33 thoughts on “Service Changes for May 8, 2011 (Updated)”

1. Let me get this right. 2010 had increases in ridership, over the estimate. More people are turning to public transit because of rising fuel prices. Therefore, the TTC will be cutting service? I fail to see the logic.

   Steve: Ah, but you do not understand the wisdom of Ford. The TTC did not “cut” service, merely “reallocated” it where it was more needed. Of course, the saving from this exercise was trivial, but it gives those who feel we riders are pampered with spectacular service on routes that should not operate late on Sunday evenings a feeling that they have found real gravy. The problem is that the hole in the 2012 budget is more than ten times the size of what will be cut in May, and we still have no agreement about what standards should be used to decide where to cut more, or how much of the extra cost will come from higher fares. Then there’s the matter of “customer service”, and the various proposals on that score add up to well over $10m on their own.

   Chair Karen Stintz can be counted on to paste that plastic smile of hers on her face and tell us how cutting back is all for our own good, without ever allowing debate on alternatives, because Emperor Ford has told her that’s how it will be.

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2. Steve, I think all of us should get pitch forks and chase Gravy Ford out of town.

   Aside from that, are the current streetcar tracks repairs along Queens Quay just a temporary fix before the ultimate track replacement?

   Steve: Yes. The reconstruction of Queen’s Quay is scheduled to start in September.

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3. Any word on whether the Queens Quay Boulevard project is continuing?

   Steve: I am planning an update on Waterfront projects generally, but in brief here’s the situation. Waterfront Toronto has enough money in its budget to do from roughly Spadina to York for the complete street makeover. The TTC will do the streetcar tracks all the way to the portal starting in September, and the road reconstruction/reconfiguration will follow next spring. The timing of the streetscape east from York to Jarvis (phase 2) and then to Parliament (phase 3) is uncertain due to budget issues.

   The Queen’s Quay east streetcar is in trouble because the cost estimate keeps going up mainly due to tunneling issues. I am trying to get more info on that subject. I would not be surprised to see us stuck with buses (and a lousy connection at Union) for some years. So much for a “transit first” approach to the Waterfront.

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4. Let’s waste more money on useless routes. The 59 should be rerouted to run via Gulliver/Benton at all times and remove the useless 52C, thus saving 4 buses and providing new two-way service during peak periods from Lawrence Ave West via Culford/Gulliver/Ingram/Benton. Currently customers have to guess which direction the buses are going during rush hour. It took me two years to have the TTC post the correct information on the info posts for both the Lawrence West 52C and Maple Leaf 59, the information and map showed this route going to Lawrence Station (hasn’t been going there since the late 90s).

   What is so difficult in providing two way service in the middle of the route AND saving 4 buses at the same time?

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5. Let me get this straight: eliminating 43B service on Progress Ave. after almost four decades of service is considered….well…Progress??

   Steve: Well, it’s only eliminated at certain times. Progress will be suspended west of STC due to budget constraints after 10pm Mondays to Saturdays, and all day Sundays. East of STC, there will still be Progress. In the best Toronto tradition, we will be replacing the 43B with a subway line, eventually, maybe, if someone else will pay for it.

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6. Too bad many of us who gave deputations at the February TTC budget meeting were ignored by the Commission. The cuts to 40+ bus routes went ahead anyways even though many deputants raised excellent reasons why the current service levels should be maintained. I even argued that the City and the TTC should commit to building Transit City. Once the 8 Transit City lines are operational, the buses from these routes can be “reallocated” to other busy routes (e.g., Dufferin, Finch East, etc.). I guess the commission didn’t like it when I asked, where’s the “Respect for Taxpayers” by canceling a fully funded transit plan and replacing it with a “Gravy Train” between Fairview Mall and Scarborough Town Centre.

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7. I used to live in Karen Stintz’s ward and used to receive her newsletters. One newsletter that came back when the Transit City plan first came out and was still being pursued seriously before the Ontario government cut half of the funding stands out in my memory because she was opposed to building light rail on Eglinton and wanted a full subway. The other articles in Karen Stintz’s newsletter were all about how she’d opposed various things ranging from excessive spending at city hall to the size of a number of condo developments.

