1) you are comparing off-peak 2) you are ignoring the significant gains that it makes west of Kennedy; east of Kennedy isn't as bad. 3) you are comparing to 2010 times; the LRT lines are premised on the massive gridlock estimated in 2031.
If Kennedy’s the split point where the average speed of bus trip increases significantly eastwards, to speeds of up to 26kph, then perhaps that’s the inference you should take notice of. Kennedy’s westwards is the bottleneck, we alleviate that choke point for bus routes feeding into Don Mills by extending the subway over to Kennedy. It’s simple logic. Do you anticipate multiple condominiums lining the eastern part of the Sheppard corridor anytime soon, or won’t Malvern-Rouge River’s population density be expected to float around the 75,000 – 100,000 mark indefinitely, for decades beyond 2031? Just for whom are we building the latter 10 kilometres of this beast for anyway when it promises to skip all of the major nearby trip-generators and provide the most circuitous routing to UTSC ever conceived?
If the travel time is only 32 minutes (and reliable) with the LRT, compared to 45 minutes (and unreliable) then that is a huge time savings. That's a 13 minute time savings. Probably more, given that it will only be a short distance with no steps from the door to the subway, to the door to LRT, compared to the long walk currently from the platform, to the bus bay. That walk alone must be 2-3 minutes. Let's be charitable and say that the total savings is 15 minutes. 30 minutes a day. 2.5 hours a week. 125 hours a year.
What’s making it reliable other than it being in a private ROW with signal priority and fewer stops? Were it asphalt and concrete instead of steel rails and catenaries, would it be any less dependable? Don Mills is a poorly designed interchange station because, guess what, it was never intended to be the final stop. Phase 1 was intended to at least bring the line to the Scarborough border whereby a majority of the splinter routes (10, 169, 167, 24, 224, 122?, 67?) would have a direct connection and avoid the timely 404 crossing. Any future extension east building built in mind to accommodate cross-platform LRT would have that incorporated from conception, not tacked on years later in the name of crafting a political legacy. Lastly people from far east Scarborough (and Durham) would be much better off to be provided with a TTC express bus service following the 401 into Don Mills Stn. Done. More affordable, faster and more effective. And it wouldn't take years on end of waiting for citizens to actually experience shorter commute times either, its implementation-ready now.
What kind of NIMBY would describe that as measly!
The kind that doesn’t want to witness businesses close down, the elderly and infirm forced to walk longer to their nearest stop, needless transfers, and the like for the sake of lining developers’ pockets and for optics to dazzle the int’l community with for all of two weeks when reserved bus lanes down the same corridor would be just as fast; and subway down over a third of said route would be even faster!
