Finch West Line 6 LRT

[ZEBuilder]

You can look up Houston and watch how efficient their system ran for 2 decades.

I do have to say left turning traffic does complicate things. It would be better if the tracks are on its own corridor like ION than in the middle of a major roadway.

Large stretches of the ION (7.5km roughly) run side running or center running, so it has to deal with not only left turn but also a fair amount of right turn traffic constantly. Even then it doesn't even complicate it that much, yes there's crashes but it's close to one a month if that.

 

[Coolibop]

Saxe: so why do we have to work with Metrolinx? why not just ask the city to do it?

TTC staff: the train operating services agreement says any changes contemplated on the LRTs require the input from metrolinx and mosaic
...
TTC staff: but the impact of the change in the signal may impact the runtime which will cause an impact to the operations, maintenance on the various vehicles. It's not just a simple TSP, it then causes a knock on effect that needs to be reviewed by mosaic and metrolinx

I appreciate Clr Saxe asking this...but wished it went further:

Didn’t Metrolinx and Mosaic already stress-test the vehicles and approve them at specific maximum speeds? Shouldn’t that be the benchmark for how fast the trams are operated? I understand that running trains faster or slower affects operations and maintenance requirements, but the current super-slow operating speeds are puzzling. It feels like the service is being deliberately constrained (perhaps to reduce long-term maintenance costs under the 30 year contract?) at the expense of rider experience. The need to consult multiple parties for every minor adjustment is bogging things down and highlights a major downside of the contractual setup.

I worry these contracts may end up constraining the delivery of good or even great service. Transit should be operated for the benefit of riders, not to help a third party save money on maintenance. That may well be a flaw in this contractual arrangement, as others here have already warned many pages ago...

I’m glad to see the pressure everyone is applying, but it’s frustrating that after years of delay, supposedly to exercise caution and “learn from past mistakes”, we still can’t get things right.

 

[urbanclient]

Yes, and as I said not everything is going to be 20 second dwells. Quiet stations can likely hit that as you show in your video, but riding the LRT on Sunday many stops had large volumes of passengers exiting and entering and with high volumes comes increased dwells, especially given the smaller doors on the LRVS. Off-peak operations could probably do 20 second dwells pretty consistently.

Getting this up to good speeds is going to be a wide mix of measures, TSP, reduced dwells, more aggressive operations, higher top speeds, the mix.

I want to clarify, I think your earlier comment was reasonable and a valuable contribution. I want to point out though, on the odd chance you didn't see my edit, that my original hypothetical case did not fully account for time lost due to deceleration and coasting in advance of a red light, which is likely to be ~2.5 minutes at least if my napkin math is right. If you wanna increase dwell times by 10 from 20 up to 30 seconds, then you only increase total travel time by 160 seconds or 2 minutes 40 seconds. If Line 6 is stopping 31 times including 15 red lights instead of just the 16 intermediate stops, then (correct me if I am wrong) you would be roughly halving the amount of time spent at cruising speed.

You would be fair to point out that excess coasting/decel and slow acceleration out of scheduled stops would be a significant factor that I did not mention. And I do agree, even under ideal circumstances of signal priority and dwell time, 34 minutes is slower than driving. Hence, I agree that ideally, the whole "wide mix of measures" including faster top speeds would be implemented to reach IDF*Paris T9 trip times.

 

[ssiguy2]

Saw the media video and it looks very promising especially because they want these TSP on Eglinton before it opens and very importantly will also apply to streetcars to get them moving especially the lines with their own lanes ie St. Clair and Spadina.

I noticed he said he has been talking with the City & province with the latter being the most significant. I bet his "talking" with Ford was none of the sort but rather a blistering attack by QP being furious about spending this kind of money for a horrible service and Ford missing all the political brownie points that are usually associated with ribbon cuttings.

As much as the TTC has it's share of blame, he is right in that ultimately this is the City's fault. They can have all the TSP and other measures available but if they aren't allowed to implement them then it's all for not. It was never a technology problem but a political one.

