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Is Hume right?

K

King of Kensington

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Yes, it's absolutely awful.
I got an e-bike just so I don't have to deal with the awful 501 anymore.
 
King of Kensington said:
I'm sure people have read this. Is he right? Not to defend the status quo, and certainly ignoring the problem won't make it go away, but I'm not sure if some of the overblown rhetoric (the TTC is the WORST PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEM IN THE WORLD type stuff) is just going to contribute to pessimism and not help contribute to solving the problems around transit.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/07/03/slow_and_unreliable_ttc_is_no_longer_the_better_way.html
Click to expand...

Hume has blown things way out of proportion. Is the TTC amazing? No. Is it horrible? No. It got me to work on time 95%+ of the time.
 
He is right. And despite the "fear of contributing to the pessimism", sitting idly by while saying nothing is much more counterproductive than voicing dissent. Luckily the city has given us a medium to voice our opinions, and I highly recommend that those of you who haven't read through it use this opportunity: http://feelingcongested.ca/#have-your-say
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Hume has blown things way out of proportion. Is the TTC amazing? No. Is it horrible? No. It got me to work on time 95%+ of the time.
Click to expand...

Tiger it's horrible. It's broken, it does not serve the six boroughs effectively, the fare is sky high, they can't come to an agreement as to what type of transit vehicle to use, etc.
 
someMidTowner said:
He is right. And despite the "fear of contributing to the pessimism", sitting idly by while saying nothing is much more counterproductive than voicing dissent. Luckily the city has given us a medium to voice our opinions, and I highly recommend that those of you who haven't read through it use this opportunity: http://feelingcongested.ca/#have-your-say
Click to expand...

My point is more against catastrophism - that isn't helpful. We need sobre anaylsis and now is the time to act. Hume is right to speak of a return to the 50/50 funding. And we need to prioritize what actually works and not Tammany Hall style BS like "subways to your door in Scarborough."

Also a lot of the supposedly pro-transit "debate" is quite ignorant: i.e. people in Etobicoke complaining about how Toronto lacks "New York" style transit, while not realizing that Etobicoke has better subway service than the Etobicoke-like sections of New York! Or someone who spends 3 days in say, Chicago talks about how you can wizz to your destination quickly while in Toronto it's "always" big delays.

In some ways the TTC is a victim of its own success given it's high ridership rate.
 
The 501 and 504 are the worst parts of the TTC, and with 110,000 daily riders between the two it quickly becomes very evident. The DRL is needed yesterday to fix this fact.

Hume is correct by saying that service is delayed and late for buses and streetcars quite a bit. But how do you go around fixing this problem? there is no cheap option, and the partial fixes are being looked at. (closing king at rush hour for example) the key way to fix reliability issues is to build bus lanes, LRTs, and Subways.

I agree that fares are way too high, it should be below $2.50, with PRESTO fully implemented similar to GO but maxing out at $100 a month.
 
King of Kensington said:
My point is more against catastrophism - that isn't helpful. We need sobre anaylsis and now is the time to act. Hume is right to speak of a return to the 50/50 funding. And we need to prioritize what actually works and not Tammany Hall style BS like "subways to your door in Scarborough."

Also a lot of the supposedly pro-transit "debate" is quite ignorant: i.e. people in Etobicoke complaining about how Toronto lacks "New York" style transit, while not realizing that Etobicoke has better subway service than the Etobicoke-like sections of New York! Or someone who spends 3 days in say, Chicago talks about how you can wizz to your destination quickly while in Toronto it's "always" big delays.

In some ways the TTC is a victim of its own success given it's high ridership rate.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I have no beefs with the TTC. But then, I have relatively easy access to it -- and that includes the subway, streetcars and buses. Plus it's not like I have to commute from, say, Scarborough to York U. every day. I live within what might be called the old "streetcar suburbs" of Toronto -- the gridlike portions of town that evolved with the transit system -- and not out in those areas w2ith winding crescents and such designed for driving. I include even Leaside, just to name one area, as part of this non-TTC-friendly mix.

Is the TTC perfect? No. But given its ridership and its budget constraints -- not to mention the reluctance of the city to restrict private cars on King and Queen to speed up the streetcars which, by the way, have a combined ridership much higher than all the GO trains put together -- it's doing damn well.

Hume is correct that the communication sucks. Two weeks ago I was stuck on the Bloor line for some unexplained reason. The delay was only 10 minutes but a clue would have been nice.
 
King of Kensington said:
My point is more against catastrophism - that isn't helpful. We need sobre anaylsis and now is the time to act. Hume is right to speak of a return to the 50/50 funding. And we need to prioritize what actually works and not Tammany Hall style BS like "subways to your door in Scarborough."

