Halifax Transit

The 42 serving Kempt Rd going downtown is always 10 – 20 minutes late. On rare days it comes early or even later. It’s supposed to show at 5:07. Often, an Out of Service bus goes by before the 42 does. Yesterday while my coworker and I were waiting miserably in the second dumping of the first big snow storm the Out of Service bus arrived at 5:11, but this time the driver stopped. He let us on and said «Who knows when your bus is going to show» and he wouldn’t let us pay because «I’m off!» I got home earlier than normal even in a snow storm.
Honestly, the transit system in Halifax is disorganized and sometimes woefully inconvenient, but the drivers are honest, caring, hardworking people that deserve so much more respect than they deserve.

Not sure where these Ottawa peeps are coming from, but having lived in Ottawa and Halifax, Halifax is as bad as OC Transpo in terms of timeliness and friendliness of drivers, only cheaper. Either way, both get one star.
I have no idea how public transportation in a mid-​sized city could be so woefully inadequate. Phantom buses that never show up, late buses, and rude bus drivers that yell at YOU for chasing an early bus.
If there was any excuse to privatize a public transportation organization, Halifax transit would be it.

My fiancé and I just moved from ottawa, ontario and I gotta say the transit system here is way better not only is it faster cheaper and more efficient the bus drivers make it a point to take care of people that need it I had the bus driver pull over the other day to let an older lady off the bus and he helped her cross the street. Well done sir.

I just moved from Ottawa to Halifax and I can’t believe how great the transit is here. It’s been a week and I know this city already and it’s buses. Easy, cost efficient, and fast.

When I made the move from Dartmouth to Halifax, I knew I would be in for a big change in how I travel to work. Previously, I would drive to the ferry and then ferry over (I work along the Halifax water front). Now, since parking in my work building is beyond ridiculous, I have to rely on the bus to get from Washmill Lake area to Scotia Square (and then walk to Purdy’s Wharf).
I live in the new development are off of Washmill so unfortunately there is no bus stop quite close. Instead, I walk about 10minutes down to Dunbrack and wait for a bus there. It took me a good week to understand how taking the bus worked, and which bus to take. In the morning I either have to take a 7:15am bus and get to work almost an hour early, or take the only other option for me at 7:55am and be to work with maybe 10 minutes to spare (if traffic is good). Luckily, the busses are express routes so the ride is not long. I take the 31 to work and the 31 home as well, which is pretty zippy.
The bus drivers for that route (morning and evening drivers) are quite nice. However, while waiting for the bus and observing, it is common that a lot of drviers will drive away (early) as people are running to them/​waving their arms. Also, the bus is pretty good at swerving in and out of traffic and it is almost like the bus is the bully and all of the other cars are the bullied victims — let me pass/​get out of my way or else!
Luckily my evening bus is not overly busy and it is a relaxing drive home. The bus in the morning gets very full — I do usually get a seat as it tends to fill after my stop. Is there a passenger limit for busses? it seems dangerous for there to be literally no moving space in the aisles as there are dozens of people standing — some of which try their darnest not to topple over as the bus moves.
Overall, so far no huge complaints — I suspect I won’t have many until I either miss a bus or experience a full winter relying on the busses. I’ve heard they might eventually add a stop to the area I live in — I can hope as I am not looking forward to the rainy season!

Hop on the bus gus
Up to the moment that I started to ride the bus,
thought Bus Drivers are over paid and made fuss
But now I ride on a daily basis,
I sit, I observe, i listen, I watch peoples faces,
there are psycho’s, wacko’s weird ones alike,
all with headphones, texting their life
Rudeness, coldness, staring you through,
and that’s just the front where I am at eye view,
now consider this folks, for 8 hours if you will
I can’t imagine how one’s brain would stay real
to a normal person who sees this every day,
to you my bus driver, you have a nice day!
to all you who had a bad day and feel strife
get a grip in fact get a life
the bus driver is there to get you home
look down and enjoy and text on your phone
now i’m hoping these kind words may help me my way
maybe a free bus pass Metro X what do you say?

