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drum118 said:
Talk to TTC or any transit system and they will tell you that there will be sections of the line that will see little or no riders that you cannot change a schedule to deal with low numbers. There are routes that will start with very low ridership at one or both end that will see ridership increase moving to the centre. I can give a long list of routes that see very few riders at the start of it, but no plans on doing so as others should be looking at this.

Some routes may see an increase of headway off peak while other remain the same toward the end of service. You see this on TTC subway system today let alone years ago.

It is very common to have various routes drivers doing overtime due to lack of drivers or the spare board is empty and that adds to the bottom line for buses.

TTC will tell you that service level is based on the peak point and this applies to other systems.

What some systems including TTC will do is run max headway between C-T and loop vehicles at those locations with headway increasing either for the rest of the line or the next loop with headway become longer. Dufferin 29 is a good example of this and many more out there.

This can be done for buses and LRT. I have seen some systems that run 2-3 car trains cut off a car at the end station to deal with the lack of riders or stop at a station on line to be turn back with the following train continue on to the other stations.

One of the biggest complaint TTC had to handle was short turning of vehicles to get drivers back on schedule or the fill the large gap caused by X. Look at any CEO report in the last 3 years and you will see short turning is very small these days regardless of COVID-19.

Riders themselves play a large part in bunching or gaps caused by many things and they are the first to bitch.

You need look route by route that carries 35,000 plus riders to see which is the best technology to use not only for today 20-50 years down the road.

There are roads in the city that can handle an elevated line, but there is no ridership now or down the road to justify building it or even an LRT.

People are so hung up that speed is needed to get a few riders to the downtown when it not where they are going in the first place.

I have said time after time one needs to walk, cycle, ride transit as well drive to understand what is on the street now and try to vision what could be on the street 20-50 years from now to say X should be built. There are roads I have done this on and other that I may have driven on it without paid no attention to it as it wasn't on my radar at the time.

At this time, its illegal to operate a triple articulated bus in NA or even a DD articulated. Only rode a triple articulated bus in 2 places in Europe and they were the only place I saw of them out of 26 cities I visited. Saw one DD articulated bus in Amsterdam as a tour bus and the only one I every saw.

System are made up of many networks on will only work base on the weakest ones.
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I know Toronto is a bubble, but there are a lot of agencies that are better at running transit than the TTC
 
superelevation said:
I know Toronto is a bubble, but there are a lot of agencies that are better at running transit than the TTC
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Makes no different if other systems can run better system, they all see similar problems that they will do different things based on the system and ridership. A normal bus route is one thing, but getting into BRT/LRT/Metro, its a different story.

If one visit other systems in NA, most will kill to have the quality of service we have.

In fact, GO Transit offer better service than most commuter systems and the only system running with more than 8 cars trains.
 
drum118 said:
In fact, GO Transit offer better service than most commuter systems and the only system running with more than 8 cars trains.
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What about NJ Transit, or the LIRR? They also run more than 8-car trains. But I do agree, GO is one of the better commuter rail agencies in NA.
 
It was noted earlier that they were not sure if double-articulated buses were legal in Canada and I have no idea. That however would not be a problem. Remember that EMU & DMU trains are also illegal but it didn't stop Ottawa nor GO. It just means they get a waiver and DA buses could do the same.

It just seems to me with busses going green and hence being much quieter and cheaper to run and higher capacity, standard low floor, and their flexibility gives them the heads up on so many LRT lines being built. This is especially true on routes like Finch where these LRT are nothing more than glorified streetcars. By going BRT you can build 3X as much rapid transit for the same price.

I often think many of these LRt projects are being built for this stupid "look Mom I have LRT too" mentality rather than based upon return for the dollar and transit service. Of course politicians line up for LRT because they have what many BRT systems lack due to being able to be phased in...………..a nice juicy ribbon cutting ceremony.
 
ssiguy2 said:
It was noted earlier that they were not sure if double-articulated buses were legal in Canada and I have no idea. That however would not be a problem. Remember that EMU & DMU trains are also illegal but it didn't stop Ottawa nor GO. It just means they get a waiver and DA buses could do the same.

It just seems to me with busses going green and hence being much quieter and cheaper to run and higher capacity, standard low floor, and their flexibility gives them the heads up on so many LRT lines being built. This is especially true on routes like Finch where these LRT are nothing more than glorified streetcars. By going BRT you can build 3X as much rapid transit for the same price.

I often think many of these LRt projects are being built for this stupid "look Mom I have LRT too" mentality rather than based upon return for the dollar and transit service. Of course politicians line up for LRT because they have what many BRT systems lack due to being able to be phased in...………..a nice juicy ribbon cutting ceremony.
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I dunno .. ribbon cutting can be done for BRT just as easily.

