A schedule means nothing to them. Late, early, you see it all with them. And not just a minute, sometimes 5 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes.

In addition, the route planning is useless. You have two 51's literally playing reindeer games down emerson going to the exact same location, back to back, within 20 seconds of each other

When considering the relative size and resources of the cities, TTC is so much worse than HSR.

Honestly, it's not bad at all. Yeah, it's late sometimes, or even early... But like we don't even understand how hard it is to stay on schedule... Oh, look, a wheelchair! that's 3 minutes gone there. Oh, look, no one is at the stops, and no matter how slow I drive, I'm *still* early! Not much you can do. Oh look Im starting my shift at 3, and the driver from before is 10 minutes late, and Im fucked over already! + traffic jams, accidents, detours, etc... shit adds up.

And so what if they stop to pee or get coffee? I'm close with someone who is a bus driver for the HSR and it's fucking hell at times. If you're running late at the end of the line, guess what? You don't get your break, you have to keep driving to try to catch up. You can go hours without a break, which is why pee/coffee stops are necessary.

Not to mention people can just be complete assholes, and that can put you in a foul mood all day.

We all need to just calm down & quit our bitching, we're lucky that we pay $125 for 8 months of bus service, that's literally nothing!

EDIT: As a side note, I've been using the HSR for 10 years, and it pisses me off how students complain all the time. Relax. Drive a bus for a day, and you'll realize the hell it is.

I'm guilty of being one of the people who complain about HSR a lot while I was still at Mac, but it honestly really was because I was bewildered by how they could be early/late so often and have buses stacked back-to-back so much (sometimes 4 or even 5 buses back-to-back).

Granted I didn't often consider the issues possibly facing drivers that were well-brought up earlier in the thread already, but it still shocked me a lot over these years whenever I saw buses perpetually late+early for over 15-20 minutes and the whole stacking issue.

I've ridden on public transportations my whole life - in Mississauga, in downtown Toronto (TTC), in Brampton, in Markham. And the countless times I've ridden buses in those cities have always been quite amazingly on schedule and without any bus stacking ever. I dunno, it might just be the routes I use in those other cities (though I've been on a lot of them over the years) or the routes I use in Hamilton, but I still feel something's up with Hamilton buses since I've NEVER experienced buses stacking up so much before and most cities somehow manage to keep their buses on schedule much better than I've seen in Hamilton these past several years.

Just my long-winded 0.02.

Originally Posted by PockyWarrior

I'm guilty of being one of the people who complain about HSR a lot while I was still at Mac, but it honestly really was because I was bewildered by how they could be early/late so often and have buses stacked back-to-back so much (sometimes 4 or even 5 buses back-to-back).

Granted I didn't often consider the issues possibly facing drivers that were well-brought up earlier in the thread already, but it still shocked me a lot over these years whenever I saw buses perpetually late+early for over 15-20 minutes and the whole stacking issue.

I've ridden on public transportations my whole life - in Mississauga, in downtown Toronto (TTC), in Brampton, in Markham. And the countless times I've ridden buses in those cities have always been quite amazingly on schedule and without any bus stacking ever. I dunno, it might just be the routes I use in those other cities (though I've been on a lot of them over the years) or the routes I use in Hamilton, but I still feel something's up with Hamilton buses since I've NEVER experienced buses stacking up so much before and most cities somehow manage to keep their buses on schedule much better than I've seen in Hamilton these past several years.

Just my long-winded 0.02.

Just wanted to say that maybe it's like that Downtown. Not necessarily other parts of Toronto. I waited 55 minutes once for a bus that was supposed to come every 11 minutes and then three of them came at once ... which still didn't explain where the other two went.

Originally Posted by PockyWarrior

I'm guilty of being one of the people who complain about HSR a lot while I was still at Mac, but it honestly really was because I was bewildered by how they could be early/late so often and have buses stacked back-to-back so much (sometimes 4 or even 5 buses back-to-back).

Granted I didn't often consider the issues possibly facing drivers that were well-brought up earlier in the thread already, but it still shocked me a lot over these years whenever I saw buses perpetually late+early for over 15-20 minutes and the whole stacking issue.

