YRT/Viva Construction Thread (Rapidways, Terminals)

[cplchanb]

The issue is that MT and BT have chosen to invest in continued service improvements, in the sense of rationalizing routes and making service more frequent, whereas YRT has been starved for funding to improve the services beyond where they are and always have been. Look at BT specifically - their infrastructure improvements are quite minimal when compared to MT and YRT, and yet their ridership has been improving by a very substantial amount every year for the past 5.



All VIVA routes and vehicles have signal priority installed, in the sense that a bus can speed up a green light, or hold one when approaching an intersection. But it only activates once the vehicle gets to 3 minutes late compared to the schedule.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

what really is a shame is that that even under normal conditions the logic still has flaws ie the 404 underpass... they need to review all their intersections to try to iron out those bugs

 

[adrianaliu]

I've always been scared to ask why VIVA is so slow. The branding is great, the busses are great, the stations are great. But there are wayy too many stations (for a so called rapid transit service) and the busses don't come often enough, not many ppl ride VIVA either from what I've seen (ik that the yonge service is doing well but aside from that there isn't much). When I'm on the Rapidway outside rush hours, the bus is going so slow that cars on hwy 7 are passing us, the opposite is supposed to be happening. When I was going home from Markham using my local Miway route, the local miway service was going way faster than viva which is supposed to be rapid transit. I understand more people will begin using VIVA especially around VMC and Unionville where higher density development is happening, but it will still be slow. I really hope the other median brt and lrt services in the gta end up being faster than viva is.

 

[cplchanb]

I've always been scared to ask why VIVA is so slow. The branding is great, the busses are great, the stations are great. But there are wayy too many stations (for a so called rapid transit service) and the busses don't come often enough, not many ppl ride VIVA either from what I've seen (ik that the yonge service is doing well but aside from that there isn't much). When I'm on the Rapidway outside rush hours, the bus is going so slow that cars on hwy 7 are passing us, the opposite is supposed to be happening. When I was going home from Markham using my local Miway route, the local miway service was going way faster than viva which is supposed to be rapid transit. I understand more people will begin using VIVA especially around VMC and Unionville where higher density development is happening, but it will still be slow. I really hope the other median brt and lrt services in the gta end up being faster than viva is.

Median BRT works well as seen around the world. its just that unfortunately for viva the operational side of things is lacking, from ridiculously slow speed limits to poor logic in the traffic light programming. Not to mention Init's "crystal" is
seriously annoying.....

 

[adrianaliu]

Median BRT works well as seen around the world. its just that unfortunately for viva the operational side of things is lacking, from ridiculously slow speed limits to poor logic in the traffic light programming. Not to mention Init's "crystal" is
seriously annoying.....

yeah i see. I hope the dundas BRT and other LRT lines don't suffer the same way. from seeing the speed limits of ion lrt, it looks like it will be slower than we hoped as well.

 

[smallspy]

I think what BT has shown is that passengers/customers are far less hung up on transit technology or shiny/new infrastructure than we think.....what attracts riders/customers is being able to reliably predict that if they walk to stop "X" at most times of the day there will be something coming along to pick them up.

Not to put too fine a point on this....but that is exactly correct. The planners at most of the agencies know exactly what will get more people on the vehicles - and that is more vehicles in a reliable manner. Not flashly branding or "new technology" widgets or bells and whistles like wifi.

The problem is that quite frequently the planners aren't given the funds to allow them to improve the service.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[TOareaFan]

Not to put too fine a point on this....but that is exactly correct. The planners at most of the agencies know exactly what will get more people on the vehicles - and that is more vehicles in a reliable manner. Not flashly branding or "new technology" widgets or bells and whistles like wifi.

The problem is that quite frequently the planners aren't given the funds to allow them to improve the service.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

As a Bramptonian.....the thing about the whole LRT debate in town was that Brampton somehow got painted as anti-transit.....it was a very localized debate about a specific line....but in the whole I don't think there are too many suburban cities that can match Brampton for their commitment to local transit.....and it is paying off.