   It’s quite a disjointed group of positions: Karen Stintz and Rob Ford want to build subways, which are the most expensive form of public transit, but are opposed to extravagant spending. I don’t know what Rob Ford’s position on huge condos is but Karen Stintz didn’t like the idea when it was proposed for Yonge and Eglinton, so if huge condos are going to be prohibited on Sheppard as well, that’d reduce the ability of the developers to pay for the subway extension they’re supposed to be financing (assuming that without size/height restrictions, enough condos could be sold to raise that kind of money in the first place).

   My question is, at what point do we stop considering any expensive subway construction when the best those two can do is conflict themselves and condescend to say that existing service has to be cut for the greater good. If that’s true, why bother thinking about incredibly expensive expansions with questionable funding mechanisms to pay for them?

   Steve: Karen Stintz owes her political existence to the opposition to the Minto development at Yonge & Eglinton. Once she got in office, her tune changed, and I have yet to hear her talk badly of intensive development. Meanwhile, Rob Ford talked negatively of increasing Toronto’s population (the infamous line that was considered to be “anti immigrant”) saying that we didn’t have any place to put more people on the roads, so why house more of them? The oddest part about the proposed intensification on Sheppard is that at best 1/3 of the trips the new developments generate will be on transit. The other 2/3 will contribute to traffic congestion, the very effect Ford claimed we should avoid by limiting population growth.

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8. Steve,

   Talking about “service changes,” why have trains been on a go-slow order over the Bloor Viaduct since the beginning of the winter?

   Steve: This comes up often here. When the TTC replaces a bridge beam (the piece of concrete that goes between two adjacent vertical members in the bridge (the steel ones, not the stone piers), they cut the old track, lift out the beam, track and all, and install a new beam. Once upon a time, I think, they re-welded the track from the new beam into what was already there, but have not been doing that recently (possibly due to time pressure to get the line open again), The result is that with the large volume of beam replacements over the past year or so, there are a lot of unwelded joints on the bridge. Not only do these give a rough ride, I suspect that the “thump thump” from passing trains isn’t helpful either. The geometry of the situation means that there will be a join on both rails directly opposite each other, and this gives the worst case “thud” because both sides of the truck drop at the same time.

   There has been a slow order since early December, and when I inquired, I was told it’s “on the list”. Where, on the list, I don’t know, and it’s time to ask again.

   By the way, I live beside the bridge and have a front row seat for repairs on the north side at the east end.

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9. And speaking of slow-orders and bridges, have you any news of repairs to the horrible track on the Gerrard Street bridge slowing 506 service over the DVP? (This isn’t just a slow order zone, its a really, really s l o w zone!).

   Steve: It is in the 2011 trackwork list. Don’t know when it’s scheduled to happen.

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10. I understand some bus routes were carrying very light loads. However in those cases, the TTC should have merged some routes late at night.

    Here is my proposal for the St. Andrews, Silver Hills, Graydon Hall service. All three could have been turned into a late night service using one route.

    Steve: There are other parts of the city where the TTC has cancelled all of the routes serving an area without taking into account the compound effect of removing all of the service (in some cases, in a block 2km square). A triumph of ideology over good planning.

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11. Looking forward to the next great leap in logic on saving money for transportation: reverting to gravel on those roads which are not well traveled. Then we can switch off every other streetlight, save some money there. Don’t laugh, it’s already been done in some towns, cities and counties in the U.S.

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12. Further to Mike’s comment, the TTC certainly could have looped the 56 Leaside around Pape and O’Connor during off-peak hours either as its own route or as a nighttime, northbound extension of the 83 Jones route.

    Viability of the overall network aside, the 56 and its poor evening frequency won’t be noticed on Eglinton (due to many the many routes present) and will be barely noticed on Laird (due to low demand). Removing local service from Donlands, except at cross streets via Broadview and Main Stations, however, is mind boggling.

    The same goes for the 74 Mt. Pleasant and 103 Mt. Pleasant North routes. Relatively low ridership on both due to the emphasis on east-west bus routes from Davisville and Eglinton Stations, but, after so many decades, the TTC should really just merge the routes and choose St. Clair as the terminus. They probably won’t lose as many peak riders as they think, and might even gain some on- and off-peak, as Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton is often where the traffic jams start to get intense on the way to Yonge Street. Routing to St. Clair probably won’t increase run time materially.

