GRT dealing with complaints about transit busses running red lights

Grand River Transit have been dealing with complaints about transit busses running red lights on Hespeler Road in Cambridge.

However, that is not the case. GRT have been using transit priority signals on three intersections in Cambridge since last fall to allow bus drivers skip the queue to keep them on schedule. It looks like they are running a red light, but that is not the case.

This is a fairly new system in our region but has been utilized in other cities in Ontario and it has improved drivers keeping to their schedule.

Eric Gillespie Director of Transit Services with the Region of Waterloo tells 570 News “what this allows a bus to do ahead of the rest of the traffic is go through the intersection and a number of people have seen that as transit busses running red lights. The way the service is designed is that the traffic signal has a transit priority signal. It’s located above the red light and it’s a vertical white bar. In advance of the traffic signal allowing the rest of vehicular traffic to go, the vertical white bar will come on and it will allow a bus that’s sitting in a queue jump lane, to jump the queue of traffic and to go through the intersection. I think there is some confusion from other drivers about how the traffic lights work and why the busses are proceeding through what they believe is a red light.”

The intersections are located at Munsch and Hespeler southbound only, at the Delta southbound only and Pinebush and Hespeler northbound only.

Gillespie adds that if this education can be pushed into driver’s training it will help drivers understand how these lights work. GRT would like to put them in busy corridors and will potentially put these signals along University Avenue in Waterloo in the future where they have an iXpress route.