What about Waterfront West BRT? Humber Bay Shores/Western Beaches/Ontario Place/Ex/Fort York/Cityplace/Bremner/Union (at ACC)
Normally I would say yes, but the WW alignment requires a fair bit of tunnelling in the Southcore area (certainly at least from the Rogers Centre into Union). The ventilation required to have that be a bus tunnel would be significantly more expensive (at least for that part). Not to mention they plan on using the same loop for most of the waterfront lines, no?
Based on Metrolinx numbers, Sheppard East will carry 3000 pphpd in 2031 and Finch West will carry 2800 (
http://www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/pd...25/TorontoTransit_BoardReport_25April2012.pdf). With articulated busses, this works out to a bus every 2 minutes. Already, it appears that Finch East has 63 busses per hour in am peak, Finch West has 35, and Sheppard East has 29 and both Steeles busses have over 30 (
http://www3.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Transit_Planning/Surface_Ridership.jsp).
Basically, we need artic busses every 2 minutes - maybe just under 30 trains per hour. What type of BRT Lite options would be applicable to Sheppard East and Finch to make this frequency reliably achievable, and perhaps increased in case demand is exceeded. And, how much money would be required to achieve this - probably much less than the $400M to $500M (each) that would be required for full BRT - or is the OneCity estimate completely out of thin air. The OneCity estimate was about $35M/km for BRT and $80M or more for LRT, depending on any tunnelling that is required (
http://onecitytransitplan.com/the-onecity-plan/list-of-all-onecity-transit-plan-projects/).
2 minutes for buses is a pretty manageable frequency. The infrastructure that I think would be required would be:
1) Signal priority at all intersections. That one is pretty much a no-brainer.
2) Dedicated bus lanes along congested parts of Finch & Sheppard. Doesn't have to be everywhere, but just in places between major intersections where things tend to clog up. For Finch, that would be pretty much anywhere between say Bathurst and Bayview. For Sheppard, that's from Victoria Park to Don Mills.
3) Queue jump lanes at major intersections along stretches where full dedicated lanes aren't required. This would hold true for the outer stretches of both Finch and Sheppard, where traffic (unless there's an accident, etc) is relatively free-flowing.
4) For the stretches where dedicated lanes aren't required, curb-side cut-outs so the buses can pull out of traffic, unload, and then pull back in. Of course, most of the BRT stops will be at intersections anyway, so there may not need to be too many of these.
5) Reduce the peak period peak point ridership by providing multiple perpendicular transfers, and generate peak-counter flow. For example, if the Bloor-Danforth Subway were to be extended to Sheppard & McCowan, the ridership on Sheppard would no longer be uni-directional (i.e. pretty much all towards Don Mills). A lot of people from east of McCowan would exit at McCowan, and even a few people from west of there would take the Sheppard BRT eastbound instead of westbound, in order to reach the subway. By doing this, you lower the peak point peak hour ridership, and you make more efficient use of the buses heading back in the opposite direction of the peak flow. For Finch, this would be things like the Jane BRT & Don Mills BRTs, the Bloor-Danforth Subway (BRT from Finch down McCowan into the station), and the Brampton-Markham GO REX station at Malton. All of those lines would reduce the peak flow into Finch & Finch West stations.
PS: Interesting that Finch West is only 2,800. I remember seeing in the RTP Backgrounder from a few years back 4,500, but then again that was for the entire Finch West line, not just the western half. 4,500 is still within BRT range, and 2,800 definitely is. I like the fact that for the SRT Metrolinx used the phrasing "within the range of LRT", whereas for Sheppard East and Finch West they used the phrasing "well within the range of LRT".
I might suggest BRT for the section of Yonge north from finch to Hwy 7 (as was proposed 10 years ago) but it might be immediately successful and nobody wants that...well, not till the DRL is built.
Check out this city of Toronto report from 8 years ago (2004).
Toronto North Yonge Study
We could have had BRT on Yonge years ago. I wish they would have just moved on it. Now we won't have any higher order transit in what could possibly be the busiest intersection in the city for both cusses and personal vehicles for a decade at least.
Traffic counts.
IIRC, the Yonge BRT in York Region was almost ready to be funded and built, when it was decided to scrap it and pursue the subway option instead. Even given the best of circumstances, the subway would have been at least 10 years away, and the BRT would have been a great interim solution. Now years later the subway is still at least 10 years away, and there's no BRT.