Alternatives to Transit City, the Spadina Extension, Yonge Extension, Etc.

[kettal]

I mean, people create fan sites for "LRT", how ridiculous can you get?

http://www.busfanplace.com/

How do you figure that? The TTC's tram routes have totally average cost/recovery compared against bus routes, despite most of the time having much higher ridership density and not having to pay for their higher capital costs.

How can route cost recovery even be calculated on a system that allows transfers? The only thing you can measure is the operating cost and the number of people carried for that cost.

 

[Whoaccio]

http://www.busfanplace.com/

Okay, that's pretty ridiculous. Its also sort of mom/pops compared to LRTnow or some of the LRT blogs.

How can route cost recovery even be calculated on a system that allows transfers? The only thing you can measure is the operating cost and the number of people carried for that cost.

I dunno, apparently the the TTC has some formula. I'm probably not the best person to ask.

 

[kEiThZ]

Though he could only do it with help from John Baird!

True enough. However, the old LRT was as fatally flawed for Ottawa as Transit City is for Toronto. O'Brien may be a crook (we'll wait for the court ruling) but he did have a decent understanding of how transit should be built.

 

[spider]

Originally Posted by LowerBay
Look, I admitted that I was a railfan myself and that I prefer streetcars, but I can put that bias aside. When I objectively weigh the pros and cons of streetcars or LRT vs buses, buses come out on top -- hands down. We shouldn't be building expensive LRT systems so that some people (who never grew out of their childhood obsession with trains) can get their kicks or jollies riding them. They can play with their toy trains in their basements.

The only reason we even have streetcars today is because of Streetcars For Toronto back in '72. Every person on that committee was a stereotypical railfan, and they bamboozled Toronto into keeping them by coming up with "objective" reasons as to why they should have been kept. The arguments for LRT that I'm hearing here sound pretty much the same.

I have a Model Railroad layout in my basement, I enjoy building and operating it. I also like trains in general but I do not have a trolley pole sticking out of my head as do most of the citizens of Trolleywood that post unconditional allegiance to the LRT come hell or high water.

I am certain that LRT can be a viable form of transit in some scenarios but not in Toronto as long as the TTC management and unions control it. Take a look around, anything on flanged wheels is a monumental disaster and will continue to be a disaster until the TTC stops playing trains and starts running a transit system.

 

[Second_in_pie]

http://www.busfanplace.com/

wtf?


I'm quite amazed at the argument that's erupted over Bus vs. LRT, and I'm not even going to try to take sides. Could someone explain to me what's being debated exactly?

 

[golodhendil]

I skip plenty of your posts, feel free to skip mine if you're that spleeny when confronted with the spectre of Toronto's future 'rapid' transit lines stopping at red lights. Real, useful, rapid light rail vs Toronto-style streetcar ROWs...you quoted the distinction I made. Funny, I thought the Sheppard LRT as per its EA was getting built on Sheppard, not a German letter-bahn - after all, random foreign case studies are *totally* relevant to the urban context and how things get built and operated here in Toronto...

Oh I will keep reading your posts, because I've always felt you have a lot of meaningful contribution and as I said I agree with most of your positions about TC. As for Sheppard E, I've repeatedly said I support the full subway and think the LRT is a stupid idea, so I don't know why you bring that specific example up. But as far as I can see the TC plans to run LRT in non-shared ROW with signal-prioritized intersections, which is the same or even better than the surface sections of many of the S-bahns (many even have street-running sections). How is that irrelevant to Toronto's situation? More importantly, you were claiming that the LRT vs bus studies, which took place in other cities, are with "real" LRT, so what is wrong with challenging your definition of "real" LRT in the context of those foreign cities? I think the only one getting spleeny here is yourself.

What's really tiresome is people supporting the argument that Finch's bus should be replaced because, in part, some people in Boston supposedly prefer rails over wheels. Um, who cares? The bus (like many routes in Toronto) is already full, all day, every day, so any argument based on preference is really lame.

Save the light rail and the billions it takes to build it for places where buses don't and won't work quite so well...Finch West, not Finch East, Lawrence East, not Morningside, take the Jane tunnel and put it on Dufferin, and so on.

