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The thing that irks me about all of this, is that we have various clowns (both political and within the TTC) who have been out for the past couple days clapping their hands like sea otters as if this is a monumental achievement that billions were spent to open one of the slowest "rapid transit" projects in the world.

But these same clowns are the ones who will do absolutely nothing to ensure the operations of the line actually function to it's maximum ability, and will continue to inhibit operations by continuing to institute idiotic policies.

I'd love for someone to do a study on the ratio of $ spent/travel speed of transit projects in the world. This one would rank in the top 10% i'm sure.

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Source: CityNews story(LRT)
 
Amare said:
The thing that irks me about all of this, is that we have various clowns (both political and within the TTC) who have been out for the past couple days clapping their hands like sea otters as if this is a monumental achievement.
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It is a monumental achievement. Something can be a monumental achievement and unsatisfactory in important ways.
 
FW36 said:
So based in comments best case secanrio LRT travel time from one end to another is about 35- 45 minutes, and when busy about 50+ minutes. It honestly is disappointing. It's an easy fix potentially but I really don't think Toronto will respond. I hope for the good of transit users toronto gives the LRT priority or else I think the project will be seen as a white elephant.
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I spoke with one out of a group of TTC instructors on a westbound train from Finch West. He went out of his way to tell me that the average trip time for a Finch West to Humber College or vice-versa is 51-52 minutes. He said the low end is 46 minutes only if they get lucky at the traffic lights. I was initially talking to other patrons about hearing of a 50-55 minute trip time when he interrupted to tell us the actual average trip time.

A TTC supervisor on the platform at Finch West later told me the one-way trips end-to-end were 50 minutes+ because of safety reasons; they wanted reliability and "didn't want the train to derail". Shades of O-Train Line 1?

Lastly, a gentleman in a navy blue and neon green high-vis coat, who overheard my conversation with the supervisor, told me that Black & McDonald was the contractor in charge of the signals. He more or less confirmed that transit signal priority was not much of a priority right now and exasperatingly said that Black & McDonald were very slow at getting stuff done. I assume this navy blue neo green coat guy was from one of the Mosaic Transit Group companies as he wore no TTC ID or identifying marks on his coat. EDIT: but navy hi-vis guy did have an ID on a lanyard.

All in all, absolutely shambolic speeds. And to think there were people saying 46 minutes was an overestimate, when it was actually an underestimate.

Remember, Metrolinx said 38 minutes at most. This clownery is emblematic of many things, including but not limited to: underfunding of transportation and the decline of meritocracy.

Two links, same document saying 33-34 minutes and 38 minutes:
 
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I took a ride this morning - Gregg Lintern was on the train and we happened to chat for a bit which was a nice surprise.

The ride from Humber College to Finch West took 50 minutes. The train never exceeded 45km/h and rarely exceeded 30km/h. Gregg reported it took over an hour for him to go from Finch West to Humber College.

It was insanely, painfully slow. And it can’t just be blamed on signal priority - that was actually a relatively minor issue. The TTC is simply operating it insanely cautiously. On the downhill stretch from Kipling to Islington it never exceeded 40km/h - 20 under the speed limit on a dead straight stretch of tracks with no signals and no stops, downhill!


It’s great to see a new line open, but the TTC better wise up and actually start operating the line properly or this will be a complete failure.
 
innsertnamehere said:
I took a ride this morning - Gregg Lintern was on the train and we happened to chat for a bit which was a nice surprise.

The ride from Humber College to Finch West took 50 minutes. The train never exceeded 45km/h and rarely exceeded 30km/h. Gregg reported it took over an hour for him to go from Finch West to Humber College.

It was insanely, painfully slow. And it can’t just be blamed on signal priority - that was actually a relatively minor issue. The TTC is simply operating it insanely cautiously. On the downhill stretch from Kipling to Islington it never exceeded 40km/h - 20 under the speed limit on a dead straight stretch of tracks with no signals and no stops, downhill!


It’s great to see a new line open, but the TTC better wise up and actually start operating the line properly or this will be a complete failure.
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The 10km/h to Humber College from Hwy 27 is an absolute killer. I don’t understand why it was designed this way or is being run this way.
 
Okay. You have a new vehicle. You drive slowly not to scratch it. But, wasn't that why the operators have had almost of month of test runs to get "used" to it? Time to get it out of first gear.
 
I watched an entire video from end to end and I just have one question...........would it help if everyone got out and pushed? Transit priority would help but there are just so many flaws one knows hardly where to start.

