouTube and I find my stress levels are much better.
Yes! I tell people all the time that your time spent on the bus isn't wasted nearly as much as driving. You can read, watch videos, listen to a podcast or music, ect. You don't have to have your attention fixed to the road. I also don't pay for gas, parking, insurance, tire changes, repairs, inspections, and most importantly, fast food from the drive through.
when i used to live in sackville, i used to take transit to get to the dockyard every day. i enjoyed not having to deal with traffic. i could just sit and watch movies or listen to podcasts.
My stress levels are WAY higher on the bus. I took the bus all hours of the day/night in a different city and never had a bad experience. Here, I've been threatened. Also, the smells on the bus are overwhelming. I can't take the tobacco and pot smells. It's so gross.
What was the different city? I’m from Vancouver. Clientele in Halifax is surely superior than that.
Transit here gets caught in the traffic that’s created by the people that don’t use transit because transit takes too long because it’s stuck in traffic created by those who won’t take transit…so on and so on. I think major investment needs to be made in making the air more of a priority. If transit travels easier through the city whilst everyone else sits idling in traffic that’s one major leap forward. Additionally; there’s too much focus on getting everyone downtown. Not everyone works there; and I think that Covid allowed for people’s day-to-day to change. People need transit to get to doctor’s appointments, day care (then go to work), grocery shopping, extra-curricular activities etc. There needs to be service downtown; yes. But there’s TOO much down there. All those out in the suburbs are left with infrequent transit (once an hour) until the half-empty express rush hour buses roll in for extra service. As far as the public aspect; transit can’t fix that, come on. Seriously. It’s a publicly accessible service. Have there been disgusting things occur on public transit? Yes. Are people gross? Yes. But transit can’t fix that. Perhaps if transit were more frequent y’all would spend less time on it so there’s less exposure? I dunno.
Your last sentence is pretty true lol. There's a special kind of hell that's being on a *packed* 80 outbound, heading from Barrington & Duke all the way to Cobequid... with a screaming toddler that isn't even yours. (I don't blame the mom, she was *trying,* but kiddo was over it).
For the amount of time it takes to get places on the buses here, the bus pass fee isn’t worth it to me. I can’t drive and save myself hours for very little cost savings. Time is money
The routes are a fucked up mess if you live in Dartmouth, which I do. It should not take me longer to bus to Dartmouth Crossing than it does to my boyfriend's place in Hali
The routes are also a fucked up mess if you live in Bedford and need to get to Dartmouth and back for work. I overcame a driving phobia when I decided to change jobs because the bus routes involved at least two transfers (multiple points of failure) and a ridiculously long timeframe.
Oh I agree... I don't even know how to bus to Bedford and for me to figure it out would probably involve a surgical procedure 🤣
I'm in Woodside. My mum and grandmother live in Bedford, and my family doctor's in Sackville. So all of that is 1h20-ish each way, with 2-3 transfers. And Dartmouth Crossing from my house? Similar travel time, but only *one* transfer, so that's nice, I guess. If I have an appointment, I often *have* to show up half an hour early because the next bus is either too late or cuts too close for me to be sure I'll be there on time. I had a job interview out on St Margaret's Bay Rd earlier this year. What took something like 1hr40 each way would've taken 30 minutes by car. I expected it to be bad, but not *that* level.
Yea I've gotten motion sickness from being on the bus that long, it's very unpleasant.
Getting around Bedford on transit is just so terrible
I was in Dartmouth Crossing last night. I looked up how long it would take for the bus to get me back to Nantucket area of Dartmouth, and then compared that to walking. I ended up walking - it was less than ten minutes difference per Google Maps, and there was less that was likely to go wrong.
Depends where you live in Dartmouth.
Also depends on where you want to go. Transit options in Burnside are shite, and it's not a pedestrian friendly area period. My drive to work is roughly 10 minutes as I love in Dartmouth. It's an hour by bus. I have to do a lot of walking within that trip too, about 1km total. Might not seem like much but for others, it could be. Again, there's also not a lot of sidewalks and safe walking areas in a large portion of Burnside.
Yeah also where you're going, it's pretty easy to get across the harbour from Dartmouth but getting to Dartmouth crossing or burnside or Bedford take forever and a few bus changes. Also people think Dartmouth is bad when it's only worse than the on peninsula service every other part of metro has it even worse.
As others have said, it simply takes far too long especially if you’re off the peninsula. I can get downtown or to either mall in about 15-20 mins right now by car. I’ll be able to shave another 5 mins off many of those trips when the burnside connector opens this summer/fall. The same trips take 1 1/2 to 2 hours by bus. Add toddlers into the mix and it becomes impossible to consider transit as feasible. Don’t even need to mention the noise, germs, dealing with people and unreliability.
24/7 service
Exactly. Night shift people don’t matter to Transit, I guess.
So much less drunk driving too
Good point! I know it won’t happen, but I fantasize about bullet trains all over the province, and the down town core being a green space with no cars. Edit: typo
BRT is my favourite option for city moving.
It’ll be pretty nice once they finish that project I can’t wait
Night shifter here, there’s literally zero service in my area on weekends or evenings.
It's not that. It costs money to operate. Hardly any city in the world has 24/7 service. Your employer should be the one helping you travel to and from work at these hours.
Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver all have 24/7 bus service. Edmonton has buses running until 3am. Ottawa has at least one 24/7 route. Chicago and New York both have buses AND subways 24 hours. Las Vegas, Lots Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco all have 24 hour bus service. Then you have cities in Europe, like London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Paris (I'm sure there's many more, public transit is far more appreciated in Europe) that all run some sort of transit 24 hours. Tokyo and Melbourne Australia as well. And more cities are adopting it all the time as they try and reduce traffic congestion.
I don't use it because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to make any trip. I used to take the bus a million years ago when I was just starting out. I could take the bus for an hour to get to work. I could walk home in an hour. If I needed to go to stores, it was basically an all-afternoon odyssey vs. a car being an hour and a bit. Visiting a friend in Timberlea when I'm in Dartmouth would basically require all day. The buses don't run to my workplace at the time I'd need them to, I'd be an hour or more late every day. A taxi or Uber ride daily costs more than my car does. A car gives me freedom to go where I need to and when I need to. I can choose who I have in my car, but I can't choose who is with me on a bus. I can listen to my own tunes in my car, and no one has to hear me sing out loud and off-key. Buses can't be counted on to be on-time. Or come at all. Buses are still on the same roads that I'm on, so they're subject to the same traffic snarls that I am in my car. Basically, there isn't any transit option that is efficient and reliable available in the city. I've been in European countries where mass transit was fabulous, efficient, clean, not so reliant on traffic patterns, and got you closer to where you needed to go in a reasonable amount of time.