Also a lot of the supposedly pro-transit "debate" is quite ignorant: i.e. people in Etobicoke complaining about how Toronto lacks "New York" style transit, while not realizing that Etobicoke has better subway service than the Etobicoke-like sections of New York! Or someone who spends 3 days in say, Chicago talks about how you can wizz to your destination quickly while in Toronto it's "always" big delays.

In some ways the TTC is a victim of its own success given it's high ridership rate.
Click to expand...


This is true though. The L goes everywhere, even into the most dangerous neighbourhoods. And you can also drive there. Toronto has the same density but the transit is mostly mediocre and it costs and arm and a leg to own a car in Ontario.
 
Well, the TTC is by no means the worst transit system in the world, but all of the transit systems that are worse than the TTC (and there are many) are either:

a) not in cities I want Toronto to look up to,
b) in cities where the vast majority of the population drives

The TTC might also have one of the worst matches of demand to need at the micro, neighbourhood level. Consider how many households don't own cars in Parkdale relative to the appalling level of transit service there compared to the number of households who live at Bayview and Sheppard and the world class level of transit service there.

A final point I might add is that Toronto's transit service was once considered to be a leading model, and it is against that, and not other cities of comparable size, that the TTC's service should be judged. Yes, I think that the TTC is a better system than SEPTA or the MBTA or MUNI or the CTA, but nobody wrote books on how progressive those transit agencies were in the 1970s.
 
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It helps that the L was built for a city of 3,600,000 people when it currently only has 2,600,000. Chicago actually closed one of the L lines in the 1990s and many run at reduced speeds due to lack of matenince.
 
Hipster Duck said:
The TTC might also have one of the worst matches of demand to need at the micro, neighbourhood level. Consider how many households don't own cars in Parkdale relative to the appalling level of transit service there compared to the number of households who live at Bayview and Sheppard and the world class level of transit service there.
Click to expand...

That is so true. The criteria for transit expansion over the past 3 decades has been totally irrational.
 
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Hipster Duck said:
Well, the TTC is by no means the worst transit system in the world, but all of the transit systems that are worse than the TTC (and there are many) are either:

a) not in cities I want Toronto to look up to,
b) in cities where the vast majority of the population drives

The TTC might also have one of the worst matches of demand to need at the micro, neighbourhood level. Consider how many households don't own cars in Parkdale relative to the appalling level of transit service there compared to the number of households who live at Bayview and Sheppard and the world class level of transit service there.

A final point I might add is that Toronto's transit service was once considered to be a leading model, and it is against that, and not other cities of comparable size, that the TTC's service should be judged. Yes, I think that the TTC is a better system than SEPTA or the MBTA or MUNI or the CTA, but nobody wrote books on how progressive those transit agencies were in the 1970s.
Click to expand...

Yes. That's another thing. This was considered to be among the top class even in the Lastman era. TTC was seen as the best. It' seems since about 2001 the TTC has gone downhill, maybe its because Toronto grew so fast, I don't know.

innsertnamehere said:
It helps that the L was built for a city of 3,600,000 people when it currently only has 2,600,000. Chicago actually closed one of the L lines in the 1990s and many run at reduced speeds due to lack of matenince.
Click to expand...
Very true and should be acknowledged. NYC and London also had its systems forever too.
 
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Hipster Duck said:
Well, the TTC is by no means the worst transit system in the world, but all of the transit systems that are worse than the TTC (and there are many) are either:

a) not in cities I want Toronto to look up to,
b) in cities where the vast majority of the population drives

The TTC might also have one of the worst matches of demand to need at the micro, neighbourhood level. Consider how many households don't own cars in Parkdale relative to the appalling level of transit service there compared to the number of households who live at Bayview and Sheppard and the world class level of transit service there.

A final point I might add is that Toronto's transit service was once considered to be a leading model, and it is against that, and not other cities of comparable size, that the TTC's service should be judged. Yes, I think that the TTC is a better system than SEPTA or the MBTA or MUNI or the CTA, but nobody wrote books on how progressive those transit agencies were in the 1970s.
Click to expand...

The transit planners in Toronto were way ahead of the world for decades. The viaduct is a testament to that, as is that famous 1910 map showing a DRL. There is a hole at the Queen subway station which was dug to take the streetcars under Yonge St. -- and that was just one location. They figured out that Bloor was the way to go. By the time Montreal got its fancy-shmancy Metro in time for Expo 67 (and very limited at that), Toronto had been riding the subway rails for a decade.

So what happened? Who dropped the transit ball and why?
 
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