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Especially if the TTC could include the phrase, “Improving the Customer Experience.” Because laughter is the best medicine for a really shitty transit system.
 
Especially if the TTC could include the phrase, “Improving the Customer Experience.” Because laughter is the best medicine for a really shitty transit system.
I honestly think I must be riding a different TTC then the people that complain about things about it. For example at the last TTC board meeting, someone complained that every 10 minutes wasn't frequent service, there are some places that every 30 minutes is considered frequent service so I don't know why you would complain about that. Then there are the people that complain about them closing parts of lines for maintenance on the weekend and they seem to think that an hour or two a night is just fine to fort them to get everything done. People then want to make comparisons to much older systems that were built long before the TTC was even formed, without actually doing any research other than looking at a map or how that other system actually runs and how it serves its city.
 
For example at the last TTC board meeting, someone complained that every 10 minutes wasn't frequent service, there are some places that every 30 minutes is considered frequent service so I don't know why you would complain about that

Cranks aside, the issue isn't that the TTC doesn't run frequent service in an absolute sense, its the typical experience is being told that 10-15 minute service is plenty while ACTUALLY being unable to reliably get on a bus.
 
Cranks aside, the issue isn't that the TTC doesn't run frequent service in an absolute sense, its the typical experience is being told that 10-15 minute service is plenty while ACTUALLY being unable to reliably get on a bus.
Also I think people have unreasonable expectations that a bus will be at the stop when they arrive or that the time between buses starts when they arrive at the stop to wait for it.
 
I honestly think I must be riding a different TTC then the people that complain about things about it. For example at the last TTC board meeting, someone complained that every 10 minutes wasn't frequent service, there are some places that every 30 minutes is considered frequent service so I don't know why you would complain about that. Then there are the people that complain about them closing parts of lines for maintenance on the weekend and they seem to think that an hour or two a night is just fine to fort them to get everything done. People then want to make comparisons to much older systems that were built long before the TTC was even formed, without actually doing any research other than looking at a map or how that other system actually runs and how it serves its city.

I think most of the people who complain about 10 minute frequencies are comparing the system against the cities that get transit right, which is totally fair -- we should aspire to Tokyo, not Cleveland.

Tokyo operates bullet trains at strict 2-minute headways.

(But, yeah, the moaning about maintenance and upgrade work is mostly just dumb).
 
I can’t speak for the other cranks, but this crank is comparing the TTC to transit systems in Sydney, London and Berlin, which I’ve used with some regularity. OK, London and Berlin are on another planet in terms of transit, but could we not aspire to Sydney? Small example - the 333 express bus I take from Paddo to the CBD during the northern winter is a fast, unbunched service on a schedule that ranges from 3-minutes peak to 10-minutes off-peak, using bus lanes that are monitored for compliance by cameras all over the place. I’ve suffered through King car bunching even with the pilot. Not to forget Sydney’s massive rail and LRT expansion, apparently demand driven, or its cleanliness, or the way so many train lines radiate from the CBD. I’m not complaining about the TTC because I’m unhappy it doesn’t meet some Platonic ideal of perfection. I’m complaining about it because it’s so vastly inferior to real-world systems in other cities. As a corollary, I’m disappointed because we collectively seem incapable of learning from better systems. Not TTC staff, not municipal and provincial politicians, and not Toronto voters. FFS, we’re only now implementing - slowly - the pantograph. So, my bad, the panto...we actually did learn something from the rest of the world. But it’s so little, and so late.
 
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I can’t speak for the other cranks, but this crank is comparing the TTC to transit systems in Sydney, London and Berlin, which I’ve used with some regularity. OK, London and Berlin are on another planet in terms of transit, but could we not aspire to Sydney? Small example - the 330 express bus I take from Paddo to the CBD during the northern winter is a fast, unbunched service on a schedule that ranges from 3-minutes peak to 10-minutes off-peak, using bus lanes that are monitored for compliance by cameras all over the place. I’ve suffered through King car bunching even with the pilot. Not to forget Sydney’s massive rail and LRT expansion, apparently demand driven, or its cleanliness, or the way so many train lines radiate from the CBD. I’m not complaining about the TTC because I’m unhappy it doesn’t meet some Platonic ideal of perfection. I’m complaining about it because it’s so vastly inferior to real-world systems in other cities. As a corollary, I’m disappointed because we collectively seem incapable of learning from better systems. Not TTC staff, not municipal and provincial politicians, and not Toronto voters. FFS, we’re only now implementing - slowly - the pantograph. So, my bad, the panto...we actually did learn something from the rest of the world. But it’s so little, and so late.