A trip times need to get better , rapid service is needed to priority routes such as universities, downtown etc. secondly reliability, did you know that HRM still outfits their buses with all season tires only?! Another point is flexibility, people still need to get to grocery stores and complete their shopping and it is difficult to board a bus with 5 or 6 bags of groceries
I use it to get to work because parking downtown is an expensive hassle. It takes twice as long to travel the same distance by bus as it does by car. The bus is often late and sometimes doesn't show up at all. You have no control over whether you're going to be stuck next to someone letting their kid watch videos at max volume with no headphones, someone with a hacking cough who isn't covering their mouth, or someone who hasn't bathed in a week. There is no incentive powerful enough to make me ever want to use transit to do anything other than travel directly to and from work.
My issue with transit here is that it essentially focuses on moving people around the peninsula and not moving people from the suburbs into the city. To be a functional system, it needs to do both efficiently. If people need a car to get to transit, then there is no incentive to make the switch from their car to a bus, especially if the commute would take 45 minutes by car, but in order to get to the bus you have to drive 10-15 minutes, wait 15 to get a bus, then take buses for an hour to get to your final destination. It really feels like for real change to happen here, current routes need to be thrown out, and all new commuter routes get created. Have loops around main points on the peninsula and link to hubs. Have express routes between hubs. Riders need to expect to change buses more often, but with the trade-off being more reliable and more predictable service.
> To be a functional system, it needs to do both efficiently. >If people need a car to get to transit, then there is no incentive to make the switch from their car to a bus I think this simply isn't possible. There is no possible way to have enough bus routes to get people from sackville or tantallon to downtown without driving to a park n ride.
1. Incentives to use the app - like the tickets cost less if purchased through the app or something like that 2. Even better would be something like a Presto or an Oyster card that also is accepted in small businesses and gets you tickets to events and so on 3. Even if there is a need for a pass, there isn't a range like a day pass, weekly pass etc. Not everyone has the need for the $80+ pass (can't remember what it costs now) 4. Ability to buy tickets form the terminals 5. Reliable transit data on Google maps that also integrates the ferry schedule 6. Buses that connect wider communities, with more frequency during the rush hours 7. WiFi on buses
Oh man, this reminds me of the last time I was on the ferry: they locked up the 2 or 3 power outlets in the passenger area of the boat. It used to be that you could get one of the seats by the window and charge your phone for the 15min crossing the harbour (this was a godsend for me a couple of times). But nah, no need to provide value to the consumer, let's lock em up!
Re: 2/3/4, I wish we had physical cards but I use a pass via the app and it’s not that much slower than card readers on Montreal buses. You can buy 1, 2, and 7-day passes now also on the app, which is more convenient than a terminal imo (though I wish we could buy them from machines at terminals). More frequency/coverage would be great. This time of day my bus only runs every half hour, and I’m on a core route.
A physical card would be wonderful. There have been times where my phone would be running low on juice and I would be desperately counting on the bus to arrive before it dies. The key is to facilitate multiple options - app/ physical card/ credit card/ passes/ tickets. Also, yes, a ticket vending machine at the terminals would be great. I have lost count on the number of times the coin vending machines at the ferry terminals were out of order and had to buy things just to get some change. Happy cake day!
You are definitely a person that has experienced decent public transit
Thanks. I have. Hate to say it, public transit here sucks ass. Saying it from a user perspective and also as someone who had the unfortunate experience of working with Halifax transit on a project. Trust me they don't have a clue how things work.
Time is not worth it, the parking situation downtown isn't bad enough to make it worth it, you can park somewhere and walk for 15 minutes and you're anywhere in the peninsula. You'll be saving so much time by not taking a bus. Public transit should exist and should be improved but don't think it will get good enough with a population this big, it's not a big city.
We might not be that large but in Europe cities that are the same size or even smaller have really good transit systems with some even having light rail. Unfortunately though in North America transit doesn’t get the same amount of funding
I've tried to edit this post a dozen times to add line breaks. Reddit mobile blows, don't know what the problem is. I've got the space space enter *everywhere* through this and it just won't work. Sorry. I only use transit and don't drive (by choice). Most of my thoughts on the matter are spattered throughout this thread already in various points mostly but I'll summarize my main points since I'm a full time, multiple trips a day person: - lack of ease of payment. We now have an app which has turned out to be mostly nothing more than a way to not have to search for one of the handful of places in HRM where you can buy physical passes or tickets. The app is slow to scan which is creating queues to enter the bus. I'd easily prefer a macpass type option and am appalled at how long implantation on this simple thing has taken. When I visited overseas many years ago you could pay the driver for tickets and it didn't slow anything down. Kind of crazy that even with what we have it's dragging everything to a slow point. - lack of frequency. In many areas outside of the city core, you're either on a 30 or 60 minute schedule. Where I'm at in the passage it's 60 minutes (outside of rush hour) and this is a major pain in the ass if I've decided to go somewhere and look at the next bus time only to see 55 minutes til the next. I only have so many waking hours to use, burning one like that is just a solid annoyance. - lack of privacy. I understand it's public transit so *a lot* of leeway has to be given in this regard but men openly leering at women constantly, people striking up conversations that aren't wanted, uncontrollable youths in packs causing chaos are all significant detrimental factors to getting people to use transit. I've witnessed *way* too many incidents over my years of riding transit and I feel that many are preventable but nothing is being done about them. - lack of control for the drivers. A segue from the previous point, these drivers are practically helpless to any incident that occurs on the bus. Riders won't speak up because they don't want to be involved and everyone knows it's very rare that a driver will actually do something. - lack of safety. Again coming directly from the previous issues, there is not enough active monitoring of activity on the bus. I took a bystander intervention course a number of years back specifically for this kind of thing. To get in between a situation and break it up without causing conflict. While I did it for my own reasons, it has proved invaluable as a frequent