Cool, I can review the bus system!
So many feelings.
THE GOOD
* generally, buses come like clockwork. Haters, to the left. I have never experienced such an on-​time bus system in my life.
* air conditioning on most buses
* ample-​ENOUGH accessibility/​seating for the differently-​abled.
THE NEUTRAL
* bus routes seem to follow the logic of a 3-year-old’s crayon drawing. With that said, so does this city’s street system, so partial forgiveness is due.
* drivers are just fine, some nice, some silent
THE BAD
* the service booklets/​time charts are pretty hard to understand, and also hard to find. If I didn’t have an excellent internal compass, education in environmental studies, and a lifetime without a driver’s license and so a history of walking and bus’ing EVERYWHERE… my voyages on the Metro Transit would take twice as long, every day. You have to teach yourself alternate routes and always have that trusty booklet on you, or else you’ll easily find yourself waiting 30 minutes between connecting buses and watching a 30 minute trip turn into a 90 minute trip.
* the main reason why the point above exists is because service is so crazily infrequent. Coming from Toronto, waiting 15 minutes for a bus/​streetcar/​subway was a cause for pissyness. Oh, how spoiled I was. Here 30 – 60 minutes is the standard interval time. I know maritimers are laid back (love you guys!) but you guys cant really think this is regular service???
*no coffee allowed. you have got to be kidding me! that is the only thing that makes the morning bus manageable!
*the names of the bus routes. where is the logic?
THE OFFENSIVE
* No stops are called. No stop announcements of ANY kind. Imagine my joy being new to this city and being totally lost on the Crosstown 52 for a total of one hour (and then learning that it could have been much, much worse). After almost a full loop in Burnside, I saw the place I wanted to be from the completely opposite end/​direction, rang the bell in a panic only to find the next stop was across two highways. Resolute, I still got off and WALKED the highway to get to my destination. My day would have been completely flushed down the toilet otherwise, but does everyone feel okay walking across a highway? WHY DON“T THEY CALL STOPS!!!
IN SUMMARY… If I was the queen of the transit system, I would…
— put buses on a more clear grid system… in so far as this city allows
— post clearer MAPS that can give riders an idea of which buses make it to which main streets, so riders can alter their routes more easily. (IDEA! maps ON buses?)
— fewer routes
— more frequent service to compensate for fewer routes.
— call the stops or at LEAST the major ones!

Oh, Metro Transit. How do I dislike thee? Let me count the ways.
To be fair, there are some nice drivers. Aaaand that’s about the only positive.
During their latest and greatest strike, I noticed (like many others) that traffic lightened up. My father and I whizzed through traditionally snarly intersections like the Windsor Street exchange. No busses cutting you off, blocking the entire street as they picked up fares, intentionally missing traffic lights and causing delays for everyone behind them. It was nice. Too bad it didn’t last.
In winter, busses are a different kind of hell. First you have to be lucky enough to board a bus with heat. That’s hit or miss. And don’t bother contacting their «customer service» people to complain; according to MT, they have literally no extra busses, so if one breaks down or has no heat in –15C weather, they don’t have one single backup vehicle to replace it. Which of course is horse poop.
I’ve watched drivers whizz past stops with people clearly waiting for their bus. I’ve watched them practically sideswipe cars as they pull out into traffic without ensuring they have adequate room. I’ve watched standing passengers lurch and fall when the drivers slam on the brakes at each stop. And I’ve watched many, many drivers take wrong turns and rely on passengers to tell them where to go. Apparently «training» is a dirty word at Metro Transit.
So that one star up there? Is for the few nice drivers I’ve encountered. Oh, how I wish I could work from home.

Remember when we went without public transport for two months… almost three?
I do.
Remember what was at the core of that strike? «Pick Your Own Schedule» scheduling. Because the divorce rate of bus drivers was high, and their personal lives were affected.
Well the other morning, I watched an elderly woman, with a cane, and tourette syndrome. be ignored a bus driver pulled away from the Lacewood Terminal as she hurried to catch a bus.
I ran to the bus shouting with her as I noticed. and got close enough to the bus to bang on the window even. so hard I felt like I may have rattled it loose.
Still, he drove on.
So what say you about this woman’s doctors appointment that she was to miss bus drivers? What about her personal life?
Any remorse for her?
She did make it to her appointment (I hope) as I put her in a cab and gave the driver $ 20 to make sure she got up into Clayton Park.
Any chance Metro Transit would have offered her the same courtesy?

Metro Transit gets a lot of flack for their services due to timing and sometimes buses that don’t show up. Plus, the strike did little to save face earlier in the year. With that said, I do admire the bus drivers and the jobs they have to do. Many people might say that it’s easy to just sit and drive but considering the long hours and the monotony of it, it’s not something I would do.
However, looking at MT as a service, they do have a long way to go to improve themselves to the standards that they should have considering the role they play in the daily routines of thousands of people. I’ve been hearing since I moved to Halifax ten years ago that they were working on giving each bus GPS capability so Go-​Time would be exact to the second rather than what it’s *supposed* to be. Anyone who has used to the bus knows that it’s rarely ever the time it’s *supposed* to be, especially the further you are from one of the central stops like HFX Shopping Centre, Scotia Square or one of the terminals.
When I used to rely on the #20 bus a few years ago, it was always either 10 minutes early or up to 20 minutes late. Reliably. I used to joke that you could almost place a bet, or have a lottery, on when it would show every day and your odds might be about the same as the real lotto.
On the flipside, though, there are some pretty good routes that have improved my ability of getting places when I don’t want to walk, it’s too cold to bike and I don’t have access to the car. My favourite new route is the #90 because of its direct path from downtown to the Bedford highway while passing the important areas without going down the high-​traffic streets. It’s Metro Transit’s (and my) best kept secret.
I’m giving Metro Transit a ³⁄₅ rather than a ²⁄₅ because I think, despite their kinks, they are still valuable to the city and I still use them despite my complaints. I just hope they are genuinely putting effort into improving the service and I hope to actually see the GPS-​feature activated soon… whenever Google Maps releases their app for the iPhone so that I can rely on that again.

