Finch West Line 6 LRT

[Bordercollie]

He needs a seat first. It also says he MAY run

 

[txlseries4]

He needs a seat first. It also says he MAY run

Ya, that's obviously how federal elections work lol. Feel like I'm going crazy trying to parse your comments. You replied to "chow vs smart track" and said there's a rumour John Tory Jr might run next election -- as in the city election. But the only rumour out there published is about him running federally. Is there also a rumour that he'd run for mayor? Source?

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

What's rough about Sunnybrook Park is that it introduced an at-grade intersection between Laird and Don Mills. Metrolinx had proposed to bypass the intersection south of Eglinton and maintain fully grade separated services to Don Mills by deleting the stop, allowing the underground frequencies and service reliability to extend to what is one of the most important stations on the line and the future transfer point to the Ontario Line.

Instead that service was cut back to Laird to maintain a transit stop on a low-ridership, low-priority location with little in the way of density or destinations in walking distance. It's like 2 condo complexes, a park, and a car dealership.

The biggest offender on Eglinton is Hakimi Lebovic and needs to get deleted.

If only we could have had a south side alignment...

 

[Obsidian]

Listening to the City Hall session - someone made a great point. That when the LRT was pitched it was supposed to be 33-34 minutes and their decision was based on that estimation. In retrospect, would the city have bought into the Finch LRT at current speed? Not sure...

I got to say that it's kind of rich that some are complaining about the number of stops slowing down the line when they fought to have the Sunnybrook stop added on line 5

If it was pitched at current speeds, 15 to 30 minutes slower than the buses it replace, it would have never been approved as a transit project anywhere.
even 33 minutes is the same speed as the bus.

 

[Obsidian]

No idea, and probably half the people on the UrbanToronto forum.


I said the same thing too. It's clear that Line 5 really was a crapshoot. I keep crossing my fingers and hoping that ML would learn from the defects of other lines, but it's clear that even those defects or operating procedures are of no use.

Well Line 5 is their first line, i would say the learning are already seen on the Ontario Line construction.

namelly building the stations first since they take the longest time than after the TBM have gone through like on Line 5.
This change alone will save 2 years of construction

 

[Obsidian]

4 months to study speeding up the line. Good lord!

It could be late into 2026 before we see this line get sped up. Will they maintain the shuttle buses until then?

why the hell are they doing a study???
Just make the change then study it.

Maybe the city should have used all that time they were bitching at Metrolinx about an opening date they should have been studying TSP so that it would be implemented while test started.

 

[urbanclient]

If it was pitched at current speeds, 15 to 30 minutes slower than the buses it replace, it would have never been approved as a transit project anywhere.

Metrolinx: Hey everyone, let's pay $2.5 billion along with another $1 billion for maintenance over 30 years, so we can get a glorified bus that rides the rails. That's right! Slower than the 36 bus. Of course! We'll build a massive 2000 square foot two storey ceiling station entrance at Finch West; Also, we'll build an overly long descent into a new concourse that is inexplicably 2 stories below the Line 6 platform level, forcing us to build another flight of escalators up instead of building the concourse at the same level. At Metrolinx, we love burning money.

The city council: Ok as long as we don't pay for any of it.

 

[hw621]

why the hell are they doing a study???
Just make the change then study it.

Maybe the city should have used all that time they were bitching at Metrolinx about an opening date they should have been studying TSP so that it would be implemented while test started.

And why study now? Shouldn't this be done at the design phase?

 

[Obsidian]

I am glad city officials are the one taking much of the heat for this mess and not metrolinx.
They have had all this time to speed up rail transport in the city ie streetcars and have refused to. so it nice to seem them fumbling over themselves now that the public is fully aware of what they have not been doing for rail transport in the city. A similar opening of the Eglinton line should bring a whole bunch of more criticism on them.

 

[6ixGod]

The videos of these LRTs crawling along at turtle speeds are honestly embarrassing. I’ve been saying for the past couple of years that the problems with Lines 5 and 6 wouldn’t magically disappear once they opened. I already had the bar set low, but this is somehow worse than expected. A week in and we’re already seeing a full line shutdown? Come on.

And yet people are still insisting LRTs are perfectly fine for a city the size of Toronto. These lines are constrained by intersections, lack signal priority, and operate at street level in a way that’s unforgiving when anything goes wrong.

What really drives this is the underlying attitude that the outer boroughs don’t “count” as real Toronto. The city centre gets treated as the city, while everywhere else is managed cheaply. When it’s the centre, subways are justified, disruption is acceptable, and costs are worth it. When it’s the outer areas, suddenly LRTs, compromises, and “good enough” solutions are pushed instead.

Scarborough and North Etobicoke, for example, have long been given scraps when it comes to public transport, areas that also happen to be some of the most diverse in the city. Finch West and Scarborough LRT are classic examples, cheaper, surface solutions designed without full consideration for long-term capacity or reliability. Even Line 3, when it was operational, was a stopgap from day one.

