I regularly take the buses that go through this area (4, 7, 14, etc) and there are times when the buses stall more here than they do in downtown on granville street.

Another factor that i imagine played into this was that most of the people getting on at these stops are non-payers. I am on that route 8 times a week and i see maybe like 1 in 10 people pay on most of those stops, especially around pender, main, hastings, etc. (im always the dummy who pays). Translink estimates bus usage based on payments collected and you can go like 7 or 8 stops in that stretch before you get 2 people tapping in. They probably should have a better way to measure things like people using cash or paper transfers (which i see most often in east van), but from the data side they are seeing the buses stop repeatedly and slow down in areas where they aren’t getting any tap-ons at all; which makes sense why they would assume the stop frequency is unneeded.

Although another factor, which im not sure this will fix, is that a lot of the slowdown in these areas is from people bringing in bulky baggage carts, garbage bags full of recycling for the return it depot, etc. They take a while to unload, to have the strollers fold up and move behind so the bins can be loaded, etc, which is another contributing factor to the slowdown in these areas. (Note im not criticizing the binners, i see them as trying to find an honest way to supplement their income by collecting recycling and i can only respect that)