goodcitywhenfinished
Active Member
43 minutes from Humber College to Finch West - must be a new record
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Finch West Line 6 LRT
- Thread starter Monarch Butterfly
- Start date
MidtownKW
New Member
I just assume that removing stops is politically untenable, at least for now. Maybe there are exceptions. And I don't think express trips are logistically practical. Maybe a request stop system is. This shouldn't be called "LRT" if the situation is that there might be stops that at times have no one embarking or disembarking. But that's beside the point.
I have to admit that I paid no attention to this during planning because I don't live in Toronto and would never ride this except for curiosity's sake. What insanity that the average station spacing is actually 600 metres.
You're right that dwell time is the answer, or a big part of it. With 18 stations, cut 20 seconds and you've saved six minutes. And there is no possible reason for dwelling for a minute or more.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
You can't get the rapid transit speeds with the ridiculous number of stations on this line. A MINIMUM of 4 of these stations should be closed preferably 6 or 7. The reality is that it can be done but that would require Chow & Company to grab a pair and make it so. They can run a bus every 20 minutes along the route for people on much shorter trips. Being a bit faster than the bus is an insult to taxpayers who have paid for this line and an affront to the people along the corridor who were promised, after years of construction, that they would be getting rapid transit. What a slap in the face.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Closing stations would be a waste of money. If the trains can hit 50kmph that alone is a huge difference.
6ixGod
Active Member
There are no “stations” on Finch West….just stops. Even Google Maps doesn’t show a station symbol, because in reality it behaves no differently to the Spadina, St. Clair, or Lakeshore streetcars. The bigger problem isn’t Finch West alone…..it’s that the TTC/Metrolinx approach to streetcar and LRT lines across the city is inconsistent and half-baked.
Finch West pretends to be a subway by giving it a numbered line, pretends to be an LRT stopping at every stop and pretends to be a streetcar, with stops spaced only 500 m apart. The result is a hybrid that fails at all three.
And the same issues exist on other streetcar lines: Spadina is frequent and mostly in dedicated lanes but still slow; St. Clair suffers from mixed traffic in parts; Lakeshore is a mix of streetcar and rapid transit infrastructure. Stop spacing, signal priority, and dedicated lanes are all inconsistent, so no line functions as true rapid transit.
My proposal: drop the Line 6 designation altogether. All streetcar and LRT lines with dedicated rights-of-way should get lettered designations, clearly distinguishing them from subways. And rather than addressing each line in isolation, TTC/ML should tackle them all together….optimise stop spacing, fully separate where possible, implement signal priority, and define the mode clearly.
FW36
Active Member
Three obvious stops to remove are
1. Driftwood
2. Duncanwoods
3. Stevenson
1.Driftwood is 300 meters from Jane. It's ridiculous to have stations that close to eachother. To keep the line connected to the Driftwood bus, the bus line could be rerouted to Tobermory.
2.Duncanwoods is 380 meters from Pearldale and 380 meters from Milvan, with no bus connections. Pearldale is already serving the neighborhood, and there is an employment zone north of Milvan station. its clear Duncanwoods is the weak link.
3.Stevenson is 360 meters from albion station and 360 meters from kipling. Stevenson really is not needed at all being so close to Kipling and Albion.
Giving the lrt full priority and a reasonable speed limit would do wonders. I also think it should have followed a request to stop model because outside of rush hours, the stops in industrial areas are not used. With all those changes the line could run at 20 minutes end to end or less.
1. Driftwood
2. Duncanwoods
3. Stevenson
1.Driftwood is 300 meters from Jane. It's ridiculous to have stations that close to eachother. To keep the line connected to the Driftwood bus, the bus line could be rerouted to Tobermory.
2.Duncanwoods is 380 meters from Pearldale and 380 meters from Milvan, with no bus connections. Pearldale is already serving the neighborhood, and there is an employment zone north of Milvan station. its clear Duncanwoods is the weak link.
3.Stevenson is 360 meters from albion station and 360 meters from kipling. Stevenson really is not needed at all being so close to Kipling and Albion.
Giving the lrt full priority and a reasonable speed limit would do wonders. I also think it should have followed a request to stop model because outside of rush hours, the stops in industrial areas are not used. With all those changes the line could run at 20 minutes end to end or less.
ARG1
Senior Member
The question I raise is whether other solutions could've been found that solved the capacity issue without even building much infra along Finch. Easy Example (completely theoretical): Imagine if we had a jump start on projects such as the Bolton Line and Kitchener Line expansion (more frequent trains, maybe moving Etobicoke North to Woodbine Racetrack). Having more North/Southish corridor options that transform the Finch West bus from mixing short haul corridor users and longer distance Subway commuters, to distributing that latter group to one or two other points throughout the line would have a substantial impact on ridership patterns along the Finch corridor, all whilst not building anything on Finch itself. Then with this more evenly split Finch Avenue you can build a far cheaper BRT that would be able to handle the demands of the route for a longer period of time. Its important to remember that no transit project is an isolated bubble - anything you build will have downstream effects on other routes and services that it passes through in the general areas. The Finch Hydro corridor is right there, and plans have existed to build some sort of higher order transit on it for a long time. Sure GO ALRT would've far from covered every use case for the 36, and the the corridor would've remained busy - but it wouldn't have remained THAT busy, and would've turned it from a "Needs LRT for the capacity" corridor, to a "BRT works fine corridor". This is especially true if it was built in conjunction with say the Bolton Line.