This isn’t about individual prejudice; it’s about systemic biases in how the city prioritises infrastructure investment. Political influence, cost considerations, and historic planning choices have all favoured the centre and left outer, diverse boroughs with substandard options. Until the city recognises that every area deserves transit built to proper standards, this kind of fiasco is going to keep happening.

Said it before and I’m saying it again….I don’t want another LRT ever built in Toronto again. If you MUST….stick it underground or above ground.

Also, I love how they did everything to say “this isn’t a streetcar” yet have stops on Line 6 that mimic TTC streetcar stops and follow the speed limit for cars. Absolutely hilarious.

I’m glad the outrage forced the city into growing the F up…..keep the pressure on them….maybe they’ll realise this isn’t 1972 Toronto anymore.

 

[JSF-1]

The videos of these LRTs crawling along at turtle speeds are honestly embarrassing. I’ve been saying for the past couple of years that the problems with Lines 5 and 6 wouldn’t magically disappear once they opened. I already had the bar set low, but this is somehow worse than expected. A week in and we’re already seeing a full line shutdown? Come on.

And yet people are still insisting LRTs are perfectly fine for a city the size of Toronto. These lines are constrained by intersections, lack signal priority, and operate at street level in a way that’s unforgiving when anything goes wrong.

What really drives this is the underlying attitude that the outer boroughs don’t “count” as real Toronto. The city centre gets treated as the city, while everywhere else is managed cheaply. When it’s the centre, subways are justified, disruption is acceptable, and costs are worth it. When it’s the outer areas, suddenly LRTs, compromises, and “good enough” solutions are pushed instead.

Scarborough and North Etobicoke, for example, have long been given scraps when it comes to public transport, areas that also happen to be some of the most diverse in the city. Finch West and Scarborough LRT are classic examples, cheaper, surface solutions designed without full consideration for long-term capacity or reliability. Even Line 3, when it was operational, was a stopgap from day one.

This isn’t about individual prejudice; it’s about systemic biases in how the city prioritises infrastructure investment. Political influence, cost considerations, and historic planning choices have all favoured the centre and left outer, diverse boroughs with substandard options. Until the city recognises that every area deserves transit built to proper standards, this kind of fiasco is going to keep happening.

Said it before and I’m saying it again….I don’t want another LRT ever built in Toronto again. If you MUST….stick it underground or above ground.

Also, I love how they did everything to say “this isn’t a streetcar” yet have stops on Line 6 that mimic TTC streetcar stops and follow the speed limit for cars. Absolutely hilarious.

I’m glad the outrage forced the city into growing the F up…..keep the pressure on them….maybe they’ll realise this isn’t 1972 Toronto anymore.

Ok so you are really going to come here of all places and peddle this suburban victim complex bullsh*t? Pleas explain to all of us here how there is some conspiracy to hold down the suburbs when we haven't opened a single new subway station in downtown Toronto since 1966? PLEASE explain to us how the "centre" is controlling things when old town Toronto hasn't had control over the TTC since 1954? PLEASE explain to us how the "centre" is controlling things when every expansion of the network since 1966 has seen the subway move deeper into the suburbs while we continued to kick the Queen Street Subway down the road in favour of suburban expansion? PLEASE explain to us how this is some grand conspiracy against the suburbs, when it was suburban councillors who helped restore the Finch West and Eglinton Crosstown LRT's in 2012 after Rob Ford killed the Transit City project? PLEASE explain to us how there can be some conspiracy when the suburbs have had a majority on every concil since the creation of Metropolitan Toronto in 1953, to the first round of amalgamations in 1967, to the second round in 1998, to this very day where the suburbs control 11 seats on City Council while "Old Toronto" only has 7?

If you want to debate the merits of the Finch West LRT that is fine because I think we can all agree that its implementation is flawed, however DO NOT bring this "Downtown elites" conspiracy crap to this thread or any thread on this site. Objective reality clearly shows that this is a nonesens belief that is not possible because the suburbs have been the majority voice in the city regardless of whether we were 13 municipalites, 6 municipalities or just 1 unified municipality. Every transit decision we have made since 1954 was done with the full knowledge and concent of a majority of suburban representatives from Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke, and at one time or another they have often voted in favour of them.

Finally there is NO reality in which the Finch West Corridor on its own can support a Subway or Light-Metro. There is NO justification to contruct a Subway or Light-Metro on a corridor that is only expected to generate 2,800 riders per hour and may max out at 5-6,000 per hour if we extend it to the Airport and Yonge Street. LRT is the best solution for Finch West as it can comfortably handle the passenger demands now and in the future if we get off our asses and run it properly. If you want to talk about Subways and Light-Metro's then we can do that on Eglinton and Sheppard, but Finch West is not the place for it, and won't be the place for it in any of our lifetimes, or our childrens lifetime, and possibly even our grand childrens lifetimes.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Finally there is NO reality in which the Finch West Corridor on its own can support a Subway or Light-Metro. There is NO justification to contruct a Subway or Light-Metro

That didn’t stop us from building the Shepard line as a proper subway