[canucks2030]

The speeds are due to the soft-opening conditions. They’ll improve over time.

This project was bad when they announced 34-38 minutes. Now this is disaster territory being a 50 minutes ride for only 10,3 KM. No excuses for the low speed. The TTC, the city and the Provinces need to address it quickly and work on solutions ASAP.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Toronto’s Finch West LRT: a $2.5 billion mega mistake

Will the Finch West LRT truly improve transit times? Uncover the truth behind this contentious transit project.

skytrainforsurrey.org

The experience today is that the 46 minute run-time was best case scenario and average right now is around ~54 minutes. Did we just built the slowest rapid transit line in the world?

Perhaps it should be renamed to the 536 Finch route after all.

 

[PL1]

I'm willing to wait a few weeks before I pull out a pitchfork

 

[ssiguy2]

If you weren't already depressed enough, I did a little fact checking and compared it to another LRT system, Calgary's CTrain. ***** CAUTION*****..........those with heart conditions may want to look away.

Finch is traversing just 11 km with 18 stations and takes 50 minutes. Conversely, the Red Line CTrain traverses 32 km in 59 minutes with 28 stations and this INCLUDES going straight thru the downtown core. yurt2022 is wrong, LRT is not garbage but rather Finch is. The CTrain is LRT done right. Funny how the supposed right-wing car loving cowboys put transit first while left-leaning "transit friendly" Toronto does everything in its power to make taking transit as painful as humanely possible.

 

[yurt2022]

If you weren't already depressed enough, I did a little fact checking and compared it to another LRT system, Calgary's CTrain. ***** CAUTION*****..........those with heart conditions may want to look away.

Finch is traversing just 11 km with 18 stations and takes 50 minutes. Conversely, the Red Line CTrain traverses 32 km in 59 minutes with 28 stations and this INCLUDES going straight thru the downtown core. yurt2022 is wrong, LRT is not garbage but rather Finch is. The CTrain is LRT done right. Funny how the supposed right-wing car loving cowboys put transit first while left-leaning "transit friendly" Toronto does everything in it's power to make taking transit as painful as humanely possible.

CTrain is high floor LRV, basically subway cars with catenary. Not that it matters though, the way the City implements this project and streetcar operations is terrible.

 

[livesquid]

Just rode from Finch West to Humber College.

65min. The chatter on the train for much of the trip was “why is it so slow?”

Got off the train and facing me was a “Thinking of suicide?” wall ad, which would be an over-reaction, but was sort of on the nose.

 

[JJTheJetPln]

After reading all of these comments from where I left off, this begs a question... What's the difference between this and the street cars that have been in operation?

If I didn't know any better (I don't), I'd have said they're treating the entirety of the line as one big slow zone (Thanks Rick Leary), or they were intentionally going slow on the first day, and will be for a while to avoid any fatalities on the track from people who didn't know any better.

That second sentence makes it seem like I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, but nothing logical sticks out on why they're limiting the speeds other than safety concerns while drivers and pedestrians become familiar with seeing the LRV's in operation before speeds pick up.

If that isn't the case, then I really wouldn't know what to say.

 

[nfitz]

I think Line 5 may take that prize. As for saving billions.... Our inability to affordably build transit extents to BRT as well.

The majority of Line 5 is grade-seperated.

For Finch, I quickly count about 24 traffic lights in 9.5 km from the portals near Highway 27 and Keele. That's about a 410-metre spacing.

For Eglinton from Agar Khan to Ionview - I count 11 traffic lights in about 5 km. That's about a 500-metre spacing. Slightly better. It's a shame they can't re-engineer the DVP interchange to eliminate the turning traffic, and get rid of the unfortunate Swift/Credit Union lights (one could leave a pedestrian crossing, where there's priority); maybe even Sinnott. Does the Eglinton Square/Eglinton one disappear one day too, with the redesign? Why there wasn't a better solution for Rosemount I don't know. And then there's Leslie; they should have engineered that one away on the south side. Perhaps there'll be better options if they rebuild the railway bridge there for Alto/GO. By the the time time they finish there'll be about 26.5 km overground, depending where the Pearson terminal is. So that's over 80% underground. Which will give different perceptions to the line; especially for those that don't go east of the Ontario Line.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Did we just built the slowest rapid transit line in the world?

I tried answering this question searching online and found (please forgive me) an article from the DailyMail, though I can already imagine the Toronto Sun headlines this week.

Sydney light rail is the slowest tram system in the WORLD

Sydney's light rail is the slowest in the world, the NSW Labor opposition has said as it slammed the tram debut as 'disastrous'.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Seems like all the same failings occurred in Sydney's LRT, reaching speeds just over 11km per hour. The Finch West LRT is doing around ~12km/h so the title for world's slowest may still be nudged by Sydney's LRT. The article is from 2019 so naturally I was curious if things got better for Sydney since.

As per below screenshot from Wikipedia, it appears they ended up removing some traffic and turn signals to speed up things. I have a feeling such improvements won't be coming along the Finch corridor.

