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Up Close and Personal
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Finch West Line 6 LRT

jacnel said:
Also the ION, despite having a more complex route with many more turns, conflict points, and 9km of additional track, can go end-to-end in 44 minutes scheduled. So the TTC has zero excuse for running Line 6 this slowly. A 10km straight, centre of the road, LRT (even with the additional stops) should be faster than the ION, it's half the size!
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Admittedly that doesnt make a ton of sense, the Fastest parts of the ION are where it has its own ROW through Waterloo, the section on King st is definitely slower
hw621 said:
The ION also does the signal priority right. Why is the ION doing everything right but the TTC isn't, when the TTC has been operating a much bigger network and supposed to be more experienced?
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The TTC brought their own "experience" while GRT actually went through the effort to learn best operating practices and apply them
 
hw621 said:
The ION also does the signal priority right. Why is the ION doing everything right but the TTC isn't, when the TTC has been operating a much bigger network and supposed to be more experienced?
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Because every rule change and every new policy over the last decade or more has slowed down service apparently for safety and fear of litigation. Throw in a lot of micromanaging from higher ups and a disconnect from what they see and what operators and passengers experience.

For me this has tracked with the gradual decline in quality of service from the TTC. If you know me, you know how much of a fan of the TTC I am, so I cannot express how incredibly angry I am at everyone that has driven it to the state it is in now.
 
hw621 said:
The ION also does the signal priority right. Why is the ION does everything right but the TTC isn't, when the TTC has been operating a much bigger network and supposed to be more experienced?
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I think that actually, the lack of experience running rail transit in the Region of Waterloo, and a more consensus-based data oriented Regional government, are the two reasons why the ION is good. Since Regional Council didn't really know how to build or operate light rail transit they put out RFIs to the private sector to help them do so. Thus, because the Region went into the project with an open mind, they actually listened to the experts from Europe who responded to the RFI. Hiring them as part of the consortium who built (and now operates) the train. Keolis was a big part of the design, build, and operations for the line, their first Light Rail project in North America. Keolis has lots of experience building light rail in Europe. So, when the Region asked them to design a good LRT, they just put Transit Signal Priority into the project from day one because that's what you do in Europe, and the Region didn't object because they understood the benefits. For the Region of Waterloo, they knew that they wanted a good LRT, because so much was riding on this project being successful. So at each stage of the process, the focus from all stakeholders (Regional Council, local council, Regional Staff, the consortium, even the public) was "how do we make this thing great?" and wouldn't you know it they put thoughts to paper and did it. The goal with the ION was always to be a shining example of what Waterloo can do, so eyes were on the project the entire time making sure the Region squeezed every little benefit they could out of the system.

Toronto on the other hand never really spoke with any experts around what good light rail transit is, applied existing assumptions from the streetcar network to Finch West without realizing that it is this conservative "we've always done things this way" line of thinking that made this mess (and is why the Spadina and St. Clair streetcars suck). Transit Signal Priority was included in the design for Finch West's build but was never included in the operational contracts signed between Metrolinx and the TTC. So the TTC and Toronto Transportation did what they always do and half-assed something together that's operationally slow and inefficient but is the "easiest" option without getting council involved. Council was also MIA pretty much throughout this entire process and didn't understand any of the attributes that make a LRT good, Waterloo Region Council was involved and educated by experts at each stage of the process and they ensured that the final product was delivered to spec.

We could learn a lot from the Region of Waterloo. Over there improving transit is just something Regional Staff are allowed to do on their own. Council just approves a transit masterplan for the decade and leaves implementation details up to the experts (Staff). The City of Toronto has politicians who know nothing meddling and stalling at every stage.
 
Back in the early 1990s I worked at Ontario Place, and even back then I’d bemoan how slow the streetcars down Bathurst were to buses. Some of the best days were when the streetcars were out of service and replaced by buses. We'd absolutely fly down Bathurst.
 
APTA-2048 said:
Because every rule change and every new policy over the last decade or more has slowed down service apparently for safety and fear of litigation. Throw in a lot of micromanaging from higher ups and a disconnect from what they see and what operators and passengers experience.

For me this has tracked with the gradual decline in quality of service from the TTC. If you know me, you know how much of a fan of the TTC I am, so I cannot express how incredibly angry I am at everyone that has driven it to the state it is in now.
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I couldn't have said it better myself. Council needs to get the rot out of the TTC, Leary destroyed the place. Seems like the culture there is now just "how do I prevent doing paperwork?" service quality and speed be damned.

