I agree, DRL is too many years away away.
Here's my attempt to help with both relieving the King & Queen streetcars now, and providing a faster alternative to going east & west downtown:
An express bus line:
Firstly, it's
buses, probably articulated buses, so no need for track work, no construction of tracks or overhead wire. With regular buses there would hopefully be less issues with getting the vehicles supply needed. This would hopefully make it faster to implement.
These run in
mixed traffic. No need for the political fight taking away car lanes or re-arranging the street for transit lanes (at least not for now). Yes they will get stuck in traffic.
It should be
faster than the streetcars because:
A. The stop spacing will be much wider, this is an express bus with wide stop spacing, to complement the local service of the streetcars. Since it's a new additional line there won't be a political battle to remove stops like the streetcars are going through.
B. It runs on faster roads: Richmond & Adelaide through the core, with Eastern in the east part should be faster roads to run surface vehicles on that King & Queen.
So, this bus is meant for those who want a faster trip than the streetcar. The part running on King & Roncesvalles could be as slow however. I'm not sure what to do about that.
This runs
in addition to the current streetcar lines, to offload some ridership from them and provide a faster alternative.
