Rob Ford wants subways, not streetcars

[scarberiankhatru]

Better bus service yes, but spending billions on light rail or subways in the suburbs is a bad investment. Even a subway can't match the speed of the 401. That's why the only people you see on these boards (myself included) are transit geeks. The only transit solution that's worth building is the DRL.

The only people on a transit sub-thread of an "Urban Toronto" internet forum are transit geeks? Very insightful!

It's one thing to be on the 401 and moving, but it can take 15 minutes to travel 1km on local roads getting to the 401 and another 15 minutes to travel 1km once you get off the 401.

Suburban Scarborough and North York already have higher transit ridership than most US downtowns. If you think there's no demand, I invite you to try squeeze yourself onto a Finch bus at rush hour.

Or at 2pm. Or at 10pm. Or a Steeles bus, or a Don Mills bus, or a 190, or...

You have to scramble for a seat on the Finch bus at 1am, too...even though it runs every 5.5 minutes (is there a higher frequency bus route in the world after midnight? The private buses that ply Hong Kong, maybe, if counted collectively.). Maybe LowerBay will be happy when the Finch bus' frequency is increased to the point that the buses push each along in a big loop and riders just jump in and out through open doors.

 

[LowerBay]

What makes you think an LRT car won't be just as crowded? All that crowding is calculated. The TTC always runs the minimum amount of service to keep the cars fully packed. Do you really think the TTC is going to run half-empty LRT cars every 5 minutes on Finch, all day long?

 

[LAz]

Ah, we've been hearing about the death of the suburbs for ages now. Well, when's it gonna happen?

Some say that this has already started in the US.

You know this recent thing that we're in, the recession?
Guess what triggered it.
Supposedly financial troubles and what not.
And where did those start?
In the outer most suburbs. That's right. The high price of gas threw us into this recession. Suburbia screamed. Far out suburbia started to die. Financial meltdown started as short term profits proved to be unsustainable. Foreclosure after foreclosure. The beginning of the end for suburbia. Today the longterm prospects for it are dim. This reduced price of petrol is pretty good for suburbia. If people in north america pay for gas what people in europe pay, then the end will come nearer.


But here we subsidize the car, don't we hm?

It's one thing to be on the 401 and moving, but it can take 15 minutes to travel 1km on local roads getting to the 401 and another 15 minutes to travel 1km once you get off the 401.

Minutes huh... the exact reason why the subway needs to be extended eastwards along sheppard. And westwards to jane. Real rapid transit, something that would make the car redundant. =)

 

[kettal]

What makes you think an LRT car won't be just as crowded? All that crowding is calculated. The TTC always runs the minimum amount of service to keep the cars fully packed. Do you really think the TTC is going to run half-empty LRT cars every 5 minutes on Finch, all day long?

Are you really so stubborn you can't admit when you were wrong?

The Finch buses at rush hour have a frequency of 90 seconds which is beyond what a bus system can efficiently service, even in the best scenario. Yes, articulated buses can help, but an LRT which has the capacity of 4 to 8 buses per trainset would also help.

But we already knew you were out of touch when you said there wasn't enough demand in the suburbs.

 

[reaperexpress]

You have to scramble for a seat on the Finch bus at 1am, too...even though it runs every 5.5 minutes (is there a higher frequency bus route in the world after midnight?

Route 320 Yonge has a 3 min frequency between 2 and 4 am.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

The TTC website claims Finch is scheduled for as little as 73 second service. Go much lower and you'll be forced to run more than one bus per light cycle, which makes bunching unavoidable. Finch East manages, though, because it has so little traffic congestion and no large employment/shopping nodes, just endless townhouses and apartments and schools.

Minutes huh... the exact reason why the subway needs to be extended eastwards along sheppard. And westwards to jane. Real rapid transit, something that would make the car redundant. =)

That's news to you? Have you never been to Toronto?

 

[LowerBay]

Are you really so stubborn you can't admit when you were wrong?

The Finch buses at rush hour have a frequency of 90 seconds which is beyond what a bus system can efficiently service, even in the best scenario. Yes, articulated buses can help, but an LRT which has the capacity of 4 to 8 buses per trainset would also help.

