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McKnight Station: A Rough Start

12/19/07

  03:52:59 am, by Nimble   , 236 words  
Categories: Announcements [A], Common Sense

McKnight Station: A Rough Start

I had a bit of a rude awakening coming back home on Monday. My wife had dropped me off at work, or else I would had my shock in the morning, and perhaps waited for a bus that would never come.

Calgary Transit opened their McKnight station for public use on Monday.

I suppose they were trying to rely on radio and local news channels to divulge the news, though, since there was not even the amount of paper signage present at Whitehorn station that they use for warnings of schedule alterations due to weekend construction.

I thought I might have missed something obvious, but when I alighted at Whitehorn station on the way north, a good few dozen people got on the C-train.

Not only had they opened the new station, they had also eviscerated bus service from Whitehorn station, the previous end of the line.

By way of personal gripe, I used to have four bus routes in and out of my neighbourhood available to me. Now I have two, and one of them goes by far the long way around. It does not seem that the buses come more often by way of compensation, either. *sigh*

Pretty poorly handled, really. In passing Whitehorn this morning, I saw yet more confused patrons waiting for buses that would never arrive. I guess everyone will adjust, eventually, but not without a modicum of somewhat sour head-scratching.

3 comments

Comment from: ElTwo [Visitor]  
ElTwo

I see the same thing when I get on the LRT for my short run downtown. Everyone’s gawking at the sign in front, wondering just where “Mcknight” is supposed to be going. I’m not sure whether I should blame that on poor knowledge of the city, or lack of information on CT’s part. CT still sucks though.

12/19/07 @ 17:46
Comment from: Nimble [Member]  

They certainly didn’t have everything lined up properly to start with. The electronic signs downtown still say “Next train: Whitehorn” :)

I’m still glad, though, that they had reimplemented an electronic “next train” system at all - they just gave up on that idea for matter of years a while back.

12/23/07 @ 13:11
Comment from: Nimble [Member]  

By the way, they have updated their electronic signs :)

Still none too happy about being reduced down to one route I can take. Last week, I got out of work at five different times, and in every single case, I missed the bus at the end of the line by one or two minutes. The resultant waits were boring and chilly.

They have shelters to stand in. The big one even has overhead heaters (natural gas? reminds me of some of the old portable heaters in the UK), but they are too far away to counteract the chill of the wind that blows often quite briskly through it - I gather it’s so we don’t suffer carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s a nice thought, though.

I wonder where the next stop will take them. Will they ever make one that goes to the airport, I wonder? The diagrams I saw last year were a bit hard to interpret. It almost made it look like there was going to be some sort of transit running along McKnight to Barlow… but there the diagram ended, and that’s not a sensible destination on its own, though it takes things a stone’s throw closer to the airport :)

Perhaps the taxi bloc would revolt in that case! Taxi fares to and from the deep south are… amazing.

01/25/08 @ 03:49