I’m traveling to Sudbury, Ontario this week. As the ‘Capital of Northern Ontario’, Sudbury is a center for mining, engineering, and education. By North American standards, they invest in a very large number of service hours, which is required in order to serve the city’s spread out geography. The settlement pattern follows local nickel ore bodies, railroad yards, and fertile land spread across a large impact crater. Pulse service is provided every 15 minutes weekdays on the most important routes from 7am to 10pm with further service across the entire network until after midnight.
While the time structure of transit in Sudbury is quite simple, the city’s method of displaying this structure is not. One of 22 maps and the route schedules for the correct day has to be consulted to understand how long a trip across the city will take. The Friends of Sudbury Transit have produced a Google Maps overlay that improves on the situation, but it’s still not useful for quickly navigating the system.
Last time I was in Sudbury, I drafted the following four maps that graphically convey nearly all transit service provided in Sudbury. In addition, the street names have been removed and the orientation of streets simplified. This is not a production quality map; this map does not convert well to black and white, and it requires some familiarity with the street layout and bus routing to read. However, it’s much better to have a simple transit map showing the service provided rather than the complicated and confusing information that exists today.
Weekday Service
Saturday Service
Sunday and Late Night Service
Weekday Coverage Service Schematic
My Ashland BRT II post will be next week.
