[nfitz]

Which is ridiculous if you look at it objectively (cars are generally the number one cause of injury to healthy young people), but you can easily feel unsafe, whether or not you are actually unsafe.

Some people seem to get stressed with such encounters as well - and I'd guess if they are triggered by observing people with mental health issues or homelessness, then I can see they'd knowingly put their lives at more risk by driving.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

I'm not about to abandon the TTC - I ride it everywhere, including with my six year old, and have almost never felt unsafe. But I hear a lot of people saying that they drive more now because they don't feel safe on the TTC. Which is ridiculous if you look at it objectively (cars are generally the number one cause of injury to healthy young people), but you can easily feel unsafe, whether or not you are actually unsafe.

Even if I don't feel "unsafe" (and I say this with the full privilege of being an adult male), I would say it is rare to go a day or two without an incident that makes me "uncomfortable".

Which is enough to deter me from the TTC. I now bike everywhere in the city, specifically because the combined discomfort + endless service disruptions has tilted the balance away from seeing the TTC as 'the better way'.

Only the recent snowfall has brought me back to using the TTC everyday, where I am reminded why I don't use it the rest of the year.

And dare I say, we are taxed far too highly in this city for our essential and critical public spaces to be either 'unsafe' or 'uncomfortable' places to be in. Safe and comfortable should be the minimum bar of expectation that our public transit should meet.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Yeah. Using the TTC as winter shelter is not working either for the TTC or for the people using it for shelter. I'm riding the 505 most days, and when I get on at Broadview, there's usually one or two people sleeping in the back seats. They've probably been riding it for hours.

I'm not about to abandon the TTC - I ride it everywhere, including with my six year old, and have almost never felt unsafe. But I hear a lot of people saying that they drive more now because they don't feel safe on the TTC. Which is ridiculous if you look at it objectively (cars are generally the number one cause of injury to healthy young people), but you can easily feel unsafe, whether or not you are actually unsafe.

Which is why the Line 5 stations are unheated.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Even if I don't feel "unsafe" (and I say this with the full privilege of being an adult male), I would say it is rare to go a day or two without an incident that makes me "uncomfortable".

Which is enough to deter me from the TTC. I now bike everywhere in the city, specifically because the combined discomfort + endless service disruptions has tilted the balance away from seeing the TTC as 'the better way'.

Only the recent snowfall has brought me back to using the TTC everyday, where I am reminded why I don't use it the rest of the year.

And dare I say, we are taxed far too highly in this city for our essential and critical public spaces to be either 'unsafe' or 'uncomfortable' places to be in. Safe and comfortable should be the minimum bar of expectation that our public transit should meet.

The sad thing is that a large part of transit safety lies right in front of our noses. Active fare enforcement, rather than a honour system backed up by occasional random checks.

 

[McGillicuddy]

Which is why the Line 5 stations are unheated.

None of the public concourses or platforms at any of the subway stations are heated. This does not stop homeless people from hanging out there.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

The sad thing is that a large part of transit safety lies right in front of our noses. Active fare enforcement, rather than a honour system backed up my occasional random checks.

That is a great point. Successful BRT and LRT systems worldwide use a fare payment area at surface stops that transit riders use prior to boarding the vehicle. This is a two-birds-with-one-stone outcome, as you enforce fare payment and decrease dwell time at stops as passengers board more efficiently without stopping to pay and fumble their pockets and purses for a Presto card with a lineup behind them.

It seems that there was an inclination to go towards this direction on the Finch West LRT with the outdoor Presto card readers but they fumbled implementation of that as well.

 

[81-717]

I now bike everywhere in the city, specifically because the combined discomfort + endless service disruptions has tilted the balance away from seeing the TTC as 'the better way'.

Only the recent snowfall has brought me back to using the TTC everyday, where I am reminded why I don't use it the rest of the year.

I also bike whenever possible, but unfortunately this winter has been terrible for that, I was only able to bike twice in early January, before the snowstorm, and maybe a few times in December. Judging by the current road conditions I don't think I'll be able to get back on a bike until spring. And unfortunately frequent flat tires are also a bitch to deal with, and kill the enjoyment & reliability of biking around the city just like delays do for transit.

