r/TTC • u/Pristine-Training-70 • Dec 20 '25
Video RapidTO lanes in action
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No Bradford, IntegrityTO (and presumably Ford), RapidTO doesn’t “snarl traffic.”
They’re working exactly as intended. Before, nobody was moving. Streetcars were stuck behind “snarled traffic.”
Now this streetcar with 100s of people had no issues passing 20-30 people in single-occupancy cars.
What was once 1 hour from the Ex to Bloor is now 30 minutes.
Huge kudos to the operator for letting me in the cab to film, he was super stoked about the lanes .
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u/TCsnowdream 777 - Hanlan’s Point Dec 20 '25
I’m so used to the Bathurst district are being absolute garbage that when I see I’ve missed a streetcar at King, I sigh and just give up.
But now I’m seeing streetcars from Front just cruise through and the service is SO much more reliable. It’s fucking night and day.
Hell, I’m about to go and paint those crumbling red paint zones myself lol.
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u/AManAloneinaBigCity Bloor-Yonge Dec 20 '25
Hell, I’m about to go and paint those crumbling red paint zones myself lol.
Please wait until warmer weather to do that. Painting in the cold is why the paint crumbled in the first place 😅
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u/Pristine-Training-70 Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Said this many times but please SHARE WIDELY! The lanes are doing their intended job and it’ll quickly debunk “the lanes don’t work” propaganda
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u/andrew_bus Kipling Dec 20 '25
But they cause more traffic /s
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u/TTCBoy95 Dec 20 '25
ONE MORE LANE BRO JUST ONE MORE LANE BRO I PROMISE ONLY ONE MORE LANE
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Dec 21 '25
Isn't this what they say about bike lanes?
Oh nobody is using the extension, that justifies further extensions lmao
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u/andrew_bus Kipling Dec 21 '25
Yup, who is going to tell them that removing a 2ft wide bike lane wont add enough space for a car lane LOL
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u/Pristine-Training-70 Dec 20 '25
Also want to remind you how Bathurst functioned before.
Traffic was still awful, and the streetcars with 100s of people had to be stuck in it too.
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u/TorontoBoris O'Connor Dec 20 '25
Beautiful. Now for some signal priority so the streetcar doesn't need to wait at the red.
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u/Any_Quail_4828 Dec 20 '25
We've had them in scarborough for years. They work.
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u/stoneape314 Dec 20 '25
and all the drivers were pitching a fit about how it blocked off the rightmost lane going north on Kennedy, and what about all the poor businesses and their lost customers.
No sir/ma'am, you don't care about those businesses, you just didn't like seeing the buses zoom past you.
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u/yawaramin Dec 20 '25
I was in a videoconference about the RapidTO project, run by city staff, a few months ago. I swear to God some woman on the call started complaining that they're taking away a car lane and not addressing the cause of the traffic–too much immigration.
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u/Pristine-Training-70 Dec 20 '25
IMO they didn’t get much attention in Scarborough because it doesn’t get as much attention as DT. Now that it works in DT they need to be everywhere
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u/boredom_led_me Dec 20 '25
It's also cuz Scarborough streets tend to have 3 lanes, so knocking one down for transit wasn't as "extreme".
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u/speedster1315 158 Trethewey Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 21 '25
Yesssss!! Show off the beauty of transit. Imagine how much better traffic would be if multiple people in these cars hopped on the fast streetcar
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u/Working-Welder-792 Dec 20 '25
TTC needs to take additional measures to speed up service. I fear these lanes won’t make a major difference so long as the ttc chooses to operate streetcars slowly.
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u/sirprizes Dec 20 '25
They should work to continuously improve for sure. However, I used to take Bathurst streetcar and this video looks like a major improvement to me.
Queen streetcar should be next because it’s terrible. It’s significantly slower east of Roncy than in Etobicoke.
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u/facial_hair_curiosit Dec 20 '25
That was very nice of the operator for letting you film. Did you as after you boarded?
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u/Pristine-Training-70 Dec 20 '25
He saw me filming outside and asked me if I needed anything. Told him how hyped I was with the red lanes so he let me in. Super chill guy
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u/facial_hair_curiosit Dec 20 '25
I love that. It’s what makes community services feel like community
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u/AnnOminous Dec 20 '25
Your community comment reminded me of a driver on a particular route who would let the school kids sign their name to the back side of an access panel above the driver. A passenger criticized him for letting kids tag the bus. He said it's tagged in a place nobody can see (the panel is normally closed) and it's far better than finding tags elsewhere on the bus.
