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Service Reliability on 22 Coxwell: Part II September 2021

This article continues a review of the 22 Coxwell bus with data from September 2021.

All of the problems seen in the analysis of August 2021 data are here: gaps and bunching, missing buses, and an overall lack of service quality for extended periods.

September 2021 Overview

There was a new signup period for September which probably led to some change in drivers on some runs, but the schedules were the same as in August.

Danforth & Coxwell Southbound

The overall weekday stats are similar to August, but the widening of average headways and standard deviations begins a bit earlier in the day. In the week-by-week charts, cases where the trend lines pull away from the expected value typically indicate that buses are missing. This is borne out by wider gaps with no corresponding pairs of buses.

  • In week 1, Wednesday and Thursday are particularly bad.
  • In week 2, Wednesday and Friday are the culprits.
  • In week 3, service is comparatively well-behaved.
  • In week 4, Tuesday and Thursday have problems, as does the late evening service on Friday.
  • In week 5, Wednesday afternoon and early evening are particularly bad.
  • Saturdays and Sundays have somewhat more irregular service than weekdays, and bunching is evident from the presence of many short headways. as opposed to weekdays where the usual problem is missing buses.

Daily details follow later in the article.

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Queen & Coxwell Northbound

As in August, the service northbound at Queen shows many of the same patterns as for southbound trips above, but with more dispersion in the headway values (this is reflected in the higher standard deviation values).

For evening and weekend service, this is the midpoint of the route for service that originates at Bingham Loop.

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Bingham Loop Westbound

As in August, service leaving Bingham Loop westbound operates on a range of headways spanning 5 to 15 minutes with a few outliers where service is missing. On weekend, headways range from zero to 20 minutes. Note that on Sundays, the averages stay in roughly the same place, but the actual headways show much bunching and gapping from noon onward.

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Wednesday, September 1

September 1 begins well enough, but at noon, a bus (“yellow”) disappears until just before 7pm as “dark blue”. The evening service was uneventful. The two-bus service through the day was usually not adjusted to account for the missing bus, and there were regular gaps where “yellow” should have been.

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Thursday, September 2

  • Just after 3pm, “pink” disappears, and is replaced by “yellow” shortly after 4pm.
  • In the evening, a fourth bus should appear, but does not and this leaves a travelling gap throughout the service trip after trip. “Yellow” carries this gap and, as a result, gets shorter layovers at the terminals.
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Saturday, September 4

Service on September 4 was something of a bus musical chairs with vehicles coming and going through the day. This implies either a lot of breakdowns, or operators bringing new vehicles out of the garage rather than taking over service on the street.

  • At 9:30am “dark blue” disappears. “Yellow” appears at about the same time but does not actually begin a trip south from Coxwell Station until 10:20.
  • At 1:00pm “grey” starts behaving oddly coming and going from the data, and at 2:00 it disappears completely. The bus may be operating out of service for part of this period. A similar problem occurs with “brown” which disappears at about 1:50pm.
  • Two new buses, “pink” and “dark blue” join the route at about the same time.
  • From 4:00pm, “dark blue” and “light blue” pair up for a few trips.
  • In the evening, “dark blue”, “light green” and “pink” both disappear, but are replaced by “dark green” and “purple”. For its first few trips, “dark green” appears to sign off at terminals making it disappear from the service.
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Sunday, September 5

  • During the late afternoon and early evening, all of the buses stay in service, but there is a lot of pairing.
  • In a short interval between 5:40 and 6:00, all four buses are at Bingham Loop with large gaps before and after the group. This problem continues in particular with “pink” and “turquoise” through the evening.
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Monday, September 6 (Labour Day)

  • Just after 7am, “dark blue” spends a trip sitting at Coxwell Station. It is replaced by “pink” at about 8:20.
  • At 11:50am, pink and mauve form a pair that stays together until 2:20pm.
  • Just after 4pm, “yellow” and “turquoise” form a pair on and off, but from 5pm onward the service is regular.
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Wednesday, September 8

Service begins in good shape through the “am peak”, but then things fall apart.

