Entry #47: Route 77 Wilmot and the Possible Expansion to other Townships

Starting next Monday (April 25) GRT's new BusPlus pilot project, route 77 Wilmot will begin servicing The Boardwalk in Kitchener-Waterloo and the Wilmot Township communities of Petersburg, Baden and New Hamburg. When reading more information about this new pilot project, the Regional planners are calling for 80-90 people a day (10-11 customers per hour). When the Regional planners put that in the report for the project, this will probably become a full conventional bus (40 foot bus). A new feature for this project is the flex routing. Flex routing is when a customer has to phone into GRT and they will be sent to a dispatch agent and the agent will determine if the route can do the flex routing. Personally, I am not a fan of the flex routing (just because of it takes the route out of it's way, and if successful, the flex routing would not work for a full 40 foot bus.) 

After hearing about the project, and knowing this route will do very well, the main question that came into my head was, what about the other townships? Taking a cab from North Dumbries (Ary), Woolwhich (Breslau, Maryhill, Conestoga, Elmira, and St. Jacobs) and Wellesley (Wellesley, St. Clements, Heidlburg, Linwood) can get very very expensive.  With this being the second township bus route, the first being route 21 Elmira, and shown that the 21 is very successful, why not give the 21 30 minute service during the week and Saturdays, even introduce hourly or maybe 40 minute Sunday service to see what ridership is like. I know this is all being very thoughtful and giving bus service to the townships would provide a direct link to spending time with family and friends, getting to part-time and full time jobs, see a movie, do errands in the city, going to the Airport and making connections to other GRT routes so people can move around the Region easily and quickly. 

Personally, I believe that route 77 will be a very successful route and will turn out to be a second route 21, busy and people can make other connections with other GRT routes and move freely throughout the Region.