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FW36
Active Member
To be fair the set of facts before 2020 leaned towards building the LRT
1. The 36 bus ridership was steadily increasing and a lot of buses were running at capacity. I remember during rush hour sometimes multiple buses would pass-by without stopping due to capacity issues or up to 5 buses would be bunched together and all completely full.
2. Around 2010's Humber College announced they would focus there expansion project mostly on there north campus. York University also had expansion plans so it was safe to assume further increase in ridership from the greater amount of students
3. Interest rates before 2020 were low. The city wanted to encourage more private development for housing as there was a lack of new residential construction along the corridor. Historically LRT encourage more development than BRT. This would have resulted in more housing options for those who live around the area
So overall prior to 2020 the big picture was buses already having capacity issues, expected growth of post secondary education in the area, and potential for large scale redevelopment and population growth leading to even higher ridership.
Now let's look at the current set of facts.
1. Ridership for the 36 bus has decreased since the pandemic and has not recovered.
2. Currently there is a decrease in the enrollment of international students and increase in the amount of classes offered online. Humber College North has slowed down its plans as well
3. Interest rates are higher than before plus increase on development charges are making it is harder for developers to build. Most likely a lot of residential projects along the line will be delayed or canceled.
With current set of facts a BRT would be more justified, it would have been cheaper the build and provide required capacity.
However a lot of the draw backs were because the pandemic. If it never occured mostly likely the 36 would have continued to see increased ridership, I imagine online classes would not be as common, and if interest rates remained low I imagine there would have been more opportunities for redevelopment projects.
I don't think planners were thinking what impact a potential world shaking event would have on the Finch West LRT back in 2010.
As the line currently stands a BRT would be acceptable. But an LRT can still be also justifiable, it would just require the city to do more work. Giving the LRT priority, increasing speed limits, and better stop placement would mean faster transit encouraging more ridership. The city could lower development charges and change zoning laws to encourage redevelopment along the corridor. The city could also lower develpment fees for post-secondary institutions to encourage investment. With these changes I would say LRT is perfectly fine and acceptable, but if Toronto tries nothing to improve the current situation than it 100 percent Finch west should have been built as a BRT
Bordercollie
Senior Member
I think you need to keep in mind that there is no supplementary bus service on this route. Just because you can walk 380m doesn't mean a senior citizen or someone with a disability can. It might be too close but to double it would be almost one km. If the downtown Streetcar on king St can be as fast as a car so can the Finch LRT.
Northern Light
Superstar
For those discussing stop spacing on this route; its not a new conversation.
Back in February '24 I tried to offer some substantive basis for the discussion by documenting the distances between stops as they are; and what they would be if you removed an intevening stop:
urbantoronto.ca
If you then scroll down you'll see a post by me more specifically examining two stops for possible removal and why the decisions were made to include them and why removal may yet be warranted; but not quite that easy.
Back in February '24 I tried to offer some substantive basis for the discussion by documenting the distances between stops as they are; and what they would be if you removed an intevening stop:
Finch West Line 6 LRT
The stop spacing should be tailored to the role of each route. A city of Toronto size needs several trunk, high capacity subway routes, that help people get across the city faster. They cannot be fully substituted by GO trains, because in many cases there is no rail line in the right place and...
If you then scroll down you'll see a post by me more specifically examining two stops for possible removal and why the decisions were made to include them and why removal may yet be warranted; but not quite that easy.
2323
New Member
FW36
Active Member
By this logic you could justify building a stop at every traffic light on Finch. The whole point of the LRT is to provide fast and reliable tranist not be a streetcar.
When removing Driftwood, Pearldale, stevenson stations are still about 700 meters apart, That is a 10 to 12 minute walk from one station to another, which is reasonable. If the city is worried about senior citizens or disabled people invest in wheel-trans or keep running local bus route. But also let's not exaggerate a 4 to 10 minute walk is not long.
lastcommodore
New Member
If the decision to keep the # of stops 6 has is warranted because it's supposed to be bus-like stop spacing rather than metro-like stop spacing, 6 should act like it and add press for stop buttons. Those things are on buses & streetcars for a reason, not just to add some level of inconvenience but because the amount of stops means there are some trams with nobody getting off at that stop. Currently we're just splitting the baby where the tram will stop for nobody.
A 6264
Active Member
When I clicked on the article, it had been updated to show the problem is fixed and the line is running.
Now it's half past noon, and there is another news story, the line is down again.
All problems are "switch issues".
Rainforest
Senior Member
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 about 25 kph average, that would be consistent with the modeling done in the early days of Transit City - essentually, that was the promised performance. That modeling predicted 22-23 kph for 400m average stop spacing, and 27 kph fopr 800m averahge stop spacing. The Finch route has average spacing ~630m, thus 25kph average speed is not unreasonable.
At 25 kph, the trip should take 10.7 * 60 / 25 = 26 min. Not perfect, but acceptable.
I don't believe 20 min / 30 kph can be realistically expected on a surface line. The goal should be about 25 kph average, that would be consistent with the modeling done in the early days of Transit City - essentually, that was the promised performance. That modeling predicted 22-23 kph for 400m average stop spacing, and 27 kph fopr 800m averahge stop spacing. The Finch route has average spacing ~630m, thus 25kph average speed is not unreasonable.
At 25 kph, the trip should take 10.7 * 60 / 25 = 26 min. Not perfect, but acceptable.