The #33 was the first bus route I rode when I came to Vancouver 8 years ago. Being the youngest crosstown in Vancouver (service began in 2008), the bus was not too crowded for most of the time, and even though it had a 15~30-minute headway during off-peak and weekends, the route was mostly reliable and the schedule could be counted on.
In the last 7 years (particularly the last three), as funding becomes available to TransLink and the Mayor's Council, almost all crosstown routes - the #99, #41/#43, #49, #25, #100 have had one or more service improvements. On the other hand, the #33 has had 0 since fall 2011. In fact, while other routes have had additional service hours (a unit that measures how much hours of service allocated to that route) to maintain reliability, the #33 has actually 400 fewer service hours in 2016 than in 2012. As a result, buses are now much less reliable and over-crowded at peak hours and on the weekends, and people have to scrambled onto the bus on the weekends and at evenings because it runs every 30 minutes, after 7 p.m. on weekdays and all-day on Saturdays and Sundays.
As transit consultant Jarrett Walker recently pointed out in a blog post, Slower Speed is a Service Cut. The unfortunate reality is, buses are slower on many important Vancouver corridors, including almost all cross-towns and N-S Downtown routes - something worthy of discussion at length in another post. Coupling an increase in ridership, increase in traffic, decrease in service hours and no change in overall service level, you get worsening service year after year.
Today, I had the fortune to experience just how bad the service has become. I got on a bus at 2 p.m. leaving 29th Avenue Station, it was already 10 minutes late when it left. The bus was almost full when arriving Main Street / Nat Bailey Stadium and was 20 minutes late by the time it reached UBC. When I tried to get on the 7 p.m. bus from UBC, that bus was cancelled because it was 28 minutes behind on a UBC-bound trip. Then I caught a #25, feeling bad for those who had to wait in the rain for another 30 minutes on campus, only to find that that #33 has only been short-turned at Blanca Loop. I got on that bus on W 16th, and it was running 11 minutes behind until it reached King Edward Station, where a crowd of people flooded the bus all the way from the back to the front door. Everyone tried their best to squeezed on because the next bus was 30 minutes away. Fortunately, no pass-ups along the way, even though people were standing by both the front and the back doors, and the bus was ~15 minutes late at worst.
I've filed at least dozens of complaint in the last four years, and yet there still hasn't been any service improvements. In a recent released summary of phase 2 of the Mayor's Council Transit Improvement Plan, the #25, #49, Broadway and Fourth corridors will have more service bumps to alleviate overcrowding, and of course, a B-Line is coming onto 41st Avenue, yet nothing in sight for the #33.
Therefore, I don't think I'd be wrong to declare the #33 as the #WorstVancityCrosstown. Even if it isn't today, it would be in a few years.
This is exactly what happens when investment lags behind development.
* Note: Almost all the details above relating to transit service, speed, service hours changes, etc. can be found in TransLink's Transit Service Performance Review
