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ssiguy2

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Everytime I look at a Toronto area transit I get dizzy. There are so many different systems, the entire area is completely disjointed, different fares, endless transfers, no coordination with the road network, and bureaucracies whose primary goal is to maintain their "turf".

Getting from one end of Toronto to the other is not only time consuming but also a logistical nightmare. By allowing all the different cities and transit agencies to control their respective transit it has resulted in an uncoordinated system. All the cities of the GTA focus only on their own needs {and voters} which has left regional planning as an after thought.

When I look at how easy it is to negotiate Greater Vancouver transit and then compare it to the GTA my heart really does go out to the long suffering commuters in Toronto. In short, it's a mess. All the way from Lion's Bay to Aldergrove, White Rock to UBC and all points in between there are only 3 different fares and just one transit system. There is complete integration and leaving one city to go to another is not the mind numbing experience it is in Toronto. Vancouver has learned that in order to make a city more transit fiendly now and into the future requires thinking like one of the transit riders themselves. Transit users don't care about different cities or their agendas and tax bases. When people are taking transit they think regionally and so must a transportation agency. People don't want some imaginary line they have to cross to become a logistical nightmare. When people are going from Miss to Ajax, Oakville to Markham, or Milton to York U they don't want to have to take an endless series of transfers everytime they cross an imaginary boundary nor do they want to spend 15 minutes on the computer trying to figure out the fare.

In Metro Vancouver you only pay a one zone fare unless you cross a zone boundary and there are only 3 zones within the huge 19 different municipalities Translink serves. Travelling, for example, just in the Fraser Valley/Surrey area is one zone and costs the exact same amount as someone who lives and travels just within the City of Vancouver. There is no guess work needed........travel within one zone, pay one zone fare, 2 zone travel is 2 zone fare, and 3 zone travel is 3 zone fare. This has not only made the system easy to figure out but also has lead to more regional connections where you don't have to transfer to another transit system every time you cross a municiple boundary. It has made commuter rail a breeze as well. It's incredibly easy, whatever you paid for transit ticket to get to the station is automatically deducted from the commuter premium fare. If you began your journey on the train it doesn't matter where you are going, the fare is valid for the entire Metro Vancouver Translink system with endless transfer for a 2 hour period. None of this some transit agencies give you a discount and some don't crap.

A similar such arrangement for the GTA {I don't think Hamilton need be part of it} would have the GTA divided into 3 zones for Toronto Zone 1 , Peel/Durham/York Zone 2, and Halton Zone 3. Not only is the cost easy to figure but it helps get rid of transfers from different systems.........everything would be under Metrolinx, including GO just as WCE is under Translink. This would result in such things as the Miss Transitway being able to seelessly continue right across Eglinton to the end of the route in Scar. People don't mind taking taking transit but hate waiting for it and the transfers which was a shortcoming of TC that Miller and the boys never acknowledged.

Another thing that Translink is which the TTC and all the other transit agencies are not is a transportation system. The GTA views highways, bikeways, walkways, and transit as completely different creatures that have nothing to do whith each other. This has led to uncoordinated transportation which is why the GTA has almost no HOV/Bus only lanes on it's freeways. This is why the new Port Mann bridge has incorporated into it, new bike lanes, walk ways, bus-only on/off ramps for Rapid Bus, Hov lanes, and the bridge and HOV and bus-only lanes are designed for easy transference over to LRT in the future. Could you imagine Toronto ever doing that? The Canada Line SkyTrain over the Fraser River has bike and walk lanes underneath the main track corridor, again impossible in Toronto.

Toronto had {atleast for it's transit service} such a system once.........it was called the TTC that served all of Metro Toronto. At the time it covered all of what would have been the entire Toronto area population. The trouble is that the TTC didn't expand it's borders as the population grew beyond them. It's time to update that visionary plan into the 21st century GTA. Whether that be called Metrolinx or even the TTC, it should cover all of the GTA as it once did 50 years ago.
 
