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Rainforest
Senior Member
You could save 30 min with Sheppard East LRT if you count both trips, but certainly not one. The forecast one-way travel time on LRT from Meadowvale to Don Mills subway is 37 min. The same trip on bus could take 50 or 55 min, but not 67 min.
BurlOak
Senior Member
You are being too generous to STC.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
For my route, taking the Finch Express to McCowan and then transferring to another bus down to the SRT and one more transfer to a bus to Centennial happens to be my fastest route. The fastest I've gotten there was just under an hour. Longest nearly an hour and a half. Depends on traffic. Unless I know for sure that they'll be no traffic I'll leave at least an hour and 40 minutes before I need to reach my destination since the busses aren't always reliable.
With the SELRT open, I would just go from Sheppard-Yonge to Don Mills (about 10 mins) , transfer to SELRT to SRT and then (about 25 min on SELRT), SRT (about 5 min) to Centennial Station . Should take around 45-50 mins on a good day, 60 mins if things were really bad. Certainly nowhere near an hour and a half. And unlike the bus it would be reliable. No more leaving an hour and 40 minutes early for potential traffic. Very interesting to see how the LRT would have affected actual commute times in the context of the network. That's an improvement of about 50% on the best days.
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diminutive
Active Member
Half the time? Busses average 17kph on Finch West and 17 is not half of 23.
Like, imagine it the other way. If the TTC decided to introduce all-door boarding, wider stop spacing and bus lanes everywhere on its main surface routes and came up with a gimmicky name for it, would you expect the public to be all patriotic towards that? Are people in York Region all psyched about the new Hwy7 Busway? Are voters praising the Finch Rocket? Most people probably don't know the Transit City Bus Plan even existed.
I was originally responding to a post which suggested there was some kind of public hostility towards LRT. I was merely trying to suggest that most Torontonians probably rationally see these projects as modest, or incremental. That's not a bad thing at all, mind you.
There's always been this odd, semi-elitist, perception here and elsewhere that the public, in all of its ignorance, doesn't really understand what LRT even is and that's why people like Rob Ford get elected. It's especially ridiculous in a city like Toronto where the only difference between, say, Finch West and the St. Clair car will be trolley poles and *slightly* wider spacing.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
Have you been on a bus on Finch or anywhere else. Even the express. I can't speak for Finch West, but on Finch East the "express bus" can take an hour to get from McCowan to Yonge. I'm sure that most of that 17kmph speed comes from non peak times where there aren't very many cars or passengers on the busses. When you're riding during peak times (when most people are on the busses) you'd be lucky to average 10 kph.
sixrings
Senior Member
Correct. The most time saving would be during rush hour where the lrt would zoom past traffic versus the bus idling in traffic. Easily there could be a savings of 50% during rush hour. The rest of the time not so much. But rush hour or not it would be a more reliable, more comfortable, higher capacity form of transit... All of these are good things.. I really tend to think once the new street cars come out, once Toronto sees the Viva BRT and sees the Hurontario LRT it is going to kick itself for not acting fasterm instead of subway subway subway.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
What's your point?
I can draw comparisons between transport technology as well.
I mean, LRT is just subways that run at street level with controls over traffic signals.
Seriously think about it.
They both can run uninterrupted by vehicle traffic.
They both use wayside signalling to control the transit to pprevent bunching.
They both stop at all stations.
Heck, they both even have similar stop spacing. Just look at the Bloor, Danforth, Yonge and University Subways. All have spacing of about 600-700 meters with some stops of 400 metres.
And I can tell you for sure that there are LRT systems with a very subway like operation to them.
See, you're not the only one who can comparisons between transit.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
Once people experience zooming past traffic on the LRVs don't be surprised if you hear a few people saying, "holy shit, we want these things everywhere"
diminutive
Active Member
What's your point?
I can draw comparisons between transport technology as well.
I mean, LRT is just subways that run at street level with controls over traffic signals.
Seriously think about it.
...
See, you're not the only one who can comparisons between transit.
Yea, you're right. Almost all 'transit technologies' as such are marketing terms.
The difference is nobody ever accuses anybody of not understanding what a subway is or could be. The 'people are hostile because they don't understand it' argument is pretty much unique to LRT, for some reason.
And to be anal, St. Clair and the Transit City LRTs will be be the same thing (except trolley poles...), which ought to undercut the argument that LRT is some kind of as of yet unexperienced technology in Toronto.
P.S. I'd also add that most people don't get super excited over subways, either. Usually the most excited people are the politicians who claim that the ribbon cutting ceremony of some short stub is the difference between permanent congestion and transit utopia.
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sixrings
Senior Member
I will say that the LRT got itself in trouble by having too many stops.. If the stops were only at major intersections as far as the walk or hastle would be to get to them people would see that it definitely is not a streetcar. The opposite of NIMBYS happened. Instead of people fighting to remove the LRT at first they fought for more stops. The more stops added, even the ones which made sense, slowed down the whole line and it started to appear like a Streetcar from a maps perspective. When I had to look up some of the stops street names to find out where these stops were I thought we might be in trouble. Fewer stops first would have been better. You can always add later. Its harder to take stops away.