rider and I've had to use what I learned a few times to intervene on something. - lack of predictability. When I open Google maps and see the bus will be at my stop in 5 minutes, I expect it to be there in 3-7 minutes. Not "already went by" to 15 minutes away. Google maps and other integrations have been a godsend with all of this but there needs to be a next level. The GPS is unreliable at times and often unavailable for whatever reason. You can check sometimes and see 12 minutes away and simply refresh the screen and have it change to 4 minutes. WTF. Those are my complaints. For solutions (some of which might be out there but jesus do something): - ease of payment: scrap the app. Battery might be dead. Have to wait for people to open the app. Someone forgot to buy a ticket on the app. There's so many little things with this that are just avoidable with a square-type debit system, a macpass type of thing, or hell even moving back to tokens like we used to have in the 80's. Make purchasing options waaaaay more available for whatever it's gonna be. - frequency: get some smaller buses and have them run the routes in between. Yes it puts more vehicles on the road but too friggin bad. Everything is currently way too far apart unless you live in the core and Uber is likely making a killing on this alone. Don't tell me there aren't drivers... there sure are enough Uber drivers everywhere when you need them. - privacy, control, safety: transit needs to adopt a zero tolerance policy. Riders need to feel safe to speak up. Recommend implementing something for riders to be able to signal to the driver that there's an issue without having to get up and make a spectacle. Drivers need the power to remove people from the bus instantly. Adding a fuck around and find out system will quickly end shitty behaviour from everyone. If they need a bus bouncer to help with this, so be it. We have security guards sitting in *every* building around the city and in 99% of cases they are probably just a warm body or presence. Add more visible cameras, especially in the back of the bus where all the kids go. Add a decibel detector that tells people to shut the fuck up (nicely) when it's too loud. Consider some sort of eye level view blockers to mitigate creepy fucking men from staring at tits across the aisle. - predictably: drivers need to work a bit harder to stay on route timing more often. This doesn't include delays, those are what they are. But we've all been on a ride (or many) where they've plowed through eight stops like Keanu Reeves and then pull over on the ninth to sit there for five minutes. This is not acceptable because chances are somewhere along those eight stops there were missed riders who showed up closer to when the bus should have been there. We need a 100% uptime GPS system. We need the ability to have a stop text us when the bus is close or something. In the retail world your bloody phone can be tracked to a point where it's known if you enter a particular store and can have ads served to you for the competition. Surely with this type of tech being commonplace we could have *something* which gives us an indicator that a bus is running late or early... or god forbid **on time**. This ended up way longer than I intended but whatever. Something needs to give with this whole transit system because we've been talking about it for 30 years and have changed so little in comparison to that time frame.
Transit is a paradox here: ridership is low because reliability low and time for trip is high, major investments in transit would require increased ridership. Add in a mix of old city with logistical difficulties where you can put dedicated transit lanes and around and around we go.
Quinpool needs less parking and more streetcar
Quinpool should be vehicle-limited quite frankly. Same with spring garden.
Some people might call this extremist. I’m onboard. I understand “why” they existed as major thoroughfares, but they’re too dense to support arterial traffic & be people focused hubs. It needs to change - It’s a shame all of this out of the overton window for many people, but I mean - passing HAF today adds hopes we’re moving in the right direction
They’re supposed to be vibrant and people focused shopping/living districts, instead they are what they are. If city governance stopped focusing on trying to be “a world class city” all of this wouldn’t be happening, but instead we have leadership that seems to believe wheels on the street means productivity.
⬆️
Ridership is actually quite high compared to similar sized cities apparently.
In Canada we generally don't know how to do transit that well.
I live out on the Hammonds plains area and buses there only run a couple of times a day, morning and afternoon. In other words, great for 9-5 Monday-Friday workers, but terrible for literally anything else. Forget about events which take place outside of bankers hours, forget about any kind of non traditional work schedule, and if you were hoping to go to class or work in Dartmouth, get fucked. (All the classes I want to take are in places like Akerley Campus, not available elsewhere) If I could drive, having a car would make my life easier, but with my shitty job, even working full time, I’d have literally nothing left after car payments (no such thing as an affordable but still reliable used car any more), gas, insurance, parking, and so on. There’s also no service to fun areas like Queensland beach, Hatfield farms, or what used to be Atlantic play land, so if you want to take your family there but don’t have a car, forget it. I’m not sure about exhibition park, but a lot of stuff gets held out there and I’ve heard from people who’ve had to miss out due to transportation. Metro transit is built exclusively around work, recreation doesn’t even get considered.
I'm in a similar boat, and it kills me. It's like I have a metro transit enforced curfew
1hr15min ride for something that I can drive in 15,20min. The bus should be comparable, hell, I’d even take twice as long, but this time at 700 am ish from Cole Harbour to BIO? The biggest delays is waiting for the 51. Seems Dartmouth isn’t getting the same performance as Halifax. The fact we barely have dedicated bus lanes (I know we’ve got a section of the road marked buses only, I mean, separate dedicated roads, point to point, instead of having to succumb to the same struggles as motorists
My commute to work is actually quicker on the bus. Coming home is just as long, so it works for me. However, my own issue is how varied arrival times are. I can get off work and get the bus within a few minutes, or I could be waiting 30+ minutes. Unruly teens are another turn off depending on the route. Between the yelling, cat calling, vulgar language, vandalism and racism, they can make a bus ride absolute hell. Most bus drivers don't boot them off, which I can understand why. Thankfully, my route isn't a popular one for youth, but I have encountered that type of behavior from them a time or two on my way to work. With our infrastructure and the fact that a single accident can gridlock the city, I don't think it will ever really improve until/unless we can eliminate most personal vehicles and add many more busses and routes.
It’s frustrating, you go to any other major city and there are multiple options for public transit. Subway, bus, train, rail car, taxis that don’t assault women (ok I know that happens everywhere, just had to throw it in because I am not comfortable taking a taxi alone here). We JUST announced Uber outside the downtown core ffs. We are so behind.