Waiting for cars to turn left? No signal priority? 10km/hour speed limit in the tunnels? Every 6 minutes in rush hour? and all this backed up by the fact that there are 2 many stations with some being just a couple blocks apart. A painted bus lane would be superior to this for $50 million. What a horrifying waste of money made worse by the fact that it's coming to an Eglinton Line near you.
 
urbanclient said:
told me that Black & McDonald was the contractor in charge of the signals. He more or less confirmed that transit signal priority was not much of a priority right now and exasperatingly said that Black & McDonald were very slow at getting stuff done.
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Assuming you quoted him accurately, I truly don't understand what we're meant to understand from this...

Tsp has been installed and available from what we've been told. What impact could this contractror have on tsp beyond its instalation?
 
T3G said:
It's not copium, it's lived experience.

I haven't been to any of the named cities, but in a city like Prague or Bratislava, their trams running in Finch style rights of way are speedy and are competitive to the subway (in cities that have one) for short and medium distance journeys.
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Just give it up son. LRTs are garbage, I'm so glad Miller wasn't able to spread more of this cancer throughout the City.
 
Thaboss said:
Assuming you quoted him accurately, I truly don't understand what we're meant to understand from this...

Tsp has been installed and available from what we've been told. What impact could this contractror have on tsp beyond its instalation?
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I don't know exactly, what I gleaned from the conversation was that Mosaic was still responsible for maintenance/changes involving transit/traffic signal operations even after substantial completion i.e. the 30 year contract. Someone more knowledgeable on the project can confirm if possible?

I would assume signals fall under "trackside infrastructure" maintenance:
 
McGillicuddy said:
It feels like 99% of passengers are having a lovely time riding the shiny new train, and UrbanToronto's there like this.

View attachment 701321
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People always flock to what is shiny and new. You see it all the time with new eateries. Those individuals cannot really be trusted with an unbiased opinion when they are largely there searching for the new experience for a dopamine hit. There are also a whole bunch of people on social media commenting on how slow the service is, some are actually posting as they ride it.

However, the real data will come from the people that ACTUALLY use this route for work on the regular. Right now, the travel times might not be promising but we shall see.

I just hope this fanfare dies down fast as, potential, lineups at stations would not be helpful whatsoever for people going to work that use this route.
 
GameOnBrad said:
People always flock to what is shiny and new. You see it all the time with new eateries. Those individuals cannot really be trusted with an unbiased opinion when they are largely there searching for the new experience for a dopamine hit. There are also a whole bunch of people on social media commenting on how slow the service is, some are actually posting as they ride it.

However, the real data will come from the people that ACTUALLY use this route for work on the regular. Right now, the travel times might not be promising but we shall see.

I just hope this fanfare dies down fast as, potential, lineups at stations would not be helpful whatsoever for people going to work that use this route.
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I was hearing grumbles and surprise of how slow it is. Parents with their kids kept asking how many stops left as if the ride was unbearable..,
 
ARG1 said:
I checked a few stop pairings in Prague (and I focused on the straight ones). Again it seems to hover around 17-19km/h. Better than Finch West, but its far from amazing. I haven't seen anything that reaches the promised 22km/h speeds on Finch West.
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Even on the low end for trip duration, Metrolinx never promised 22 km/h average speeds? Even if end-to-end was only 33 minutes, the speeds would be below 20 km/h when including dwell times. 10.3/(33/60)= 18.7 km/h.

More to the point: a 22 km/h average moving speed target without including the time stationary at each stop is a pointless target.

Source: https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/...trolinx/Finch-West-LRT-FAQs-Revised-June9.pdf
ARG1 said:
TSP is frankly not even the top of this line's concerns. The train simply shouldn't be crawling at 20km/h between stations (not at intersections), and it especially shouldn't be running at 10km/h in the curved tunnel under H27/Finch. The operations here are just beyond inexcusable for a finished product running revenue service.
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We're waiting at red lights 10+ minutes. It is a huge problem. Subtract 10 minutes from 52 minutes and you're already at 42 minutes.

Again someone explain to me and @ARG1 this clownery from the parties involved:
"All of the City's current TSP locations are 'unconditional' in their operation. [...] For these reasons, and in consultation with the City and TTC the Metrolinx consortia are implementing Conditional TSP on Line 5 Eglinton and Line 6 Finch West."
Source: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/cc/bgrd/backgroundfile-254795.pdf

The streetcar signal priority is already weaker than a wet paper bag. Who in their right mind thought implementing even weaker signal priority than the streetcar would be a smart idea for two flagship transit projects?
 
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