But those routes are also different to Spadina and St.Clair in the amount congestion is a factor in their travel times. Unlike downtown streets which get complete gridlock, the streets of the inner suburbs don't get complete gridlock despite the streets being very busy. Travel time on those bus routes is slowed more by frequent bus stops and passenger volumes increasing wait times at those stops.
Buses in the inner suburbs, including Sheppard East,
do get caught in gridlock, and overall traffic has far more effect on travel times than you claim. Reducing stops can have a big impact, though - just look at the 190 Rocket vs the regular 85 Sheppard. The 190 still gets caught in gridlock, though. The Sheppard & VP area is notoriously bad.
The SRT is near capacity and in need of replacement but the city didn't prioritize its upgrade to a subway so they completely missed the boat on funding and the subway system which makes up one of the top expenses for the Toronto taxpayer is now having two extentions into the 905. A field on highway seven got higher priority than a necessary replacement on an existing line to one of Toronto's four "centres". A transfer could have been eliminated at Kennedy and travel times reduced to SCC but travel times, existing riders, and convenience don't weigh high on the TTC evalutation criteria the way new riders do, wherever they come from and no matter how slow they end up travelling.
I don't want to go off on an RT rant, but this can't be discussed in isolation from Transit City. A subway was rejected because it was too 'expensive,' too 'unpredictable,' and would actually provide capacity for the future instead of being crowded right off the bat. Yet...they now want to extend the RT, which will bring the cost of renovating the RT to about what the subway extension would cost. The extended bit will only serve some of the RT's riders in Malvern, while the subway would have served everyone living north of Eglinton and east of Kennedy. Both Sheppard and Morningside LRTs
and a Midtown GO line will all now be run out to Malvern, too, so that over $2 billion will have been spent on the residents of one city ward in a questionable attempt to lure them out of their cars and solve an assortment of socio-economic problems. It's disgusting.
Yanking out stops may decrease trip time, but it will anger a lot of people who have to walk that much further to a stop.
It doesn't need to make them angry. Typical stops that might be cut are only used by a small number of people, who may actually experience
lower overall travel times by walking an extra minute or two due to the faster vehicles. Only a tiny amount of people would not receive a net benefit. This miniscule minority tends to be very vocal, though...