[EnviroTO]

Indeed, but I somehow suspect such a minor issue is being used as a Trojan Horse against LRT

Removing stops may be a minor issue but LRT being proven as inconvenient and a waste of money on St.Clair and Spadina is something that can more easily used as the Trojan Horse. If the city doesn't want the performance of St.Clair and Spadina to be used against its Transit City plan then they should smarten up and fix "the minor issue" which causes it to be ineffective.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Enviro:

My point is half the battle is getting the thing built in some form - instead of spending years debating about the fine details such that nothing happens since nothing is exactly right. By the time some sort of perverted consensus emerges, the political/funding environment changes so drastically that it gets dropped off the radar. And people wonder why we have so few transit lines?

Besides, as "inconvenient" and "waste of money" St. Clair and Spadina supposedly is (compared to some well intentioned ideal), what is the exactly measure of effectivness? Ridership? Supposed system goals?

AoD

 

[EnviroTO]

My point is half the battle is getting the thing built in some form - instead of spending years debating about the fine details such that nothing happens since nothing is exactly right.

I don't agree that trip time is a fine detail. Isn't the purpose of transit to lure people from their cars and to do so isn't travel time going to be a key measure?

Besides, as "inconvenient" and "waste of money" St. Clair and Spadina supposedly is (compared to some well intentioned ideal), what is the exactly measure of effectivness? Ridership? Supposed system goals?

I would hope the measures would be related to ridership gains compared to the status quo and trip time improvements compared to the status quo. Hopefully being able to say "look... we built something" is not the measure. Hopefully if it can be shown that for the same amount of money we can increase ridership more and improve trip times more that it is something we can focus on rather than focusing the equipment and infrastructure that is used to deliver that increased ridership and improved trip times.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Enviro:

One can talk about trip time all that they wanted, but if at the end of the day, there isn't a single bit of infrastructural improvement coming out of it, it's meaningless. Once the actual system is in place, however, new possiblities open up. We can't even get to the latter in Toronto.

re: indicators

We all know what LRT can do - we also know what are the basic elements required for it. Getting to those basic elements in place is the hardest fight of all and not necessarily the details. Like honestly, if people fight for signal priority, fewer stops and the like with as vehemently as they did against LRT (or whatever transit lines), we'd be doing rather fine. I am not seeing that.

AoD

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Not really that critical an issue, considering most of the cost will have more to do with infrastructure and rolling stock.

AoD

Of course it's a critical issue - if we're going to spend over half a billion dollars on every arterial road in this city, we better be sure we get more out of it than what's happened to those routes. St. Clair's fine but all it did was replace one streetcar with a slightly better streetcar, while Spadina's often a mess and certainly not something the TTC can afford to reproduce. If streetcars on Don Mills or Finch West are slowed to a crawl due to excessive stops or get bunched up, reducing the frequency to a shadow of what it was with buses, it won't matter if 5 minutes are cut off travel time, we will have spent all those billions on marginally increased but unusable capacity just because a few influential people think streetcars are cooler and more comfortable than buses.

The TTC and the city both know what LRT can do...yet we have very little faith in them that they can actually provide it. Does the TTC even acknowledge Spadina's flaws? We're just going to trust them to prevent similar flaws everywhere else?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

scarberian:

If streetcars on Don Mills or Finch West get bunched up or slowed to a crawl due to excessive stops, reducing the frequency to a shadow of what it was with buses, it won't matter if 5 minutes are cut off travel time, we will have spent all that money on marginally increased but unusable capacity just because a few influential people think streetcars are cooler and more comfortable than buses.

And would you mind telling me how difficult it is, from a purely technical standpoint, to rectify such an issue once there is an LRT line on say Don Mills; compare that to say, the difficulty of getting the line there in the first place? I think we are dealing with a totally different level of criticality here.

The TTC and the city both know what LRT can do...yet we have very little faith in them that they can actually provide it. Does the TTC even acknowledge Spadina's flaws?