 

[crs1026]

While safety concerns on transit may be statistically benign, the apprehensions and anxieties that are felt by riders when they encounter an unstable or dishevelled individual are completely reasonable. The average rider has little or no guidance on how they can protect themselves, and the close quarters of transit vehicles and stations means they may not be able to extricate themselves on their own.

When I rode Line 5 on opening day, there was a strong security presence, but...my usual pet peeve......at Mount Dennis, there was a small herd of TTC security and customer assistance people who (typical for that function) stood as a group and basically had a social event with each other while ignoring the ridership and making little effort to exercise vigilance. I did see both police and security patrols out riding the line, but my overall impression of TTC security is that standing around is tolerated unreasonably..

If it were my unit, there would be a rule that no more than two officers can gather in one place unless there is a reported incident or for a briefing. If four officers end up in the same spot, they need to pair off and disperse. (I feel the same way about police bicycle patrols, who I regularly see patrolling in groups of three or four, seemingly having a great outing - where they could split off in pairs and provide twice the patrol coverage and public presence). There is a lot of room to maximise the coverage of the existing security resources which of itself would assure more riders.

-Paul

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

I also bike whenever possible, but unfortunately this winter has been terrible for that, I was only able to bike twice in early January, before the snowstorm, and maybe a few times in December. Judging by the current road conditions I don't think I'll be able to get back on a bike until spring. And unfortunately frequent flat tires are also a bitch to deal with, and kill the enjoyment & reliability of biking around the city just like delays do for transit.

I rely on the city bikes primarily, which mitigates most of those issues but replaces them with the “is there a bike available in Midtown?” question. But yeah, I had one bad fall the other week trying to cross an icy streetcar rail with a tire devoid of traction due to the snow packed on it. This has put me off cycling until the snow clears.

 

[Burnt creek]

The sad thing is that a large part of transit safety lies right in front of our noses. Active fare enforcement, rather than a honour system backed up by occasional random checks.

Yes, a lot of these issues emerged at exactly around the time that the many agents in fare booths were removed. But I would add one more factor, this problem also emerged around when they replaced those steel turnstiles with those stupid transparent plastic gates. Its now easy for trespassers to walk right behind and pig back off of other "fare paying" users in order to crash though those gates. I am still baffled even to this day how in the world those plastic glass gates are supposed to be an improvement from the steel turnstiles. .it was hard work to get passed those turnstiles without paying your fare whereas now its very easy.

That has to be one of the biggest boneheaded decision that I have ever seen from the TTC.

 

[adma]

Quite a few pages back, I recall some questioning of the worth of Hakimi Lebovic--but it's something that one only grasps when one comprehends how it's in the middle of a significant big-box retail node. But it got me reflecting on other (quotes intentional) "useless" stations on the other lines...

Summerhill: the only station on the '54 Yonge line w/o a bus connection (other than Yonge), and supposedly one that presupposed a more intensive "transport hub" around N Toronto Station/the Crosstown Expressway. It had a way of seeming forlorn (and particularly Gloucester-car-smelly) right through the 70s, but condo/office intensification (and the general "desirability" of the environs, clearer by the 80s than it had been in '54, when it was far-side-of-the-tracks relative to Rosedale) had a way of alleviating that.

Chester: the only station on the '66 B-D line w/o a bus connection. It only really came into its own in the late 70s/early 80s w/Riverdale gentrification and Carrot Common serving as a "granola hub".

Glencairn: the most middle-of-nowhere of the Spadina stations, even if it is served by a bus. Still sort of middle-of-nowhere, though not w/o lack of trying (budding intensification around Marlee to the W as a first breach of yellow-belt entropy, and it's *still* not enough)

Bessarion: everyone's favourite Sheppard-line punchline, but at least it always had intensification in mind (and yes, it's happening, though that hasn't made Bessarion any less of a punchline).

