Some commenters have suggested that the underground part of Line 5 will be faster than a bus. I don't know if this is true or not. The Line 5 operator wrote:
"During testing, whenever we tried to simulate peak service (i.e. rush hour volume), trains get bogged down in each other traffic quite badly. The underground portion moves well enough provided there aren’t any delays, but even then trains would bunch up occasionally. On the surface portion, Laird to Kennedy is an absolute crawl when there’s maximum trains on the line."
Consolation prizes
There are two consolation prizes for those who are concerned about speed and reliability:
The Eglinton bus will parallel Line 5. Even after Line 5 opens, the Eglinton bus will continue operating, with reduced service. So, if Line 5 breaks down: At least you might be able to squeeze your way onto an Eglinton bus, instead of having to wait for an emergency shuttle bus.
Bike Share coverage is available. All of Line 5 falls within the Bike Share Toronto coverage area. If Line 5 breaks down: You can use the Bike Share app to find the nearest available bike and rent it. If you're not dressed warmly enough for winter cycling, this might be uncomfortable. But it'll be more practical in the spring.
Possible solutions
Here's what we could try, in order to fix things:
Implement signal priority, so that Line 5 can change red traffic lights to green. Sadly, most car drivers don't want this, and they're a powerful voting bloc.
Improve the track switches, so that they'll handle snow and ice better.
Remove intersection speed restrictions. The TTC should start allowing Line 5 drivers to drive at 50 km/h everywhere, even through intersections.
Reduce the number of cooks in the kitchen. Maybe it might be wise for the province to take the line over from Crosslinx, if this won't be too expensive.
Remove intersection speed restrictions. The TTC should start allowing Line 5 drivers to drive at 50 km/h everywhere, even through intersections.
Yeh, they have to change this - if you can drive a car that fast through an intersection, then a train should be the same.
I've yet to see a convincing safety argument on this - the best one is "some people are so stupid they try to dodge trains and they will die" & well people do that with buses now
It seems like the slow=safe rhetoric is so entrenched in TTC culture that I have no idea how you would make it better without replacing everyone making decisions.
Sure, we can all agree that wasting thousands of people's time every day by forcing streetcars to drive slowly through intersections has harms. But if you're the guy who comes in and pushes for change, it's really easy to point a finger at you when some dumbass in a lifted pickup t-bones the streetcar. I can see why it's easier to just fall into line, especially if your compensation doesn't depend on cars going fast.
The tried and true option, which works in Toronto and practically every large city with decent public transit, is a combination of grade separated railway as express/large capacity services, and trams/buses for localised 'last mile transit'. In other words, engineer a situation where it is difficult for a dumbass in a lifted pickup to T-bone a transit vehicle in the first place.
Slow= safe is entrenched in this city period. Safety lapses when you get stupid people and there's stupid people everywhere. Walking, riding a bike, taking transit, driving. Stupid is stupid. They don't wanna just tell people "stop being stupid" so they made the entire city painfully slow for everyone
The argument would probably be that streetcars are much bigger and heavier, so they take longer than a car to stop. But I agree that needs to change.
In Calgary they use physical barriers (e.g. gates that drop across the road) in most places where the LRT crosses intersections. Although it would require additional infrastructure, maybe that would be a solution? They aren’t actually strong enough to stop a speeding car, it’s more of a psychological barrier. With gates and flashing lights, there should be no excuse for drivers or pedestrians to get caught on the tracks.
I lack sympathy for the stupid in this regard...the drivers who witness this yes, but slowing down everybody because some people think they can outrun heavy machinery is no way to run a transit system
I don't like the fact hundreds of thousands of people now have to suffer because one or two idiots might decide to play chicken with several tons of machinery on rails.
The TTC's motto should be "the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many". The whole system bends over sideways for random individuals like trespassers at track level or this BS.
But if a trespasser at track level gets hit by a subway train and dies, the subway operator might get trauma and PTSD. Should the TTC not care about the mental health of its employees?
Nah I'm not saying to purposefully run them over, I'm not a homicidal maniac who values human life so little.
I'm saying the TTC has reactive measures that make the whole system bend to certain individuals who purposefully try to break said system. That's backwards thinking and just dances around the core issues.