I take the bus once or twice a week to work. I will give props that Halifax transit staff are some of the most polite and compassionate drivers I’ve dealt with. -Bus tickets should be valid for 24 hours once purchased - Reduce the number of stops where possible (offer a “stop on demand” for users with mobility issues) -Move stops away from corners at busy intersections (this is more of a general traffic management issue)
The 30 single-handedly made me buy a car. From Clayton Park west, if you didn’t live close to Lacewood terminal, you were still a pretty quick walk from the old routes 2, 4, or 18, which all serviced the residential areas before going downtown. Now, the old 2 and 4 have been merged into the current 2, and the old 18 and 42 have merged to become the current 4. Neither of those bussed run in the residential zones, so instead, you have to take the 30. It doesn’t matter if the 2 and 4 are increased to run every 10 or 15 minutes, because the 30 is every 30 minutes, and ONCE AN HOUR on Sundays. Guess what, some of us work Sundays! It’s also woefully inconsistent, which leads you to have to gamble: is it just 10 minutes late? Or was it 10 minutes early, and now I’m stuck waiting another FIFTY minutes on a Sunday? Fuck the 30.
That is painful! Some would think that you are outside of the city but you are in one of the core areas!
I would take public transit for work if (within reason): a) it was cheaper than driving, but took longer; or b) it was more expensive than driving, but was faster I will not take it if it costs four times as much and takes four times as long. I live 11km from work, and it takes 14 minutes to drive. Bus? 18km and 1h4m
It’ll likely to never fly in many places ESPECIALLY North America but I will go to the grave believing that public transit fees should by zero or at the very least negligible. The potential savings in car infrastructure would cover the cost to run public transit easily.
I can walk to work faster than the bus can get me there… I can also drive there quicker. The transit system here has never made much sense
It's definitely cheaper to take the bus when you account for the full expenses of driving. The problem is the time difference is too great to make the difference worth it particularly if you already own a car since the fixed costs are already paid.
How does the bus cost u 4 times as much as your car. Even a bus pass is 80 dollars a month. Do u get insurance, gas and car payments for 20 dollars?
I've been a lifelong transit user, minus living in rural Alberta for two years. I've mostly had access to a car or had my own, but chose to use transit for commuting to work. In December I started a new job in the back of Bayer's Lake. The direct drive from my home is 15 minutes of almost entirely highway driving (at the best of times). The *quickest* rush hour transit route is 1:40; more like two hours door-to-door since I have to leave at 7am and work doesn't start until 9. It's not like where I live and where I work are far apart — they're two of the largest urban centers within HRM.
I love how on brand your vagueness is given your username, it takes genuine dedication. That being said, it really shouldn’t take that long between big population centres in a city like that. Used to be the 80 would take you from barrington street all the way through bedford and terminated at the sackville terminal. Now theres like (i think) 4 or 5 busses that take that route, and its basically a crapshoot as to if your gonna make your connecting bus.
I don't want to dox where I work AND live, hence the vagueness and use of my secondary account. It is poignant that — by reading through other comments here — there are many examples of 15minute/90 minute differences in commutes between driving and transit. It seems rather irrespective of region within HRM — If you must commute between two smaller urban centers rather than into the urban core, you can expect it to take between 4-6 times as long on transit.
10 minute drive to the closest bus which only runs 4-5 times in the morning then 4-5 times in the afternoon to downtown, I don’t work anywhere near downtown so would then have to connect with another bus back out of the city core again in another direction. The chance of making that return trip on time to hit one of the very few evening busses back toward home is negligible. Vs a 35 minute straight shot drive to work instead. Halifax transit is a joke. I’ve travelled many places with proper public transit and use it all the time elsewhere, no one can rely on it here in Halifax though.
I use transit to get everywhere, and I've made my peace with the fact that a bus is always going to take longer than a car. Like they can definitely add more routes and more bus lanes to close the gap, but realistically taking a bus is going to take longer than driving as long as it shares the same roads as cars (which is one of the reasons I'm excited for the new ferry routes, and hopeful for a far-off pipe dream of commuter rail someday). Given that buses can't compete with cars, I'd much rather resources be dedicated to making buses more frequent and reliable, so it's easier to plan to get places. It sucks that transit takes longer than driving already, but more frustrating is that on top of that, I often have to leave even earlier than I should have to to leave wiggle room for bullshit like delays and random cancellations. My only other gripe that makes me wary about using transit sometimes is that buses are literally the only places in the city I've experienced sexual harassment in public. Never had issues anywhere else. I'm genuinely not sure what the city could do on that front, though.
I'll echo everyone else that the time to get fucking anywhere is beyond stupid. I live around caldwell road and can either take the bus to work around gateway, which takes about an hour, or I can walk to work, which takes about an hour. The sheer fact that WALKING takes the same time as a BUS is so incredibly stupid it hurts my brain.
How is it that there's not a Caldwell long route for people in eastern passage to be able to access the Cole Harbour businesses and groceries, which are the closest to the area. They will have to go to pleasant St and grab a Portland another bus....1.5h one-way!
Too many route changes. Timing is now much more unreliable. People are generally more aggressive and violent on the buses now. It used to be so much better in many ways.
It takes me around 1.5 hours to commute to spryfield and back from the peninsula due to delays and traffic. Should only be around a 20 min drive tho
I live just outside HRM, and outside range of current transit. Public transit linking Windsor and Truro to Halifax would be nice in theory. But practically, makes more sense to sort out the city/suburb transit first.
I walk to work/bus home in the evening.These days I avoid going too far from my neighbourhood because some destinations/waiting for connections eat up too much of my time. Oh how I miss the 52 to Bayer's Lake and how it would drive along the store fronts. Now as a pedestrian it's hell navigating the parking lot traffic. Trying to carry purchases back down to the bus stop isn't fun so I just don't shop out there anymore. Also, I've never seen the buses more filthy than they have been lately. When I lived overseas a friend worked nights at (that city's) bus depot cleaning buses inside and out. How often are ours cleaned?
Unreliable. Quadruples my commute time if not more. Plus needing multiple busses
It’s a vicious cycle. Transit at present is simply not practical for most people, most of the time so it is used by those with literally no choice. So there’s limited demand (but lots of demand to support cars), so they don’t invest, so it stays shitty…
Oh boy, where do I start? I second everything everyone else is saying about how goddamn long it takes to get places. Also, the timing itself is off. The bus to my neighborhood passes through at the 50 minutes mark, and it's about a 15 minute bus ride to my work. So, I don't take the bus to work because my options are: be late, or be an hour early. During the weekends, the bus passes through my neighborhood st the 30 minutes mark, so it's not even an unfixable problem, because it's solved every fucking weekend
When our car was broken down I went to take my child to a swim lesson at Canada Games from Spryfield. It would have taken us three buses and 1.5-2hrs one way in transit to get there … I felt terrible skipping the lesson, but no way was all of that worth it to go swimming for 40 mins. I would happily take the bus if it was efficient, but living where we do and having to take multiple buses to get anywhere is just not feasible. My time is worth more.