But we already knew you were out of touch when you said there wasn't enough demand in the suburbs.

So then why is the LRT going on Finch W. and not E?

 

[kettal]

So then why is the LRT going on Finch W. and not E?

Mainly, this is due to the existence of a subway on Sheppard Ave E.

I'm not saying the Transit City plan is divine and beyond criticism, but there is certainly a level of demand to warrant LRT in these areas.

 

[Fresh Start]

So then why is the LRT going on Finch W. and not E?

Political motives, that's why. We can't have Rexdale look all isolated while Scarborough's literally getting rapid transit every other concession road, now can we? Transit City has to have the appearence that every ward in the city will be catered to; pretty lines on a map to give off the perception that Toronto's now "world-class." The use of bus-only lanes (or private roadway?) with articulated buses across the Finch corridor area right across the city was not up for discussion. Even though according to the TTC's own statistics the 36 Finch West bus on average is only moving about 1313pphpd; a number that would further decline upon the advent of a subway up Keele St and north-south BRTs along Highway 27, Albion and Jane.

 

[nfitz]

The TTC website claims Finch is scheduled for as little as 73 second service. Go much lower and you'll be forced to run more than one bus per light cycle, which makes bunching unavoidable.

The light cycle on Finch is less than 73 seconds? There are light cycles on Don Mills that I think are already significantly longer than that now - closer to 2 minutes.

 

[kettal]

according to the TTC's own statistics the 36 Finch West bus on average is only moving about 1313pphpd;

I guess that puts any rail upgrades for Eglinton out of the question then, as 32 Eglinton West is hardly any busier.

 

[LAz]

That's news to you? Have you never been to Toronto?

lolzers.
No.

It's news to those proponents of tramsit city. Else, there would not be any construction of the tram west of Kennedy.

 

[Fresh Start]

I guess that puts any rail upgrades for Eglinton out of the question then, as 32 Eglinton West is hardly any busier.

Riiiight, because a smorgasbord of people wouldn't have any incentive at all to transfer off their inbound bus trips at Eglinton rather than go all the way south to Bloor. Because a subway along here wouldn't be feeding directly into the 20th busiest airport in all the world. Because it wouldn't take a Humber College student less time to commute from a Highway 27 subway stop than taking the 191 from Kipling Stn or the loppypop guild LRT line across from Finch West Stn.

 

[kettal]

Thank you for proving how stupid your own reasoning is.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Route 320 Yonge has a 3 min frequency between 2 and 4 am.

3.5 minute service, yes, but it is a subway replacement route - not a pure bus route like Finch. The replacement shuttles after 12:30 practically run in bunches every couple of minutes...the nearly comical frequency is needed less for the crowds than for PR, to keep people happy when they get woken up and kicked off the subway at Eglinton.

So then why is the LRT going on Finch W. and not E?

Did you really think they sat down and chose to systematically replace buses on the busiest routes with LRT? No matter if we picked the routes with the highest total ridership or the highest peak ridership or the worst congestion, we'd end up with a very different plan than the one we got worrying about the optics of balancing out the transit map and throwing money at select few areas of social need. We'd learn that Steeles is busier than Jane but with more potential ridership growth, we'd build LRT lines on corridors practically tailor-made for them, like Wilson-Albion or Lawrence East or Lawrence-Dixon, or maybe Victoria Park or Dufferin, and we wouldn't be shelling out well over a billion dollars to run a line beyond STC, up what's something like the 40th busiest bus route in the city.

Anyway, Finch East doesn't need 'rescuing' with light rail. It works fine, mysteriously well, even. The bus already squeezes most of the ridership that transit is going out of the area and the ideal solution for Finch East would just be simple Rocket service added in combination with offloading thousands of rides onto GO, the Sheppard subway, etc. Still, running an LRT line the whole length of Finch would not be bad idea - and it's an infinitely better place for it than, oh, Morningside - but it's just not necessary and it'd cost a fortune for a seriously marginal change.

The light cycle on Finch is less than 73 seconds? There are light cycles on Don Mills that I think are already significantly longer than that now - closer to 2 minutes.

Why don't you go out there with a stopwatch and track the cycles at every intersection for a few months? It's absolutely essential that we know if they're over one minute or less than two minutes.