I don't think we're likely to see official stats until at least the 1 year mark. That said anecdotally the ION did have a number of mysterious delays in the first month or two after launch, but not as many people were taking trains, so it wasn't as noticeable. Transit riders in KW don't have a complaint culture which can have good and bad aspects to it, there isn't the overwhelming negativity of other cities but there's also little momentum toward improvements. Complaint culture seems to correlate heavily with commuters and white collar professionals where being late really matters, while students and seniors are comparatively more relaxed. The Confederation line seems to have a lot of commuters so that may be a big part of things. Since ION service started to mature in the fall delays have been minimal and pretty much always due to collisions, which is an unfortunate reality of street running LRT. Therefore popular consensus (aside from boomer car culture types) is that it's drivers' fault. Confederation line delays can't be attributed to cars so people are more likely to blame the system itself and Rideau group.
Routes such as Hurontario and Hamilton are at least higher-order than the street section of ION LRT.
-- Much like Spadina streetcar except much longer curbs between traffic intersections, and bigger/raised subway-style platforms.
-- No left turns allowed except at traffic signalled instersections.
Transit priority systems work extremely well on such systems:
The Eglinton Crosstown is likely to be the first LRT in Toronto, Ontario to utilize a "properly" modern predictive transit priority system. Otherwise, the intersections will clog the whole service (including trains in the tunnel). They have to, or else -- it's critical to a hybrid subway+surface system.
How GOOD transit priority works
-- Better transit priority (that can be GPS-based, or hook into new signalling systems that feeds realtime positional & speed info)
-- Once an LRT train departs the previous stop,
it has a deterministic arrival time at the next traffic light 0.5km later. (curbed lanes with no obstructions & no LRT stops)
-- At that next intersection -- the pedestrian crosswalk countdown timer begins automatically to clear pedestrians safely.
-- The intersection goes red a few seconds before the LRT train arrives. The intersection is safely clear in advance of a full-speed LRT train.
-- The LRT train whooshes through the intersection at a speed of up to 40-50kph (typical speed of a median LRT).
-- The LRT train decelerates to the stop on the far-side of the traffic light (unpredictable dwell time, but that doesn't matter; bear with me, continue reading)
-- Once the doors close and the LRT starts accelerating again, it's yet another 0.5km to 1.0km continuous curb straight to the next traffic light, no LRT station to stop at beforehand.
-- Good systems predictively time the green light to the speed currently occuring (e.g. slow moving in bad weather, versus fast moving in good weather).
-- It's predictable if it's a curbed lane clear of cars and clear of LRT stops/stations until right after the next traffic light (aka "far side stops")
-- This makes transit priority (automatic green lights for LRT) much more intelligent than for yesteryear TTC streetcar systems.
-- Properly designed, the lights can be green-in-advance for an LRT practically 80-90% of the time, for a full speed whoosh-through.
-- For a properly engineered transit priority system, they become almost as train-speed-preserving as crossing gates.
As a buy-in for automobile owners that hate this concept; consider these systems
often give drivers an extended green light right after the LRT train passes by, as a kind of a quid pro quo.
TTC needs to upgrade to these systems on St. Clair and Spadina eventually. The current system in use is a crude barebones transit priority system that has a Homer Simpson zero brain. No intelligence whatsoever, and often mistimed. Such legacy "Transit Priority Lite(tm)" needs to go in the crapper and be upgraded to a much smarter European-quality transit priority system like the above. Even the Calgary C-Train transit priority system is superior to the TTC transit priority system.
This is also why Eglinton West LRT shouldn't have to be completely tunneled; it should still be possible to reliably transit-priority a lot of intersections because of the way Crosstown is already designed with long curbs + far-side stops, making possible reliably-predictive transit priority systems.