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13. Umm… routing the Mount Pleasant North bus would add 15 minutes to a one-way trip, and given that a trip on route 103 end to end is 15 minutes, I’m pretty sure it would increase run time materially.

    Steve: Actually about 10, because the trip from Mt. Pleasant to Yonge is common to both routes. The point of the exercise is to preserve service by reducing the vehicle count. Of course, the fact that the ward Councillor and his staff counted far more people on the 74 Mt. Pleasant that the TTC staff counts showed suggests that a lot of these cuts and their so-called justifications should have been reviewed. However, the Mayor wants cuts and the Mayor gets cuts, whether they make sense or not. How we will ever get these services back, given the shoddy work done in eliminating them, is a mystery.

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14. Sorry, Mike and Jason, your ideas make way too much sense, which is why they were never implemented in the past.

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15. I think you guys should read up on the history a little bit. In the early 80’s the plan WAS for ONE route to serve both of these York Mills North areas but there was so much opposition from the neighborhood that the routes were split in two. There will NEVER be a single route through there, even though it does make sense. You should read the articles from the day, the local alderman, Al Heisey took a real beating in the polls because he supported the routes. Nobody wanted either route, which is why as a sort of compromise the smaller buses were originally put in service on these routes. I think the neighborhood feels the same today. This is not the TTC’s fault.

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16. Lots of sensible ideas here (route alterations/amalgamations during off-peak etc.)…

    Even some semi-sensible ideas, that posters thought were non-sense! Seriously, why should you use a full-pave treatment for a low-use dead end crescent, with extremely low traffic? Why would you put street lights if there is no safety issue/residents don’t want them? Perfectly legitimate places to save money, not to mention, good for the environment!

    Granted, I don’t expect either of those ideas to apply to many streets inside the City limits or to save bundles of money, but I’ll take the 100k per year for better TTC service or streetlights where needed/desired!

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17. Steve,
    What area in a 2Km square has no service? I think major gaps like that need to be pointed out? If you have that info could you let us know?

    I am planning on riding some of the bus routes which are being cut and doing my own count and taking photos in the coming days.

    I think more people need to do that, so we have evidence.

    Steve: I talked about this in an earlier post. There are several blocks in central Toronto (the strip between Bathurst and Yonge from Bloor to Lawrence for example), but they’re not the only ones. In the TTC’s analysis, they claimed that they took the combined effect of multiple cuts into account, but it is abundantly clear that this is creative writing. An attempt by one Commissioner to fix this by adding a walking distance criterion, but this was voted down as it didn’t fit with the agenda.

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18. You know what would be interesting Steve – if you published a list of all the routes that got their service span extended as part of the Ridership Growth Policy that are NOT being cut in May, presumably because they are now productive enough to stand on their own. The fact that almost nobody wants to ride the 127 Davenport at 12 AM doesn’t diminish what an astonishing maneuver and success it was to at least try to have all the routes operate until 1 AM daily. It certainly makes Toronto unique in the U.S. and Canada in that regard.

    I totally agree that the TTC could have used better creativity to create late night routes on some of the routes that were cut back that would have allowed service to continue at a lesser cost. Should we take their absence as another sign that these cuts were rushed through and hastily enacted?

    Steve: I commented on this back in February (see the end of “For The Greater Good”). Of the 423 service adds (combination of route and period of service), half remain in operation. The percentage of survivors varies by time of day with the late evening periods being the least successful (M-F 39%, Sat 33%, Sun 28%), but during most periods, a majority of the adds remains in service.

    The political flavour of the day is to make the Ridership Growth Strategy, a Miller-era scheme, look like a failure and a waste of money when, in fact, much of what it brought the city was worthwhile. I have no problem with reviewing programs, but what we have now is fuelled entirely by ideology and the desire to “get even” for the Miller years, not good transit planning.

    Do you have any comments on the 36 Finch West? I remember the Globe article about the horrible overcrowding on that route, and my first thought was the useful graphs you have made which have shown the abysmal headway adherence on the 501, 510, and 512. Do you have enough information for the 36 as well?

    Steve: I don’t have any vehicle tracking data for Finch West, but this is an obvious target. Now that the bus network is switched over to GPS tracking, there should be good data worth analyzing. This will show service reliability and operational issues such as short turns, but it won’t reveal crowding or passups.

