Finch West Line 6 LRT

[Northern Light]

The Paris metropolitan region has a nominal GDP per capita of $77,000 USD now, versus $55,000 USD for the GTHA. How are the stereotypically lazy, 8 week vacation, bureaucratic French doing better than us when we used to make fun of them for having lower salaries and lower per capita GDP? Clearly that stereotype was wrong.

I wonder if it's because we have inadequate transit, inadequate transit plans, and the transit we do get is 3 times the cost for the same length...thereby hamstringing any and all economic growth.

Paris is no stranger to low-skilled immigration and expensive housing. Not to mention the occasional city burning riot. God Toronto is such an unserious city.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1638271461352787996

We all get the point, and most of us agree with a great deal of it.

But...you are tending to repeat yourself and also sidetrack away from the specifics of transit to broader questions of politics and economics.

Maybe we can stipulate here that virtually everyone is unhappy with the cost of transit projects per km in Toronto (and NY as well) and the results for the dollar are completely unacceptable, and that multiple global jurisdictions deliver better.

I've spoken to these very issues in our discussion on the cost of building transit here, and on my loathing of P3s; but lets try to keep on topic if we can, and take tangential discussions to a more appropriate thread.

 

[Aplus23]

This is the city's first new transit line and not an extension in like forever no? why don't yall give them some grace? We are asking for trams to interact with traffic (at intersections) in Toronto, this is different from Europe and their policies and their view on transit You guys say in Waterloo they operate theirs better so we do have some real world Ontario experience. Patience....

 

[Northern Light]

Q4 2026 lol

Note that a progress report is required in Q1 2026, and that the TTC has now committed to improved speeds by spring.

The details on the latter will matter, but I offer that only to say there is no intent to wait til Fall to do something. The report in fall is intended to be 'what was done', and 'what's left to do that could not be done sooner'.

 

[Northern Light]

This is the city's first new transit line and not an extension in like forever no? why don't yall give them some grace? We are asking for trams to interact with traffic (at intersections) in Toronto, this is different from Europe and their policies and their view on transit You guys say in Waterloo they operate theirs better so we do have some real world Ontario experience. Patience....

Some grace is a fair ask; but there is no level of grace available that excuses the abysmal performance here.

People are right to be angry at 4 years late, significantly over budget and a run time slower than the bus its replacing.

That's preposterous, not teething issues.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Some grace is a fair ask; but there is no level of grace available that excuses the abysmal performance here.

People are right to be angry at 4 years late, significantly over budget and a run time slower than the bus its replacing.

That's preposterous, not teething issues.

Actually zero grace is fair - it isn't like low speed/long travel time is a problem that they just discovered; it is baked in for at least a year, and certainly would have been known by the operational testing phase. They chose to do nothing about it until after the backlash. In other words - they did not perceive this as a problem.

Grace is a fair ask when there is a genuine, unexpected issue. Even then, some sort of action plan should already be in motion while accepting an initially disappointing level of performance. This is a known issue that wasn't perceived as such, with zero plans for a dramatic improvement in place. This is a case of an organization that is completely out of touch.

AoD

 

[lastcommodore]

This is the city's first new transit line and not an extension in like forever no? why don't yall give them some grace? We are asking for trams to interact with traffic (at intersections) in Toronto, this is different from Europe and their policies and their view on transit You guys say in Waterloo they operate theirs better so we do have some real world Ontario experience. Patience....

The problem here is:
- There was no communication by basically anyone involved, and even now a lot of it seems to come down to the blame-game. TTC has seemingly spent more time trying to blame the consortium or whatever than actually doing anything to speed up 6 by interpreting their contracts in the strictest way possible (Faster speeds -> we broke the contract (??) -> we have to literally consult everyone before we can do anything) meanwhile the province and MX are telling the TTC that they have the power to just go faster.
- Tram vehicle operation is not new to the TTC. We have the entire streetcar network of Toronto to show that the TTC has basically gone "We've tried making things slower and we're all out of ideas on how to make things faster". The TTC has shown literally zero interest in even making the routes with dedicated ROWs slightly faster, and has repeatedly clogged up every opportunity and attempt at doing so ("We have to consult literally everyone to remove a stop and if ONE person objects we gotta cancel!")
- These motions from the city should be entirely unnecessary. The TTC should be just getting it done, or the TTC should be demanding the city let them implement faster protocols- not the other way around.

 

[lastcommodore]

(Double reply, evil i know)

I really gotta emphasize that the 6 FW is literally just a prettified 512/510/509. There's nothing really interesting to it. The only thing that really changes infra-wise is the double point switches, no turnback loops, and standard gauge. The rest is fluff. Off-board payment, level boarding, nicer signage... And unsurprisingly, the 6 performs on par, speed wise, as the 512/510/509, because that's it. That's the only changes.