The reason is that LRT is an established technology for medium capacity, while DA buses are an emerging technology and faces hurdles at this time. Doesn't necessarily mean buses are not suitable, just means going with the buses for that capacity range requires a mental shift.
 
drum118 said:
Makes no different if other systems can run better system, they all see similar problems that they will do different things based on the system and ridership. A normal bus route is one thing, but getting into BRT/LRT/Metro, its a different story.

If one visit other systems in NA, most will kill to have the quality of service we have.

In fact, GO Transit offer better service than most commuter systems and the only system running with more than 8 cars trains.
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Doesn't matter is other systems can be run better? Toronto is better than America so we are good?

I think this attitude is exactly why we aren't good, we compare ourselves to an incredibly low standard in Canada across numerous things, check the "we beat America" box, and then go on with our mediocre solution.
 
This is an example of the perversity of different levels of government funding transit. I'm all for upgrading to LRT (or better) eventually when ridership demands it, but in the near term it seems more valuable to provide more extensive BRT and operate high levels of service.
 
afransen said:
I fail to see the debunking in the article. LRT may be cheaper to operate, but nevermind the upfront billions?
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Up front cost will always win regardless how much saving in operation cost is over X timeframe. Everyone looks at the cost of building X and not looking at all the the apples cost vs the orange full cost over time.

The biggest cost for buses doesn't come into play like LRT and that is rebuilding the road and maintaining it unless part of a true BRT ROW. Since roads are used by all type of vehicles, it falls onto the city to maintain them that allows buses to use them freely while streetcars has to pay their way when the concrete is damage by these other vehicles travelling over them in the first place.

Then there is the fix route that cannot be change on the fly compare to rubber wheels that can if the plan route fails over time or the need to have a trunk line with many branches to it. You need to get that fix route line right on day one

Since the 80's, more LRT lines are being built and expanded regardless the higher cost doing so as they are still cheaper than building subway/Metro. At the same time those who have approved new LRT/Streetcar lines are not looking at cost to build them, but what it will do for the city or area as a whole, not part of one thing.

Those in the 40' to 70's who call for the removal of streetcars in place of buses would be surprised to see how much ridership has fallen doing that move with a number regretting it.

At this time, I would class 4 LRT/streetcar lines as failure that been built in the past 20 years compared to 6 BRT that are failures ae well.
 
Allandale25 said:
downtownsparrow.ca

Debunking the Promises of Bus Rapid Transit | Downtown Sparrow

by Sean Hurley – Whenever the on-again, off-again Hamilton LRT debate is on-again, invariably a suburban politician will counter with “BRT!” The idea is that rather than the planned, ready…
downtownsparrow.ca downtownsparrow.ca
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The problem is that the difference in capital cost is so high. According to the Queen Street BRT IBC, the most expensive option for the BRT, that being Bus lanes with no reduction in car lanes (so with road widening and what not), as well as Bike lanes is planned to cost 500m dollars in capital costs, or about $21m per km, over its 24km length.

The Hurontario LRT is $4.6b in capital costs, or about $255m per km, over 18 kilometers, or 12x more expensive upfront (granted the Hurontario LRT has an underground station and an elevated viaduct, but the difference in price is still astronomical).

As for operating costs, the Hurontario LRT was given a billion dollars to operate the line over 30 years. This is approximately 33.3m per year. For Queen Street it was rated for $45m per year in 2019 and I'll include the addiitonal maintenance costs. If we assume that costs don't scale per km (which they absolutely should, and would make this comparison even more favourable to Queen Street), It would take 14 years for LRT to catch up to BRT. Realistically though the costs do scale with distance quite a bit, unfortunately I can't say by much, and I'm not going to pretend that it scales linearly, otherwise it will apparently take 900 years for the operating costs to catch up to the capital cost price difference. What is most likely true is that if at some point the BRT costs do catch up, it won't be until 30-40 years and at that point you'll likely have the ridership where you can safely upgrade to a light metro or something higher order than an LRT.
 
drum118 said:
At this time, I would class 4 LRT/streetcar lines as failure that been built in the past 20 years compared to 6 BRT that are failures ae well.
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May I ask what you consider to be failures and why?

On the point of cost, as I've written above, while it is true that BRT has higher capital and maintenance costs than LRT, the cost of LRT has skyrocketed so much in the past several years that it will take a long time for those operating costs to catch up, (Reminder that the Hurontario LRT went form $1.4b capital + operations compared to 2020 where the winning bid was $5.6 billion, although apparently the 1.4 didn't include utility relocations?) and by the time they do, many of the corridors we we're building BRTs will likely have the ridership to support a metro or a light metro. This isn't factoring how the operating costs for BRTs assume much higher frequencies than the LRT counterparts which means that transit users will get a travel experience where busses come far more often and they can spend less time waiting for their bus compared to waiting for their tram (As a reminder, the Hurontario LRT will operate at 7.5 minute headways, longer than the existing bus route along Hurontario).
 
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