Since the Grand River
Transit redesign, there's only a hand full of routes that have extensions on
them or the extension has become part of the full routing. The routes that
still have route extensions are routes 9 Lakeshore, 10 Conestoga College, 11
Country Hills, 16 Strasburg, 55 St. Andrews, and 59 Christopher. These are the
only routes that have extensions, the 13 Laurelwood has an extension and runs
year-round to Laurelwood/Blue Beach and route 23 has the Oldfield/Springmount
extension incorporated into the route.
The 9 extension, which
the 9 serves the Waterloo Industrial Park (mainly Kumpf Drive) assists the
industrial workers at night, the 9 extension operates at Sunday to Friday at
9pm. After 6:30pm on weekdays, route 10 is extended down Doon Villiage Road, Bechtel
Drive, Pioneer Road, to Conestoga College and after the 10 serves Conestoga
College it is extended to the College Residence. As a former Conestoga College student, I can say, that the 10 turning around within the College residence is a very bad idea. I personally believe that route 10 should be following the 61 routing out to the Cambridge Campus and turning around and coming back to the Doon Campus but have a layover at the Door Campus before departing back to Fairview. This way the 10 can not just collect students within Kitchener, it can also get the students in the Cambridge Campus. Route 11 has an extension, but it only operates on Sundays, but because of the roundabout construction on Ottawa Street, it runs 7 days a week, temporally though. The 11 is extended along Ottawa Street to Strasburg Road, and back onto Kingswood Drive. This way all of Kingswood has service. I have not been on the 11's extension since the start of the roundabout construction, I cannot say if the extension is busy or not. Route 16 Strasburg's extension is very interesting. When the 16 leaves Forest Glen Plaza to Conestoga College, it travels down all of Biehn Drive, turns around at the bottom and makes a right onto Black Walnut Drive continuing to Conestoga College. My first year at Conestoga College, I did take the 16 as the was part of its midday service, once I took it, i realized how useless the extension is. No one gets picked up, except for one person, I personally believe that the 16 should not have the Biehn extension, instead, have the 16 operate 2 ways to and from Conestoga College and Forest Glen into the Huron Village neighbourhood. The routing for the 16 would be Huron-Parkvale-Woodbine-Huron-Battler-Old Huron-Biehn-Black Walnut-Bechtel-Pioneer-Old Carriage-Homer Watson-Conestoga College Boulevard and into the college. 16 returning to Forest Glen plaza would be Doon Valley-Homer Watson-Old Carriage-Pioneer-Bechtel-Black Walnut-Biehn/Old Huron-Battler-Huron-Woodbine-Parkvale-Huron-Strasburg to Forest Glen. This way, the residence in the Huron Village would have more bus service during the day. For Cambridge route 55 St. Andrews, its service extension is traveling along Main Street and Grand Avenue, this extension is similar to route 11, it only operates on Sundays. Route 59 service extension is not very beneficial as it removes service from Langlaw Drive and has Service to the South Cambridge Shopping Centre, again just like the 55 and 11, it only operates on Sundays.