But due to its LIGHT RAIL designation, 6 FW was mentally put on a higher standard than the rest. It was supposed to be faster. The 512/510/509 is slow due to infra and switches or whatever, or the 1000 other reasons the TTC trots out. The 6 FW was supposed to fix all the infra problems- which they did- and when all the infra problems were solved, it revealed that it was just the TTC being horrible at operations.

Left alone, the TTC has only made the streetcars slower on dedicated ROW routes. Left alone, the 6 FW will only get slower. The public, province, MX, and city need to kick TTC into high gear. Other agencies would operate this exact same line at 20+kmh avg, as has been shown in this thread.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

But due to its LIGHT RAIL designation, 6 FW was mentally put on a higher standard than the rest. It was supposed to be faster. The 512/510/509 is slow due to infra and switches or whatever, or the 1000 other reasons the TTC trots out. The 6 FW was supposed to fix all the infra problems- which they did- and when all the infra problems were solved, it revealed that it was just the TTC being horrible at operations.

Actually it isn't the designation that mattered - but the fact that the proverbial ""we" spent 3.5B on it that required higher standards.

AoD

 

[Admiral Beez]

We genuinely paid over 3 times the price for an inferior tram, for a smaller city, in a farther suburb, completed 4 years slower, and with one less stop (18).

Let Finch and Eglinton be the last LRTs this city builds. Fine to extend Line 6 to Finch station and maybe onto Seneca Newnham, but that's it.

To quote our crack smoking former mayor, we should be building subways...subways, subways.

 

[abovegrade]

I'm just so happy we are starting to have these conversations about signal priority for LRT...AND Streetcars. Never would have thought we'd be able to make enough noise for this but here we are with council and the mayor flagging it.

 

[Obsidian]

Let Finch and Eglinton be the last LRTs this city builds. Fine to extend Line 6 to Finch station and maybe onto Seneca Newnham, but that's it.

To quote our crack smoking former mayor, we should be building subways...subways, subways.

Waterfront LRT and Eglinton East LRT are still to come.
My preference is that both should be BRT however.

 

[T3G]

Let Finch and Eglinton be the last LRTs this city builds. Fine to extend Line 6 to Finch station and maybe onto Seneca Newnham, but that's it.

To quote our crack smoking former mayor, we should be building subways...subways, subways.

Where will you find the money for this?

 

[lastcommodore]

Where will you find the money for this?

While I understand that subways are far more expensive than LRTs and that if we built LRTs we could build more for less, I think what's far more important is the fact that, per km, we built Finch West for what we built Sheppard for.

Costs have ballooned here (And to be fair, the entire Anglosphere, not just TO/ON/CA) and keep going up with seemingly no regard.

"LRTs are cheaper than subways" is meaningless when in twenty years we will be painting red lanes for what we built Finch West for. I would call that crazy, but if you told someone we would be building streetcars for the cost of Sheppard 20 years ago, they'd also call you crazy.

 

[KhalilHeron]

Waterfront LRT and Eglinton East LRT are still to come.
My preference is that both should be BRT however.

Waterfront LRT makes 0 sense as BRT. The Density is very high (could eaisly support several subway stations) and the corridor is short. It's as close to a perfect use case for LRT that we have. A Brt would cost so much to run enough busses to keep up with long term demand. Now i agree Eglinton East would be way better off as a brt. The LRT will be slower, and wouldnt provide the same branching service the corridor provides today.

 

[T3G]

While I understand that subways are far more expensive than LRTs and that if we built LRTs we could build more for less, I think what's far more important is the fact that, per km, we built Finch West for what we built Sheppard for.

Costs have ballooned here (And to be fair, the entire Anglosphere, not just TO/ON/CA) and keep going up with seemingly no regard.

"LRTs are cheaper than subways" is meaningless when in twenty years we will be painting red lanes for what we built Finch West for. I would call that crazy, but if you told someone we would be building streetcars for the cost of Sheppard 20 years ago, they'd also call you crazy.

Sure, I don't deny that the costs of the LRTs have ballooned, to an extent that is frankly alarming. But those costs are ballooning everywhere, it's not as though the cost of a subway has remained fixed throughout this debacle, so I would argue that the relative price of LRT vs subway is still a meaningful comparison, arguably even more so than 25 years ago; since everything is so expensive, it would be logical to choose the most expensive option where we will see the most benefit from it, instead of building a subway along every suburban corridor just because we can't get our act together and run an LRT properly. There simply doesn't exist a compelling argument for being anti LRT.