Alternatives to Transit City, the Spadina Extension, Yonge Extension, Etc.

[scarberiankhatru]

Note that many TTC's bus routes, including Finch East and Jane, already have express / rocket branches. Although further expansion of rocket services is possible, I would not expect that to result in dramatic improvements of service.

No, they don't have Rocket service, they have some undifferentiated express branches that make some local stops. Putting a real Rocket route on Finch East or Jane, branding it as such, and letting the drivers actually drive faster than 10 km/hr would markedly improve service (which 190 drivers do and 39E drivers do not do). Capacity and ridership go up, travel times go down...and it costs effectively nothing.

This may be true in the US, but not here. Our history of subways, streetcars, and buses makes us different. I've asked many Torontonians this exact same question, and the majority simply do not care. I'm a railfan myself, so I know what bias is.

Aside from the fact that a much more varied demographic and socio-economic bunch of people take buses in Toronto, I'd bet real money that every study that has studied light rail vs buses has studied *real* light rail (probably grade-separated), and not streetcar ROWs. Apples to orangutans. No one will get out of their car for something that sits at red lights (they'd rather sit in their own car at red lights).

There is no equivalent way to study the two. As for Spadina, that comparison isn't fair, either - not unless the bus had an underground connection to the subway and clearly visible stop platforms. Bus ridership would go up if it had the little infrastructural tidbits LRT gets. Successful bus routes like Finch East should not be trashed because some people erroneous assume everyone would prefer to ride on rails (they really prefer features like faster travel and grade-separation).

 

[kEiThZ]

Actually, Ottawa's urban population was over-estimated as well. About 80% of Ottawa's residents stay in 'urban' areas serviced by some transit. Therefore, transit usage is actually higher than those numbers estimate them to be. It should be noted that what really promotes transit usage is the federal government restrictions on parking for all federal employees (military and civilian) in the downtown core. There are no such restrictions in the more suburban areas and no such restrictions for most private sector emplyers. That's why transit ridership is so high for such a relatively smaller North American city. It's also why there is such a large difference in on and off-peak ridership….it's all the civil and miltiary servants. I don't know if these kinds of policy could be easily translated to Toronto where the bulk of employers simply forced all their employees to leave their cars at home…indeed Ottawa's the only government centre I've seen in all my travels where generals and deputy ministers take the bus. It takes something like 15 or 17 years in the civil service to get a parking pass. Needless to say it seems more like a rumour, cause I've never met a federal employee with a parking pass in my 3 years in Ottawa.

 

[kEiThZ]

The problem is that nobody has the clout to stand up to Miller and Giambrone. In Ottawa, O'Brien took on the old LRT plan, ran against it and won. In Toronto, there is nobody who can or wants to do that. There isn't even anybody willing to run a few ads or billboards criticizing Transit City. If that going, we'd quickly see Transit City coming apart.

 

[ShonTron]

The problem is that nobody has the clout to stand up to Miller and Giambrone. In Ottawa, O'Brien took on the old LRT plan, ran against it and won.

Though he could only do it with help from John Baird!

 

[Hipster Duck]

golodhendil, posting an article on the virtues of light rail from "lightrailnow.org" was about as objective as posting an article about communism from Pravda.

Not to mention, the article uses strawmen liberally: bashing the Orion-Ikarus bus for its performance? This isn't a failing of busways. One could just as easily throw in the quality of performance of Boeing's awful VERTOL LRVs (I think Boston had some before junking them for Ansaldo Bredas - MUNI had to get rid of their entire fleet).

 

[MisterF]

Ottawa is currently a BRT-based system, and it already has higher ridership than any LRT-based system in the US or Canada. How anyone can argue that LRT is more attractive than bus is beyond me. It seems to me that there are more important ways to encourage more transit use than simply building light rail.

How is it beyond you? Did you read the studies in the links I posted? BTW, I've never claimed that light rail should be built solely to increase ridership. Don't misrepresent my arguments.

Ottawa is converting its BRT to LRT purely for capacity reasons, not to attract riders.