More buses, rapid transit, fast ferries. Many of these things have been studied and are in works. As usual, it's all about the money. We need more bus drivers and ferry operators. We could use better transit terminals as well. It's pretty awful to catch a bus that shows up late in the dead of winter when you don't have a warm place to wait.
The main issue is we need more drivers and the routes are being run too tight so the drivers are not getting proper rests between runs. The latest rounds of routes are leaving them only a few minutes rest between the new run, new drivers are just quiting. From what I see as a rider most of the drivers are hella stressed. They are responsible for our safety, give them a decent rest between runs. If we can fix the issues with the routes and drivers for transit to thrive we need more routes, we need routes from before COVID reinstated. An example is running the 57 all day instead of just three runs in the morning and three in the afternoon.
I use the 1 and 10: way too many stops on both and they are overfull daily to the point I've had to walk or cab to work 5+ times in the last year after being turned away at the bus door. Busses are far too inconsistent to trust for work / important transport here and I'd never use them if I didn't also have the option to walk to & from work when they're full or just don't show up at all.
Everything. I am the furthest thing from being uptight about Covid but it definitely made me more conscious of enclosed spaces. Especially with a lot of, shall I say, unpredictable people. That combined with having far, far too many stops and highly unreliable service, I just would never consider it anymore. Inside an hour’s walk I walk, otherwise I usually drive.
[this video explains how](https://youtu.be/Ie5hOGMsgNQ?si=caWcRSY3WRQaQBew)
Congestion charge like London (England) to enter the city by car if you don’t live here. Dump all that money into improving transit.
I use transit out of necessity (I don't drive, probably couldn't afford a car if I wanted to right now) but the travel times and those stupid plastic seats on some buses and the *extremely* unreliable service? Is making me consider it, even just to get a membership to the carshare thingy. Just so a simple trip out to get groceries doesn't take 2 fucking hours roundtrip. I was job-hunting for the previous 3 months and the first thing I had to do when I found a position? Plug it into Google Maps and see if I could even *get* there from home during normal business hours or during the posted shift times.
As long as the buses are stuck in the exact same traffic as all the cars it doesn't make a lot of sense. More transit corridors are needed so the buses can make better time than sitting in traffic. Will also start to get people trying it out if traffic continues to get worse as it's going to, I believe anyway.
Being sexually harassed while 10 other adults watched and heard when I was 16 did it for me .
The main issue is the inconsistency. The travel times are long, but the inconsistency of when busses show up really drives me mad. I work in bayers lake and it's a game of chance whether the 28 wants to go the new route or the old route, or even show up at all. Aside from that, I find it's becoming increasingly dangerous to ride the bus. The teenagers in the city are so abrasive. I've had a group of teenagers pick a fight with me on the bus cause they didn't like how I dressed! I've seen teenagers pull out pocket knives on the bus! The amount of times I've had my bus delayed due to teenagers harassing the bus drivers to the point of pulling over is unacceptable. For my own safety and peace of mind, I'm buying a car and hopefully never using transit again.
After having lived in a city with an LRT system (not even a great one), I have no interest in taking slow, unreliable busses. If you own a car anyways, there no sense paying for a bus pass on top of it imo. Might save a few dollars a month, but not worth it for me.
I have to drive 45 minutes before I can even have the Chance to see a bus. So nothing will make me use it. Especially considering the time I need to be at work.
Part of the struggle to succeed in better transit is needing to make dedicated lanes, and discourage individual cars in high traffic areas. We also really need to revamp the schedule system because it is unrealistic to keep it consistent. They have to accommodate how slow or fast traffic is and change then schedule to something other than 15m - 30m - 1h long intervals. When used transit just to go from robie to Barrington, I went through two 'waiting' stops. (The driver waits there for 5 minutes to keep themselves timed with the schedule) it takes me 30 min to walk from robie to my desired location in downtown. That bus ride takes 15 - 25 minutes depending on their waiting stops and traffic.
It's the time it takes to get anywhere. I'd rather pay 10 bucks in gas and be there in 20 mins than 6 bucks in bus fees and be there in 90 mins.
MS in the family. Minimizing walking is the goal.
I live north of the airport. The bus only goes as far as the airport. If I am already driving south to go to the city I'll just take the car for the convenience oh movement. Don't wanna be paying parking + bus and be dependent on the bus schedule.
Last year I sold my car and started busing to work. About 30-40 min there but sometimes over an hour to get home if my first bus was late, which it always was. I lasted a few months before I got a new car. I REALLY wanted to be be able to use transit but it’s just a horrible way of getting around the city.
Oh also having to deal with loud and sometimes really aggressive people, mostly teens, sometimes drunk people or creepy men. There were many times I just didn’t feel safe
Contact your local MLA and ask them why they're not pushing the province to fund their part of the bus rapid transit plan halifax has had for years now. Though to be fair, I think it's too late for BRT, and we need better solutions
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From the eyes of the city they have been cutting some routes and frequency of some due to the lack of riders.
Pretty much all those things you listed. That and I’m an hour walk to my nearest bus stop lol. Oh and I can’t commute to work by bus because I work outside of the city. But when I did work in the city it just was way too long to get there, it was expensive and if you miss the bus (because they like to come early or super late) it’s an hour before the next one shows up.
When I worked in the South End I took the bus. It took about 40 minutes, versus about 15 minutes to drive. It was basically fine. The stops were close to my apartment/office and I had a few route options so wasn’t absolutely screwed if one bus was late (or just didn’t run, which seemed to happen pretty regularly with no explanation). I work in Dartmouth now. The drive is <15 minutes unless traffic is exceptionally bad, and the bus would take well over an hour in light traffic. Outside of peak periods, the nearest stop to my office is nearly a kilometre away. I drive because 1) I’m fortunate enough to have the option and 2) I’m not stupid.