I think you must have me confused with someone else, because I have never said I support LRT on Finch E (I might have even said the Finch E connection to Sheppard via Don Mills is a stupid idea and destroys the currently working Finch E bus). Sometimes, it helps to actually read people's posts before responding to them, without making yourself look like a fool.

This is a bit late, but a lot of the anti-bus stigma is frankly ridiculous. The only people this argument tends to have traction with are middle class white kids who are scared of the black people who ride the bus. As Hipster Duck pointed out, in the US this usually leads to a totally disproportionate investment in LRTs because they evoke some kind of nostalgic era where the 'inner city' wasn't filled with minorities. In L.A, the bus riders union was formed in part because LACTMA kept funneling money away from high ridership bus routes, typically used by the city's mutli-ethnic communities, towards low ridership LRT routes which were popular with white voters who associated buses with black people and trams with something their grandparents must have used.

I doubt anything the city does will change these prejudices, but it makes no sense for Toronto to spend 10+ billion dollars on LRTs just because polling from the L.A. shows some lawyer's kid from the Valley thinks buses are for poor people. Especially when Toronto already has several examples of popular bus routes in areas which by all rights shouldn't be. How prissy can you be for the love of god, getting motion sickness while riding a bus? Are you kidding me?

While I have heard this claim floating around for some time and I can see how it might have some truth in it, when you see the same sentiment arising in other countries (ooh scarb must not like this), such as places like HK where this class and racial segregation doesn't exist (at least not nearly to the same extent as North America), then you know this cannot be just a "white middle class kid" thing. Also, currently in Boston (I hope scarb doesn't snap), the "hype" is with buses and BRT, not LRT, and the city/state is pouring millions or even billions into building glorified bus routes and "pinnacle of dumb" bus tunnels. Some of the most vocal opponents of this boondoggle are the community groups of predominantly poorer Black neighbourhoods, who had been fighting for decades for a return of trolley/LRT service to those neighbourhoods. If the "anti-bus stigma" is really just one of racial/class differences, which race/class is the Black communities trying to stigmatize? The Latinos?

 

[golodhendil]

I'm quite amazed at the argument that's erupted over Bus vs. LRT, and I'm not even going to try to take sides. Could someone explain to me what's being debated exactly?

I think it started with some people saying the TC plan wasted billions on corridors that could have been better served just by buses (in some corridors, for sure), then people started pointing out the perceived advantages of LRT over buses, real or otherwise. Then some started saying LRT sucks and everything should be either bus or subway, and it went downhill from that

 

[golodhendil]

I ride the bus daily and am an asthmatic, I have never had this experience. Ever. Unless you are 12" tall, the exhaust is to high for most people to notice. By the time it does settle to human height, it is to diffuse to have an impact.

That's weird, I am half that height and I have no problem noticing it. It's not necessarily sickening, not the buses we have nowadays, but it's still definitely noticeable.

 

[xtremesniper]

That's weird, I am half that height and I have no problem noticing it. It's not necessarily sickening, not the buses we have nowadays, but it's still definitely noticeable.

I think it helps if you stand on the curb of the York University bus loop for a few minutes, too...

Just walking through that loop from one end to the other makes one feel like you've shortened your life span by a few years. It's essentially second hand smoking. =P

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I think you must have me confused with someone else, because I have never said I support LRT on Finch E (I might have even said the Finch E connection to Sheppard via Don Mills is a stupid idea and destroys the currently working Finch E bus). Sometimes, it helps to actually read people's posts before responding to them, without making yourself look like a fool.

You really need to be walked through this? No wonder I skip your posts!

The bus vs LRT argument directly arose from xtremesniper's claim that Finch needs LRT because buses are just not good enough. Whoaccio was then talking about Finch East's express bus. The argument that people prefer rail over buses was trotted out to counter the argument that buses can work on Finch. "Finch" is really just a stand-in for any bus route, though, which is obvious to everyone but you.

edit - and as for how relevant letter-bahns are to Toronto, everyone tends to forget that building them in similar ways is one thing, but operating them effectively is very much another...the operational side of such lines is what this city has, so far, been quite bad at. Not all at-grade intersections are created equal, and even fewer are operated equally. When Sheppard's EA says it'll be spending time at red lights (so we might as well put a stop at every intersection), it's time to raise a red flag. Fixing things later may not be possible.

