Why wouldn't I find it controversial? If you took the transitway, exactly as it is, keeping the same stop spacing and top speed limits, and dropped LRT tracks in its place, can you honestly tell me it would be any slower than a bus running in the same circumstances?

The ability for buses to bypass each other has much more utility on city streets, on routes running extremely frequently (such as the 29 Dufferin), than on such a right of way, especially when you consider that everyone has to board buses in this country through one door and LRTs have more, therefore all else being equal dwell times would be cut down dramatically. If congestion were a problem, however, more tracks could be added to the corridor, I dare say easier than if you tried to add more tracks onto a street running route.

There is a lot of misinformation being spread on this forum about LRTs of late. I actually find it astonishing. It's like if I tried to discredit the introduction of a new GO bus route by pointing at the painfully slow 47 Lansdowne bus and claiming that the GO bus would run at those speeds and is therefore a bad investment. In fact this is being done with some frequency on the forum by LRT opponents using the TTC streetcar network as an argument against LRTs.
 
T3G said:
Why wouldn't I find it controversial? If you took the transitway, exactly as it is, keeping the same stop spacing and top speed limits, and dropped LRT tracks in its place, can you honestly tell me it would be any slower than a bus running in the same circumstances?
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Yes. LRT makes all stops. No express service is (reasonably) possible. 12 minutes CC to Renforth is possible because it makes only one intermediate stop.

LRT has its place. But it isn't always better than buses just because it is more expensive. And putting LRT in places that are inappropriate (Line 5 is a wildly inappropriate use for LRT) locks us into a compromise transit solution that is more expensive or less effective than other alternatives. The idea that LRT will ever be upgraded to higher order rapid transit is quite dubious. You can accomplish a lot with BRT, and by the time BRT is reaching capacity you might be better off skipping over half-pregnant solutions and going to a real rapid transit alternative for only a slightly larger investment.
 
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afransen said:
It would take 45 minutes just to get from Sq One to Eg West station on an LRT line. I think an express bus would be more practical. If Lakeshore does get upgraded to 5 minute frequency, it would probably be faster to go that way to Toronto.

It seems very wasteful to spend money on LRT when it would not be fast enough to be regional transit. If the BRT transitway achieves high enough ridership, put in something fast and relieve it that way. Or frankly, just spend the money upgrading the Milton Line.
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What bus is express from Sq One to Eglinton as I know of none??

Who will run this express service??

What is the ridership numbers for this express service and what time of the day is the highest numbers???

How will the bus travel to get to Eglinton??

You think the express bus will not get caught up in traffic???

It takes me 15 minutes to get to Hurontario St, another 25/30 minutes to Port Credit, 30 minutes to Union Station and then to Eglinton. Why would I do that if it faster taking the LRT including the 15 minute trip to Sq One???

Great to say its a time from X-Y on the Lakeshore, but how long does it take people to get there by car or transit??? Unless you are within walking distance of a station, the time between X-Y doesn't count in the final travel time, but quality of service does. Since most riders are not within walking distance of a station, total travel time is more important.

T3G said:
Why wouldn't I find it controversial? If you took the transitway, exactly as it is, keeping the same stop spacing and top speed limits, and dropped LRT tracks in its place, can you honestly tell me it would be any slower than a bus running in the same circumstances?

The ability for buses to bypass each other has much more utility on city streets, on routes running extremely frequently (such as the 29 Dufferin), than on such a right of way, especially when you consider that everyone has to board buses in this country through one door and LRTs have more, therefore all else being equal dwell times would be cut down dramatically. If congestion were a problem, however, more tracks could be added to the corridor, I dare say easier than if you tried to add more tracks onto a street running route.

There is a lot of misinformation being spread on this forum about LRTs of late. I actually find it astonishing. It's like if I tried to discredit the introduction of a new GO bus route by pointing at the painfully slow 47 Lansdowne bus and claiming that the GO bus would run at those speeds and is therefore a bad investment. In fact this is being done with some frequency on the forum by LRT opponents using the TTC streetcar network as an argument against LRTs.
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The only place buses in the Transitway can pass each others is at the station, otherwise its follow the leader.

Going back to my 2004 EA report, the plan ridership calls for a DD bus every 30 second. How long do you think it will take a DD bus to off load and load and well it meet the 30 second timetable???

Can you see a problem how to move 25,000/hr at peak time from Renforth to Sq One using buses??? What about 12,000?? The 25,000 number is a Metrolinx/GO Transit number in the EA requirements.
 
afransen said:
Yes. LRT makes all stops. No express service is (reasonably) possible. 12 minutes CC to Renforth is possible because it makes only one intermediate stop.
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According to distance measurements on Google Maps, the distance between City Centre and Renforth is 9.88 km. The schedule for GO Transit's route 29 indicates that at the peak of rush hour, heading eastbound, a bus will leave CC at 7:55 and arrive at Renforth at 8:07, a travel time of 12 minutes, as you said, with an average speed of 49.4 km/h.

