Off-peak projection for Transit City LRTs

[taal]

If, hypothetically, Finch bus service was reduced to 1 bus per hour, you can be assured that people will start using whatever other mode they can (drive, bike, walk, crawl, electric wheelchair), and the buses won't actually be full.

Where do you think is the ideal spot on this curve for TTC service?

This is pretty silly ...

Ideally any transit agency would want to be in the middle but there are problems with doing such ... if say for the TTC the ideal number is 5min off peak for Finch that leads to bunching as that's not *manageable*. So really need to look at a lot of other factors.

The other clear issue is how does one forcast such a curve in advance ... they don't typically, they just use whatever current ridership exists and probably try to aim smack middle in your chart there. But what's to say going over to the left side doesn't increase demand and then the entire curve shifts..

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Not sure how you got that from the above, although I agree it wasn't written very well. The point is 15min frequencies will of course be more reliable and cheaper to operate and could still serve the same number of people as 5/7min routes given the vehicles themselves are larger - but is this really ideal.

I couldn't get much from the above because it made no sense.

15 minute frequency would be less reliable than 7 minute frequency, not more reliable. Any delay can turn it into 20+ minutes, which starts hurting ridership. Fewer but fuller vehicles take longer to load/unload than more but emptier buses. 7 minutes is nowhere near frequent enough to run into the kind of light cycle problems that triggers bunches, and if the route is mismanaged at 7 minute frequencies, it'll surely be mismanaged at 15 minute frequencies, too.

 

[Platform 27]

One of the reasons I've always had an unfashionable soft spot for ART/ICTS is precisely because it avoids this problem by having smallish cars that can run driverlessly, and thus scales nicely. SkyTrain in Vancouver always has itty-bitty headways compared to what a conventional line with a similar overall ridership catchment would likely run at, and thus offers a better quality product to potential riders. Too bad the SRT was such a lemon.

For argument's sake, 36 Finch West presently runs through most of the off-peak with a 7.5 minute headway. Assuming 1 Transit City LRV = 2.5 buses (although the TC LRVs will probably be a bit longer than the new Flexitys for the legacy network) and 25% ridership growth on that corridor between now and day 1 of LRT service (probably a bit generous), you're going to be looking at a situation where 15 minute headways would be the notional conversion.

Now, I'm fairly confident that given the shiny new chunk of capital they want to have succeed and the prospect of substantially growing the ridership thanks to rail bias, the TTC will probably run the line with a looser hand on the operating pursestrings relative to how they're rationalizing costs on the bus service. On a per vehicle basis, running one LRV could actually be cheaper than one bus--operator labour, which is the biggest cost, will be the same, and I reckon an LRV will have lower fuel and maintenance costs. But I still wonder how realistic it is to expect 7.5 minute LRV headways to be sustained, even if it costs the TTC exactly as much as the current bus does to run. Surely the first time there's a budget shortfall, someone will make the case of leveraging some savings by turning 1/3-full LRVs into 1/2-full LRVs and thereby helping stave off the dreaded fare hike from 4.00 to 4.25.

Where I'd be really worried about larger vehicles driving up headways is not on the TC lines but on some of the existing streetcar lines once the Flexitys enter service. Take the 502-- right now CLRVs seem to justify 20 minute headways. What happens once Flexitys with twice the capacity become the vehicle of choice?

 

[RedRocket191]

Where I'd be really worried about larger vehicles driving up headways is not on the TC lines but on some of the existing streetcar lines once the Flexitys enter service. Take the 502-- right now CLRVs seem to justify 20 minute headways. What happens once Flexitys with twice the capacity become the vehicle of choice?

I know what you're getting at, and it's a bit irrelevant. The commission has a 30 minute frequency standard during daytime operations, and it's going to move to 20 minutes in the next few years.