I've ridden on public transportations my whole life - in Mississauga, in downtown Toronto (TTC), in Brampton, in Markham. And the countless times I've ridden buses in those cities have always been quite amazingly on schedule and without any bus stacking ever. I dunno, it might just be the routes I use in those other cities (though I've been on a lot of them over the years) or the routes I use in Hamilton, but I still feel something's up with Hamilton buses since I've NEVER experienced buses stacking up so much before and most cities somehow manage to keep their buses on schedule much better than I've seen in Hamilton these past several years.

Just my long-winded 0.02.

The reason that cities like Toronto have no stacking is because if busses begin to run late/off schedule, they can literally stop a bus and turn it around to fix the schedule. How inconvenient is that for the passengers? I'm glad we don't have that kind of system for the HSR.

edit: whoops, doublepost! feel free to delete, mods.

The HSR is a joke of a transit system. Im from Toronto so I've dealt with the TTC for a long time. I've also been on MiWay (Mississauga Transit), Brampton Transit and YRT. The HSR is the worst out of all of these transit systems and i can list a bunch of problems with their service if I really wanted to. I'll summarize the basic problems with the HSR:

-Bunching is the most obvious; the 1A, 5C/5A, and 51 are constantly run in pairs. You can even add the 52 and 10 B-Line. If you look at other cities who run multiple routes on the same street, service is still spaced out (for example MiWay with the Hurontario routes)

-Delaware bus. I really shouldnt even have to explain this, if you have ever questioned why its numbered the way it is then its clearly a problem

-Confusing to read bus schedules: It literally takes me 10mins to figure out when a bus is going to come from reading their rediculous online pdfs

Like I said, I can go on and on about this stuff but the bottom line is if you compare the HSR to other transit systems, it is a joke. Its no wonder the HSR has the lowest cost recovery (ie: lowest revnue on the dollar) then all of the other systems in the GTA

Originally Posted by amare

-Bunching is the most obvious; the 1A, 5C/5A, and 51 are constantly run in pairs. You can even add the 52 and 10 B-Line. If you look at other cities who run multiple routes on the same street, service is still spaced out (for example MiWay with the Hurontario routes)

Well you can blame McMaster for that. All of the students pill on the bus even though most live in walking distance, then they get off in Westdale/Emerson. So the busses are alway full around McMaster but by the time they get downtown their half empty. But to compensate they have to add more busses to the same route.

Things you can do to resolve HSR stress:
1) Move to the back of the bus, don't stop in front of the doors or other people can't get on.
2) If you're <20 minutes walk to school, walk.


Bus drivers are people too. Try holding your bladder for 8 + hours. It's fucking terrible. Let them go to the bathroom and get a coffee. :|

The fact that they have a system where you can call to see when the next bus is coming is fantastic. Plus the synching with google maps = <3

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

People who complain about the HSR clearly haven't had to deal with a truly shitty system, like the TTC.

Or Oakville Transit, where all the buses leave the GO station as the train pulls in.

Originally Posted by Lois

Things you can do to resolve HSR stress:
1) Move to the back of the bus, don't stop in front of the doors or other people can't get on.
2) If you're <20 minutes walk to school, walk.

Can I add to 1) and advise people to use the god damned stairs.

I swear, the way that people clump up around the back door/steps to the back of the bus makes me wonder if they see those three steps as some magical impenetrable barrier.

^ Agreed. That's what I meant when move to the back of the bus. Whenever it was fullish, I used to go all the way to the back and people would look at me like I was crazy. :|

I do have issues with the HSR. I take the bus for two different jobs; one in Ancaster and the other on Upper James and I consistently see those buses 10-15 minutes late and it drives me up the wall.

This morning for example I was at my stop 5 minutes early waiting for a 5c that NEVER showed up. The next one showed up at it's allotted time but didn't see me and ended up stopping about 20 meters away from me which would've been fine if the driver hadn't yelled at me when I got on the bus because he couldn't see me. After waiting 50 minutes in the rain and wind for a bus that never came and then experiencing that let's just say I'm pretty ticked off with the system today. I can handle the 15 minutes late thing every once in awhile but the fact that it's almost every day and sometimes the buses don't even come is a bit much.

sigh... whatever happened to the good old times... remember them? when MTV used to play music, when Nickelodeon showed real cartoons, and when people used to get to the bus stop 5-10 minutes before the bus was scheduled, so if the bus showed up earlier, they wouldn't miss it.