No, one of the stated goals of expanding LRT in Ottawa is to increase ridership and the modal share of transit.

This may be true in the US, but not here. Our history of subways, streetcars, and buses makes us different. I've asked many Torontonians this exact same question, and the majority simply do not care. I'm a railfan myself, so I know what bias is.

I think I'd rather trust impartial studies and accepted knowledge in the industry over your anecdotes.

I call bull.

The TTC has a bad habit of comparing pre-construction Spadina 77 ridership to today's. It did not compare all time peak ridership. By doing this they can claim, like you, that LRTs attract more riders. Though, if one was to re-weight the increase of Spadina ridership to that of overall TTC ridership increases during the time in question a more accurate picture emerges.

Hundreds of millions of dollars to save 2 minutes max, wile attracting no, real, additional riders. A money making bus route is now a money losing LRT. At least kettal won't get motion sickness while reading though, that must be worth something.

You can call bull all you want, but the fact remains that ridership on Spadina has increased by almost 20,000 per day since it was converted, and the line is actually slower than it used to be. The line loses money because the route is badly operated and because the CLRVs are poorly designed to handle the crowds, not because of anything inherent to LRT technology.

 

[golodhendil]

golodhendil, posting an article on the virtues of light rail from "lightrailnow.org" was about as objective as posting an article about communism from Pravda.

Rather than simply criticizing the source of the article (which I noted is biased), how about addressing the verity of the facts and data like "the federal government had implemented strict rules governing centre-core parking for civil servants – only one parking spot for ten employees – and hefty fees were charged for nearly all. Ottawa has ca. 300 parking spots per 1000 downtown jobs compared to a typical North American rate of 500 to 600 per 1000 jobs" (which Keithz just confirmed), and the cost went into building this railway-like busway system to make it work basically "as well as" a railway?

Not to mention, the article uses strawmen liberally: bashing the Orion-Ikarus bus for its performance? This isn't a failing of busways. One could just as easily throw in the quality of performance of Boeing's awful VERTOL LRVs (I think Boston had some before junking them for Ansaldo Bredas - MUNI had to get rid of their entire fleet).

With as many problems as the BVs had, they were used for 30 years before being retired. After the BV LRVs, Boston converted first to Kinki Sharyo Type 7s, and so far they have been used for 20 years and still going strong.

 

[golodhendil]

Aside from the fact that a much more varied demographic and socio-economic bunch of people take buses in Toronto, I'd bet real money that every study that has studied light rail vs buses has studied *real* light rail (probably grade-separated), and not streetcar ROWs. Apples to orangutans. No one will get out of their car for something that sits at red lights (they'd rather sit in their own car at red lights).

What exactly is "real" LRT? So suddenly all the stadtbahns and U-bahns and premetros of Europe, and the light rail systems of the US, with their level crossings and street-running sections, are "fake" light rails?

And should UT set up an account for the common money pool for you to send your money to? Because the study cited by MisterF, another study by SEPTA (can be found here - lightrailnow again but still it was done by SEPTA so the data still holds), and the casual comparison I made for Boston, are all comparing systems with grade-crossings or even street-running.

While I have always agreed with you that Eglinton should be completely grade-separated and Sheppard should be a subway, and I have concerns about how well would TTC be able to maintain transit priority on future light rail lines, your "stopping at red lights" rant is really starting to get tiresome.

 

[LowerBay]

So your anecdotes trump others'? When you feel like it, ask me to give you anecdotes of people who prefer trams/streetcars over not just buses, but subways. And to be fair, kettal was referring to preference for rail over bus, so your rant about prefering streetcar over subway, other than giving you an opportunity to spew your LRT-hatred, is unwarranted.

Look, I admitted that I was a railfan myself and that I prefer streetcars, but I can put that bias aside. When I objectively weigh the pros and cons of streetcars or LRT vs buses, buses come out on top -- hands down. We shouldn't be building expensive LRT systems so that some people (who never grew out of their childhood obsession with trains) can get their kicks or jollies riding them. They can play with their toy trains in their basements.