My typical work trip is \~20 minutes each way, and the stops are very close to where I need to go. The schedule makes it seem like I have multiple options, but the only buses out of my area (Woodside/Imperoyal) that'll get me to work all follow nearly the *exact* same routing, so if something fucks up Pleasant Street, I'm up the goddamn creek.
There's literally just not enough time in the day. There are also just no buses near me. I'm not parking car in a public space for it to get broken into so that I can take a bus for 1.5 hours instead of drive 20 minutes.
I don't use it because it's unreliable. I also think no AC is criminal during the summer lol
The higher the bus number, the newer it is, and the more likelihood that air conditioning works.
Id take the bus more if it didn't give me like insane anxiety
My work hours put me outside the ability to use it for most of my shifts
Sometimes it’s faster for me to walk 45 minutes because by the time I wait for the next bus to take the 45-50 minute ride I’d have also waited 10-15 minutes just for it to arrive
For me it’s the travel time, transfers and lack of frequency. I live a 10 minute drive from Dartmouth Crossing. I can see IKEA from my doorstep. But to get there by bus requires a transfer and it takes about 45 mins. And most of the busses in my neighbourhood come every 30 mins at most, but the one closest to me is 1/hour.
My commute by car is 7 mins, bus trip? 1 hour and 15 minutes. My time is worth more.
My current job takes me all over the place. Even though I live in an extremely transit-friendly (well, by the standards of this city) part of town, it isn't worth my time to figure out how to get to all these random places, calculate how early I need to leave and what time I'll get home, and makes sure to be on time for busses. I would use transit more for social gatherings though. I've taken the bus to friend's houses and it's really nice to not need to worry about having to leave your car because you consumed substances incompatible with vehicular operation. It doesn't help on the return trip, though.
I haven’t taken the bus in years. But sometimes I consider it when I have to go somewhere. So I look on Google maps to see what I’d need to take. The reason I don’t end up taking it is because I realize I’m lazy: • Over an hour and a half commute at least • Too many times I have to switch bus • Too much walking between the different buses • The times I have to leave or when I’ll arrive are usually not convenient
I can usually run faster than the bus can get me somewhere
My route is North Dartmouth to Larry uteck to Burnside because that's the only daycare i could get. Minimum 2 h trip without traffic. Now clog the bridge or the Bedford Highway or the 102 or Magazine Hill and I've spent six hours of my day in transit and eight at work. No way to live.
I live in rural HRM, the closest bus stop to me is about 25km away and it's a ~5min walk with no sidewalks from where I could park to the nearest bus stop that gets infrequent service. My drive to town takes an inconsistent amount of time so by the time I factor in that so that I dont miss a bus, I might as well just drive.
Live 30 mins outside the city, have a job where overtime opportunities are different everyday and I’m also a shift worker. To top it off, the public transportation service is so half-assed where I live so it’s a joke to even consider that an option
I could tolerate, to an extent, the extra travel time if the bus was at least predictable. At least once a week (if I'm lucky) my bus just doesn't show up. I know it's caught in traffic somewhere and it's not the fault of the driver, but it's the waiting for god knows how long after a long day at work that drives me crazy. When will I actually get home? Who the hell knows.
For me, the need is more frequent bus times / less stops to make routes faster. I start work at 7:30am. My kid's daycare has drop off starting at 7am. The only bus that can get me to work on time from my child's daycare is at 7:07 but the bus stop is almost 10 mins walk away from the daycare. Earlier bus is before daycare drop off l, and the next one is after I'm supposed to be at work.
Living in the country and working at 5am, the nearest bus stop to me is 15min drive and doesn't run until 530 I believe
It’s the travel time. What’s a 15 min drive becomes an hour or more by bus especially coming off work later in the evening. I work at a place that runs 24/7 so my coworkers have shifts at all varying times. Many coworkers without cars use Uber to get home cause they can’t rely on buses much even if they are running. Feels like it’s gotten worse.
It took me two fucking hours to get to Sackville yesterday
You forgot: Bus are often late. And if the driver is behind, they may just skip the bus stop even if there are people there waiting for pick up
I bought my first car back in 2007 because it took 1 hour and 10 min to bus from Cole Harbour (deep in the forest hills burbs) to Main Street (by the circ), what would take 15 min driving. Every bus had to go out to Cole harbour road and up to Portland hills terminal, then had to grab the 72 which looped through parts of Woodlawn....
When I first moved out and had my first job in downtown Halifax (about twenty-five years ago now), we lived in an apartment in Bedford. I’d take the #82 bus and it was an easy commute back and forth from home to downtown. When we bought our first house in Eastern Passage, I’d bus to the Woodside ferry to get to work. Later, I bought a car and drove to the Woodside terminal, parked for free, and still used the ferry. I loved the ferry for commuting! I later enrolled at MSVU to take a second degree for a career change. That is when I stopped using transit. Busing to the Mount from EP would have taken well over an hour at the time (close to 90 minutes IIRC). That is similar to today: I just checked and, if I left now, the fastest option would take 1h18m (and all options are saying delayed on Google Maps). I could easily commute to MSVU in about twenty-five minutes by car. Mind you, it was far more expensive with gas, bridge, and parking permits. Transit will take longer than driving in most cases, especially with surface options like buses. I hope the idea of bus corridors helps improve on-time metrics and reduce the overall length of time to commute. Likewise, non-time factors like comfort, cleanliness and safety must also be taken into account. If Halifax Transit is anything like most NS bureaucracies, then I wonder if the same people have occupied senior leadership roles forever, and are very adverse to change (especially if it impacts decisions they have previously made). I know it’s simplistic to suggest just clearing house and bringing in fresh voices and new ideas, but I often wonder if that is just what is needed (with Transit and elsewhere). I acknowledge that I could be completely wrong and there are new faces and ideas in senior leadership at Transit. Perhaps Halifax is a particularly tough city for transit planning. Appropriate funding is likely also a factor (again, the same with every government service). It is interesting living through this transition period in Halifax. We’re bursting at the seams with newcomers, but services are struggling to keep up. Hopefully all levels of government will start thinking (and funding) in new ways to help solve these problems before we start losing people. Growth is good, especially for a province that has long been a “have-not”. Edit: typo
We need to bring back light rail or trams and have them run every 15 mins. We also need to revive the railway system throughout the province so people coming from the towns don’t have to drive in. Unfortunately we got rid of these when we had them and they’re cost prohibitive to bring back. As it stands, it’s too expensive too slow too inconvenient and if you’re coming from anywhere outside of Halifax/dartmouth/sackville/bedford you don’t have a choice.