Ssiguy,

Like you, I'm a former Torontonian but I live in Vancouver now. The days of Vancouver being a shining beacon of transit progress are coming to an end, too. Translink is broke, they're going to raise fares, they're going to cut service and - mark my words - we are not going to see a rapid transit line down Broadway to UBC for at least 25 years, even though it's as desperately needed as the DRL is in Toronto.

We shouldn't laugh at Toronto. Transit-wise, we're at the point Toronto was at in, say, 1978 when it opened the Spadina subway line and basically called it "quits" on subway expansion for over a generation. We're also, coincidentally, about the same size Toronto was back then.
 
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So what's the beacon of 21st century transit now in North America? Is it still Portland, is it Calgary, that's opening its West LRT this month? Is it Los Angeles, who has voter approvals for monies for more transit projects?
 
Of course Translink has funding problems but this is not about funding. This is about regional transit and regional planning.

As a case in point you mentioned Translink for Vancouver while in the GTA to use the same agenccies for comparisons you would have to say all 400 series highways, Toronto urban freeways, TTC, GO, Metrolink, MiWay, 2 zones for York Transit, Brampton , Oakville, Burlington, Milton, Ajax, Pickering, Oshawa transit agencies. This doesn't include the different city road networks for BRT lanes. Can you imagine having to figure out how to get from one end of Toronto to the other and how much the fare would be?

Vancouver's Translink has it's problems but how Metro views transportation as a regional issue and one that emcompasses many different transportation forms is a sound and valid one. It simply reflects the obvious........people travel from different locations throughout a region and the easier, more coordinated that travel can be is better for everyone.
 
Shon:

In terms of transit expansion per population, my money is on either Calgary, Salt Lake City or Denver. Let's hear it for the Rocky Mountains! Of course, if Toronto experienced the same amount of transit expansion as Denver, the amount of ridership growth - in sheer numbers - we would experience would be staggering.

ssiguy,

Translink is more of a ward of the province than you think. Yes, they are nominally in control of road projects, etc. but do you honestly think that Translink called the shots on all the gleaming road projects under construction now? Do you think they have much of a say in rapid transit projects, for that matter?

And while their jurisdiction seems large enough for now, they don't have any control over what happens in the Fraser Valley Regional District which is where I think a huge chunk of growth will occur in the near future.
 
So what's the beacon of 21st century transit now in North America? Is it still Portland, is it Calgary, that's opening its West LRT this month? Is it Los Angeles, who has voter approvals for monies for more transit projects?

I would actually throw Ottawa in there too, at least as far as mid-size cities go. Yes, the LRT project is getting all of the headlines, but there have been several pretty major Transitway expansions into suburban areas in the past few years.

Like Toronto, Ottawa has had some flip-flopping on its transit plan too, but that's nearly a decade behind us now, and the LRT is slated to start construction in January. And then there's the Western LRT extension, which is going to start ramping discussions next year, with a final decision hopefully in 2014.

Side note: When the City redid the Baseline-Heron bridge (twin span 3 lane bridge), they reconfigured it to become 2 general lanes + a bus-only lane + a bike line. The Baseline-Heron corridor is slated for BRT-like service, but they've been doing it 1 piece at a time. I can't imagine Toronto taking 1 general traffic lane in each direction along a major arterial bridge like that to replace it with a bus-only lane AND a bike lane. Just wanted to highlight the transit-first mindset that Ottawa has right now. The Strandherd-Armstrong Bridge under construction right now between Barrhaven and Riverside South is employing a nearly identical setup I believe.
 
I've been to Vancouver a number of times, and while the transit geek in me enjoys the various transit modes available, Vancouver Translink doesn't even come close to matching the TTC in service quality and levels. Hell, Vancouver's commuter rail service is still a rush hour service with a few trains, compared to GO transit. Ssiguy2, you do not seem to understand that each GTA municipality runs their own system, and pays for it accordingly. Why not call the abolition of BT, MT, YRT? Oh, right, you know nothing of those systems. THe GTA also has a regional system to accomodate long distance travellers, and is funded by municipalities: GO Transit.

What works in Vancouver(and I've been hearing Translink is in serious financial trouble, and the broadway Skytrain extension isn't happening anytime soon), probably will not work here.