The only reason we even have streetcars today is because of Streetcars For Toronto back in '72. Every person on that committee was a stereotypical railfan, and they bamboozled Toronto into keeping them by coming up with "objective" reasons as to why they should have been kept. The arguments for LRT that I'm hearing here sound pretty much the same.

 

[Whoaccio]

This is a bit late, but a lot of the anti-bus stigma is frankly ridiculous. The only people this argument tends to have traction with are middle class white kids who are scared of the black people who ride the bus. As Hipster Duck pointed out, in the US this usually leads to a totally disproportionate investment in LRTs because they evoke some kind of nostalgic era where the 'inner city' wasn't filled with minorities. In L.A, the bus riders union was formed in part because LACTMA kept funneling money away from high ridership bus routes, typically used by the city's mutli-ethnic communities, towards low ridership LRT routes which were popular with white voters who associated buses with black people and trams with something their grandparents must have used.

I doubt anything the city does will change these prejudices, but it makes no sense for Toronto to spend 10+ billion dollars on LRTs just because polling from the L.A. shows some lawyer's kid from the Valley thinks buses are for poor people. Especially when Toronto already has several examples of popular bus routes in areas which by all rights shouldn't be. How prissy can you be for the love of god, getting motion sickness while riding a bus? Are you kidding me?

 

[xtremesniper]

Well, there's also the issue of diesel usage to take into account. I don't know about you, but if you've ever been standing near a bus as it pulls away from a stop and try to breathe, you're in for a nice dose of killer exhaust.

Fine, we'll add bus lanes and add more and more buses until the buses can just be linked together as they make a pickup/dropoff every 6 seconds. But when would you say "enough is enough" and just put an LRT in its place so that you take all that disgusting exhaust out of the air, and make it more comfortable for all the riders who are sardine canned into a bus.

And let's face it, with the way TTC drivers drive those buses, it's no wonder people complain about motion sickness, and it's also no wonder why people hate having to stand. You're just tossed around like a bag of shake-n-bake most of the time.

so...

a lot of the anti-bus stigma is frankly ridiculous

On the contrary, a lot of this anti-LRT stigma is ridiculous as well. Frankly I'm into the idea that VivaNext is doing, which is BRT until LRT comes in the future. But we are already seeing excessive rapid service on some routes, and I believe they are in need of a better solution.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

What exactly is "real" LRT? So suddenly all the S-bahns and U-bahns and premetros of Europe, and the light rail systems of the US, with their level crossings and street-running sections, are "fake" light rails?

And should UT set up an account for the common money pool for you to send your money to? Because the study cited by MisterF, another study by SEPTA (can be found here - lightrailnow again but still it was done by SEPTA so the data still holds), and the casual comparison I made for Boston, are all comparing systems with grade-crossings or even street-running.

While I have always agreed with you that Eglinton should be completely grade-separated and Sheppard should be a subway, and I have concerns about how well would TTC be able to maintain transit priority on future light rail lines, your "stopping at red lights" rant is really starting to get tiresome.

I skip plenty of your posts, feel free to skip mine if you're that spleeny when confronted with the spectre of Toronto's future 'rapid' transit lines stopping at red lights. Real, useful, rapid light rail vs Toronto-style streetcar ROWs...you quoted the distinction I made. Funny, I thought the Sheppard LRT as per its EA was getting built on Sheppard, not a German letter-bahn - after all, random foreign case studies are *totally* relevant to the urban context and how things get built and operated here in Toronto...

What's really tiresome is people supporting the argument that Finch's bus should be replaced because, in part, some people in Boston supposedly prefer rails over wheels. Um, who cares? The bus (like many routes in Toronto) is already full, all day, every day, so any argument based on preference is really lame.

Save the light rail and the billions it takes to build it for places where buses don't and won't work quite so well...Finch West, not Finch East, Lawrence East, not Morningside, take the Jane tunnel and put it on Dufferin, and so on.