  • Just after 10am, “dark blue” disappears followed by “yellow” at 11am.
  • A bit later “pink” and “dark green” appear. “Pink” appears to be an extra because only three buses are supposed to be in service at this point. Even when it does operate, until just after 5pm, it is often running as part of a pair.
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Friday, September 10

  • The service operated with only two buses from just after 10am until 3:30pm.
  • For the rest of the day, service was normal except for minor bunching between 7 and 8pm.
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Saturday, September 11

  • Service starts out poorly with “brown” having an affinity for travelling together with other buses on the route right from 7am until it disappears at about 10:30.
  • The service remains reasonably spaced until about 4:30pm when “mauve” takes a layover at Coxwell Station making a gap in service for almost two trips.
  • Service in the evening is fairly even although “turquoise” and “pink” run close to each other for a few trips.
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Sunday, September 12

  • Service runs reliably until about 12:30pm when “purple/yellow” become a pair which also picks up the other two buses on the route to the point that they are all at Bingham Loop within a 20-minute interval just before 2pm.
  • “Purple” gets a short turn, but “yellow/turquoise” remain a pair until about 4pm.
  • No sooner is that problem fixed, but “dark blue/purple” become a pair until 6pm.
  • “Purple” stops eastbound on Kingston Road west of Bingham Loop and is replaced by “pink” at 6:30pm.
  • “Pink remains in service until about 7:50pm, and “purple” reappears at 8:10pm.
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Saturday, September 18

  • Service runs normally until just before 10am when a bunch of “yellow/pink” forms. This is short-lived, but it does not take long for a larger bunch to accumulate. Three buses arrive in a span of 10 minutes at Bingham Loop at 10:50am.
  • Two vehicles are short-turned: “turquoise” at about 10:50 and “dark blue” at 11:30am. This does not prevent a parade of four buses arriving at Bingham Loop between 12:20 and 12:35pm.
  • “Dark blue” makes an express trip from Bingham Loop to Gerrard and Coxwell, but still needs to make a short trip to Coxwell & Queen to get back into place.
  • Meanwhile, “yellow/pink” form into a pair and are later joined by “purple”. This trio arrives at Bingham Loop at 3:50pm.
  • This erratic service continues, including a few short turns into the late afternoon. Even when things are more or less back to normal, some bunching continues until after 8pm.
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Tuesday, September 21

  • After the am peak, “green” goes out of service at about 10:20 and is replaced at 11:30am by “turquoise”.
  • At 1:40pm, “turquoise” goes out of service, and is replaced at 4:40pm by “dark blue”. During some of the period when buses are missing, there are gaps, at other time the remaining buses are evenly spaced.
  • At 6:20pm, “dark blue” goes out of service. It is replaced by “purple” at 7:50pm.
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Thursday, September 23

  • “Dark blue” disappears just after 1pm and is not replaced until “pink” appears just before 7pm. The remaining two buses are fairly evenly spaced from about 2pm onward.
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Saturday, September 25

  • From 7am, one bus “dark green” is missing and it does not enter service until about 8:50. The gap where it should be is evident in the chart. “Dark green” operates only a few trips and leaves service just before 10am.
  • Another bus, “grey”, appears at Bingham Loop at 10:30. Although it appears to make an eastbound trip from Coxwell Station at 11am, there is no tracking data and it may have been running “out of service”.
  • At about 12:40pm, “purple” disappears for one trip at Coxwell Station, but reappears at about 1:30pm. This is likely a crew change problem.
  • “Brown” goes out of service at 1:50pm followed by “blue” at 2:25pm. A new bus, “dark blue” enters service at about 3:15pm.
  • All four buses on the route arrive at Bingham Loop between 3:15 and 3:35pm with a substantial gap on either side of them. They operate 1.5 trips like this until “turquoise” is short turned at 4:50pm and “dark blue” leaves service at 5:45pm. “Light turquoise” enters service just before 6:30pm
  • “Grey” leaves service at 6:50pm and is replaced by “pink” a 7:40pm.
  • Service through the early evening includes some bunching, notably by “pink”.
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Sunday, September 26

  • Service is fairly regular until after 1pm when “pink” becomes very friendly with both “dark blue” and “turquoise”. This continues until about 5:30pm.
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Wednesday, September 29

  • Service operates regularly until about 3:10pm when “yellow” goes out of service. The two remaining buses run sometimes together, sometimes on a proper spacing for the rest of the daytime service.
  • In the evening, the route operates with only three buses (“dark blue” joins at 7pm) until “turquoise” joins them at 9:30pm. The gap where it should have been makes a few round trips.
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