Transit Signal Priority for Line 6 will do a lot of heavy lifting at speeding up the TTC, but Toronto City Council needs to also tell the TTC to calm down, stop micromanaging, and instead focus on giving their customers what they want: fast, reliable service.
 
drum118 said:
It has been said that this is day one of real service, and TTC doesn't want Ottawa issues on this line to the point it may take 6 months to see a decrease in runtime to a point. Until there is a real transit priority signal system in play. Let's see what April will bring for service quality
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So to avoid an Ottawa style disaster, they chose a worse PR disaster? At least people were happy and hopeful when the Confed line opened, the disappointment came later
 
KhalilHeron said:
Admittedly that doesnt make a ton of sense, the Fastest parts of the ION are where it has its own ROW through Waterloo, the section on King st is definitely slower

The TTC brought their own "experience" while GRT actually went through the effort to learn best operating practices and apply them
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The King St section of the ION is slower, but compared to what I experienced with Line 6, they're still driving the trains in downtown Kitchener faster than the TTC drives Line 6 in comparable areas. I was watching the speedometer in the empty drivers cab when I took Line 6 this weekend and we were taking pretty much every bend in the tracks at like 7-10km/h. The ION takes turns at 15km/h only dropping to 10km/h at the worst 90 degree turns on the system. So even on comparable sections of track the TTC wants Line 6 to be slower than the ION.
 
hw621 said:
The ION also does the signal priority right. Why is the ION doing everything right but the TTC isn't, when the TTC has been operating a much bigger network and supposed to be more experienced?
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Because Waterloo/Grand River Transit has a wealth of competence coming out of UWaterloo that probably help locally before they jump ship to Silicon Valley; whereas Toronto gets complacent backward-looking people and cronies who can play politics. If Line 6 opened pre-internet pre-mass media, it might never have gotten potential speed improvements.

To illustrate my point about complacency:
We had a highly respected contributor unironically cite two of the most shambolically delayed megaprojects in the world in Berlin Brandenburg airport and Stuttgart 21—both from the same country that let its rail system rot—as one of the reasons GO Expansion going to sh** is not unprecedented and therefore not that big of a deal. Why are we looking at things and places worse than us, when instead we should be looking at role models.

EDIT* P.S. In my short time on this forum, I get the feeling that even the best-faith industry insiders are or at least occasionally under the influence of the complacent and risk-averse transit organizational culture of the Greater Toronto Area. Not to mention, fiscally over-conservative in a penny wise, pound foolish way.*
 
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T3G said:
That's an average speed of 25.91 km/h, in line with the best practices of Finch-style suburban lines in Prague, and that's with the bizarre speed restrictions around the last few stations at the south end (including the inexplicable slow zone right past Fairway) Imagine that number if they sorted out... whatever tf is going on in Kitcehener, you'd start to get pretty close to the average speeds of Lines 1 (29.2) and 2 (30.0)!
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This is why I keep pointing to the ION when it comes to Finch West because, even with all the weird design choices made with the ION and its bottlenecks, it's pumping out an average speed equal to trams in Europe and nearly as good as a subway. Not to mention absolutely blowing Line 6 out of the water. The Region of Waterloo shows, even if you have some weird design choices and compromises, you can still build LRT like a subway. So how did the City of Toronto and TTC manage to take an even simpler, straight line LRT that's half the length of the ION and run it slower? Because nothing about the Finch West track design says to me that they need to be driving the trains that slow. Ottawa absolutely hammers the Citadis Spirt with their line and yeah that broke the trains, but the TTC isn't remotely near Ottawa's operating speed and Waterloo has similar tracks but is driving the Flexity Freedom faster.

Had the Region decided to send the ION straight down King St in Downtown Kitchener, and got rid of some turns, they could easily hit Line 1/2 operational speeds. And luckily, based on how the system is designed, the Region could do this at any point in the future if they wanted to, but they're more focused on Stage 2 right now which should come in the next 10 years.

Edit: oh also I think that weird slow zone is just because the line terminates at Fairway. It's for when they sometimes have to switch the train to the other track before it gets to the station. Once Stage 2 is done the line won't terminate there anymore so I'm sure the slow zone will be removed/reduced.
 
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urbanclient said:
Because Waterloo/Grand River Transit has a wealth of competence coming out of UWaterloo that probably help locally before they jump ship to Silicon Valley; whereas Toronto gets complacent backward-looking people and cronies who can play politics. If Line 6 opened pre-internet pre-mass media, it might never have gotten speed improvements.

To illustrate my point about complacency:
We had a highly respected contributor unironically cite two of the most shambolically delayed megaprojects in the world in Berlin Brandenburg airport and Stuttgart 21—both from the same country that let its rail system rot—as one of the reasons GO Expansion going to sh** is not unprecedented and therefore not that big of a deal. Why are we looking at things and places worse than us, when instead we should be looking at role models.
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There is no guarantee we get speed improvement now...
 
Kyle Campbell said:
So to avoid an Ottawa style disaster, they chose a worse PR disaster? At least people were happy and hopeful when the Confed line opened, the disappointment came later
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As someone who lived through the "Ottawa style disaster", the idea that this stuff about the speed of Finch is a "worse PR disaster" is complete nonsense.

If you think that the reaction to the Confederation Line involved people being "happy and hopeful", man. You truly don't know.
 
from Chow’s reddit:

IMG_8427.jpeg
 
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