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19. Personally, I’m all for streetlights that only come on when either

    a) a car approaches
    b) another streetlight within the surrounding 4 comes on
    c) a person walks by

    A guy can dream for the technology. But, more importantly, a guy can dream for the days when the massive subsidy towards the car infrastructure is looked at for possible efficiencies.

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20. In general, I disagree with the idea of making special late-evening variations and combinations on regular routes, no matter how much ‘efficiency’ might be gained. The transition between regular and night service is quite enough to keep in mind. Since not every trip can be pre-planned, it’s much better to know that bus route xxx runs until 1 AM than trying to guess whether you have to go to station Bar to catch xxx or to station Foo to catch the late-night multi-route efficienc combo yyy.

    Steve: Part of the reason for running everything until 1am was to eliminate the need to know what routes ran when, where. “Efficiency” does not apply to one’s ability to travel.

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21. P. Coulman I am very familiar with the North York Mills bus issue, as I have family who live on the 115 and I in fact represented my grandparents in the matter, to stop the combination of the routes.

    The reason I am for a late night combo, is because the community needed the bus routes to serve York Mills Road during rush hours, to get students to York Mills C.I.

    But in late night periods there are no people going to York Mills C.I., and I would rather see service retained than taken away. And if that means having to combine service on lightly used routes late at night, than that is a good compromise. I don’t think anyone will argue that many routes were not carrying many people at night. But in such a case, one must look at how to improve the route and attract riders, before cutting.

    Clearly these cuts were pushed through fast without any consideration for late night route mergers, etc.

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22. Ed,
    That is a very good point and I totally agree with keeping routes on the same path no matter the time of day.

    But I think there are a couple areas such as York Mills, where a combo late at night would not have really been that large of an impact. Almost no one boards the bus on York Mills Road, on these routes. They all board at York Mills Station. So it would not have mattered if the bus took them along York Mills or the streets north.

    This is similar to how Blue Night routes are combined at night.

    That being said, this combo thing would only have worked in a few places and would not have been used across the network.

    What really concerns me is the cutting of arterial road service, like Bellamy, Leslie, and Avenue Road services. I don’t care how low the counts were, those routes should be considered primary routes, that should not be cut.

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23. A bit off topic, but

    Shound’t we see , by now , “a mock-up of the new new street cars”

    or better still “a proto-type”?

    And, when do the new subway train sets enter service?
    TTC has had months to sort out the minor issues.

    It there a systemic problem here?
    Just saying.

    Steve: My last info from the TTC is that the TR’s will enter service in June. As for the new streetcars, there were design changes implemented at the request of the Advisory Committee on Accessible Transit, and these changes affected other aspects of car design. The changes are now being retrofitted to the mockup. Assembly of the prototypes is also now in progress. I don’t have due dates for their arrival in Toronto, but that’s why things are delayed.

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24. The Ashbridges Carhouse Update March 2011 on the City website features photos of a Flexity LRV for Innsbruck, Austria. It appears intended as an example of what we’ll be getting and is slightly different from the previous renderings. Oddly this newsletter is the only place these pictures and comment exists. I do much prefer this front-end to the one in the renderings. Do you know if it is a reasonable indicator of the final design? I can’t imagine why they would present it in this manner if it wasn’t related. I assume the ACAT changes were purely internal.

    Steve: I checked with the TTC, and Innsbruck has been used as an example of the Flexity car operating in a Toronto-like environment. The “Toronto” front end has not changed.

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25. Steve: My last info from the TTC is that the TR’s will enter service in June.

    The delivery of the new subway trains has to be the poster child for ever-slipping deadline. First last fall, then by March, then May, now June… I’ll believe it when I actually get on one… and if that doesn’t happen until 2012 or 2013, at this point it won’t surprise me.

    Bodes SO well for the launch of the new streetcars.

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26. My point regarding the 78/115 services were:

    1) in the early 90s the 166 GraydonHall/SilverHills route ran nightly to pull people out of those areas and take them to York Mills (or Don Mills or Leslie) where they could get to wherever they wanted to go. Because of low, low ridership, this route was cancelled in a year. Granted a lot of years have gone by, maybe things have changed? and

    2) the TTC in the early 80’s and again in a report from 1989, 1996 and 2002 where not allowed to run buses on any other streets in the area. Speaking of that, I wonder if you know Steve, who gives or who has to give permission fro the TTC to use a certain street???