As a college student, I’m somewhat reliant on Metro Transit to get around town. That being said, my experience on the whole has not been quite so good.
My bus is almost always about 10 minutes late even in fairly low traffic, connections are horrid, and getting information is like pulling teeth.
Good thing the only place I’m going at any given time is school, I’d be hosed otherwise.

I don’t drive (gasp!) so I’ve been relying on public transportation for a decade now.
Taking the bus in this city is a game of chance. There’s a chance your bus will arrive on time and you’ll make your connection. There’s a chance you’ll get a seat, reducing the risk of head-​diving to the front of the bus during a sudden brake situation because your arms are too short to comfortably grip the hand bar. There’s a chance you won’t feel sick from the onslaught of smells ranging from unwashed, month-​old B.O. to oversaturated first-​year university cologne bathers. There is a chance that your bus ride will be uneventful. The question then becomes, are you willing to take the risk?
My experiences with Metro Transit run the gammut. I’ve been on buses that break down for the third time that week. I’ve waited in the freezing cold for 45 minutes because the bus was either early or really late. I’ve been nearly thrown off the bus by cranky drivers who didn’t like the fact that I hadn’t yet signed my new bus pass. I’ve also had bus drivers drop me off in front of my house between stops so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the dark. I even had a bus driver stop once at a Tim Hortons and let us get coffee because he was running early and we were the only two on the bus.
There is so much that needs to be done to improve the transit system in this city. For what we have now, it’ll do the trick as long as I don’t need to stray far outside of the city core for the price of the daily latté I don’t drink. I’m far from in love with it, but it gets me to work and back, so I guess that’s the best I can hope for.

Oh metro transit, how I loathe thee. Many of the complaints I have have been voiced multiple times; buses late or not showing up at all, buses leaving at the same times for the same bus routes, and the list goes on.
Luckily I have a UPass and don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for terrible service.
Only gave two stars since I do take it everywhere I go.

Metro Transit, I rely on you daily and I think I have had more good than bad?
There have been times when you flew by me, never came, came late and came on time. But what can I really expect during rush hour, construction and crazy people putting you behind? I love to hate you, but you get me from Point A to Point B and occasionally Point C. Since moving I have more options now on what bus to take to where which I do enjoy but there are some routes you can modify and add more times to.
But, how do you justify having two buses, going the same way leaving within only a few minutes apart, common people does this make sense? I think not. And, the fare. Stop jacking it up. This will be my last year with the UPASS (which I love), so soon every month I will be handing you a limb until I have none left, then what? First born child?

Oh, Metro Transit. Where shall I begin?
It would help if you showed up on time. No, scratch that — sometimes you don’t show up at all. I’m a regular bus user, commuting from my home downtown to my workplace in Clayton Park twice a day for most of the past 14 months. And every day is a crap shoot.
Schedules? Forget ‘em, whether they’re in print, over the phone, or courtesy of Google maps. Y’all never arrive when you say you will. Or you do, but drive right past me EVEN THOUGH I’M STANDING RIGHT THERE WAVING AT YOU. Sorry, had to yell there. Sometimes you leave me standing in the cold at my bus stop, shivering as you blow by me, taking a completely different route than the one you’re supposed to be on. That’s always fun.
You know what else I love? Getting to a bus stop and finding out that two different buses will take me to my location, but they both leave within a minute of one another, and I’ve missed that time by five minutes. Have fun waiting for half an hour! Really? I mean, really? Is that the most practical way to plan routes? Come on. We can do better.
While we’re at it, what’s the deal with Bayer’s Lake? It’s a pretty big shopping centre, you know. Sure, I’d prefer to purchase everything in Downtown Halifax. But sometimes I need to get my license renewed, or the movie I want to see is only playing at 9:30 p.m. at the Bayer’s Lake Empire Theatres, or I just really, really want to go to Chapters and forget any problems I have exist. But you know what? That’ll take me over an hour and TWO buses each way. Two. Come on. There should be a bus that can get me from Spring Garden Road to Bayers Lake and back.
Look, I haven’t knocked any stars off for other things that bother me, like weird smells and obnoxious passengers. These are things about the bus that suck, but are beyond your control. But buses are good and more people should take them, so let’s work on the things you can control and make this a more bearable experience, ‘K?

