News   Dec 09, 2025
 302     1 
News   Dec 09, 2025
 359     0 
News   Dec 09, 2025
 441     1 

Finch West Line 6 LRT

told me that Black & McDonald was the contractor in charge of the signals. He more or less confirmed that transit signal priority was not much of a priority right now and exasperatingly said that Black & McDonald were very slow at getting stuff done.
Assuming you quoted him accurately, I truly don't understand what we're meant to understand from this...

Tsp has been installed and available from what we've been told. What impact could this contractror have on tsp beyond its instalation?
 
It's not copium, it's lived experience.

I haven't been to any of the named cities, but in a city like Prague or Bratislava, their trams running in Finch style rights of way are speedy and are competitive to the subway (in cities that have one) for short and medium distance journeys.
place.png


Just give it up son. LRTs are garbage, I'm so glad Miller wasn't able to spread more of this cancer throughout the City.
 
Assuming you quoted him accurately, I truly don't understand what we're meant to understand from this...

Tsp has been installed and available from what we've been told. What impact could this contractror have on tsp beyond its instalation?
I don't know exactly, what I gleaned from the conversation was that Mosaic was still responsible for maintenance/changes involving transit/traffic signal operations even after substantial completion i.e. the 30 year contract. Someone more knowledgeable on the project can confirm if possible?

I would assume signals fall under "trackside infrastructure" maintenance:
 
It feels like 99% of passengers are having a lovely time riding the shiny new train, and UrbanToronto's there like this.

View attachment 701321

People always flock to what is shiny and new. You see it all the time with new eateries. Those individuals cannot really be trusted with an unbiased opinion when they are largely there searching for the new experience for a dopamine hit. There are also a whole bunch of people on social media commenting on how slow the service is, some are actually posting as they ride it.

However, the real data will come from the people that ACTUALLY use this route for work on the regular. Right now, the travel times might not be promising but we shall see.

I just hope this fanfare dies down fast as, potential, lineups at stations would not be helpful whatsoever for people going to work that use this route.
 
People always flock to what is shiny and new. You see it all the time with new eateries. Those individuals cannot really be trusted with an unbiased opinion when they are largely there searching for the new experience for a dopamine hit. There are also a whole bunch of people on social media commenting on how slow the service is, some are actually posting as they ride it.

However, the real data will come from the people that ACTUALLY use this route for work on the regular. Right now, the travel times might not be promising but we shall see.

I just hope this fanfare dies down fast as, potential, lineups at stations would not be helpful whatsoever for people going to work that use this route.
I was hearing grumbles and surprise of how slow it is. Parents with their kids kept asking how many stops left as if the ride was unbearable..,
 
I checked a few stop pairings in Prague (and I focused on the straight ones). Again it seems to hover around 17-19km/h. Better than Finch West, but its far from amazing. I haven't seen anything that reaches the promised 22km/h speeds on Finch West.
Even on the low end for trip duration, Metrolinx never promised 22 km/h average speeds? Even if end-to-end was only 33 minutes, the speeds would be below 20 km/h when including dwell times. 10.3/(33/60)= 18.7 km/h.

More to the point: a 22 km/h average moving speed target without including the time stationary at each stop is a pointless target.

Source: https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/...trolinx/Finch-West-LRT-FAQs-Revised-June9.pdf
TSP is frankly not even the top of this line's concerns. The train simply shouldn't be crawling at 20km/h between stations (not at intersections), and it especially shouldn't be running at 10km/h in the curved tunnel under H27/Finch. The operations here are just beyond inexcusable for a finished product running revenue service.
We're waiting at red lights 10+ minutes. It is a huge problem. Subtract 10 minutes from 52 minutes and you're already at 42 minutes.

Again someone explain to me and @ARG1 this clownery from the parties involved:
"All of the City's current TSP locations are 'unconditional' in their operation. [...] For these reasons, and in consultation with the City and TTC the Metrolinx consortia are implementing Conditional TSP on Line 5 Eglinton and Line 6 Finch West."
Source: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/cc/bgrd/backgroundfile-254795.pdf

The streetcar signal priority is already weaker than a wet paper bag. Who in their right mind thought implementing even weaker signal priority than the streetcar would be a smart idea for two flagship transit projects?
 