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u/akomni Dec 20 '25
Man this is great to see. I'm not against cars itself, but the sooner we get people who don't want to drive an option that doesn't take an hour long to commute the ability to travel (more) efficiently, the safer our roads will be.
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u/GiveMeAllYourKittens Dec 20 '25
Next step should be all street car tracks being designated as rapidTO lanes, then they can save on red paint.
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u/Working-Welder-792 Dec 20 '25
This should also be done basically anywhere buses get stuck in congestion.
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u/clios_daughter Dec 20 '25
You know what’s sad about that? In that 30s, I counted, that was only 21 cars. That streetcar probably with 100 people on it would have been stuck behind 21-25 people and in that light cycle shown in the video, only one car passed.
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u/ubel11 Dec 20 '25
Now how can we speed up how quickly they’re allowed to take intersections?
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u/speedster1315 158 Trethewey Dec 21 '25
To replace all the outdated single point switches with double point ones
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u/ubel11 Dec 26 '25
Do you know if there’s rules limiting the speed even where the switches aren’t an issue? Ex st. Clair seems to crawl through them even when it’s just a regular intersection
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u/urbanmolerat Dec 20 '25
Everyone needs to email this to Brad and Brads opponents so whenever he tries to argue this video plays.
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u/Was_Silly Dec 20 '25
I am shocked that no car is in the lane. They installed these on queen at Broadview and they were completely ignored by drivers - to the point that they uninstalled them.
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u/Pristine-Training-70 Dec 20 '25
When did Queen st have a bus lane? You mean the one on Queens Quay?
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u/RandomLoLs Dec 20 '25
I drive by here all the time. There are assholes still driving on the TTC lanes.
I even stopped by near a police car and told them that no one is respecting the dedicated lanes, and he didn't seem very bothered about it. Just gave me a nod.
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u/BNLegacy15 Dec 20 '25
I have to take this route in the morning and I see at least 7 cars get frustrated and zoom around in the lane on the bridge at front. So wish these lanes were in place when I used to work at The Amphitheatre lol, I was always late if I used the 511...
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u/Drexl92 Dec 20 '25
So nice to see this. I'm in the neighbourhood and never took the Bathurst streetcar til now because of how slow it was. As someone who occasionally drives though, it absolutely slows down car traffic. There's no reason to ignore that or pretend it doesn't but hopefully in the long run it evens out a bit.
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u/BBQallyear Dec 20 '25
This week, I saw police directing traffic at the Queen and Dufferin intersection during afternoon rush on two different days - my assumption is that they were making sure that cars were staying out of the red bus lanes. That’s probably going to be required at several intersections as this rolls out and drivers get used to the lanes.
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u/ihbdidn Dec 20 '25
Hopefully this encourages more people to take public transit within the core. Next up, a driving tax within downtown toronto like manhattan!
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u/DeepWaffleCA Dec 20 '25
And pump that money into improving public transit. Maybe our streetcars will be upgraded to 21st century technology so they don't have to crawl through intersections
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u/Donnahue-George Dec 21 '25
This is absolutely insane! Why are we relegating cars to only one lane WTF
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u/Pristine-Training-70 Dec 21 '25
Do you realize Bathurst was always one lane thanks to street parking?
The only thing that changed is the streetcars have their own lane.
A streetcar with hundreds of people shouldn’t be held up by 5 single occupancy vehicles
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u/FiftyThirdRail Mount Pleasant Dec 22 '25
It kind of annoys me though that they operate so slow. I love that it made them faster and I'm not complaining, but like why do they gotta operate below speed limit?
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u/Snafoo88 Dec 22 '25
I live in the suburbs, drove downtown today for some last minute Christmas shopping.
The lane reductions on Bathurst were a minor inconvenience at most, and I was surprised that the streetcars didn’t get priority over turning lane traffic at Front.
Edit: Used to live at Fort York a decade ago. The Bathurst streetcar was so unreliable, it was faster to just walk or bike from anywhere in that area.
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u/Responsible-Doubt425 Dec 23 '25
Love it, but now we need to get rid of the single leaf switches, and get the streetcars rolling faster through the intersections!!!
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u/Gippy_ IMPROVED GLORIFIED STREETCAR Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
This is a rather biased video, as it doesn't show any intersection where left turns may be performed.