Rainforest
Senior Member
This is interesting. In the context of two lines, the saving can be greater than for Sheppard LRT alone. The SLRT trip from Sheppard to Centennial could be even less than 5 min (it would be the next stop), whereas today's bus 134 would probably take 8 - 10 min and it may not be very frequent and reliable.
That makes me think, perhaps the network can still be saved even in the Murray subway context; by building a shorter LRT route that starts at Scarborough Centre and goes to Centennial, Sheppard, and Malvern, pretty much like the eastern part of SLRT in the previous plan.
nhui06
Active Member
I think that so long as they find a way to bring the 95 York Mills buses down to Ellesmere Station (or even the 43 Kennedy Bus for a quick spur trip), they will add Ellesmere Station. The only reason why it is underused is because the buses currently drop passengers off near the bottom of a bridge, and people have to walk down a big hill (around 200m, or around 300M from Kennedy and Ellesmere) to get to the RT station. Let the buses drop drop off passengers down there, and Ellesmere may become a fairly used stop.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
I really take issue with calling LRT technology (I know I did it above, but I'm allowed to change my mind
). It really Isn't any different at to any other rail transit "technology". LRT is just a very loosely defined method of mass transportation. Everything from streetcars to heavy rail subways has been called "light rail". Also we really don't have anything similar to our LRT lines. St. Clair is definitely not an example.
-It does not have signal priority. Depending on how Metrolinx implements out signal priority, the light rail vehicles may never have to stop at stoplights. I've seen it done before.
-St. Clair does not feature similar stop spacing to our LRT line. The LRT will be much closer to our stop spacing on our subway lines (about 650 - 800m).
-St. Clair doesn't stop at every station.
-St. Clair does not have subway style wayside signalling to control the flow of the LRVs. Our lines will probably have them. This will help to eliminate bunching and make LRT arrival times extremely punctual. This is been a huge problem on St. Clair and just about every other streetcar line. And don't underestimate the importance of this. Arrival predictability is hugely important to how people use transit. Perhaps as important as average speed. At the end of the day I really don't care if the LRV is moving in ROW at 22 kph or 30 kph underground. Unless you're travelling from one end of the line to the other (most aren't), the travel time will only differ by a minute or two (not trying to say LRT is slow. As I showed in my own personal example a few posts back the LRT will cut my travel time in half). What will change my travel patterns is whether or not I can count on an LRV being there every 90 seconds (or whatever the headway is). With the LRT, I will know that the train will arrive more or less 90 seconds on the dot, every time.
Our LRT operations really should have more relation to our subways than anything. This is assuming that Metrolinx doesn't screw up of course. So far they've been doing good work.
I apologize for any typos. Let's just say that the UT mobile site doesn't like me.
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Electrify
Senior Member
I really take issue with calling LRT technology (I know I did it above, but I'm allowed to change my mind
Also we really don't have anything similar to our LRT lines. St. Clair is definitely not an example.
-It does not have signal priority. Depending on how Metrolinx implements out signal priority, the light rail vehicles may never have to stop at stoplights. I've seen it done before.
-St. Clair does not feature similar stop spacing to our LRT line. The LRT will be much closer to our stop spacing on our subway lines (about 650 - 800m).
-St. Clair doesn't stop at every station.
-St. Clair does not have subway style wayside signalling to control the flow of the LRVs. Our lines will probably have them. This will help to eliminate bunching and make LRT arrival times extremely punctual. This is been a huge problem on St. Clair and just about every other streetcar line. And don't underestimate the importance of this. Arrival predictability is hugely important to how people use transit. Perhaps as important as average speed. At the end of the day I really don't care if the LRV is moving in ROW at 22 kph or 30 kph underground. Unless you're travelling from one end of the line to the other (most aren't), the travel time will only differ by a minute or two (not trying to say LRT is slow. As I showed in my own personal example a few posts back the LRT will cut my travel time in half). What will change my travel patterns is whether or not I can count on an LRV being there every 90 seconds (or whatever the headway is). With the LRT, I will know that the train will arrive more or less 90 seconds on the dot, every time.
Our LRT operations really should have more relation to our subways than anything. This is assuming that Metrolinx doesn't screw up of course. So far they've been doing good work.
I apologize for any typos. Let's just say that the UT mobile site doesn't like me.
The LRT stop spacing is actually closer to 400-500m, not 800m. This results in 3 mid block stops as opposed to 1 or 2 that is found on the subway. Still far better than the streetcar which has up to 9 mid block stops. That said, there are some places where the stops will be further apart, such as near the ends of the lines and underground along Eglinton.
As for typos, are you using Swype? I know that it caused problems in some text fields which is why I use the basic Google Keyboard.