So, it looks like this lemon might be turning into lemonade as it has finally forced the City and councilors to put aside their political ambitions and put the travelling public first and foremost as they rightfully deserve to be.

 

[hw621]

Actually on the line right now. God isn't it painful?! Frequent stops, crawling...What a joke

 

[lastcommodore]

Look in this video at how aggressively they drive the trams.

Interestingly, other than the much stronger TSP, the trams arent actually going that fast. The max speed here seems to be 40/45kmh, (which I feel like for a median tram should be higher but regardless) the tram driver accelerates and decelerates so aggressively that it's so frequently at max speed. Every single video I have seen of the 6 trams (Though I have not personally been in one) makes the GO trains look like they have a heavy foot.

 

[Cobra]

This is hopeful like I wrote in the streetcar thread. Part of the motion is to have vehicles go faster than the road speed limit - which is a no brainer

 

[afransen]

I think this also raises questions about how well will the operation of Line 5 go with through-running trains between the underground and non-grade separated portions. If the underground portion is similarly hobbled, it will be a catastrophe.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

I think this also raises questions about how well will the operation of Line 5 go with through-running trains between the underground and non-grade separated portions. If the underground portion is similarly hobbled, it will be a catastrophe.

If that becomes the case, then the only serious answer I’m loathe to say is forcing the transfer at Laird until the four parties figure out how to resolve operations.

 

[urbanclient]

I think this also raises questions about how well will the operation of Line 5 go with through-running trains between the underground and non-grade separated portions. If the underground portion is similarly hobbled, it will be a catastrophe.

I would argue in its current state it already is a catastrophe (see below). If signal priority isn't sorted out by the spring opening of Line 5 Eglinton, then the above ground section will be a slow ~30 minute slog with bunching and inconsistent trip times. Short turns at Laird would be the only hope of not having the cancer spread to the western underground section.

On the bright side, the underground section is supposed to be under Automatic Train Control; so slow speeds for that section, if any, should be fixed relatively easily.

TTC staff: The current schedule that we have for revenue service demonstration [for Line 5] to allow the line to actually achieve the performance that is needed, we are currently scheduling 112 minutes round trip.

 

[afransen]

Finch LRT is a very important showcase. It will either confirm the viability of LRTs in this city, or bury the whole idea for a long time.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Line 10. Very similar project, but a different operator and transportation department. If Peel/Mississauga is successful with it (whenever it opens), that could help show the way if Toronto can't get its act together.

 

[Steve X]

Large stretches of the ION (7.5km roughly) run side running or center running, so it has to deal with not only left turn but also a fair amount of right turn traffic constantly. Even then it doesn't even complicate it that much, yes there's crashes but it's close to one a month if that.

Finch is much wider than the roads the ION runs on. So pedestrian must be given enough time to cross the road which is around 40 seconds. You can’t cut that short and let a train through. They’ll have to change it to two stage crossing if they want to work around TSP and preemption.

It’s much better if they can program the line to get a green wave. If trains get delayed, they’ll just get delayed to the next wave.

If the city get both if these items going while operators drive full speed, we’ll see significant improvement.

 

[afransen]

Fire all those TTC staff!! "Believe??" Really now?

Imbeciles. They clearly do not know what they are doing. They could've also talked to York Region about TSP on the VIVA bus ways.


Even better yet! I just Googled which places in North America uses TSP:

PAGE 57:

https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/transit_signal_priority_handbook_smith.pdf

Rank incompetence.

 

[sunnyraytoronto]

2009 "LRT TTC Toronto",... oh, just skip over to the 2:30 mark,... to watch the simulation as LRT easily zoom by car traffic!

 

[allabootmatt]

I'm encouraged by the tone of comments from everyone involved here, and I understand that some of these changes (especially on the legacy streetcar network) will take time to implement. But what's stopping TTC sending a directive to Line 6 operators, right now, telling them to speed up to X km/h (where X is at least 50% faster than current), wherever they deem safe to do so? This isn't rocket science, and you'd think the politicians will want to show immediate improvement.

Ford and Sarkaria must be hitting the ceiling.