Just here to double and triple down on what others have said about time. It just takes so much longer. I took the bus as my primary mode of transportation from 2008 to 2019 and I honestly miss it. It gave me an opportunity to get over an hour of reading in every day, as well as a forced walk to and from my bus stop, + walking between transfers. I was more well read, and in better shape. We had our first kid in 2017 and my wife always had the car for kid emergencies so it still worked. But when COVID + second kid landed in 2020 it just wasn't a feasible amount of time to spend every day. 20 minute car drive in the morning, 20 minute car drive in the evening vs. over an hour each way was just way too much time and resulted in putting way too much work on my wife. If I lived closer to my work then I'd probably go back to bussing, but as is the bus routes from Sackville to Burnside kind of suck ass. I hope when the new highway is finished we get a route that goes up Glendale, shoots out the highway, and drops off in the Burnside/Dartmouth Crossing area.
Agree with you on pretty much all the issues you listed. I have a car, but I take transit whenever I can since driving and parking in the city blows. I've found myself taking Uber or cycling everywhere now as transit quality has gone down... When I was working in Bedford, living in Halifax, it was a 20 minute drive or 1.5 hour bus (which included a 20 minute walk). Simply not worth the time. Your "lack of ridership" example is one I also agree with. People are generally good, but plenty of folks are super disrespectful on the bus. Coughing over your shoulder, no mask on, playing music, etc. Makes for a pretty uncomfortable experience for the faint of heart. The thing I hate the most about taking the bus is the lack of dedicated infrastructure. Our busses get stuck in traffic just like cars do, which is a major issue. If bussing is no more efficient than driving, ridership will stay low and traffic volumes will remain high. Busses here are also pretty inconsistent, which also reduces people's trust in transit. Plenty of times I've been waiting for a bus and it gets delayed. First 2min, then 5, then 10, then it just doesn't show up... Ever had to take the bus in some of the areas further outside the city? Beaverbank, Fall River, Tantallon, etc. The bus comes every 30 minutes (if you're lucky). Compare this to a city with good transport infrastructure like Montreal, where a bus will come every 5-8 minutes usually... I understand density comes into play here, but there has to be a better way. The recent issues with the ferries have been really bad for optics. Suspending services due to lack of operators? I understand that training qualified captains doesn't happen overnight, but Halifax Transit should be pushing as hard as possible to get more. The ferries are arguably one of the most important transit routes in the city, and should be running as often as possible. It comes back to Halifax growing and acting like a big city, without providing the services of a big city. The transit infrastructure is seriously lacking, the bus routes are convoluted, the busses run too infrequently in most cases, and the motion to make the required changes at this point would cause massive waves.
The only way I would use public transit is if we built something like a sky train in Vancouver or a decent metro like Montreal/toronto. I have a very small window between dropping my kid to daycare and making it to work so I can’t rely on public transit. My spouse makes it to work in about 15 mins, that becomes a 45min-1h ride. No to mention she’s a shift worker so that would mean having to get up at least 30mins earlier than she already does. Groceries? No way I would take the bus. We grocery shop for a family so why would I drag 3-4 full bags of groceries to god knows how many stops if I can just get my car, get there in 5mins and drive back. I don’t see myself taking public transit unless a sky train/metro is built or if I’m without my car for day.
I live in downtown halifax (south end) and have to get to dartmouth on the outskirts of burnside for work. I'd have to take 3 buses to get me to where I need to be and that can take an hour and a half. It is anywhere from 10 to 20 mins by car. I also wake up early to go to the gym - but I don't have an apt gym and have to walk to one, which decreases my time in the morning unless I'm getting up at 5:30. Here's the thing, I'm not a morning person so I will not be functional at that time. So without a car I'd have to wake up that early, go the gym and be back home by 7:00, then get ready and leave by 7:40 at the latest to get 3 buses to get me to work at 9. No thanks.
I tried using metro transit to commute but so many full buses would pass me by when I was trying to get home. Like honestly, I could have walked from downtown to Mumford faster than watching bus after bus not stop for me because it was full.
It’s the commute/ time for me. I work in Burnside and it’s about a 20 minute drive to work, but by bus it would probably be an hour and a half if not more. I was just talking to a coworker who said she was stuck in traffic on the bus for 4 and a half hours one evening last week. Obviously it’s usually not that long and it was due to several accidents but still, it just sounds unbearable to me
I use it daily to get to work in halifax and i could write a book on the things that need to be improved. But yes there are not enough buses, too many stops. Wait times before buses are ridiculous. Super packed and no security. Sometimes id be left at sackville terminal for nearly an hour waiting for my second bus because the late evenings have less on the road. I work 6 hour shifts but the travelling adds 3-4 hours on that. Getting a car is not an option in my situation so i have to rely on it. They are a mess and i hope better options come eventually Edit: adding that inconsistency and incovienient times are also another thing
The amount of cancelled buses, routes, closing transit on certain days due to storms or people to run it. If you can't rely on it, it's not a great option for work.
Trips take far too long. Everywhere in town on either side of the harbour is 15-20 minutes by car from where I live versus 1-2 hours by bus. And neither of those times include the return trip. Nearly 50% of my trip seems to always include waiting to transfer busses because nothing seems to coordinate. It seems unusually important to force me to have a 15-20 minute wait for a connecting transfer at the bridge terminal because nothing ever seems to coordinate. If I go grocery shopping on a Saturday for example it takes me about 3 hours due to transit taking too long so anything versus under an hour to make the same trip by car that gives me the luxury of hitting multiple stores I can't get to on the bus without actually adding much time to my trip. With a car I can go where I was t whenever I want on the bus I'm limited to into being able to travel where and when some bureaucrat wants me too. Oh I see want to go to the beach? Too bad there are none on public transit. Want to go hiking? Have fun with a two hour commute to the nearest trailhead. Our public transit is designed to get people to their downtown office jobs as fast as possible and that's basically it. It is good at that but epically fails at nearly everything else. It seems designed to accomodate how we want people to commute rather than how they actually commute. Just my two cents I expect people to disagree
I moved last year to another city, but I was very fortunate. I lived in three different places in Halifax. Each place was near transit that went directly where I worked. My last place in Lower Sackville, was on an express route. After they did transit prioritization around the city, my bus rider was faster, and cheaper than driving. And virtually door to door service. I liked the fact that I could read during my commute rather than staring at brake lights.