Schedule source:


The schedule for MiWay's route 109, an express route, but one which makes all stops along the Transitway, shows on Triplinx that at a similar time, a bus will leave CC at 8:00 and arrive at Renforth at 8:15, a travel time of 15 minutes, with an average speed of 39.52 km/h.

Schedule source:


A few things stick out to me from this analysis, the first of which is that if a bus making all stops along the Transitway achieves an average speed of 39.52 km/h, why would the LRT run at only 30 km/h? Keeping in mind that this information is sourced directly from the GO schedules, they have to take into account passenger loading times, and the reality of the services as exist presently is that everyone can only board through one door, which considerably slows down travel times compared to an LRT vehicle which can have 4-5 doors and in virtually every circumstance (I have yet to find an exception), utilizes all door boarding. This makes the LRT extremely time competitive to the 109 and given that the 29 uses predominantly double-decker buses, which take longer to offload than a single deck MCI coach, the times should come decently close to the express bus timings as well.

The other thing I notice is that the difference between 12 and 15 minutes is extremely trivial.

afransen said:
LRT has its place. But it isn't always better than buses just because it is more expensive. And putting LRT in places that are inappropriate (Line 5 is a wildly inappropriate use for LRT) locks us into a compromise transit solution that is more expensive or less effective than other alternatives. The idea that LRT will ever be upgraded to higher order rapid transit is quite dubious. You can accomplish a lot with BRT, and by the time BRT is reaching capacity you might be better off skipping over half-pregnant solutions and going to a real rapid transit alternative for only a slightly larger investment.
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So, under what circumstances, precisely, would an LRT be the optimal choice, in your book? The statement "You can accomplish a lot with BRT, and by the time BRT is reaching capacity you might be better off skipping over half-pregnant solutions and going to a real rapid transit alternative for only a slightly larger investment." does not allow for any such possibility, in so far as I can tell, and your assertion that it would be only a "slightly larger investment" is fairly dubious and could only be true in an insular debate about the underground portion of line 5, which of course this thread is not about (I hope no one would suggest running any possible LRT along the Transitway underground!). Grade separation, be it underground or elevated, adds a huge cost to a project that simply laying rails on level ground cannot come close to.

The advantages of LRT over BRT are significant, you are able to achieve much higher capacity, should it be required (you can't couple buses together, but you can couple trams) with minimal to no upgrades of infrastructure required if you plan your system right, and the comfort of a nice, smooth, quiet LRV over a bus with an extremely loud engine, bashing your brains in as it hits every bump in the road (a very real, and very unpleasant drawback of the present fleet of GO's double decker buses) should not be discounted, either.
 
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drum118 said:
Can you see a problem how to move 25,000/hr at peak time from Renforth to Sq One using buses??? What about 12,000?? The 25,000 number is a Metrolinx/GO Transit number in the EA requirements.
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At that level of demand, higher order transit can be justified.

The benefit of the transitway in a highway corridor is that buses can leave the route to reach actual destinations. LRT won't be able to do that. It would be rather silly to invest billions in rail transit in a corridor that is by design well removed from walk-up traffic. This is a bit of a strawman anyway. If the transitway was delivering 25k pph to Renforth, Line 5 would collapse. Line 5 is only capable of 15k pph. So clearly 25k per hour would require substantial upgrade, replacement or supplementation of Line 5.
 
Perhaps Mississauga should focus on transit to get around Mississauga, attract offices and hope for a lot of work from home since many of their residents live in houses which can fit offices. The whole topic over the last few pages is how to get Mississauga people to Toronto. Mississauga is its own city and should be focused on moving people primarily within Mississauga to businesses and entertainment in offices.
 
T3G said:
So, under what circumstances, precisely, would an LRT be the optimal choice, in your book? The statement "You can accomplish a lot with BRT, and by the time BRT is reaching capacity you might be better off skipping over half-pregnant solutions and going to a real rapid transit alternative for only a slightly larger investment." does not allow for any such possibility, in so far as I can tell, and your assertion that it would be only a "slightly larger investment" is fairly dubious and could only be true in an insular debate about the underground portion of line 5, which of course this thread is not about (I hope no one would suggest running any possible LRT along the Transitway underground!). Grade separation, be it underground or elevated, adds a huge cost to a project that simply laying rails on level ground cannot come close to.