Downsview Park/Hwy 407: yeah, two stations on the Spadina line extension. The former having that terminally-stubborn industrial-park windswept-wasteland cast, compounded by being elevated above street level (even if it serves its namesake park, not to mention the Merchant's Market--and being coupled with a GO station winds up being insult to injury rather than giving it a sense of purpose), and the latter being insular-by-design due to its own unique transit-hub purpose (and less like Hakimi Lebovic than Aga Khan in that fatally-superhighway-adjacent light--in fact, I see 407, Aga Khan, and maybe Wynford at the sort of stations which, going back to the early 70s, would have been perfect jumping-off points for the hitchhiker set).

Sorry; just felt like a little ad hoc rambling reflection there.

 

[kotsy]

Some more photos from opening day

 

[duffo]

Quite a few pages back, I recall some questioning of the worth of Hakimi Lebovic--but it's something that one only grasps when one comprehends how it's in the middle of a significant big-box retail node. But it got me reflecting on other (quotes intentional) "useless" stations on the other lines...

Summerhill: the only station on the '54 Yonge line w/o a bus connection (other than Yonge), and supposedly one that presupposed a more intensive "transport hub" around N Toronto Station/the Crosstown Expressway. It had a way of seeming forlorn (and particularly Gloucester-car-smelly) right through the 70s, but condo/office intensification (and the general "desirability" of the environs, clearer by the 80s than it had been in '54, when it was far-side-of-the-tracks relative to Rosedale) had a way of alleviating that.

Chester: the only station on the '66 B-D line w/o a bus connection. It only really came into its own in the late 70s/early 80s w/Riverdale gentrification and Carrot Common serving as a "granola hub".

Glencairn: the most middle-of-nowhere of the Spadina stations, even if it is served by a bus. Still sort of middle-of-nowhere, though not w/o lack of trying (budding intensification around Marlee to the W as a first breach of yellow-belt entropy, and it's *still* not enough)

Bessarion: everyone's favourite Sheppard-line punchline, but at least it always had intensification in mind (and yes, it's happening, though that hasn't made Bessarion any less of a punchline).

Downsview Park/Hwy 407: yeah, two stations on the Spadina line extension. The former having that terminally-stubborn industrial-park windswept-wasteland cast, compounded by being elevated above street level (even if it serves its namesake park, not to mention the Merchant's Market--and being coupled with a GO station winds up being insult to injury rather than giving it a sense of purpose), and the latter being insular-by-design due to its own unique transit-hub purpose (and less like Hakimi Lebovic than Aga Khan in that fatally-superhighway-adjacent light--in fact, I see 407, Aga Khan, and maybe Wynford at the sort of stations which, going back to the early 70s, would have been perfect jumping-off points for the hitchhiker set).

Sorry; just felt like a little ad hoc rambling reflection there.

None of these other stations are less than a 5 min walk (400m) to the next station... Removing Hakimi-Lebovic, you still have the two neighbouring stations within the Golden Mile big box retail node.

 

[mikey7767]

It took 39 minutes from Kennedy to Yonge in rush hour and 41 minutes from Yonge to Kennedy on my journey, got many red lights on the way there and a few more on the way back. Looks like everyone on the West end are really happy. I wish the short sighted "limited use of transit dollars" public are happy we compromised something that could have been really beautiful for nothing (FW which is a joke and Sheppard East that thankfully was never built). This line clearly shows the divide between what makes transit good and what makes it shitty. Yet we will have these short sighted limited anti-progress-oriented folks comment on how great this is because DeDiCaTeD LaNeS.

 

[privateeye]

It took 39 minutes from Kennedy to Yonge in rush hour and 41 minutes from Yonge to Kennedy on my journey, got many red lights on the way there and a few more on the way back. Looks like everyone on the West end are really happy. I wish the short sighted "limited use of transit dollars" public are happy we compromised something that could have been really beautiful for nothing (FW which is a joke and Sheppard East that thankfully was never built). This line clearly shows the divide between what makes transit good and what makes it shitty. Yet we will have these short sighted limited anti-progress-oriented folks comment on how great this is because DeDiCaTeD LaNeS.

have you not been following TSP? If after March, it’s still bad then you have a point but the system isn’t even in full service right now..