Yeah, this is what I mean. If we're comparing to the King car, we've got pretty close to 3 minute peak, 10 off service today. Frequency is not the TTC's issue writ large, it's a pile of other things (mostly management issues) that degrade service below where it should be. Per the above, King doesn't need drastically greater frequencies so much as it needs route management worthy of the name. The same can be said for more places on the network than not, especially those that don't have rapid transit plans in some stage of official consideration.
 
Has anyone seen these FinchWestLRT renderings. Some design changes have happened since envisioned but still is interesting.

https://www.gh3.ca/work/finch-lrt-design-excellence

It looks like some of the renderings include what the FinchWestLRT station below will look like when completed.

Anyone wants to give feedback?
I'm surprised they are still using Line 7. And the light-green colour.

The bilingual signage surprises me too ... though I guess it's cheaper than a new French university.

I'm a bit surprised the stop at Alexdon Road is called Axeldon! It's way cooler though! :)

I wish I could zoom into the entire map. Hmm, interesting that the graphics show Finch West complete from Yonge to Keele.


1548731983360.png
 
I can’t speak for the other cranks, but this crank is comparing the TTC to transit systems in Sydney, London and Berlin, which I’ve used with some regularity. OK, London and Berlin are on another planet in terms of transit, but could we not aspire to Sydney? Small example - the 330 express bus I take from Paddo to the CBD during the northern winter is a fast, unbunched service on a schedule that ranges from 3-minutes peak to 10-minutes off-peak, using bus lanes that are monitored for compliance by cameras all over the place. I’ve suffered through King car bunching even with the pilot. Not to forget Sydney’s massive rail and LRT expansion, apparently demand driven, or its cleanliness, or the way so many train lines radiate from the CBD. I’m not complaining about the TTC because I’m unhappy it doesn’t meet some Platonic ideal of perfection. I’m complaining about it because it’s so vastly inferior to real-world systems in other cities. As a corollary, I’m disappointed because we collectively seem incapable of learning from better systems. Not TTC staff, not municipal and provincial politicians, and not Toronto voters. FFS, we’re only now implementing - slowly - the pantograph. So, my bad, the panto...we actually did learn something from the rest of the world. But it’s so little, and so late.

The TTC alone has 50% higher ridership than all of the combined transit in the Sydney metropolitan area. The Sydney area's transit ridership has declined by 20% since the 50s while the TTC's ridership has doubled since the 50s. In 1950, Sydney transit had 791 million boardings compared 635 million today. The TTC had 312 million revenue riders in 1955 compared to approximately 600 million today (965 million boardings in 2018). And that is not even counting any of the transit ridership growth in the 905. So it seems to me that Toronto has made a lot more progress transit-wise than Sydney. Sydney is the one who should be following Toronto's lead, not the other way around.

Sydney area buses get 264 million boardings annually. TTC buses get 460 million boardings annually, MiWay 55 million, Brampton Transit 40 million, YRT 30 million, GO 17 million, Oakville Transit 4 million. Toronto's bus network is more than twice the size of Sydney's. Sydney doesn't even come close.
 
Toronto is also about 50% larger than Sydney mind you.
Nope.

https://www.population.net.au/sydney-population/

http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/toronto-population/

As for Doady’s patriotic notion - Go Leafs! - that Sydney should follow Toronto’s lead because combined the GTA’s transit systems carry more passengers:

1. He’s obviously never used public transit in Sydney.
2. By extension, Toronto should follow the lead of every other transit system that carries more passengers. Actually, I’d agree with that if the comparable were HK, London, Berlin or Paris. NYC not so much. But I’m not sure why it follows Toronto can’t learn anything from systems with fewer boardings.
3. To clarify, the discussion was about how well the respective systems transport their passengers, not how many passengers they move.
 
1. He’s obviously never used public transit in Sydney.

It looks much improved over 10 years ago. I just asked for Google directions for a few terrible trips I took in the past (Sydney Beachhouse YHA to the airport for example) and it looks like they've chopped the travel time in half.

So I guess even if you have used public transit in Sydney, if you've not done so recently it might be an incorrect view.
 

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