nfitz
Superstar
Changes? Or two drivers swapping vehicles when they pass (which is common enough on streetcars).
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- Thread starter Monarch Butterfly
- Start date
TwoWheelPoli
Active Member
I timed 41 minutes from Finch West to Humber College earlier this month, though it does seem to be inconsistent.
Meanwhile, Walter used my blog post as inspiration to do his own bike share vs Finch West LRT comparison which showed the bike share being faster even after including exiting and entering stations, as well as re-docking the bike share.
urbanclient
Senior Member
Pardon the nit pick on "cheap-bare bones stations". ION surface stops don't seem cheap at all when compared to Line 6, unless you think Line 6 has expensive bare-r bones stops... Is it justifiable that Waterloo paid less than 1/3rd for something that started major construction in 2014 instead of 2019, and got better surface stops? All that money was blown on overbuilding the terminus stations and much much more.
lastcommodore
Active Member
(I've mentioned this to you before but not on the forums so i'm repeating myself)
Unfortunately cost of a sheltered station is not a function of how useful the shelter is. In a smart world, yes, but consider the fact that the ION shelters are
- Far fewer- Generally one shelter on ION stops as opposed to up to EIGHT shelters per "station" on 6 FW- though the singular ION shelter is usually larger on footprint than a single 6FW shelter
- Far less material- just look at the sheer heft of those 6 FW stops versus. the ION walls and roof are much thinner than the 6FW, which are insanely overbuilt and hefty.
- Far shorter- For some reason they build the 6 FW shelters for giants? Every image I see of the shelters they look like thrice the height of a human... I'm genuinely interested in bringing a tape measure and trying to catch it on the roof to see how tall they are.
- Far smarter- MX is yet to be informed that four walls make a shelter, not one and two-halves. It is nearly comical to me how thick and overbuilt the roof and wall is, but the side glass panels are tiny and are miserably short.
In short: The 6FW shelters are not cheap, nor are they poorly built. They are horribly designed and overbuilt.
The horribly useless yet expensive terminal stations are the peak of this ideology, but even without them i'd say the stations are at bare minimum 3x more expensive on shelters than ION.
urbanclient
Senior Member
I was hoping you would chime in actually, I mentioned overbuilding... and much much more as a personal callback to you letting me know exactly how overbuilt Line 6 is. But I didn't want to just regurgitate what you told me and effectively take the credit.
jordanmkasla2009
Active Member
ION also only built the shelters on half the platform length at the start since the full length of the platform wouldn't be needed for trains until years later.
jamincan
Active Member
Looking from the distance, it also seems that RoW and Keolis have had a pretty functional arrangement that actually mostly works compared to other public-private partnerships.
6ixGod
Active Member
lastcommodore
Active Member
Reece Martin via The Star: To fix transit in Toronto, we need to embrace a simple idea: subways subways subways.
The piece is primarily about speeds. Though he also goes further and comments that even with all the speed ups of TSP and wider stop spacing, we still need faster transit than that, and LRTs should serve as the local roads and subways the highways of transit.
Opinion: methinks if the 6FW speed fiasco is not solved soon public opinion on LRT over subway will sour, and sour fast- irregardless of whos to blame.
The piece is primarily about speeds. Though he also goes further and comments that even with all the speed ups of TSP and wider stop spacing, we still need faster transit than that, and LRTs should serve as the local roads and subways the highways of transit.
Opinion: methinks if the 6FW speed fiasco is not solved soon public opinion on LRT over subway will sour, and sour fast- irregardless of whos to blame.
Dan416
Senior Member
The thing is, the problem is solvable. It's just a matter of political will. So if the politicians don't have the will to do it, they should be voted out in favour of politicians who will increase the speed of the Finch Line and the rest of the streetcar system.
Bojaxs
Senior Member
Is it though? It could be a design flaw with Line 6 and not so much lack of political will. As others have pointed out, the lack of pedestrian/ refuge islands at intersections along Line 6, and the surface portion of Line 5 may make it difficult to implement aggressive TSP on the lines.
