Finch West Line 6 LRT

[urbanclient]

Lawrence won't get higher order transit because it's too close to Line 5 Eglinton...

What about the ROI issue, spend more to get basically nothing for Line 6. Again, I repeat myself, I am not advocating for LRT on Lawrence etc... I specifically said "transit improvements" not "higher order transit", that could be bus lanes, outfitting transit priority for the buses, shortening headways, more articulated buses etc...

For Line 6:"Province relieving gridlock and connecting more than 51,000 daily riders to more convenient transit"

The 36 bus averaged 54,870 riders per day in Fall 2019. They're bragging about worse projected ridership than 2019 after upgrading to LRT... The GTA's population has grown up to 20% since 2019. The implication is Line 6 will not capture any latent transit demand.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1006817/ontario-opening-new-finch-west-lrt

 

[KhalilHeron]

What about the ROI issue, spend more to get basically nothing for Line 6. Again, I repeat myself, I am not advocating for LRT on Lawrence etc... I specifically said "transit improvements" not "higher order transit", that could be bus lanes, outfitting transit priority for the buses, shortening headways, more articulated buses etc...

For Line 6:"Province relieving gridlock and connecting more than 51,000 daily riders to more convenient transit"

The 36 bus averaged 54,870 riders per day in Fall 2019. They're bragging about worse projected ridership than 2019 after upgrading to LRT... The GTA's population has grown up to 20% since 2019. The implication is Line 6 will not capture any latent transit demand.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1006817/ontario-opening-new-finch-west-lrt

Isn't line 6 shorter than the 36 in 2019? A sizeable portion of the riders would be east of keele

 

[ShonTron]

I went out earlier this week to ride the LRT again. Though the eastbound trip took 49 minutes, the westbound trip took 15 minutes linger than that - 1 hour, 4 minutes.

It isn't just the slow speeds, it's the inconsistency that's awful.

Still waiting for the Finch West LRT

There’s not one easy fix for the Finch West LRT. Not only does it need transit signal priority, but it needs tighter schedules and better operations to live up to early promises.

seanmarshall.ca

 

[urbanclient]

Isn't line 6 shorter than the 36 in 2019? A sizeable portion of the riders would be east of keele

Yeah, but 51,000 per day is still a pipe dream and a weak one at that. I still stand by my case that Finch West did not deserve an LRT so early. Comparable cities do not build LRTs that far from downtown. There is a reason why T9 mostly replaced a 183 bus* that hit 56,000 riders per day**; and now T9 has a weekday ridership of 100,000. If the latent transit demand were the same for both cases, Line 6 should be able to easily hit similar numbers to T9. But it won't because Finch West is a low density area whose ridership is mostly driven by Humber College. Seeing as international student numbers are dropping, I don't see Line 6 coming close to the projected 51,000.

*that now runs a shortened route connecting to T9, like the plans for Line 6 and the 36
**similar to the 55,000 of the 36

Therein lies the problem though, as you stated Finch West was converted to LRT because it was the easiest of the routes to fix, all the other ones have some kind of issue holding them back.

We should not pick what places we prioritize by how easy it is to fix, but rather the greatest benefits to the greatest amount of people. Pardon my hyperbole: by that logic, should Metrolinx be prioritizing dedicated bus lanes in Newmarket? Prioritizing transit where there are more people living is not a groundbreaking concept. How can the same contingent of Urban Toronto members be defending LRT in low density suburbs and high density arterial thoroughfares (Hurontario and Eglinton) at the same time? LRTs are best suited for middle density that is not high enough to necessitate a subway.

 

[ownthesky]

Most bus stops can be cleared by a sidewalk plow, and and one city worker. Usually relatively quick.

You didn't answer the question. Does the high floor LRT lines in Edmonton have the same issue with snow & ice as the Valley West line experiences? I couldn't care less how silly you think my question is.

Does the Valley Line have issues? This looks like a routine switch clearing operation to me.

I think the CTrain is actually the better comparison - they've been running an at-grade downtown section for 40 years now, so if snow and ice clearing was some major burden, we'd have heard about it.

 

[TRONto]

Yeah, but 51,000 per day is still a pipe dream and a weak one at that. I still stand by my case that Finch West did not deserve an LRT so early. Comparable cities do not build LRTs that far from downtown. There is a reason why T9 mostly replaced a 183 bus* that hit 56,000 riders per day**; and now T9 has a weekday ridership of 100,000. If the latent transit demand were the same for both cases, Line 6 should be able to easily hit similar numbers to T9. But it won't because Finch West is a low density area whose ridership is mostly driven by Humber College. Seeing as international student numbers are dropping, I don't see Line 6 coming close to the projected 51,000.

*that now runs a shortened route connecting to T9, like the plans for Line 6 and the 36
**similar to the 55,000 of the 36

We should not pick what places we prioritize by how easy it is to fix, but rather the greatest benefits to the greatest amount of people. Pardon my hyperbole: by that logic, should Metrolinx be prioritizing dedicated bus lanes in Newmarket? Prioritizing transit where there are more people living is not a groundbreaking concept. How can the same contingent of Urban Toronto members be defending LRT in low density suburbs and high density arterial thoroughfares (Hurontario and Eglinton) at the same time? LRTs are best suited for middle density that is not high enough to necessitate a subway.

What we should do in the future is different than what should have been done in the past. The transit city concept was created because it was believed at that time there was no money for subways (Eglinton getting filled in). A concept that was created about 2 decades ago.

I don't think this is an either/or situation. A well setup LRT is probably the best option (not what we got). I think a Skytrain setup would be overkill (but prefered to what we ended up getting). Note that there also was a bus version of TransitCity and between the 2 most of the busier city routes were covered.

