Funny guy jaye ... the vast majority of riders will be in LRT in a right of way. The bus is a supplement, only for those few riders who prefer to board at a local stop rather than walk a few hundred meters to the LRT stop. Is it that hard to grasp?
How do you know that the travel time cannot be reduced significantly; do you have any estimates at hand?
Travel time is just as important as capacity and reliability. Real people need to reach their destination in a reasonable time; not sit forever in a reliable but slow vehicle, simply in order to satisfy your skewed transit vision.
Average time to cross a corridor for a person, not a vehicle, is a result of reliability and capacity management. Stop spacing is an issue of accessibility, which would fall under reliability. Because, the further a station is from your home, the less reliable you will perceive it to be. Especially during winter times.
Time from point A to point B is a result of time to get to a station/platform, how long the vehicle will take to arrive, how long the vehicle will take to get to a destination, and how long it will take you to get from where the vehicle leaves you to your destination.
This bus you propose, because it is along a mostly suburban route with an LRT running parallel, will be less frequent than the time it will take to walk to the nearest LRT platform, making it impossible to maintain reliable service especially during rush hour. This would leave those who are unable to walk, waiting longer times forcing them to have inferior and unreliable bus service. Possibly even having to walk a few minutes or wait for parallel bus service after getting off the LRT, again increasing that individuals travel time. Making the line less attractive for local riders, which make up the majority of Sheppard's riders.
Let me ask you this. When the new streetcars arrive in Toronto in 2014, the TTC is going to convert one line at a time. Because these new streetcars have a higher capacity, they will run less frequently than they do today. The TTC has to decide whether to run the new lrvs on headways rather than set schedules. The benefit of running the legacy network on headways rather than set schedules would mean more reliable service, less bunching. But it would also mean longer travel times for vehicles.
This doesn't mean a longer travel time for people, because with more reliable service their average travel time is lower even if the travel time of the vehicle is longer.
With the bus service that you propose, the average time to travel along the corridor will actually rise.
Because the ridership along the route would be distributed between the bus and lrt, the service will be less than if the route was served by one mode of transport alone. Resulting in longer travel times along the route, even if the vehicles are traveling along the corridor faster.
It's not just about how long a vehicle takes to get from Point A to Point B. The wait times have to be attractive, and the route must be accessible. If the route isn't accessible, what would be the point. I mean, it
is at grade, you know, in the middle of the street.
What your proposing would be more expensive and actually have the opposite effect on the problem you wish to resolve.
The irony.