Marco Chitti (@chittimarco.bsky.social)
The problem is that it's going to be hard to have very strong TSP, because the very reason you can't have it (one-stage pedestrian crossings that take too long, preventing truncated red as a tsp strategy) has been literally cast in concrete by not having refuge islands in many places.
bsky.app
If the lack of refuge islands at intersections proves to be an issue, then we'll probably get some weak TSP. Like just giving trams priority over left turning cars. But they would still have to wait at red lights. That would, at best, probably shave 2-3 minutes off a trip. Maybe "extended green lights" if the signals at the intersection detects a tram coming?
I think a lot of people consider the cars when discussing TSP, but don't consider the pedestrians who might be crossing the street when a tram is approaching.
This crossing in Prague has a separate pedestrian crossing light for the tram. You can see it's telling the pedestrians to "Stop" as a tram is approaching. I don't think Line 6 has anything like this.
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urbanclient
Senior Member
I'm going to pile on here:
Opinion: A transit blunder in the name of equity
A look at the origins of Toronto’s latest transit goof
www.theglobeandmail.com
They say democracies move slow, but when they do, they tend to stay on the right track. I hope lessons are learned here. As I've mentioned in another thread, it's not exactly a novel concept to reject trams in favour of metro. (Although in this case, I don't think Finch West deserved a metro.) China now has more metro than the rest of the world combined at 11,987 km vs. 11,957 km, and yet they only have 600 km of tram. Their metro system total is projected to hit 15,000 km in 5 years while their tram total will stagnate, if not decline.
Good public transit benefits the least privileged, most vulnerable members of society. Good public transit does not preclude private car usage from growing or even doubling as you can see below:
I second this and would like to expand on this idea further.
This is from both personal and secondhand experience: in Tier 1 and Tier 1+ Chinese cities, i.e. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and a dozen others, the rapid metro/subway expansion over the last 10 years has not actually reduced car congestion by much. In fact congestion is still just as bad as Toronto, if not worse. And the stats back me up, car usage rates and metro expansion appear to be positively correlated in China. The most rabid Amsterdam-bike-urbanists would think the opposite would be true, wouldn't a fast and efficient transit system reduce demand for personal cars?
I’m intentionally simplifying this for the sake of discussion; basically, a gargantuan amount of fast public transit did not reduce demand for cars in China, what it did instead was allow more people, especially the less privileged to travel more. A lot more. Private jets and helicopters are a much smaller thing in China, if you are ultra-wealthy, you'll still travel by common carrier like commercial airline and high speed rail.
“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.” —former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa Londoño
And here I ask, why not both? In an ideal world, the rich and poor can use cars and public transit as they please.
To each their own, but to me cars are for convenience, for trips too far for metro, but too short for intercity or high speed rail, best time of use would be non-peak. The metro is for rush hour and medium distance trips that stay within the city. Shorter trips you walk, ride a bike, or catch an Uber or bus.
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ThenWhat
Active Member
This whole discussion, here and in other places, is about speed. I like faster trains as much as everybody, but I am much more concerned about reliability. If the schedule says the next train/bus/subway is coming in 2 minutes, but I have to wait 20 minutes instead, then no speed will make up for it. The same if my train breaks down or turns back half way to my destination; I'd much rather go slowly but actually get to where I am going at the expected time.
I get it why it is easier to talk and write articles about speed. It is easy to measure and understand. It is easy to write about and appreciate the image of a runner going faster than a streetcar. Reliability is more subtle, not so easy to define and measure, and also may be more difficult to achieve in operations.
A big problem with putting so much focus on speed is that reliability is ignored. At some point the trains will run faster, those in charge will declare victory, and this and other lines will be just as unreliable as the rest of the TTC system.
I get it why it is easier to talk and write articles about speed. It is easy to measure and understand. It is easy to write about and appreciate the image of a runner going faster than a streetcar. Reliability is more subtle, not so easy to define and measure, and also may be more difficult to achieve in operations.
A big problem with putting so much focus on speed is that reliability is ignored. At some point the trains will run faster, those in charge will declare victory, and this and other lines will be just as unreliable as the rest of the TTC system.
6ixGod
Active Member
It's not too much to ask to have better speeds and better reliability. This is the bare minimum when it comes to public transport....you can have both, we don't have to chose one or another.
6ixGod
Active Member
Reddit Link
Here's the reality outside of the forum. This is what the masses are talking about.
Some other comments beyond the echo chamber
Here's the reality outside of the forum. This is what the masses are talking about.
Some other comments beyond the echo chamber