In these unprecedented times, our region has a unique opportunity to rethink how our roadways and cities can work better for everyone.

One such examples is bus stop balancing. When stops are too close together, customers spend more time waiting for their buses to arrive. And the same goes for the buses: our buses spend over 700,000 hours every year waiting at the stops. This is the equivalent of $73 million per year in operating costs.

TransLink’s Bus Stop Balancing project tackles this issue. It improves travel times and reliability for customers across the region by consolidating and removing the least used bus stops that are too close together.

Starting on Monday, April 12, we will be balancing the bus stop spacing on Routes 17 Oak/Downtown and 25 Brentwood Station/UBC.

These routes have some of the closest stop spacing, often less than 250-300 metres (or 2 blocks) apart. We’ve carefully considered the physical constraints, accessibility, convenience, and transit performance, among other criteria, in selecting the location of each bus stop.

Benefits of balancing bus stops are:

• more reliable buses and fewer delays
• more comfortable trips with fewer stops
• more sidewalk and curb space for non-travellers

To learn more, visit: https://www.translink.ca/busstopbalancing

Our current rollout is based on the successful pilot project on Route 2 Macdonald/Downtown in Fall 2020.  Customer’s travel times were reduced by four minutes roundtrip as a result. 86% of customers were able to use their existing bus stop and had a faster, more reliable trip. Although 14% of customers’ stops were closed, the nearest alternative was generally within one block of the closed stop.

We’re balancing bus stops to get you to the people and places that matter most to you, faster and more reliably.