[Coolibop]

Some delay logs made their way to Steve Munroe, up on his site.

Makes the point on how these should have been caught earlier on, perhaps indicating gaps in testing or operator training.

Unsure how this compares to other line openings or how 'typical' this is of an opening week. It would be interesting to see how line 5 compares should those logs find their way over to Steve (as I'm sure they might)...

 

[DSCToronto]

Some delay logs made their way to Steve Munroe, up on his site.

Makes the point on how these should have been caught earlier on, perhaps indicating gaps in testing or operator training.

Unsure how this compares to other line openings or how 'typical' this is of an opening week. It would be interesting to see how line 5 compares should those logs find their way over to Steve (as I'm sure they might)...

The logs Steve has posted show an amazing lack of either training, supervision or management.

 

[ThenWhat]

‘It will be so much better,’ Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says Finch West LRT should be faster by the end of the winter - NOW Toronto

Mayor Olivia Chow says the Finch West LRT could become faster by the end of the winter, as she pushes for transit signal priority.

nowtoronto.com

"“When the train gets to a traffic signal, they should have priority. In the past, they didn’t because what Metrolinx had was a system that is conditional priority. They need to have much higher priority because there’s like three or four cars making left turns, and it blocks a train that has 40, 50, 80, 100 people in it. There’s no reason to do that,” she said. "

[…]

The headline says "it WILL be much better". The quote in the article "it COULD be much better" --- a crucial difference.

Olivia Chow has been Mayor for more than two years now, yet she seems surprised by what's unfolding with Line 6. Was she as uninformed as the rest of us before the opening day?

 

[hawc]

How about at least getting trains up to 50kmph?

I'm starting to wonder whether this City has developed a fetish for all vehicular traffic moving slowly. I mean cars are limited to 30km/h on roads that used to be 60km/h. I think the same fetish has now spread to public transit!

 

[Undead]

I'm starting to wonder whether this City has developed a fetish for all vehicular traffic moving slowly. I mean cars are limited to 30km/h on roads that used to be 60km/h. I think the same fetish has now spread to public transit!

The City lowers posted speed limits because genuine traffic calming is way more expensive. It requires road reconstruction and major physical design changes.

Speed cameras and artificially low speed limits are a bandaid measure by a City too broke or too cheap to do things properly.

 

[robmausser]

I'm starting to wonder whether this City has developed a fetish for all vehicular traffic moving slowly. I mean cars are limited to 30km/h on roads that used to be 60km/h. I think the same fetish has now spread to public transit!

This isn't far from the truth. The TTC dramatically lowered the speeds on the new Harbourfront 509 layout, because there were some close calls with tourists wandering onto the tracks. Their solution was to slow down the streetcars to a glacial pace.

NO, you install some kind of physical barrier like these to stop people from wandering onto the tracks!

But I feel like the TTC LOVES any excuse to slow down their vehicles. It means an easier time for their operators and less maintenance. Screw the customers!

 

[Bordercollie]

The bigger question is that who though during the testing stage that this was going to fly? They thought people would just accept the fact that they spend several billion dollars for a service that takes twice as long as the service it replaced? Is there no accountability or common sense?

 

[EnviroTO]

Earlier in the week when I heard the comment about needing to get agreement from the consortium maintaining the vehicles to agree to speed changes I thought to myself "the cat is out of the bag now". I kept thinking to myself "why are they talking about stop light priority when the bus was faster and it also didn't have stoplight priority". It made no sense that stop lights were the problem. Now that the whole fiasco is about vehicle maintenance the disaster that is Finch West LRT speeds became clear. There isn't contractual arrangements on speed at all... there is service levels, capacity, maintenance, etc... but speed clearly isn't much of a factor. To minimize wear on the wheels they can set the speed to near zero. We are about to see the most babied LRT vehicles on the planet. We have replaced workhorse buses with big spoilt LRT babies. Oh, did you scrape a little filing off your wheel on that turn going 15km/h... let me put that down to 10km/h for you.

 

[lrt's friend]

Earlier in the week when I heard the comment about needing to get agreement from the consortium maintaining the vehicles to agree to speed changes I thought to myself "the cat is out of the bag now". I kept thinking to myself "why are they talking about stop light priority when the bus was faster and it also didn't have stoplight priority". It made no sense that stop lights were the problem. Now that the whole fiasco is about vehicle maintenance the disaster that is Finch West LRT speeds became clear. There isn't contractual arrangements on speed at all... there is service levels, capacity, maintenance, etc... but speed clearly isn't much of a factor. To minimize wear on the wheels they can set the speed to near zero. We are about to see the most babied LRT vehicles on the planet. We have replaced workhorse buses with big spoilt LRT babies. Oh, did you scrape a little filing off your wheel on that turn going 15km/h... let me put that down to 10km/h for you.