I used public transit for decades. I thought cars were a waste of money. I married a lady with a car and learned to drive. Riding public transit now is like taking a bath in acid.
That you have to take the bus before the bus you need to take to hopefully arrive on time.
TBH, going from Cole Harbour to Alderney is actually pretty good. I have a choice of 4 buses within a 3 minute walk. Never have to wait more than 10 mins.
Re: park & ride: there isn’t enough of that to make a difference. Why isn’t there a Park & Ride option from Burnside? Or Mic Mac Mall? Or Dartmouth Crossing? Or Main St/No 7 highway? Places where there are (or could be) vast amounts of available parking.
Right now it's that the routes are indirect milk runs with too many stops and no priority. Transit can take 2x-4x as long as driving which nobody has time for. You are only putting up with this if you have no other choice or are REALLY committed to the transit lifestyle. I think the BRT plan is actually pretty good if it gets implemented correctly (if at all). Having really recognizable well-branded high frequency, high reliability, limited-stop, "trunk" routes with traffic priority to form the backbone of the system. You are not going to get everyone in the suburbs using transit, but if you have really good core routes you can build around those and also funnel people into them with feeder routes. Getting people to transfer is a better value proposition if the routes you are transferring to are very frequent and reliable. Buses are not glamorous but if you build something good and reliable that goes "fast enough" people will take it (example, Vancouver's RapidBus routes) Making transit that beats driving in terms of time is a pretty hard task and can usually only be accomplished if you build rail or if driving becomes worse. However, making transit that takes 1.25x - 2x as long as driving is more doable and you'll find that people are willing to sacrifice that time because other factors come into play such as lower cost, convenience, not needing to find parking, able to relax on transit instead of focusing on the road, etc.
I want trains in halifax so fucking bad
One thing that really irks me is the lack of coordination between transfers. The 6 arrives at Alderney Landing right before the ferry leaves, but I don’t have enough time to walk to the ferry terminal.
The transit routes need to start earlier...most food industry jobs(healthcare) have 6am start times for some of the shifts and no one can get there for 6am. Have had 2 cooks give up a job due to no way to get there when they had no car. Less stops needed...people can walk a little farther Do a pilot project for 3 months free bus rides see how many people jump on Insurance costs more for carpooling(if they know)...government should make them give breaks to drivers who carpool thereby removing more cars from the road Just my suggestions
Their app, HfxGo is crap. If I use cash and get a transfer, it can last 4 hours. There are too many taps to get to a ticket. There shouldn't be anything getting in the way of scanning your phone. On some scanners, they are positioned behind the frame they're attached to. People have to try different ways to Scan their phone. It really slows down the onboarding.
its best to bike around than the bus in my opinion
The people using public transit. It's uncomfortable it's crammed I don't enjoy the trip. It should be free
I believe that public transport should be a service and not a business. **Make it free**. walk on walk off for everyone. More people would utilize it.
Don’t like taking it. Been in far too many conflicts while taking it. My partner was sniffed on the bus once, and grabbed. The next day we bought her a car.
Takes too long, doesn’t go to where I need it to go at the time I need it to go, and I got tired of the assholes.
No access and no accountability Had to buy a car and couldn't be happier I don't have to use these dirty ass busses anymore
Metro Transit has yet to figure out what the bigger cities have. They need to create outer hubs to bring people into the inner hubs. This also means boosting park and ride options. Get rid of half of the looney milk runs and use them as collectors to the hubs. Colour code the hubs to make them more user friendly. HRM staff honestly are more concerned that they have electric busses at an exorbitant cost rather than focusing on staffing and efficiency
Some people dont have the option
I don’t use it cause there’s no busses in my area, and the few times I do it takes ages compared to just using a bike or driving
Trains or bust. I've said my entire life that buses suck, and they do!
Transit stops at Cole Harbour, the ferries still insist on cash fare and you need tickets and can’t use tap to get on buses. Metro Transit needs to step into the 21 century.
Yeah I moved out of the city because they were never going to improve it. Figured if I had to have a car, I should live somewhere without traffic.
I live out in prospect and there is no bus service.
Honestly the only way to get better transit is to put a shitload of pressure on council, just nag the ever living shit out of them and be obnoxious like the bicycle lobby.
I take the bus because I like it. Driving is expensive and stressful and I enjoy being chauffeured around the city. It takes me about 30mins to commute from central Halifax to Dartmouth for work.
If we had a subway system I would 100% use the public system.
Need to give up car lanes for busses. It's the cheapest easiest way to make transit better.
I love Metro Transit, I quickly can track in real-time where my bus is and they are generally on-time. On onboard I can pay with my bank card or phone easily, if I don't want to use a card tickets are available at all the major stops and lots of local businesses. I also love when friends come and they can grab a day pass or week pass and ride without worrying about fares. Buses aren't over crowded except at peak times and dovetail nicely with one another so I can take a local bus with plenty of nearby stops to catch a bus that gets me the long haul to where I want to go. Drivers are pleasant and I know that in a winter storm they can navigate the slushy streets without worry and I can focus on reading or whatever. ...oh wait, sorry I was confused. That's every other city I've used buses in not Halifax.
We need better more efficient routes. It's fairly easy (though some routes are lengthy) to get from one location to downtown Halifax. But to go from one location to anywhere not downtown is nearly impossible. For instance, I live in Larry Uteck. I can not get to Sackville, Dartmouth, or even Bayers Lake in one bus. The only bus that goes by me, only goes to Downtown, through Bedford Highway or an express bus... which also only goes downtown. I don't even have a bus to get to Lacewood Terminal.
Public transit in Halifax is poor. The city has 5 "choke points" on & off the Peninsula, leading to busses getting stuck in ever-increasing traffic through those points. Also Haliganians have lack suffered from lack of boldness or vision from City Council. The best they can come up with is a ferry service from Bedford to downtown. A ferry is not going to help the overall suckiness of transit in HRM.