    I know in my current area (Fall&Queen in the beach) ONE complaint on Courcellette and the 143 was forbidden forever to use these streets. The school principal got wind that the TTC wanted to extend the 143 up to KR and then to garage as a no cost one-way extension to get more riders. The school complained to Ashton, and the result was there will never be a bus on these streets.

    How does that work Steve? again, who grants permission???? thanks

    Steve: Actually, the TTC can run anywhere it wants subject only to concerns about the physical ability to fit a bus along the street. This may be tempered by political and safety concerns in a neighbourhood, but the decision is up to the TTC to weigh the competing interests. That’s a political decision, and as we well know, political concerns win out. Some times the result is the “right” one on balance, and some times nimbyism triumphs.

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27. Thanks for the clarification Steve. Like I said, the 143 proposed extension was killed by an objection from then Councillor Ashton and we were told that as long as an objection is on file, The TTC will not consider any further action either way, as in case closed. I guess in this case, a councillor can pull a lot of weight! Also as you said regarding political will, the facts were the bus would run before school opened in the AM and long after school closed in the PM but that did not matter, Ashton said no to the bus, and we have no bus. ( oh, and yes, this all happened long before speedbumps were installed on these streets)

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28. The TTC Commissioners are so wise. Gasoline is going over 132¢ a litre on Friday. And less than a month before the TTC cuts bus route service.

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29. In response to P. Coulman, it doesn’t take much to get changes to a route or a layover point, usually just one person calling to complain about a bus laying over at the stop will do it. There are at least five or six routes at my division where we have been told not to layover at any time. It doesn’t matter that the stop might be the end of the line and the bus may having stopping there for thirty or more years. If the TTC receives one complaint about it, we are told not to stop there anymore unless we are servicing the stop. Realistically, the TTC should be asking these people “Did you not notice the stop when you moved in?” But that never happens. The TTC just bends over backwards to accomodate the complaint.

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30. You kinda wonder what the geniuses in TTC management are smoking when they delete late evening service on 3 routes covering a similar area. You would think that eliminating one, might be enough that the other two routes would gain enough traffic to be viable.

    Then again there are many parts of the Province where there is NO late evening service, and others that are limited to only a few routes, or buses hourly. It’s tough for someone in a place like Owen Sound to sympathize, when they have no evening service, let alone late evening service.

    Steve: And at the public feedback session at Metro Hall, they had the gall to say they had taken this sort of thing into account.

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31. Wogster,

    I think the premise behind those areas losing three routes, are that they are high income areas and the people will just drive.

    Overall though, those cuts go against the TTC’s own service standards, and a much bigger fuss should be made about this, as we can’t start chipping away at standards.

    If you look at what is going on in Ontario right now, we have three and probably more transit systems chipping away at standards

    Ottawa, York Region Transit, and now the TTC. All three are making service worse, telling people it is o.k. to walk further, and are not concerned with later evening services.

    Steve: In the process of assuming that everyone living in an area can drive, the TTC does two things. First, they ignore the many people scattered through those areas who don’t drive, notably tenants in much more upscale parts of the city. Second, they reinforce the attitude among the well-off that transit is “not for us” thereby undermining political support.

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32. Steve,
    Can you speak to the issue of core major routes losing service due to the cut of the so called low ridership branches?
    For example, last night(Saturday) at 10 pm, the 86D branch was standing room only. Yes most riders were riding the common portion of the 86 route. But with this cut, that means riders will have to all migrate to the regular 86 branch. Anyway I went through the service guide and here are some reductions we will see on major routes.

    Steve: I am going to embed my remarks here as this is a long comment. My general observation, something I noted in my summary of the changes, is that cuts such as the removal of the Wilson-Tandridge and other services does not make as big a change in the actual headway on some routes as it looks on paper. The TTC quotes an average headway, in effect based on the number of buses per hour, but without reference to the blending, or lack of it.

    If you look at the service westbound from Wilson Station weeknights, you will see that the 96C and 96F buses are scheduled at times to leave Wilson Station at almost exactly the same time as the regular 96 service. The reason for this is that the headway on the 96A and 96B is blended, while the other services run on their own schedule.