The advantages of LRT over BRT are significant, you are able to achieve much higher capacity, should it be required (you can't couple buses together, but you can couple trams) with minimal to no upgrades of infrastructure required if you plan your system right, and the comfort of a nice, smooth, quiet LRV over a bus with an extremely loud engine, bashing your brains in as it hits every bump in the road (a very real, and very unpleasant drawback of the present fleet of GO's double decker buses) should not be discounted, either.
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It makes sense to me where existing rail ROW can be leveraged, such as in KW. It is well suited for smaller cities where travel distances are not significant and most destinations are on an axis or two that can be connected by rail. It also can make sense for high demand local transit where buses would struggle to meet demand without bunching due to traffic signals. Putting low floor LRVs in a fully grade separated ROW is very silly, as Ottawa has shown.
 
sixrings said:
Perhaps Mississauga should focus on transit to get around Mississauga, attract offices and hope for a lot of work from home since many of their residents live in houses which can fit offices. The whole topic over the last few pages is how to get Mississauga people to Toronto. Mississauga is its own city and should be focused on moving people primarily within Mississauga to businesses and entertainment in offices.
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Toronto is Toronto (GTA). Regional economies grow in productivity the more people they contain. Our competitiveness as a region is dependent on the ability to move people around the region. Traffic is suffocating the city's competitiveness, and that requires regional transit to address, as well as first/last mile.
 
Brunel Road/Sandstone Drive. Looking north:
Brunel1.jpeg


Looking south:
Brunel2.jpeg
 
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afransen said:
Toronto is Toronto (GTA). Regional economies grow in productivity the more people they contain. Our competitiveness as a region is dependent on the ability to move people around the region. Traffic is suffocating the city's competitiveness, and that requires regional transit to address, as well as first/last mile.
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At what point is a city far enough from Toronto that it has to become its own city?

Guelph, Kitchener, Hamilton?
 
sixrings said:
At what point is a city far enough from Toronto that it has to become its own city?

Guelph, Kitchener, Hamilton?
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Time to move on as it has nothing to do with Hurontario.

The support beam for the girders are being added to the top of the piers with the one on the southside of the off ramp more advance.

Shoring underway in the north-west corner of Rathburn and City View for a pier to take the line over the intersection.

The pile of dirt on the southside of Rathburn and the pier has been remove to allow building of the ramp from the pier to to Sq One Dr to get the line back to grade.

The off ramp to Rathburn and City Centre has been rebuilt more to the north to allow more room for the bridge support over Rathburn. The bus lane is more of an S shape now to get to Rathburn.

Intersections that have the island between the turning lane and the main road will see them remove to the point the turning lane will have to stop for traffic lights as well having pedestrian crossing the road. The north side of Eglinton has this new change that the sidewalk is filling that turning lane area to shorten the distance a pedestrian has to cross the intersection as well being more safe to do so.

New curbs been pour on the eastside of Hurontario north of Eglinton to allow the rebuilding of the new traffic lanes as well get ready for the guideway work.

The plan I know of will see Hurontario shut down for the QEW as well the QEW when the push box is to be move. The close QEW traffic will use the off and on ramps to get around the closure for Hurontario for about 62 hours while the highway is dug up to allow the push box to be move into position. Once in position, backfilling and building new lanes will take place. As far as I know and MTO Call, Hurontario traffic will only be able to use the on ramp to go east or west on the side close to traffic and think that is a mistake. It only will slow down the QEW traffic more than what is taking place since you are going from 3 to one lane with a possible 2nd lane on the ramp.

Thanksgiving weekend has been the timeframe for the move and haven't heard any change for that weekend so far.

Service roads will be use for transit as well traffic wanting to go n-s of the closure that will be gridlock and why I don't support of traffic being allow Hurontario traffic to use the on ramps.
 
T3G said:
Can you share the math by which you reached the conclusion that an express bus would be the faster choice?
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On top of everything that has been said, if you really want to find out, you can go to Ottawa and take a ride on the Confederation Line, and compare it to the ride on the South East Transitway. The difference is absolutely night and day. Especially off peak, the drivers often slam down the gas pedal on the transitway and you often fly through it. Nobody needs to get off at a station and nobody is on the platform, no need to waste time idling on the platform. This was especially true in the old days of the eastern transitway where the roadway had 90km/h speeds. With the LRT, a lot of this was no longer possible. Trains now have to stop at every station, and due to them using Low Floor Vehicles, the idle time was way longer compared to what you'd see on say the Yonge Line. Plus, even before they implemented all the slow orders on the route, the LRT still reaches nowhere near the same speeds as the old busses did, and after the Slow Orders? It is honestly depressing to look at.

Now don't get me wrong, the LRT conversion in Ottawa was absolutely necessary. Capacity was becoming a massive issue, reaching a point where no matter how many busses you ran during rush hour, you simply wouldn't be able to carry that many people by a bus, not to mention that the introduction of the downtown tunnel was an absolute saviour for the system. That being said, there's a reason why so many people in Ottawa disliked the LRT when it opened, and why there was public sentiment to change it back to a busway (as foolish as that idea was). In many instances the transitway was so much more convenient. It allowed for more one seat rides, outside of downtown the busses were faster, off peak the busses would just absolutely zoom.

If you want a more modern example of high quality busways, I was thoroughly impressed by the Brisbane Metro, which is like a modern interpretation of the Ottawa Transitway. The busses absolutely zoom, 90km/h areas are absolutely everywhere, and iirc they have dedicated express routes that skip specific stops. Convert that system to light rail, and many people would absolutely have longer commutes.
 
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