The TTC already prints a map that covers a fairly large regional area, but the agencies could do a better job advertising connections and link between each other. But blaming the TTC show how little you know about the GTA>
 
I like the idea of fare zone, but would propose a zone 0 within the inner city, say south of Eglinton, West of Pape and East of Dufferin.
We all know it is stupid to charge the same fare for Queen to St Clair as King to Finch. North of Eglinton stn, the spacing gets much much wider.
 
We all know it is stupid to charge the same fare for Queen to St Clair as King to Finch. North of Eglinton stn, the spacing gets much much wider.
How far do you take it? What about my 4-5 stop streetcar stop trips from Woodbine to Coxwell?
 
I have been on other cities' transit systems. For example, Montréal, New York City, Atlanta, etc., but Toronto still seems to provide better service than them. The fares, on the other hand, could be improved by getting operating subsidies from the province and/or federal governments, which Toronto only gets from the city.
 
I like the idea of fare zone, but would propose a zone 0 within the inner city, say south of Eglinton, West of Pape and East of Dufferin.
We all know it is stupid to charge the same fare for Queen to St Clair as King to Finch. North of Eglinton stn, the spacing gets much much wider.

I don't buy this 'fare's fair' excuse when justifying a fare by distance scheme,. In local transit, the people you want using transit live in the burbs. Fare by distance discourages those riders from using transit considering suburban residents have to endure longer trips, and have fewer alternatives.
It'd be tough to implement a fare-by-distance system for the TTC. where do you draw the boundaries? TTC riders take so many trips, you may find riders will be paying different fares for every trip.
 
What works in Vancouver(and I've been hearing Translink is in serious financial trouble, and the broadway Skytrain extension isn't happening anytime soon), probably will not work here.

The serious financial trouble isn't any worse than the one in Toronto and even Calgary. Those "cutting service from less used routes and adding service to heavily travelled routes" isn't anything new to Toronto. In fact, it happens once every few months every year. It is a big deal in Vancouver because, before these optimization projects, they almost never take service away once they've added them in. Its not like they're running out of money and have chop service everywhere - the overall service still increases. Langley is getting a new commuter route in December; Surrey is getting a new BRT in April or June; Coquitlam is getting a new route serving new residential area next September.

As for Broadway SkyTrain... That project is pretty much still on the drawing board at the moment. I can argue that even the DRL has progressed much further. The main issue is the funding model - TransLink must find their own money to fund their share of any capital project. The municipality does not just hand over money, and the province isn't willing to contribute unless TransLink paid their share. There is no other city like Toronto where the province just hand over 8.4 billions for rapid transit expansion and couldn't figure out what to do with it. And there's no other city like Vancouver where capital projects have to be funded partially through operating budget...
 
I for one can't wait for the mayors of the 905 to try to bushwhack projects in the 416 under the ambit of a Translink style authority :rolleyes:
 
I don't buy this 'fare's fair' excuse when justifying a fare by distance scheme,. In local transit, the people you want using transit live in the burbs. Fare by distance discourages those riders from using transit considering suburban residents have to endure longer trips, and have fewer alternatives.
It'd be tough to implement a fare-by-distance system for the TTC. where do you draw the boundaries? TTC riders take so many trips, you may find riders will be paying different fares for every trip.

Well, when you use more service, you pay a bit more. What's to complain? Many cities do the distance based fare. To "endure" longer trips, those people choose to live so far from work out of their own volition to buy bigger houses. I think a couple of $ more on the subway is worth it.

fare zone is not as good as distance based. Shanghai's subway fare is based on how far you travel: under 6km, 6-16km, 16-26km etc, 1 CNY more for each additional 10km range. Fare can vary from CNY 3 to a maximum of CNY 10 depending on how much you have travelled. I think we should do the same. You can't charge the same for someone who use the system for 5 minutes as another who used for 1.5 hours.

They also provide a reduction on subway-bus transfer. The reader will know you are tranferring from the subway and will automatically give a CNY 1 price reduction.

This $3 for any trip system won't work well. Monthly pass should be abandoned as well and be replaced with a pay per trip with a monthly cap system.
 

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