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ehlow
Senior Member
Do you disagree that we need better bus service? No matter what we do with regards to rapid transit, the majority of the city will be using buses for at least part of the trip, and buses will remain a huge part of the system.
Solid Snake
Active Member
I don't disagree at all. She chose to make that issue the focus point of her transit platform which left me very disappointed. There can always be more buses and we did ordered the articulated buses didn't we?
Adjei
Senior Member
She must be smoking some of what that crackhead is smoking if she thinks she can cancel the subway but yet keep the tax hike.
datamouse
Active Member
Could have saved herself by saying where the funds would be reallocated but no, she didn't. That comment is going to be spun like hell now.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
yes, but the articulated buses replaced the regular buses equally (roughly 2 articulated buses for every 3 normal ones), meaning no additional capacity.
all chow is proposing is returning to the crowding standards under miller, and undoing the cuts Ford made in 2011. its not that big of a deal really. It means that instead of designing peak service levels to have 53 people on a 38 seat bus, there would be 48. Off peak, instead of having service levels designed for 48 people per 38 seat bus, there would be, well, 38. it just means that commuters would have a bit more room to breath on the bus. its not that radical, and is really quite cheap. It does bigger things to make the TTC seem more attractive than you would think as well as (especially off peak) frequencies increase quite a bit meaning your wait for the bus goes from 15 to 10 minutes or so. When Miller introduced those crowding standards in (I think) 2006, TTC ridership growth jumped a percent annually.
The "keep the tax hike" is rather misleading, as she is promising rate of inflation tax increases, including the tax increase for the subway. she should have said that she was going to get rid of it, but really 0.5% annually increase is 1/4 of inflation and can easily be fit in. its not really important whether or not the tax increase occurs or not as it is so small.
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ehlow
Senior Member
Sounds very reasonable to me. Decreased waiting times is great, especially when you're waiting for the bus in winter.
nfitz
Superstar
I agree. All she's doing is restoring the more frequent service David Miller/Giambrone put in that Karen Stintz cut. If she puts it back, there's nothing to stop a future mayor/chair getting rid of it again.
It takes years to put in place more buses. First you have to build a garage.
How articulated buses help anyone? Instead of running a 12-metre bus every 6 minutes in rush-hour, they now run an 18-metre bus every 9 minutes. No less crowding, and less frequent. It's a complete failure I'd think for everyone.
nfitz
Superstar
Kind of like Eglinton ... grade-separated downtown, but when you get to the burbs, around the 8'40" it has level crossings, and then runs down the middle of a street.
Hopefully they do something in the downtown piece currently running - it's nightmarishly slow, with very closely spaced underground stations, and constantly sitting and waiting for the buses to clear the station before the LRT can proceed.
MrsNesbitt
Active Member
Sigh. Chow had a lot of opportunity to explain the good that the money for the BD-Scarborough extension could do, but as has been stated above she's just going to find the Ford-Stintz-Tory crowd pouncing on "Chow is pro-tax but anti-subway". She really missed it here, and even though reintroducing the more frequent service at Miller-Giambrone levels is a good thing (albeit only a starter in terms of what Toronto needs in transit), it's a small enough point that the public at large will turn a deaf ear to it.
officedweller
Senior Member
Note the overhead pedestrian bridge at the end of the Seattle video is being paid for by Microsoft, as it will link to its office campus.
datamouse
Active Member
Well that was fast. Chow has clarified that she would indeed cancel the tax hike.
JayBeeGooner
Active Member
2019 is the date when buses must leave the transit tunnel.
epcjay
New Member
2 less salaries TTC has to pay I guess?
nfitz
Superstar
It certainly saves the TTC money on wages. It doesn't relieve crowding though, and reduces frequencies.
Though if they were to implement them on routes like 25 Don Mills that already run every 3 minutes at peak, and they'd gone to 4.5 minutes at peak, rather than on routes like Bathurst that only ran every 6 minutes peak (closer to 9 minutes now with the Artics), it would have made more sense.