Organization changes, politics changes - and I believe historically we have seen quite a few changes in thinking at both institutions over the course of the past say, 50 years - once something is physically there, at least you have the potential of messing with it as one see fits. Right now, there isn't even the possiblity of that.

AoD

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Right now, there isn't even the possiblity of that.

Hey, I think that's a good thing...much of Transit City is a miserable waste of money that could do more harm than good re: your indicators.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Now I wonder whether it's really about the potential of LRT, or whether it's bias against it. I think that post made it patently clear.

AoD

 

[scarberiankhatru]

As opposed to the unashamedly pro-LRT stance of you and everyone else here? Based on how the TTC runs streetcars/LRT in this city, it'd require a leap of faith worthy of Bob Beamon to believe $6 billion in new construction should be endorsed without discussion.

edit - I support LRT in some places, but I don't think the whole city should be blanketed in them or that every Transit City route is suited for them. On this forum that position is seen as fanatically anti-streetcar.

 

[Hydrogen]

Organization changes, politics changes - and I believe historically we have seen quite a few changes in thinking at both institutions over the course of the past say, 50 years - once something is physically there, at least you have the potential of messing with it as one see fits. Right now, there isn't even the possiblity of that.

I agree. It would be unfortunate to forgo a whole new line because a few issues of interest were not immediately addressed (and I am not belittling those concerns or interests). But once a streetcar route is up and running, and once it is being used, it is an issue at hand because it has become necessary. Unbuilt, it remains imaginery, and nothing more.

 

[unimaginative2]

Ahh, I don't think you need a Trojan Horse for local groups to oppose the streetcars. The thousands of trees and hundreds of front lawns that would be destroyed will surely be enough to arrouse just a little bit of criticism.

 

[unimaginative2]

scarberian:
And would you mind telling me how difficult it is, from a purely technical standpoint, to rectify such an issue once there is an LRT line on say Don Mills; compare that to say, the difficulty of getting the line there in the first place? I think we are dealing with a totally different level of criticality here.

Alvin, come on. If it's so easy, why has it been almost two decades that Spadina has been built and it still runs as slow or slower than the bus? Even now, in this midst of all this streetcar talk, nobody is seriously proposing doing anything to make Spadina run properly.

Besides, as "inconvenient" and "waste of money" St. Clair and Spadina supposedly is (compared to some well intentioned ideal), what is the exactly measure of effectivness? Ridership? Supposed system goals?

Several studies have shown that the hundreds of millions that it cost to bring a right-of-way to Spadina hasn't saved a minute of travel time. I'd say that's pretty ineffective. Not to mention Spadina's fare recovery, which dropped from making a profit to below 50% after the conversion.

This doesn't mean that I oppose streetcars, and indeed I think that even Spadina was a good project. It does, however, mean that I think that the TTC should be telling us now how this $6 billion worth of projects will actually be beneficial from day one, and not twenty years down the line when they're "fixed".

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

unimaginative:

Alvin, come on. If it's so easy, why has it been almost two decades that Spadina has been built and it still runs as slow or slower than the bus? Even now, in this midst of all this streetcar talk, nobody is seriously proposing doing anything to make Spadina run properly.

Quite frankly, because Spadina as it is works well enough shovelling riders across relatively short distances that nobody except hard core transit geek cares enough about it? It gets the job done, to quote James Bow. What I would really like to see is the average trip length/trip destination for riders using the line.

Several studies have shown that the hundreds of millions that it cost to bring a right-of-way to Spadina hasn't saved a minute of travel time. I'd say that's pretty ineffective. Not to mention Spadina's fare recovery, which dropped from making a profit to below 50% after the conversion.

This doesn't mean that I oppose streetcars, and indeed I think that even Spadina was a good project. It does, however, mean that I think that the TTC should be telling us now how this $6 billion worth of projects will actually be beneficial from day one, and not twenty years down the line when they're "fixed".

