Same issue at Dundas West. I recently was delayed by a good 10 minutes during the morning rush because the Flexity I was on couldn't pull into the station until another Flexity had cleared the 504 platform (with a CLRV in between)
I'm not as familiar with Dundas West, but I think you could do a lot with that station, with some paint and cones to increase the boarding area. For Broadview, at a minimum they'd have to rebuild the 504 exit, and push the platforms along to Erindale - and presumably move some of the bus roadway a bit too.
The more I watch this problem play out, the more I think, wow, how did everyone (TTC, pundits, sidewalk observers like us) miss that. Why weren't we talking about loop changes back when the order was placed? We knew enough to build a whole new maintenance base, but we didn't have the foresight to realise that the loops are just not right for the longer vehicles. It's not for lack of time to think this through.
Oh, they knew. I've been hassling them occasionally since the Flexity order was placed.
I don't have a long-articulated solution (Although I'm now proposing one, which is to extend the routes and build new loops somewhere up the road, and run through the subway stations instead of laying over in them). But it goes to show...sometimes we don't think of everything. No point in pointing fingers, just gotta put this on the list of things to fix retroactively.
As I said, I don't think Dundas West is tough. And if you look carefully at Broadview, you'll see that there are two curves to get the 504 to Erindale. You can turn that into 1 longer curver, if you move the curves further (map) east, lengthening the straight loading area.
And then 504 and 505 don't join until Erindale. Which means you can extend the platform around the curve, to near Erindale.
If you want to be really radical, you can just close Erindale completely, so the west end, is just east of the station. And then you've got tons of potential boarding area - though you might want to make the loop clockwise instead of counter clockwise, so that the car that's loading, is near the station.
Broadview doesn't have to be that expensive.
Union ... now that's going to be expensive.
(which of course means the TTC will actually be working on a $400 million underground design for Broadview that will lengthen each platform 22.5 metres).
