North Durham Transit Services Need an Overhaul

 Hey pals!

A few months ago, I made a trip up to Port Perry. It's a cute little town, and I had a great time doing my readings on Lake Scugog with an ice latte in hand. To get into town, I went through Uxbridge on Durham Region Transit, but took GO Transit home. The infrequent, and frankly, inconvenient schedules make navigating on transit in North Durham Region difficult. In this somewhat short blog post, I will explore some of the challenges of North Durham faces, and how they can be significantly improved upon with little additional resources required.

Background and Issues

Two routes operate in North Durham Region. 

I wish DRT made good route maps so I don't have to use this random clipping anymore.

The first route is Durham Region Transit's 905B. While most 905 service stays south of Windfields Farm, service every 90 minutes runs up to Uxbridge via Port Perry, using Simcoe. This route also includes a stop at ONTechU/Durham College North Campus when travelling to and from Whitby Station. In Uxbridge, connections can be made to GO's 70/71 service, with connections to the Stouffville Line.

GO bus route 81.

The second route is GO Transit's 81. This route runs from Whitby Station to Beaverton via Port Perry and Cannington. This route uses Brock Street mostly, and crosses the 905 in Port Perry. Service is very limited, with only two trips each way. At least it runs on weekends as well.

The entirety of the 81's schedule on weekdays. The weekend schedule is the same number of trips, but the times are changed.

As you can tell, service up this way is not great. Sure, you may think that because the area is rural, the frequency of the 905B is decent enough. It's not bad, but it does make it difficult to plan trips, or run multiple errands in a day. Additionally, since service is focussed on the regional vision, trips within Uxbridge and Port Perry are done using on-demand services. This isn't great when these are your two biggest population centres. Additionally, since both services are anchored to the Lakeshore East GO Line, travelling into York Region immediately west is simply not possible, or requires an uncoordinated transfer in Uxbridge.

My Proposal

The reason this blog post is so short is because it doesn't take a huge plan to make significant impact.

Recently, Durham Region Transit has been trying to get headways on some of their 900-series 'Regional' routes up to 15 minutes during peaks. While the 905 was not one of these routes, I think that increasing service to 15 minutes should be in the cards, as ridership continues to increase. While the entire 15-minute service obviously wouldn't reach the northern part of Durham, I think a 45-minute headway north of Windfields Farm is appropriate.

This 45-minute service would continue into Port Perry. The route would travel to Reach and Highway 7, splitting again. One branch, which I call the 905B, would run to Wellington/Highway 404 Park-and-Ride in Aurora via Uxbridge, every 90 minutes. This would restore a link lost many years ago, and provide transit to Ballantrae, in York. The second branch, the 905C, would duplicate the GO 81 route, to Beaverton via Cannington, also every 90 minutes. This branching scheme would keep service functionally frequent to Port Perry, and provide decent levels of coverage on the appendages. The 905B service to Aurora would also bank on York Region Transit extending regular service to the park-and-ride lot, likely through an improved 33 Wellington, running all-day, every-day, every 30 minutes. 

With this, I would also implement local circulators in Uxbridge and Port Perry. Instead of on-demand, a bus would come by around every 45 to 60 minutes, making connections to the 905 route and local destinations, including grocery stores and medical centres.

While it may seem backwards, I would probably discontinue the 81. Although it has a purpose, improvements to the 905 and an all-day connection to Sunderland, Cannington, and Beaverton make it less of a neccessity. Without the connection to ONTechU/Durham College that the 905 has, ridership would fall further. A couple of isolated stops would lose service, but this would still be covered by Durham Region Transit's rural on-demand service. Additionally, GO, when it cut the 81's former, more robust schedule, has made it clear these trips were being kept out of necessity, and so they are clearly on the chopping block to some extent.

Is the new 905 a bit overkill for a local transit agency? I mean, yeah, of course, but Durham is a large area so it isn't too unreasonable to expect the regional municipality to provide services to the whole regional municipality.

In the map above, the green line is the 15-minute service segment. The olive line is the 45-minute service segment. The 90-minute 905B is shown in orange, and the 90-minute 905C is shown in red. I did not map the unrelated 905 branch within Oshawa, the local circulators in Uxbridge and Port Perry, or GO's 70/71 service that reaches Uxbridge.

Conclusion

North Durham is probably the easiest rural area in the GTA to serve by public transit. Doing so requires a low amount of new resources with a huge impact. My only question is, then, when can it get started?