Recent content by Rainforest

Removing stops is always controversial, and arguments can be made to keep each particular stop. Well, usually something has to be sacrificed in order to achieve something. The situation as it stands: - Surface LRT Line 6 turned out to be much slower than the forecasts. Those forecasts were the...

Actually, Line 5 has seven stops between Keele and Yonge, while Line 2 has nine stops between Keele and Yonge. Given that both those sections are tunneled, it is makes sense that the number of stops is similar. Yonge to Kennedy, Line 2 is considerably (about 3 km) longer because it runs...

There are several potential strategies for reducing the LRT's wait times. If some of them (shortening the cross-street green phase) can't work, others are still available. You can extend either phase, to increase the chance that the LRV can cross when it is ready to cross; of course that...

Au contraire, my view is that a better TSP and other improvements to the LRT operation should be attempted first. Finch West LRT is a perfect use case, anything that works there should work in other suburban LRT corridors. However, it is hard to plan or fund any new suburban LRTs until and...

St Clair and Spadina are fine. Those routes are short, and therefore their slow speed does not matter much, the total travel times are still acceptable. The needs are different for Finch LRT and for the other contemplated suburban LRTs. Travel distances are 2-3 times longer, a decent speed is...

LRT is the right technology for Finch - based on the experience of other cities that are capable of running their LRTs at a decent speed. However, if the next few months show that we are chronically incapable of operating our LRTs properly, then indeed there will be no new LRT projects launched...

I think both factors can contribute, but the quality of traffic control is more important. Some route designs may be more prone to bunching than others, and thus require more efforts from the dispatchers to avoid bunching. However, a good dispatch + cooperation from the traffic signal control...

However, if the TSP alone does not help enough, then some harder choices will have to be made if we want this LRT line to become appealing for the riders. Either the operational practices will have to change: faster acceleration, top speed wherever possible, minimal waiting etc. Or, the number...

I think it is best to give them a few months for sorting the things out. If the TSP can be improved to the point where the line becomes reasonably fast, then no need to tweak the number of stops. I don't believe 20 min / 30 kph can be realistically expected on a surface line. The goal should be...

They did not want to remove stops, because they wanted to avoid the need to run parallel bus service. Kind of makes sense, if they were able to operate at the advertized 22-23 kph average speed with all those stops. In the present situation, the actual speed being in the 12-14 kph range, every...

20 min to get from the terminal (at Keele) to Jane? With only 2 stops in between? That's insane. The good old St Clair streetcar covers the same 2 km, from Yonge to Bathurst, faster than in 20 min. While crossing Yonge St at grade, serving countless local stops, and making a detour via the St...

LRTs work reasonably well in a number of other cities, thus it was worth building some in Toronto. However, any future LRT expansion will only happen if the first two lines can be fixed. In particular, if Finch West gets fixed. If Finch West remains slow, then we can forget about almost any...

Would be fun to ride, but not easy to build. Plus, the existing St Clair west section cannot run any faster, because of the built form / amount of traffic lights. Even if some stops are removed, the traffic lights will stay. As a short, standalone feeder for the two branches of Yonge line, St...

That's not how it works. Outside downtown, every major transit line gets the bulk of its riders from the feeder routes. Living right next to a subway station is great, but walk-in riders are the minority of all passengers. The same will apply to Sheppard and Eglinton. Therefore, an extended...

Yes. Apart from obviously annoying the riders, unnecessarily slow movement results in higher operating costs. That part of the situation is not immediately visible, but the basic math says that. Let's say you have a 10 km long transit line, you want service frequency = every 5 min, and each...