I debated between giving Metro Transit 1 or 2 stars, in the end, thanks to the new Hybrid Buses, and the fact that you can now use your transfer for 2 hours, it gets an extra star.
When I was living in the South End and working in Burnside, it would take me and hour and a half, three bus transfers and a 20 min walk on a highway to get to work. In the morning to get out of the South End, there were three buses that I could take, multiple options, great right? Wrong, all three buses showed up at the exact same time, so if you were late for one, you missed them all and had to wait 15 – 30 min or longer. This is the case with most of the bus routes with Metro Transit, they all follow the exact same path (Barrington, Spring Garden, Gottigen, Portland Street etc. Metro should have more variations with routes and times.
Also the fact that you have to board the bus though the front door only really slows things down, especially when the person in front of you gets into a nice long chat with the bus driver.
Where is Go time?
I got spoiled when I lived in France, now mind you, I was not living in a place like Paris, whose transit system is one of the best in the world, but I was in the suburbs of a small French city not much larger than Halifax, and the transit system was still infinitely better, so everyday I get on Metro Transit, I get slightly angry thinking of easy ways the bus system could be improved.

Nothing really to compare them with besides the transit systems in other cities. In this respect they are horrible. Inconsistency my big issue. The bus should NOT come early so the driver can take an extra 5 min break at the next terminal. I can understand late.
Most of the drivers I’ve talked with have been pleasant. They have a hard job and a simple thank you and a smile goes a long way.
Buses are often dirty. And I dislike the bus-​wrap advertising, I enjoy looking out the window.
I also like the fact that Metro Transit are bringing in hybrid buses.
The LINK is a nice feature as well, I will gladly fork over an extra 50 cents to enjoy a direct ride into Halifax in comfy seats and no advertising.

I may be a tad biased, as I lived in 4 urban centres (Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver), where the bus systems are all well developed. To me, it seems like Metro Transit isn’t up to par for the largest Maritime city.
Many of the fleet are outdated (my guess is that they are retired buses from other major cities– Ottawa comes to mind), and could use some adjustments to be more comfortable.
Also, I notice that a number of buses are cruising around with practically no passengers, particularly in the suburbs. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that there are A LOT less convenient bus stop locations as there are in the other major cities. When buses aren’t convenient, nobody rides them, thus the money could be better spent improving the system.
I will say that I’m a fan of the LINK system: when I lived in Sackville, it was nice to be able to get downtown in under ½ an hour, and not have to worry about parking.
But, if not for the LINK, I would forgo using Metro Transit altogether and stick to driving my car

I really like Metro Transit. Everything about it (except maybe the advertisements for The Bounce) makes me really happy. Conserving fuel, affordable travel, running on a tight schedule. What isn’t there to love?
The Metro Transit service has service all through the city and surrounding areas and can take you as far as Eastern Passage and Sackville if you don’t mind the long ride. Fare is regularly $ 2.25 and discounted to $ 1.50 for seniors and children, which makes the transit the cheapest most efficient way to get across town. (I’ve given up biking downtown due to the uphill climb on the route home).
Just make sure you have your change ready to go when the bus arrives, the drivers have their schedule to stick too are aren’t receptive to anyone slowing them down. Other passengers will also thank you for the consideration, and you wont get cursed under their breath while you rummage through your change.
Hot Hint: Using the Park and Ride option with Metro Transit will save some money on gas and parking fare downtown. Parking in designated lots is free.

Not bad but plenty of room for improvement.
Metro Transit is of course our main transit service in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The buses are cleaner than a lot that I have seen in other cities. The driver’s can go from some of the best and friendliest to some of the worst with led feet that make people topple over and fall to the ground. I understand how someone working for a transit service could be grumpy given the fact that they see all sorts of individuals who could test their stress levels in a day. But when you start being grumpy at people having a good day, well that’s just mean.
The pricing for a bus ride has just risen again. This time it is $ 2.25. But the good news is we have more bus routes than ever, the buses themselves have been refurbished and there are more buses on the road for more frequent pickups. Just kidding. As usual Metro Transit has risen their prices for no reason besides profit and is giving the public nothing new. I will say that I notice security cameras on the buses which I think is a new addition and I do enjoy. But of course we are paying for those cameras and it would be great if we have some softer seats while we are being watched.
I’m giving Metro Transit three stars because they do a good enough job for me to still want to use them from time to time. They keep raising the cost of their fare once every four or five years for no reason and are not giving anything new to the public which is why they have two stars missing. Many people keep asking for the same areas that are a bit out of town to have buses that run for longer hours but in the fifteen years that I have used Metro Transit, I have almost never seen them improve or increase their route’s. So there is tons of room for improvement which I hope they do. But in the mean time, three stars it is.