 

[kettal]

The only reason we even have streetcars today is because of Streetcars For Toronto back in '72. Every person on that committee was a stereotypical railfan, and they bamboozled Toronto into keeping them by coming up with "objective" reasons as to why they should have been kept. The arguments for LRT that I'm hearing here sound pretty much the same.

Quite simply, there is no way routes like King could even come close to handling the current demand with buses in place of streetcars.

 

[drum118]

Look, I admitted that I was a railfan myself and that I prefer streetcars, but I can put that bias aside. When I objectively weigh the pros and cons of streetcars or LRT vs buses, buses come out on top -- hands down. We shouldn't be building expensive LRT systems so that some people (who never grew out of their childhood obsession with trains) can get their kicks or jollies riding them. They can play with their toy trains in their basements.

The only reason we even have streetcars today is because of Streetcars For Toronto back in '72. Every person on that committee was a stereotypical railfan, and they bamboozled Toronto into keeping them by coming up with "objective" reasons as to why they should have been kept. The arguments for LRT that I'm hearing here sound pretty much the same.

How can buses come out on top when they have the highest operatring cost on high travel routes???

Once you get over 20,000 riders daily as well 3,000 at peak time, LRT/Streetcar is the way to go.

If you have 5,000/hr leaving one stop at peak time, you need 100 buses to carry those riders. At $100/hr for operation cost, that $10,000 using 40' buses. Using double deck buses, you need 65 buses at a cost of $6,500. Using LRT, you need 40 of them at a cost of $4,000.

In a week, 40' buses will cost $50,000 vs. $20,000 for LRT. LRT will save just over $1.5 million in operation cost a year.

When one looks at up front cost of building a BRT vs. LRT, BRT will win. 40' buses on a road will win over a BRT or an LRT since roads are not part of transt operation or capital cost in the first place.

Buses, BRT LRT, subway, heavy rail all have thier place in transit movement.

I have had many train layouts in my basement. I will take LRT over buses any day base on the service level.

Until transit has it's own lane, you will keep throwing money out the window to maintain current headways by putting more buses on the road yearly and not carrying more riders doing so.

I have my bias, but I let the numbers do the talking for me to say a bus/LRT/Subway should be the way to go or be use based on ridership numbers.

 

[Whoaccio]

On the contrary, a lot of this anti-LRT stigma is ridiculous as well. Frankly I'm into the idea that VivaNext is doing, which is BRT until LRT comes in the future. But we are already seeing excessive rapid service on some routes, and I believe they are in need of a better solution.

There is very little "anti-LRT stigma". Complaints tend to either focus around how the TTC has completely missed the point of successful LRT systems like Calgary's by opting for glorified tram networks or how the routes the TTC has selected for LRT are absurd (Jane). Very few people will throw out arguments to the effect that "nobody likes trams" or "people think trams are for poor people", which is basically what people are referring to as the "anti-bus stigma." Its also probably at least partially in response to the idea some people have that LRT is everywhere and always the solution to every problem.

I mean, people create fan sites for "LRT", how ridiculous can you get?

Well, there's also the issue of diesel usage to take into account. I don't know about you, but if you've ever been standing near a bus as it pulls away from a stop and try to breathe, you're in for a nice dose of killer exhaust.

I ride the bus daily and am an asthmatic, I have never had this experience. Ever. Unless you are 12" tall, the exhaust is to high for most people to notice. By the time it does settle to human height, it is to diffuse to have an impact.

Quite simply, there is no way routes like King could even come close to handling the current demand with buses in place of streetcars.

By itself probably not, but if you started to expand bus service along roads parallel to king, like Adelaide/Richmond or Wellington, it would probably be pretty manageable. There are routes all over the world serviced by buses which make most of the King car's route look like suburb, so I would be skeptical that were trams to disappear people simply wouldn't be able to travel.

How can buses come out on top when they have the highest operating cost on high travel routes???

How do you figure that? The TTC's tram routes have totally average cost/recovery compared against bus routes, despite most of the time having much higher ridership density and not having to pay for their higher capital costs.