W. K. Lis
Superstar
It should be noted the major cost in any public transit route is the employee. The streetcar carries more people than a bus, and the planned low-floor light rail vehicles will carry even more people than our current streetcars.
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Completely, 100% false.
Searching for a citiation, I find that you, Glen, made this same claim on the Spacing blog a year ago and were corrected on it. But yet you continue making this claim... odd.
Anyway, here's a quote: "transit ridership on [510 Spadina] has risen by about 30 per cent, swelling from 32,000 riders daily to 43,000." -Toronto Star
Sean,
Now I remember why I am questioning the figures. It was the result of a Globe and Mail report that found……..
We found that:
• Instead of living up to pre-construction reports that streetcars on dedicated lanes would cut travel time from Bloor Street to Queen’s Quay by 5½ minutes — the environmental assessment boasted of up to 10 minutes in savings — the 510 appears to take longer than the buses that plied the route from 1948 to 1997. A TTC document obtained last month says the trip takes one minute longer in the afternoon rush hour than in 1990. Data on historical and current transfers indicate a 17-minute bus trip in 1993 now takes 19 minutes by streetcar.
• The 510 may be the slowest of all routes between the Bloor-Danforth and Queen Street. Travel times on TTC transfers put Bloor-to-Queen trips at 12 minutes on Spadina, 8 minutes on Bathurst and 10 minutes on other routes.
• The TTC says ridership on Spadina is up 30 per cent since 1997, the year the line opened. But when compared with 1992, the last year before construction tore up the street and cut into ridership, Spadina appears to be down 1.5 per cent, while overall TTC ridership is up about 3.4 per cent.
• TTC cost-to-revenue ratio lists show the Spadina and Harbourfront lines (now considered one for accounting purposes) have plunged to 35th-best among the TTC’s 132 surface routes. In 1997, they were No. 1 and No. 9, respectively, with the Spadina bus one of only seven routes turning a profit.
reproduced here…..
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=210484
TTC cost-to-revenue ratio lists show the Spadina and Harbourfront lines (now considered one for accounting purposes) have plunged to 35th-best among the TTC’s 132 surface routes. In 1997, they were No. 1 and No. 9, respectively, with the Spadina bus one of only seven routes turning a profit.
Your googling sucks, or your scroll wheel is broken!Here is the comment;
Care to point out where it was rebuffed?
Glen:
Interestingly, you also mentioned that everytime you checked out the 510, both the vehicle and the stations are empty. How did your attempt to reconfirm that observation go?
AoD
I did not mention the stations, but yes, I did the trains.
Sean,
Are you sure this comment……..?
Spadina is now much more reliable and carries a many more people than the old 77 Spadina bus, but it isn’t a true LRT line either, closer to the local streetcar service that Torontonians are familiar with.
The old 77 route was always packed and there were buses nearly every minute. By comparison the Spadina LRT looks empty whenever I see it. Not just the trains but the stops also. IIRC correctly the old 77 route was one of only two surface routes that generated positive cash flow. I have a suspicion that perhaps the TTC has cherry picked some numbers to justify it existence.
And for the Spadina LRT lovers…….
http://southofsteeles.blogspot.com/2008/02/steve-munros-heaven-or-hell.html
Comment by Glen
February 11, 2008 @ 11:25 am
Informal eyeballing, showed good peak utilization but poor off peak. On the few occasions in which I observed off peak, the average number of passengers looked to be ~10-12. These were taken mid morning and early afternoon. More for shits and giggles than anything worthy of drawing any conclusions from.
Posted on Spacing Wire, Feb. 11th 2008
Retrieved from http://spacing.ca/wire/2008/02/10/streetcars-and-light-rail-transit-torontos-next-steps/
Perhaps there IS something wrong with your scroll wheel. On the bright side, my googling skills didn't suck.
Which is no different from any other transit line, and certainly not different from back when it was 77 Spadina (unless somehow miraculously people decided to ride on buses and not streetcars during off peak). "Always" packed, you say?
Glen:
And I thought you'd be smart enough to avoid getting stuck on a change the use of phrase to get all hung up on semantics. So, let me rephrase just so that you can get the question - are the stops empty every time you looked then? Or the streetcars? Not 10, 12...but empty.
Interestingly, the first time you insisted that all the streetcars and stops are empty, then they are just busy during off peak hours. Change your statements much?
More people used the Spadina 77 bus than do use the current LRT. The difference in ridership is more apparent during off peak periods. When Buses were on Spadina, they very seldom had fewer than 20 people on board, Even though the number of buses on Spadina was greater than the number of streetcars today.