[6ixGod]

I mean no one has to look further than Vancouver and the Sky Train.

Everyone who says the SRT was crap clearly haven't seen whats possible with the technology when its managed properly.

Yes look no further….and that is kind of the point. Outside of Vancouver almost nowhere else in the world adopted that technology. SkyTrain works because it is a very specific, tightly managed, fully grade separated system, not because the technology itself scaled well elsewhere.

You clearly do not live in Scarborough or have ever ridden the former Line 3 as a commuter. The entire thing was a terrible fit from day one. We already had an existing heavy rail subway network and forcing riders to transfer at Kennedy between Lines 2 and 3 was a massive inconvenience. EDIT: and by massive I mean….forcing commuters who scale two entire levels, mainly by stairs or narrow escalators. Add chronic reliability issues, poor performance in snow and zero interoperability and the SRTs failures were not surprising; they were structural.

In Vancouver they are essentially stuck with it, which is why people there pretend it is flawless. Billions have been sunk into the system, contracts and infrastructure are fixed, and walking away is politically and financially impossible. That does not mean it is the right technology; it just means they are committed to living with the consequences.

LRTs and SRT style systems can work in smaller cities or greenfield builds. They do not work in Toronto. The headlines around Line 5 and Line 6 speak for themselves. This experiment has already failed and pretending otherwise does not change reality.

 

[T3G]

Transferring is an inherent part of using public transportation. Why don't you ask the people who live along Eglinton Avenue East, or in south Scarborough, or further northeast than Sheppard and McCowan, whether the amount of transfers they have to make will go down post SSE? And what difference is there exactly between having to transfer from subway to bus vs. subway to LRT/SRT?

 

[urbanclient]

Transferring is an inherent part of using public transportation. Why don't you ask the people who live along Eglinton Avenue East, or in south Scarborough, or further northeast than Sheppard and McCowan, whether the amount of transfers they have to make will go down post SSE? And what difference is there exactly between having to transfer from subway to bus vs. subway to LRT/SRT?

I think you might be misreading whatever hyperbolic point they're making. Which I don't even fully agree with because I think the Skytrain is great, and its technology family (called Innovia now) has produced half a dozen light to full metro lines around the world.

The Skytrain tech did not scale well because LIM propulsion has many flaws that made it 'obsolete' according to some critics, compared to traditional steel-wheeled metros using third rail or overhead wire. Obsolete is kind of inaccurate because Skytrain technology was invented long after steel-wheeled metros were invented. But LIM does have its advantages, like being more resistant to slippery conditions, and being able to climb steeper grades than steel-wheeled metro, but less than monorail, and similar to rubber-tired metro.

The transfer in itself is not the biggest issue with Line 3. IMO it's the opportunity costs and the lack of driverless operation. A transfer to a short spur line makes sense. A transfer for an extension of the main line less so. A Line 2 extension would've cost a lot less in the 1980s, even adjusted for inflation.

Correct me if I'm wrong @6ixGod is saying the SRT implementation was flawed (see posts above), and should've been a Line 2 extension. In an ideal world, that's what should have (and will) happen, but the 1980s political environment foisted SRT onto Toronto. But the city didn't have much choice. They were broke.

 

[turbanplanner]

Weird there is no live tracking like 2 months after it opened.

Also this might be why there are so few fountains in stations?

 

[EnviroTO]

Also this might be why there are so few fountains in stations?

The stations are below freezing? That seems unwise.

 

[MidtownKW]

The media is starting to notice the difference in LRT operations between Toronto and KW. https://toronto.citynews.ca/2026/01/29/ion-lrt-kitchener-lessons-for-toronto-transit-projects/

Yes, ION uses some rail right-of-ways with no traffic, which Finch West doesn't have. But ION also has some very slow twisting curves in the on-street sections, which Finch West doesn't have. Yet ION still manages double the average speed.

The concluding paragraph of that article summarizes it as being an issue of stop spacing. Which is not easy to fix.

You're right that Ion is slowed by some of the turns it takes very slowly- my non-expert opinion is that it could probably take some of these a bit faster, and maybe one day will. There's also a part near the end of the line with a very slow speed limit that might be able to be improved by construction a footbridge. Ion will get a little faster, in short, but how can Finch if the main difference is that it has very little opportunity to get up to speed before the next station?

 

[T3G]

The concluding paragraph of that article summarizes it as being an issue of stop spacing. Which is not easy to fix.

You're right that Ion is slowed by some of the turns it takes very slowly- my non-expert opinion is that it could probably take some of these a bit faster, and maybe one day will. There's also a part near the end of the line with a very slow speed limit that might be able to be improved by construction a footbridge. Ion will get a little faster, in short, but how can Finch if the main difference is that it has very little opportunity to get up to speed before the next station?

I think that the summary of it as an issue of stop spacing is nonsense. 400-500 m stop spacing is common on European tramways, and they don't crawl in between stops.

 

[Bojaxs]

You're right that Ion is slowed by some of the turns it takes very slowly- my non-expert opinion is that it could probably take some of these a bit faster, and maybe one day will. There's also a part near the end of the line with a very slow speed limit that might be able to be improved by construction a footbridge. Ion will get a little faster, in short, but how can Finch if the main difference is that it has very little opportunity to get up to speed before the next station?

