The Bus Comes to Town

The GRT has finally setup a pilot route out to Elmira passing through St. Jacob's. I have taken it to get to work these past two days and found it very nice. I need to get up 40minutes earlier to get to the office by my normal 8am but that is no big deal. Yesterday not knowing the full schedule, when leaving work I had to wait 12 minutes for the first bus then 25 for the one that goes to Elmira.

There has not been that many people on the bus so I hope they do not discontinue this pilot but make it permanent. My hope is that it will continue and that when the lease on our one vehicle is up we can go down to one. We have been thinking about it for some time now and this bus route makes it very viable. Currently I save about $10 a week on gas, which does not seem much since I increase my commute by 60minutes a day, but if we can reduce by one vehicle then we would save several hundred a month. I even think in the winter if I continue to coach that I could make the Monday practices with time to spare, and with my two girls going to the same school next year getting them to the arena will be easy.

The only complaints I have about this service is that it does not run late enough. During the week the last bus leaves Conestoga mall at 6pm and on Saturday it leaves at 4pm and there is no Sunday service. I was thinking that this service would open the Conestoga malls jobs to more teens from Elmira and St. Jacob's. Stopping so early prevents the easy travel for these jobs. It also prevents the easy access to the movie theatre at the mall.

Lets hope that the route is made permanent and that the schedule is lengthen a little.

This is my point of view