A local article that shows the difficulties our community faces in mass transportation. If this was Europe or Asia it wouldn't be an issue because their systems are so much more advanced/elaborate than ours. However, this is the reality of North America; a car driven society that thinks about convenience for drivers before public transfer.Read and think:
1) What caused this problem in the first place?
2) How can we fix it?
3) What other problems does this create for Barrie or Canada or the world?
4) Why is Europe and Asia so much better at this than us?
http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/2014/05/06/barrie-transit-changes-continue-to-frustrate-riders-and-councillors
After reading this article I am glad to hear that Barrie Councillors are aware of the problem that is happening with the bus routes. I believe of what may have been the problem is the sudden change of all bus routes. I believe changing it so suddenly made the citizens confused and frustrated. If they slowly added a bus route then changed another and gradually over time there would not be such a huge problem. The fact that they change the routes so suddenly and the citizens were used to the old routes it made the routes confusing and just too frustrating for the people of Barrie to use them. Also the routes now are much longer than they used to be. For example it would take me just under 20 minutes to get to the downtown terminal by bus and that was just with one bus. Now it takes 40 minutes to a hour and taking 2 buses. They made the routes much more confusing and too long.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that the Councillors of Barrie should do another drastic change again but work on it slowly. I also think they should minimize the time gab between buses. They can even have buses that go directly to each terminal within a 10 minute time span between each arrival of one. The only problem is is that Barrie does not have the population of bus users for such circumstances. Then again if the bus system was more reliable and well done the more people would use them.
The problem that is creates Barrie and Canada is that the use of public transportation is beneficial for the environment. Therefore if the bus system is so bad that less of the population took use of the buses the more cars people would use to get to their destination thus creating more pollution.
Europe and Asia have been creating and using these type transportation system much longer than Canada. Many people from Europe and Asia don't even own a car because the train and bus system are so much better. Barrie only just got a train into Toronto only 6 years ago. When I lived in England I lived in such a small town but there was still a half hour train route into London from there. Canada overall is so behind on the public transport services and still has a long way to go compared to Europe and Asia.
Here is someone's paper on transportation in Europe versus North America. It gives a real insight of how different European's way of transportation is used versus North America.
https://weshare.eftours.com/shared/projects/2013/LeMay_Warren_GP110-EOU-13060.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=
This is my weekly post,
ReplyDeleteAgreeing with maddie, i believe that one of the biggest problems with the transit system in Barrie is that they changed it so quickly. The bus routes became confusing and more inconvenient than it already was. In Canada many people assume that people just have cars to drive but this is really untrue. The majority of people, especially in Barrie take public transit. In the article i listed below "And of course it’s not perfect, of course it’s different, of course it’s not convenient for everyone who wants to ride the bus." but this is obviously a problem. The point of changing the bus system was for it to be more convenient and because the old system was not working.
In the article it states that not only Barrie is having problems with their transit system but also Toronto. The transit system is a problem throughout Canada and I believe this is because we waited so long to make changes and then tried to change everything all at once. Europe is obviously more advanced than Canada but we can't fix our transit system all at once, it needs to be done gradually.
http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/2013/08/29/barrie-transit-changes-need-time-to-succeed