The worst offender on the ION is the two turns located near the intersection of Hayward & Courtland Ave. If the city has successfully convinced Graybar to move their office, they could have straighten out the alignment there.

 

[lowtrain]

I think that the summary of it as an issue of stop spacing is nonsense. 400-500 m stop spacing is common on European tramways, and they don't crawl in between stops.

I strongly disagree. I travelled to Warsaw recently where the tram network is excellent, fast and on schedule with multiple lines overlapping and no bunching. Stops in the city centre are spaced 400-500 meters apart (vs 280m avg spacing on Spadina source), meanwhile suburban lines which resemble the Finch line have stops that are 800m apart. Stop spacing is absolutely one of the biggest issues with the tram network in Toronto.

 

[lastcommodore]

The concluding paragraph of that article summarizes it as being an issue of stop spacing. Which is not easy to fix.

You're right that Ion is slowed by some of the turns it takes very slowly- my non-expert opinion is that it could probably take some of these a bit faster, and maybe one day will. There's also a part near the end of the line with a very slow speed limit that might be able to be improved by construction a footbridge. Ion will get a little faster, in short, but how can Finch if the main difference is that it has very little opportunity to get up to speed before the next station?

On stop spacing of 6FW vs. ION,
1. Yes, stop spacing does influence average speeds
2. No, stop spacing is not the biggest factor in making 6FW slower than ION - it is by far operations
3. I don't see the turns on ION being taken much faster. I obviously do not know the exact specifications, but from my measurements they're about 25m minimum in curve radius, which is usually taken at 15-10km max with current low-floor trams. I do not know exactly how well different types of rolling stock can take them.

Boring data time form my Big Spreadsheet of Transit Data:

	Avg. Speed (kmh)	Avg. Stop Spacing (m)
ION, Willis Way to Mill Stn.	17.8	743
6 Finch West	13.0	606
Paris T9	19.1	572
CTrain Blue, Kerby to BVC Stn.	14.1	430

Takeaways: These speeds mainly show a mix of infrastructure realities and operational ability. CTrain kind of pulls all the stops out to make it operate fast in the downtown core, and it shows, managing to eek out 6FW despite super short stop spacing. Even though ION has good operations and farther stop spacing, it still loses to T9 with (by Toronto standards) insane operating standards that could never fly here and less curves.

So: Stop spacing does matter. Currently, operations matter more. If operations was good, I am pretty sure stop spacing/route shape would be the next bottleneck.

(Edit: I considered TSP as part of Operations. Separately, I agree with nfitz and i'd rank Ops, then TSP, then Stop Spacing in decreasing importance.)

 

[nfitz]

So: Stop spacing does matter. Currently, operations matter more. If operations was good, I am pretty sure stop spacing/route shape would be the next bottleneck.

Excellent post. Another factor is TPS. Waterloo has very good TPS. I'd rank TPS as a bigger bottleneck than stop spacing/route. Perhaps even more so than operations - or perhaps not.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

How fast is "too fast" on curves or turns?

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

View attachment 711283View attachment 711290View attachment 711287
@WearyInspection5396 seems to be a real operator based on post history. Winterization was an afterthought and TSP seems to be DOA. So ready the pitchforks?

From: https://www.reddit.com/r/TTC/comments/1qnvz67/comment/o1wya00/

what the ****.

 

[T3G]

I strongly disagree. I travelled to Warsaw recently where the tram network is excellent, fast and on schedule with multiple lines overlapping and no bunching. Stops in the city centre are spaced 400-500 meters apart (vs 280m avg spacing on Spadina source), meanwhile suburban lines which resemble the Finch line have stops that are 800m apart. Stop spacing is absolutely one of the biggest issues with the tram network in Toronto.

????

The post I made, and the post I was responding to, were both talking about Finch. I don't see what relevance the stop spacing on Spadina has to this discussion. I agree that the downtown network has excessively close stops, but that's neither nor there.

I don't see what justification exists to remove any stops on Finch other than Stevenson and Pearldale.

 

[urbanclient]

So: Stop spacing does matter. Currently, operations matter more. If operations was good, I am pretty sure stop spacing/route shape would be the next bottleneck.

????

The post I made, and the post I was responding to, were both talking about Finch. I don't see what relevance the stop spacing on Spadina has to this discussion. I agree that the downtown network has excessively close stops, but that's neither nor there.

I don't see what justification exists to remove any stops on Finch other than Stevenson and Pearldale.

I think the point is: stop spacing only gets to be like Finch at its narrowest when a line is in a European city centre (~300-400m). Finch West is pretty far from the city centre, and not that dense. An equivalently dense / far-flung European line would probably have wider stop spacing than the 600m average on Line 6. Really no good reason for Finch West to have the stop spacing it has now, were it not for the (ill-conceived) plan to fully replace buses.

I agree with you though @T3G , stop spacing is certainly not the first-order bottleneck for average speeds as that CityNews article suggests. It's probably something like: number 1&2, TSP & snail-like operations enforced by automatic braking, then stop spacing, and finally the tight curves near the terminuses / poorly-turning garbage rolling stock.