You and I both know the urban context of Spadina (or St. Clair) vs. potential new lines like Eglinton or Finch West, so to draw these parallels without stating that is somewhat misleading. In fact, I would argue Spadina, while nice from a UD standpoint, is where one shouldn't have a surface LRT given the amount of trouble extremely frequent stops/stoplights, lack of POP and high pedestrian volumes creates if the purpose is strictly to minimize travel time and not serve as a neigbhourhood transit service.

As to the issue of Spadina LRT’s effectiveness – it managed to accommodate a significant increase in ridership – one that would have been rather difficult to achieve with a bus line. Isn’t that one measure one should be looking at, considering the context of the area (short distances, heavily pedestrian/urban, ongoing gentrification)?

AoD

 

[Hipster Duck]

It would be interesting to compare the ride of the Bathurst streetcar with, say, the Dufferin bus south of Bloor.

On the 511, the streetcar stops at every stop, including Bloor just south of the subway stop (useless), and then the tiny street right afterward. Continuing along, the 511 takes about 25 minutes to reach Exhibition at 8 minute frequencies. At either end, the service is severely jammed up and often 4 cars trundle into Bathurst station or Exhibition all at once after a 25 minute wait.

On Dufferin, the 29 bus upon leaving the subway station almost never stops until it reaches the Dufferin Mall, which is roughly at the same latitude as Harbord. When one bus is parked, the other one just leapfrogs around it and continues to the next stop. Of course, a streetcar cannot do this. The frequency of the 29 bus is every 4 minutes or better, and this is usually fairly consistent. Drivers usually floor it, don't have to wait for left-turning vehicles and make it down to Exhibition in less time than the Bathurst streetcar. The Dufferin bus also carries more people than the Bathurst streetcar despite the fact that the 511 frequently runs with ALRVs.

I am not sold on streetcars. I think I will say the unsayable in Toronto and wish that we had gotten rid of them in 1970 in favour of a Queen subway line and frequent N-S bus services like Dufferin.

 

[unimaginative2]

unimaginative:



Quite frankly, because Spadina as it is works well enough shovelling riders across relatively short distances that nobody except hard core transit geek cares enough about it? It gets the job done, to quote James Bow. What I would really like to see is the average trip length/trip destination for riders using the line.

Are you joking? Quite frankly, as someone who actually lives on Spadina and uses it as my local route, I can tell you that it bothers me very much that I have to budget at least 30 minutes to travel three kilometres up to Bloor. It bothers me, it bothers my friends who live near me or visit me, and it bothers my neighbours. I don't appreciate being late for an exam on more than one occasion because I stood for over twenty-five minutes waiting for a streetcar to trundle along on a route that's only 4 kilometres long. I don't like how it's often faster or just as fast for me to walk, even as far as Dundas or College. Spadina is a very, very poor urban service considering it runs on an expensive right-of-way and it would take a hard-core transit geek to say otherwise.

I've heard the excuses, that it's all the Transportation department's fault or whoever. I don't really care. The City is the City and surely they can talk amongst themselves and fix something after twenty years when they've hundreds of millions on a project that doesn't work. The fact that they haven't and aren't making any effort to do so is why I'm so concerned about these new projects.

You and I both know the urban context of Spadina (or St. Clair) vs. potential new lines like Eglinton or Finch West, so to draw these parallels without stating that is somewhat misleading. In fact, I would argue Spadina, while nice from a UD standpoint, is where one shouldn't have a surface LRT given the amount of trouble extremely frequent stops/stoplights, lack of POP and high pedestrian volumes creates if the purpose is strictly to minimize travel time and not serve as a neigbhourhood transit service.

I don't see how the urban context of Eglinton is significantly different from St. Clair. European cities operate light rail lines on routes much busier, shorter, and more congested than Spadina with great success and reliability. I've lived there and ridden them on a daily basis, and they literally come like clockwork. If I had a service like that on Spadina, I wouldn't have to go over to the subway and back again to Spadina just to travel north with any kind of reliability.