Blog Entry #37 King-Victoria Hub, Charles St. Terminal, Route 20 and Cambridge Ctr. Terminal

It has been two weeks since the implementation of the new 2015 GRT routes, which have picked up within the first few days of being in service. These new service changes are for the better, not just because of the LRT coming in the next few years, but in general because more and more subdivisions are being built and they require other methods of transportation. The main point of this particular blog post is mainly focusing on the new King-Victoria transit hub, the Charles St. terminal and the route 20. To being, let's look at the King-Victoria transit hub. The King-Victoria hub is going to be the main terminal for making connections in Downtown Kitchener, but there is a catch, not all of the routes will be servicing the hub. The routes that will be servicing the hub via on street parking include routes 6 Bridge, 7 Mainline, 20 Victoria-Frederick and the 204 Victoria-Highland iXpress. The routes actually turning around within the hub include routes 2 Forest Heights and route 34 Bingemans, with the possibility of routes 3 Ottawa South, 4 Glasgow, 11 Country Hills, and 22 Laurentian West (Depending what the 2016-2017 GRT service changes are proposed and what will look like). The routes that will not service this hub include route 1 Queen-River (transfer at Frederick/King also known as Kitchener Market Square), 5 Erb (transfer at Uptown), 8 University-Fairview Park (transfer at Fairview Park or any where else along the 8 routing), Route 23 Idlewood (Stanley Park-Fairview Park run, transfer to the hub at Fairview or Stanley Park mall) 27 Chicopee (transfer at Fairview), 29 Keats Way (Transfer at the Boardwalk or University/King) 31 Columbia (Transfer at Conestoga Mall), 33 Huron (Transfer at Block Line Station). In order to get people used to transferring to make connections on the street, the hub should have been built before the LRT construction, that way, people could have been taught to make transfers on the street, rather than making these huge changes and requesting people to transfer on the street without warning. As for the Charles St. terminal, I heard rumours floating around that it will no longer be around once the King-Victoria hub is operational, but it turns out, Charles St. Terminal will be used as a back up terminal. I can see that Charles St. becomes a Greyhound terminal (mainly greyhound, more runs will be needed to be created) with some GRT buses servicing it (route 2 and other routes) then continuing to the King-Victoria Hub. Since the introduction of the new revised route 20 Victoria-Frederick, it no longer services Charles St. and it is the only bus that travels along Frederick St. and services the Frederic Street mall. There have been many issues with the 20, mainly with senior citizens asking why the route 20 no longer services Charles St and what other bus routes can be used to make connections with the route 20. Personally, route 20 should have never been taken out of Charles St., it needed to stay in that terminal until the new hub was built then pull every bus out of Charles St. and move it to the King-Victoria hub. Now looking south of the Region, Cambridge, one of its main hubs is the Cambridge Centre. There are two main hubs in Cambridge, Ainslie St. and Cambridge Centre, these transit terminals are very very busy and as proposed in 2015, the Cambridge Centre terminal would be moved closer to Hespeler Rd. to make connections with the BRT (currently route 200 iXpress, as of 2017 ION BRT). Unfortunately, it was not moved this year, but in 2016 it will be moved to make more direct connections with the BRT along Hespeler road.