The speeds are due to the soft-opening conditions. They’ll improve over time.
This project was bad when they announced 34-38 minutes. Now this is disaster territory being a 50 minutes ride for only 10,3 KM. No excuses for the low speed. The TTC, the city and the Provinces need to address it quickly and work on solutions ASAP.
 
1765145219170.png


The experience today is that the 46 minute run-time was best case scenario and average right now is around ~54 minutes. Did we just built the slowest rapid transit line in the world?

Perhaps it should be renamed to the 536 Finch route after all.
 
If you weren't already depressed enough, I did a little fact checking and compared it to another LRT system, Calgary's CTrain. ***** CAUTION*****..........those with heart conditions may want to look away.

Finch is traversing just 11 km with 18 stations and takes 50 minutes. Conversely, the Red Line CTrain traverses 32 km in 59 minutes with 28 stations and this INCLUDES going straight thru the downtown core. yurt2022 is wrong, LRT is not garbage but rather Finch is. The CTrain is LRT done right. Funny how the supposed right-wing car loving cowboys put transit first while left-leaning "transit friendly" Toronto does everything in its power to make taking transit as painful as humanely possible.
 
If you weren't already depressed enough, I did a little fact checking and compared it to another LRT system, Calgary's CTrain. ***** CAUTION*****..........those with heart conditions may want to look away.

Finch is traversing just 11 km with 18 stations and takes 50 minutes. Conversely, the Red Line CTrain traverses 32 km in 59 minutes with 28 stations and this INCLUDES going straight thru the downtown core. yurt2022 is wrong, LRT is not garbage but rather Finch is. The CTrain is LRT done right. Funny how the supposed right-wing car loving cowboys put transit first while left-leaning "transit friendly" Toronto does everything in it's power to make taking transit as painful as humanely possible.
CTrain is high floor LRV, basically subway cars with catenary. Not that it matters though, the way the City implements this project and streetcar operations is terrible.
 
Just rode from Finch West to Humber College.

65min. The chatter on the train for much of the trip was “why is it so slow?”

Got off the train and facing me was a “Thinking of suicide?” wall ad, which would be an over-reaction, but was sort of on the nose.
 
Last edited:
After reading all of these comments from where I left off, this begs a question... What's the difference between this and the street cars that have been in operation?

If I didn't know any better (I don't), I'd have said they're treating the entirety of the line as one big slow zone (Thanks Rick Leary), or they were intentionally going slow on the first day, and will be for a while to avoid any fatalities on the track from people who didn't know any better.

That second sentence makes it seem like I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, but nothing logical sticks out on why they're limiting the speeds other than safety concerns while drivers and pedestrians become familiar with seeing the LRV's in operation before speeds pick up.

If that isn't the case, then I really wouldn't know what to say.
 
I think Line 5 may take that prize. As for saving billions.... Our inability to affordably build transit extents to BRT as well.
The majority of Line 5 is grade-seperated.

For Finch, I quickly count about 24 traffic lights in 9.5 km from the portals near Highway 27 and Keele. That's about a 410-metre spacing.

For Eglinton from Agar Khan to Ionview - I count 11 traffic lights in about 5 km. That's about a 500-metre spacing. Slightly better. It's a shame they can't re-engineer the DVP interchange to eliminate the turning traffic, and get rid of the unfortunate Swift/Credit Union lights (one could leave a pedestrian crossing, where there's priority); maybe even Sinnott. Does the Eglinton Square/Eglinton one disappear one day too, with the redesign? Why there wasn't a better solution for Rosemount I don't know. And then there's Leslie; they should have engineered that one away on the south side. Perhaps there'll be better options if they rebuild the railway bridge there for Alto/GO. By the the time time they finish there'll be about 26.5 km overground, depending where the Pearson terminal is. So that's over 80% underground. Which will give different perceptions to the line; especially for those that don't go east of the Ontario Line.
 

Back
Top