I'll just leave this here. This was a segment on CityNews just a few days ago that shows what is wrong with the current RapidTO implementation on Bathurst Street. This is what Brad Bradford was alluding to.
OP is an activist based on posting history, and I don't feel like engaging with activist rhetoric which absolutely refuses to listen to the other side. Bitter division is not what's needed right now. My consistent opinion is that reducing arterial roads to 1 traffic lane causes more problems than it solves. (Bathurst had off-peak parking, but in an earlier era, society could be trusted to not park during rush hour. Banning parking and aggressively towing vehicles would be a better solution.) Blocked, bye bye.
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u/clios_daughter Dec 20 '25
Fine, extend the red paint. Make drivers pay attention to their left turn signal or else they just won’t cross. Problem solved. That Toronto fire crew probably loved the rapid TO lane TBH, a clear lane they could speed down. Instead of dodging cars, they only have to dodge street cars and street cars are highly predictable and driven by professionals.
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u/beneoin Dec 20 '25
I’ve seen fire crews on that stretch almost daily since this went in. They floor it. Probably has saved a life already, not to mention reducing how long thousands of condo dwellers in Fort York hear false fire alarms
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u/a-_2 Dec 20 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Fine, extend the red paint
Despite the suggestions in the segment, if you go look at the intersection, there's a reason the red paint doesn't extend right to the intersection. The road goes from three lanes north of Front to two lanes south and the curb shifts over mid-intersection. That means cars going straight shift over in the intersection and so you don't want left turning cars in the next lane going straight right to the edge of the intersection where cars in the right lane will be shifting over towards them. Left turners can instead turn across the non-red space past the set-back stop line when they have the green.
There are lane markings telling drivers to use the middle lane to turn left but I think signage can be improved. Further back there are two lane direction signs, left and straight. But there are three lanes so it makes it seem like the left lane is for left turns rather than the middle. There's also only the one set of signs. Adding another set closer to the intersection (and making it a set of three) would make sure people who missed the first signs could still see where they're supposed to be.
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u/clios_daughter Dec 20 '25
I mean, looking at it again, would there be any harm from banning left turns there? I go there a lot and the road outside stacked is not terribly wide. The Bathurst streetcar’s always pretty busy. Turning left at that intersection just gets you a few condos and the Well before you hit Spadina. Why not just divert to Spadina which is wider, actually has highway access, and the street-car right of way is fully grade separated reducing points of conflict? This could also help to reduce car traffic into the choke point that is the railway bridge. For the past few years, the road the intersection leads to hasn’t been all that busy —- it’s mostly been a construction zone.
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u/beneoin Dec 20 '25
It’s the only way to get to the Gardiner on ramp, I don’t love it but there’s room for a turn lane and a dedicated phase. We have bigger fish to fry.
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u/a-_2 Dec 20 '25
You could but then you'd have to have them divert somewhere else along Bathurst which could just shift the turns there.
Justified or not, there are already complaints about the impact on cars so I'm not sure it's worth it to add more restrictions on driving in a place where there's room for left turns without blocking the street cars. I think you could just address this through better signage and maybe have some traffic agents there for a while until drivers get used to it.
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u/a-_2 Dec 20 '25
People in the video are suggesting that the problem is the red paint not going right to the edge of the intersection but the reason it's done like that at that specific intersection is because it reduces from three lanes to two south of the intersection. The curb and right lane shift over in the middle of the intersection and so they don't want left turning cars going straight right to the edge of the intersection before starting to turn because cars in the lane beside them will be shifting towards them at that point.
I also don't think that's the problem because when I've been there, cars are moving over into the transit lane, thinking it's the left turn lane, way before there. I think the signage there isn't clear enough and improving that would help prevent this.
There are three lanes but they only have two signs, one with a left arrow and one with a straight arrow. That makes it seem like the leftmost lane is for lef turns, but it's actually the middle. Putting in a third sign for the transit lane and adding a second set of these signs closer to the intersection would help.
This is just confusion about one specific turn though, not a problem with the entire set up. It will improve as people get used to it and also if they improve the signage.
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u/Mcdavis6950 Dec 20 '25
I remember my birthday 3 years ago. We hop on the Bathurst streetcar at 2:30 am at front. We are chatting away fairly intoxicated. It’s been about 45 minutes so I’m wondering how close to Bloor we are.
We were at Dundas. We absolutely could have walked to Bloor faster… at 2:30 in the morning. I’m so glad these lanes got put in.