 

[Steve X]

What we should do in the future is different than what should have been done in the past. The transit city concept was created because it was believed at that time there was no money for subways (Eglinton getting filled in). A concept that was created about 2 decades ago.

I don't think this is an either/or situation. A well setup LRT is probably the best option (not what we got). I think a Skytrain setup would be overkill (but prefered to what we ended up getting). Note that there also was a bus version of TransitCity and between the 2 most of the busier city routes were covered.

Yeah Finch West never warrant a subway. It was either this LRT which TO can’t even implement or curb side bus lanes. They wanted developers to build in the area so they went with LRT.

 

[Bordercollie]

Am I misunderstanding your post? The guy in the Instagram you posted is critiquing the Valley West line, not praising it, and he brings up a good point.

Billions spent on a transit line, and they have to resort to bringing out guys with brooms to clear the tracks. More excessive labour and "man hours" to keep the line running in the winter. Not to mention they probably have to shut the line down temporarily to allow these guys to do this work.

EDIT: For all we know those workers may have been out there for 30 minutes while the tram waited to move. The Instagram was edited to make it look like it was a quick job.

Does the high floor LRTs in Edmonton have this issue or just the Valley West line?

At least they are out there doing it. Unless you plan on installing switch heaters

 

[ThenWhat]

The discussions of the Line 6 performance that I see are almost exclusively about the end-to-end time. But for many (maybe most) customers frequency is more important than speed. This is true for those who only stay on the line for a few stations, and for others who prefer sitting on even a slow moving train to a long wait at a station. And by frequency I mean not just the average time interval between trains, but also the worst case interval.

The average interval is determined by the end-to-end time and the number of trains in service. So speeding up end-to-end certainly helps with frequency and is definitely worth doing. But if that is impossible or difficult, frequency can also be improved by buying more trains. Which means money of course, but what doesn't?

The worst case interval is something else. Even if you speed up the end-to-end time to the originally promised benchmarks and thus get the average to be acceptable, the worst case may still be terrible. To optimize the worst case, the operations must prevent bunching and keep the trains evenly spaced. We'll see how that goes; not much has been reported so far.

 

[Vortex112]

Do we think a GO station on the Bolton line at Emery/Weston could help improve the ROI of this line?

 

[rdaner]

Yeah, but 51,000 per day is still a pipe dream and a weak one at that. I still stand by my case that Finch West did not deserve an LRT so early. Comparable cities do not build LRTs that far from downtown. There is a reason why T9 mostly replaced a 183 bus* that hit 56,000 riders per day**; and now T9 has a weekday ridership of 100,000. If the latent transit demand were the same for both cases, Line 6 should be able to easily hit similar numbers to T9. But it won't because Finch West is a low density area whose ridership is mostly driven by Humber College. Seeing as international student numbers are dropping, I don't see Line 6 coming close to the projected 51,000.

*that now runs a shortened route connecting to T9, like the plans for Line 6 and the 36
**similar to the 55,000 of the 36

We should not pick what places we prioritize by how easy it is to fix, but rather the greatest benefits to the greatest amount of people. Pardon my hyperbole: by that logic, should Metrolinx be prioritizing dedicated bus lanes in Newmarket? Prioritizing transit where there are more people living is not a groundbreaking concept. How can the same contingent of Urban Toronto members be defending LRT in low density suburbs and high density arterial thoroughfares (Hurontario and Eglinton) at the same time? LRTs are best suited for middle density that is not high enough to necessitate a subway.

Many cities have built transit outside of the provincial hub/spoke model. Don’t forget that these investments accelerate higher density development patterns so are a logical next step.

 

[lastcommodore]

Do we think a GO station on the Bolton line at Emery/Weston could help improve the ROI of this line?

Interconnecting TTC with GO is good on basically every level due to reduce Union dependency and allowing more non-downtown focused trips, however any near-term Bolton line is probably going to be rush hour only which will limit much of the usefulness, except for the four rush-hour commuters who live in Bolton and work in J&F.
That being said, some theoretical all-day Bolton line would be massively useful for 6 FW. Again, it would cement 6FW as not really a thoroughfare but a short-haul line, which is perfectly acceptable.

 

[Westey]

Yeah Finch West never warrant a subway. It was either this LRT which TO can’t even implement or curb side bus lanes. They wanted developers to build in the area so they went with LRT.

Rob Ford wanted a subway. So did Georgio Mammoliti. They realized the due to the way Toronto is - there would be no way that the LRT would actually be Rapid. Unfortunately, they were not smart enough to propose something else.
Circa 2010, the cost estimate for the FWLRT was about $1.2M for an 11 km line.
That was immediately after the Canada Line in Vancouver was just completed for $2B for a 19km line - that was half elevated and half underground.
If someone was thinking - they would have proposed an elevated line along Finch - maybe 40m trains.
Basically, the same cost as the on-street LRT but with only 10 stops and takes 20 minutes.

 

[KhalilHeron]

Do we think a GO station on the Bolton line at Emery/Weston could help improve the ROI of this line?

If it has all day service it would certainly be faster than transfering to line 1 and again to the barrie line

 

[FW36]

If the LRT was expanded towards new Woodbine GO station and a new Emery GO station was built it would be transformational easily. From both GO stations it would be 30 minutes to union station. If the LRT is improved with full priority and speed increased to 50 km per hour the LRT could travel from woodbine GO station to Finch West Station in 40 minutes. That means theoretically for anyone who lives along the line it would take less than an hour to make it downtown. If the province ever does 15 minute GO train service and the LRT is improved I Imagine long term there would be a return on investment.