 

[kEiThZ]

The debate should not be over bus vs. LRT. Clearly in any well designed transit system there is room for different modes of transport. The debate should be over whether the Transit City routes are an appropriate deployment of LRT. And on that point I would say no. As Scarberian pointed out, Sheppard, Morningside, Jane, Eglinton and Finch East don't need LRT. In fact, LRT could make travel times longer on some routes because of longer wait times at the stop (vs. the bus). And I predict that once this starts showing up there will be a lot of folks pissed off at the loss of so many left turns.

I would have liked to have seen LRT used more appropriately. For example, the TTC is proposing to install ART Mk IIs in the SRT corridor all the way to Malvern. Clearly the better solution would have been to extend the subway to Scarborough Town Centre and then run an at-grade LRT along Progress and the Hydro corridor to Malvern from STC. Sheppard would have done fine with a subway extension to STC and (if really needed) curbside bus lanes from Kennedy till Meadowvale. Jane and Morningside would have been fine with curbside diamond lanes too. And Don Mills would have been better off with a DRL extension all the way to Don Mills station. Eglinton would have been better as a subway the whole way. Etc, etc. Finch West though is a great application of LRT. The capacity is certainly needed and a subway would have been overkill.

I think there are merits to every mode of transport. We should be discussing where these merits can be maximized.

 

[waterloowarrior]

Regarding Ottawa (my hometown), the reason to convert to LRT is capacity not because of the magic and special essence of light rail. The downtown is and will be running way over capacity and the numbers didn't work for a bus tunnel (projected frequencies were too high to be manageable). They are still building plenty of busways around the city. The stations will fit a 6 car LRT train, so it's definitely not a tram system. They are thinking about a tram/Transit City like system on Carling Avenue.

 

[unimaginative2]

So suddenly all the S-bahns and U-bahns and premetros of Europe, and the light rail systems of the US, with their level crossings and street-running sections, are "fake" light rails?

I don't want to get into any of this other stuff, but S-Bahn in no way is considered by anyone to be light rail. I'm not sure if you've ridden on one of those trains, but it's full heavy rail like GO trains. You may be thinking of the single example in Karlsruhe where special vehicles operate both on the street in the city and the join the main line railway out of town.

I completely agree with all of your comments above, Keithz.

I think what people don't understand about light rail successes in Europe is that distances are so much shorter. For example, Berlin operates some light rail lines in the east, mostly radiating out of Alexanderplatz. To give you some idea of the distances involved, the principal section of the streetcar line along Prenzlauerallee travels a grand total of 5.5km. Obviously the slower travel time would be much less of an issue than on the 20km+ lines that we are building in Toronto.

 

[golodhendil]

You really need to be walked through this? No wonder I skip your posts!

The bus vs LRT argument directly arose from xtremesniper's claim that Finch needs LRT because buses are just not good enough. Whoaccio was then talking about Finch East's express bus. The argument that people prefer rail over buses was trotted out to counter the argument that buses can work on Finch. "Finch" is really just a stand-in for any bus route, though, which is obvious to everyone but you.

Unfortunately for you, I know where the Finch E discussion came from, it's the fact that you brought it up in a post against me that it is taken to imply I support that position.

edit - and as for how relevant letter-bahns are to Toronto, everyone tends to forget that building them in similar ways is one thing, but operating them effectively is very much another...the operational side of such lines is what this city has, so far, been quite bad at. Not all at-grade intersections are created equal, and even fewer are operated equally. When Sheppard's EA says it'll be spending time at red lights (so we might as well put a stop at every intersection), it's time to raise a red flag. Fixing things later may not be possible.

That the TTC is a poor transit operator overall, I have no disagreement (and have pointed out in my previous posts). But if the TTC has to screw up, they can screw up with anything, so that's not (completely) a reason to denigrate the technology/implementation.

 

[golodhendil]

I don't want to get into any of this other stuff, but S-Bahn in no way is considered by anyone to be light rail. I'm not sure if you've ridden on one of those trains, but it's full heavy rail like GO trains. You may be thinking of the single example in Karlsruhe where special vehicles operate both on the street in the city and the join the main line railway out of town.

Oops, sorry, I meant Stadtbahn. Thanks.