Ridership is up but expect delays: Grand River Transit

 Grand River Transit says while more people are taking the bus, increased traffic is causing delays.

According to GRT, the number of buses on the street is at pre-pandemic levels, but the number of riders is higher than in 2019.

“Especially since the fall of 2022 when schools were back in after Labour day, the universities back on campus, high schools back in class. We’ve really seen a significant bump in ridership on a number of our routes across the region,” Neil Malcolm, acting director of transit services said.

GRT said traffic levels are at or above pre-pandemic levels, especially around the universities which is slowing down buses.

Riders told CTV they are noticing the delays.

“I think, in general, they’re not on time. Sometimes I’m waiting for the bus, and I check the time, and they are usually delayed a few minutes or even 10 [minutes] to half an hour,” said one person waiting for the bus.

“Post-COVID – they weren’t really expecting that many people to come back. So it is quite busy,” said another person. “And they’ve been kind of allocating more buses to some routes and less to others as a result of it.”

GRT plans to make changes to a number of routes with the hopes to keep buses running on time.

For the winter of 2023, there are plans to have increased level of service for popular routes like 201 and 202 i-xpress.