    On the 32 Eglinton West, the 32D Emmett Service generally runs on an unblended basis. When service is frequent, this really doesn’t matter because the buses are rarely exactly on time anyhow. When the service is infrequent, the 32D trips may or may not fill a gap between the other branches of the 32, and may in the worst case be scheduled to leave at or near the same time.

    The 43B Kennedy via Progress bus headway is at times integrated with the main route to Steeles, but not always. For example, on Sunday evenings, the 43B leaves Kennedy on the 00 and the 30, with a 43 to Steeles on the 06, 26 and 46. This produces headways over an hour of 6, 20, 4, 16, 14 — although this is 5 buses/hour, it’s not a 12 minute headway. Most people will experience the longer headway already because they are more likely, given random arrivals, to be in the wider gaps than the narrower ones.

    73 Royal York has, in some cases, an unblended 73B service to La Rose Avenue, but at other times it is integrated with the main route. The removal of this service, as you point out, will cause headways to be doubled on the route south of the point where the La Rose service branched off (Eglinton).

    76 Royal York South has a 76B Grand Avenue branch that is on a different headway from the main route, and this branch will be eliminated at some times. On this route, the 76B is scheduled so that although it runs less often than the 76, its trips fall midway between buses on the main route. All the same, the headway over an hour will be erratic. At least in this case, the TTC made an effort to blend services even with mismatched headways.

    It will be interesting to see how riders react especially on those routes where the discontinued service actually was scheduled to assist the main route rather than to effectively duplicate its trips.

    FREQUENCY CUTS COME MAY

    96 Wilson
    Weekday Late evening
    Reduced from a bus every 12 minutes to a bus every 20 minutes

    Saturday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 12 minutes to a bus every 22 minutes

    Sunday Early Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 12 minutes to a bus every 20 minutes

    Sunday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 12 minutes to a bus every 22 minutes

    32 Eglinton West
    Weekday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 5 minutes to a bus every 7 minutes

    Saturday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 8 minutes to a bus every 12 minutes

    Sunday Early Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 6 minutes to a bus every 9 minutes

    Sunday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 9 minutes to a bus every 15 minutes

    43 Kennedy
    Monday to Friday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 10 minutes to a bus every 15 minutes

    Saturday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 12 minutes to a bus every 20 minutes

    Sunday Morning-Afternoon
    Reduced from a bus every 6 minutes to a bus every 8 minutes

    Sunday Early Evening-Late Evening
    Reduce from a bus every 12 minutes to a bus every 20 minutes

    73 Royal York
    Weekday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 15 minutes to a bus every 30 minutes

    Saturday Early Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 12 minutes to a bus every 20 minutes

    Saturday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 15 minutes to a bus every 30 minutes

    Sunday Early and Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 15 minutes to a bus every 30 minutes

    76 Royal York South
    Weekday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 10 minutes to a bus every 15 minutes

    Saturday Early Morning
    Reduced from a bus every 10 minutes to a bus every 15 minutes

    Saturday Morning & Afternoon
    Reduced from a bus every 8 minutes to a bus every 12 minutes

    Sunday All Time Periods
    Reduced from a bus every 10 minutes to a bus every 15 minutes

    86 Scarborough
    Weekday Early Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 6 minutes to a bus every 7 minutes

    Weekday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 9 minutes to a bus every 14 minutes

    Saturday Early Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 7 minutes to a bus every 10 minutes

    Saturday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 10 minutes to a bus every 17 minutes

    Sunday Morning to Afternoon
    Reduced from a bus every 6 minutes to a bus every 9 minutes

    Sunday Early Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 8 minutes to a bus every 11 minutes

    Sunday Late Evening
    Reduced from a bus every 10 minutes to a bus every 17 minutes

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33. Come Sunday May 7, I wonder how many people will be waiting for the bus that never comes. I made a farewell trip on the last day of Sunday running for 162 and spoke to a woman who was probably a domestic worker at a Post Road mansion. She was surprised that weekend service was ending and said she would have to go back to walking.

    The posts at bus stops served only by 162 have stickers describing service terminations effective May 7 but 162 stops shared by other routes either do not have stickers or report only lighter restrictions (124 late night on Sundays, holidays).

    In previous years, I do recall posters at each bus stop announcing service changes. This time, I don’t recall seeing any such posters.

    Steve: They may get around to it eventually, although they will be on paper, not cardboard, and will wash away in the spring rains. The interesting bit will be how long there will still be out of date schedule information.

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