I'm in Ottawa and we use the same trains. We had to slow our trains down because of maintenance issues. I have watched our trains near the VIA Rail station operating at bicycle speeds ever since the derailment at that location. The fact of the matter is that the PPP arrangement does not produce real solutions to the problem. Basically, everybody involved expects the public to accept the slow speed of the trains. The original solution to redesign the bogies has simply been dropped because it is too expensive of a solution. Nobody wants to pay that cost. You guys are saddled with the same design problems (and so will Mississauga in the future) so the trains have to crawl to prevent premature wear and to prevent possible derailments.

As indicated, signal priority is not the main problem. Otherwise the buses would face the same speed issues.

 

[nfitz]

The bigger question is that who though during the testing stage that this was going to fly? They thought people would just accept the fact that they spend several billion dollars for a service that takes twice as long as the service it replaced? Is there no accountability or common sense?

If I was a Machiavellian conspiracy theorist, I'd think that some in the TTC (and board?) were quietly going along with the whole thing, not making too much noise publicly, and not even trying to fix some of the little things, because they wanted this to fail. Because by failing as spectacularly and publicly and surprisingly as it has, it may create the political headwinds to fix long-standing systemic issues.

A few days ago, TTC Board Chair Jamaal Myers said “We are seeing the stars align in terms of the political will and the actual policies that people want to see,”.

I don't think Myers has as much gumption as this though. Who is the puppet master? Or perhaps it's just serendipitous luck.

 

[Bordercollie]

If I was a Machiavellian conspiracy theorist, I'd think that some in the TTC (and board?) were quietly going along with the whole thing, not making too much noise publicly, and not even trying to fix some of the little things, because they wanted this to fail. Because by failing as spectacularly and publicly and surprisingly as it has, it may create the political headwinds to fix long-standing systemic issues.

A few days ago, TTC Board Chair Jamaal Myers said “We are seeing the stars align in terms of the political will and the actual policies that people want to see,”.

I don't think Myers has as much gumption as this though. Who is the puppet master? Or perhaps it's just serendipitous luck.

So he knew that if he tried to improve the project people would pin it on him to actually get stuff done so he let it fail and allowed the public pressure to do the work? Seriously?

So can we have streetcars turning before pedestrians downtown as well?

 

[nfitz]

So he knew that if he tried to improve the project people would pin it on him to actually get stuff done so he let it fail and allowed the public pressure to do the work? Seriously?

Well a) I don't think he personally has the gumption. I still figure he was the naïve patsy in the attempt to fire Rick Leary for workplace misconduct. And b) I may not be a Machiavellian conspiracy theorist.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

If I was a Machiavellian conspiracy theorist, I'd think that some in the TTC (and board?) were quietly going along with the whole thing, not making too much noise publicly, and not even trying to fix some of the little things, because they wanted this to fail. Because by failing as spectacularly and publicly and surprisingly as it has, it may create the political headwinds to fix long-standing systemic issues.

A few days ago, TTC Board Chair Jamaal Myers said “We are seeing the stars align in terms of the political will and the actual policies that people want to see,”.

I don't think Myers has as much gumption as this though. Who is the puppet master? Or perhaps it's just serendipitous luck.

No one involved here is that smart. This is just a happy accident that the circumstances are creating some political headwinds to tackle some long-standing problems. As political actors, they are merely not letting a crisis go to waste, but lets see if they even have the gumption to fight for systemic changes or this will be seen as a wasted opportunity in time.

I'm thinking the political actors involved are probably most terrified now about what the opening for Line 5 will look like. The opening of the Eglinton Crosstown will not be so small an affair like Finch West, it is quite literally one of the most expensive transit line openings on the planet and one of the biggest projects in the country in general. Its opening should garner international attention, not just local, and perhaps international ridicule as well.

 

[Bordercollie]

No one involved here is that smart. This is just a happy accident that the circumstances are creating some political headwinds to tackle some long-standing problems. As political actors, they are merely not letting a crisis go to waste, but lets see if they even have the gumption to fight for systemic changes or this will be seen as a wasted opportunity in time.

I'm thinking the political actors involved are probably most terrified now about what the opening for Line 5 will look like. The opening of the Eglinton Crosstown will not be so small an affair like Finch West, it is quite literally one of the most expensive transit line openings on the planet and one of the biggest projects in the country in general. Its opening should garner international attention, not just local, and perhaps international ridicule as well.

So dont Fu$k it up!

 

[hawc]

Signal priority is not the main problem. Otherwise the buses would face the same speed issues.

Hey yeah, this is actually a brilliant point. All those crying "SIGNAL PRIORITY!" buses are still faster with THE SAME SIGNALS!!