 

[lead82]

Un-urbanized no. But definitely uglier than they would be without the above ground hydro infrastructure.

Exactly. Downtown Toronto is just as bad at this. All the major main streets downtown need to bury the hydro cables. St. Clair looks a heck of s lot better without them. My point was one of a missed opportunity. When you are digging up a roadway, why not invest a small increment to do it right and make things a lot better. Aesthetics is not something people seem to care about here. Any crap will do. Design matters.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Exactly. Downtown Toronto is just as bad at this. All the major main streets downtown need to bury the hydro cables. St. Clair looks a heck of s lot better without them. My point was one of a missed opportunity. When you are digging up a roadway, why not invest a small increment to do it right and make things a lot better. Aesthetics is not something people seem to care about here. Any crap will do. Design matters.

I agree they should do/should have done it but this was discussed up-thread: it was not a small increment. I forget the exact figures now, but it was a substantial addition and also not easily folded into the cost because of jurisdiction. It's not a property tax issue but a hydro bill issue; in theory maybe that can somehow be folded into the overall capital project but it's not easily done when Powerstream (or, ooooh, Alectra) owns the lines you want to bury.

Here's a new article from 2012:
http://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/1452329-bid-to-bury-power-lines-turned-down/

I'd like to see them buried, but I understand why they didn't.

 

[Adjei]

This is in Toronto problem. Other places manage to do it so i don't see why it cant be done. It's just not a priority here. Aesthetic value is not of much concern here.

 

[lead82]

I agree they should do/should have done it but this was discussed up-thread: it was not a small increment. I forget the exact figures now, but it was a substantial addition and also not easily folded into the cost because of jurisdiction. It's not a property tax issue but a hydro bill issue; in theory maybe that can somehow be folded into the overall capital project but it's not easily done when Powerstream (or, ooooh, Alectra) owns the lines you want to bury.

Here's a new article from 2012:
http://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/1452329-bid-to-bury-power-lines-turned-down/

I'd like to see them buried, but I understand why they didn't.

Thanks for the article link. The costs are peanuts in comparison. We are spending several billions of dollars on Viva BRT and they don't want to spend $20-$30 million on burying the wires. It's not just aesthetics but it's a lot safer and more reliable to have the lines underground. All major cities in the world do this bit it seems not in GTA because we know better.

 

[wilson_wu]

The Viva BRT line on Highway 7 is extremely slow. The problem with this line is the bus is plowing down a street that is just way too congested at peak times, not only along Highway 7, but most of the intersecting streets are heavy traffic streets.

I foresee the Yonge BRT to be much faster because there's simply less east-west traffic intersecting than there is north-south traffic for Highway 7.

While I don't mind stopping for red lights. Would it be too disruptive to put in a quick flash transit priority signal that literally lasts for 4-5 seconds before allowing left turns? This would speed up service a LOT!

-----

Although while slow, I'd much rather take Viva than YRT given the choice. I remember taking the YRT 1 @ McCowan at noontime because it arrived before the Viva. Thinking it'd be the faster choice because it skips the downtown Markham. We soon hit traffic before the 404 and crawled. The Viva bus that was 5 minutes behind the YRT somehow made the Downtown Markham detour, caught up to us and passed us. Never again. lol

And it is especially useful during a winter storm. We were heading to RHC to catch the airport bus in our car and Highway 7 was clogged. The Viva bus passed us near the 404, disappeared into the distance and never to be seen again.

 

[TOareaFan]

We are spending several billions of dollars on Viva BRT

Honestly did not know the cost of VivaBRT was >$3B......what is the total cost?

 

[Leo_Chan]

Honestly did not know the cost of VivaBRT was >$3B......what is the total cost?

http://www.vivanext.com/faq
$2B for Yonge and Highway 7 Rapidways

 

[drum118]

April 09
Some Davis Dr shots

 

[Leo_Chan]

Does anyone know why the displays on Viva buses and stations don't show well on camera and video? This isn't the case for TTC buses.