Alas, these improvements did not seem to help with operating speeds. I looked up statistics from the transit agency and according to here, the route (Line 2, Randwick to Circular Quay) actually went from 34 minutes (when reported at opening in 2019) to 38 minutes and 30 seconds today.

Which does not aspire me with great confidence for our line.

 

[urbanclient]

If you weren't already depressed enough, I did a little fact checking and compared it to another LRT system, Calgary's CTrain. ***** CAUTION*****..........those with heart conditions may want to look away.

Finch is traversing just 11 km with 18 stations and takes 50 minutes. Conversely, the Red Line CTrain traverses 32 km in 59 minutes with 28 stations and this INCLUDES going straight thru the downtown core. yurt2022 is wrong, LRT is not garbage but rather Finch is. The CTrain is LRT done right. Funny how the supposed right-wing car loving cowboys put transit first while left-leaning "transit friendly" Toronto does everything in it's power to make taking transit as painful as humanely possible.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, who thought it was ok to round up 10.3 to 11 km in the marketing? One of the least objectionable things about the line but still funny how they tried to oversell the line this way.

 

[Thaboss]

This project was bad when they announced 34-38 minutes. Now this is disaster territory being a 50 minutes ride for only 10,3 KM. No excuses for the low speed. The TTC, the city and the Provinces need to address it quickly and work on solutions ASAP.

Aprox. 5 min per KM is just below (above? Lol) the average runners speed per km at 6 min...

That seems honestly INSANE....


I truly am praying that crosstown is not this bad ...and yes I know it will be this bad maybe worse on the east end.

 

[FW36]

I don't understand how the LRT can be that slow. Why do low floor LRT's seem to operate below the speed limit.

 

[rdaner]

Rode today and marvelled at how many sfd are ready for intensification. Also, it took ~6 minutes to go from Humber College station to Woodbine by bus so I expect many workers to continue using this route.

 

[urbanclient]

I tried answering this question searching online and found (please forgive me) an article from the DailyMail, though I can already imagine the Toronto Sun headlines this week.

Sydney light rail is the slowest tram system in the WORLD

Sydney's light rail is the slowest in the world, the NSW Labor opposition has said as it slammed the tram debut as 'disastrous'.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Seems like all the same failings occurred in Sydney's LRT, reaching speeds just over 11km per hour. The Finch West LRT is doing around ~12km/h so the title for world's slowest may still be nudged by Sydney's LRT. The article is from 2019 so naturally I was curious if things got better for Sydney since.

As per below screenshot from Wikipedia, it appears they ended up removing some traffic and turn signals to speed up things. I have a feeling such improvements won't be coming along the Finch corridor.
View attachment 701327
Alas, these improvements did not seem to help with operating speeds. I looked up statistics from the transit agency and according to here, the route (Line 2, Randwick to Circular Quay) actually went from 34 minutes (when reported at opening in 2019) to 38 minutes and 30 seconds today.

Which does not aspire me with great confidence for our line.

The article you linked cites a ~11 km/h average speed for Sydney's L2 Randwick line in conjunction with a 58 minute travel time, not 34 minutes.
This article concurs and mentions a 11.16 km/h average speed, implying a 10.788 route length (actual route length source needed):

The Light Fail - The Beast

It’s 10.22am on a Wednesday morning and I’m sitting in the middle of Crown Street, Surry Hills. We haven’t moved for over 15 minutes. Why? I’m on the light rail, doing a review for our dear readers of The Beast, and it has broken down. The irony is not lost on me. Unless you’ve been […]

thebeast.com.au

But since opening, Sydney's L2/L3 lines have improved in their scheduled (and actual) speed.

Source: https://transportsydney.wordpress.com/2021/09/30/sydney-light-rail-l2-l3-speeds-up-unannounced/

Consider the fact that the timetabled journey went down to 31 minutes, and commenters report actual trip times of ~35 minutes, it appears that the average speed has increased by up to 66% to ~18.5 km/h. Assuming the 52 minutes average trip time that I heard from a TTC instructor was correct, 10.3/(52/60)= 11.88 km/h. EDIT #1: Even if speeds got worse since 2021 and trip times climbed up to 38.5 minutes, >99% on time performance means trip time is at least reasonable compared to Line 6: https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/da...-travel/sydney-light-rail-performance-reports

EDIT #2: For reference, Google Maps is showing trip times of 32 minutes from Randwick to Circular Quay and 36 minutes from Circular Quay to Randwick. Take that with a big grain of salt, since Google Maps is often overly optimistic *cough* Line 1 TTC.

TLDR: Sydney L2 Randwick Line is actually 18.5 km/h with 35 minute actual travel time for 10.788 km (as of 2021). Toronto Line 6 Finch West is 11.88 km/h with 52 minute travel time for 10.3 km.

4 minutes walking time:

 

[APTA-2048]

I don't understand how the LRT can be that slow. Why do low floor LRT's seem to operate below the speed limit.

They don’t in other parts of the world. A friend sent me videos from his trip to Melbourne. The difference is striking.