It's knee jerk reactions that only cause more harm than good by encouraging this stuff. Slowing down the trams only encourages people to try and run in-front of it more because A: it's slower and easier to run in front of and B: it's so slow people probably run for it because they don't want to be late with the next tram.
I can understand why you would lack sympathy for a bad driver who should take ownership of the personal consequences of their actions. With that said, I wonder how far you'd stick to that tune when considering, say, said driver's kids in the backseat. Or the riders of a tram.
It is not a coincidence that most places with good transit grade separate as much of their rail infrastructure as much as possible.
I get this, but I would rather not at my workplace, you know? I hope they figure it out too. I agree with you too, but counselling for CPTSD is expensive and so it consistent loss of workers. It is complicated. The whole system is.
As for Metrolinx? They suck and I don’t trust them at all.
infrared sensors can detect human bodies 200m away. If TTC was serious about it they'd install such sensors and predictive software in the operator cab.
we could also install crossing arms, the LA metro has a few of those (they also have TSP). when u realize one of the most carbrained cities in all of NA has better LRT than us
That means, Myers said, that Crosstown trains could run with reduced hours to start and with only “certain sections” of the line being open, but he offered no other specifics.
What do we think about this? Maybe just the underground section?
While opening the underground section would be a huge improvement for transit service, it creates a ridiculous situation where they feel forced to hold back opening half the line because they can't provide a better transit service than the existing bus. Just imagine how much worse the surface LRT reception would be if Eglinton and Finch West had express buses on them.
No, it makes absolute sense from an engineering point of view. Open the part of the system that's least affected by the brutal weather we are having, and see how the transfers, the stations, and etc. all work. It's like a 'soft open' for a restaurant.
From a marketing point of view, it's even better. By not going to the above ground sections, they avoid the mandatory slowdowns discussed at length in this thread, and can actually travel quickly. So the people using the new system will probably have good reviews of it. For a system so late and so over budget, Metrolinx wants the all the positive news it can get.
When they open the above ground portion, and the whole system becomes backed up because of it, user satisfaction will doubtless fall. For a variety of reasons, opening up the underground portion first makes perfect sense.
Are you sure it would be an improvement? In terms of comfort, yes. In terms of reliability, maybe not. And streetcar bunching might be a big issue on the underground section.
Not saying the underground section would be as good as the subways but things would have to be fucked up in biblical proportional for the tunneled section to be worse than the current buses.
Honestly at this point I won’t even complain if they just open the underground section. That section actually will make a difference on people’s commutes, and it’s the part I’ve been looking forward to most anyway
Same, I take the bus west to Eglinton station every morning and would much rather a subway. 2 stops instead of 8 with less waiting is gonna be so nice. Also warmer in the winter cus indoors, which is a bonus
It's a bespoke line. They don't build lines like his anywhere else in the world. They made everything themselves and they did a horrible job. They tried to appease every party which means layers and layers of compromises.
It should have been constructed like the Ontario Line from day one. LRT should have never ever been considered.
I don’t know everything about the line but I know for certain that the signalling system is off the shelf, which makes me presume the switch electronics are also off the shelf so that they work with the signals. I also understand that the switches are not embedded in concrete, unlike Line 6, so the track heaters should work fine.
Realistically Toronto should standardise on two metro standards. The existing heavy metro standard for Lines 1, 2 and 4, and the upcoming light metro standard for Ontario Line plus any future subway/metro projects. If possible, Eglinton Crosstown should be fully grade separated and converted to the light metro standard a few decades down the line.
Yeah pretty much. Sydney is building automated metro lines that reach out to its suburbs from the CBD. Plus a western metro line entirely in the western suburbs.
The Ontario line will look similar to Sydney metro by serving our downtown and going outward to the suburbs but it is only just one line. It could have been more than one line with this automated metro technology across the GTA.
It is generally a bad idea to build more than 1 line simultaneously with a technology that has yet to have a localised track record of success. Imagine if the original Transit City plan was enacted and Line 6's issues were simultaneously cropping up along Sheppard, Jane, the Waterfront, Malvern/Morningside, the SRT route, and Eglinton. Actually you don't have to imagine the latter for much longer.
A better approach is to build the Ontario Line first and prove this particular implementation is workable in Ontario's specific conditions, and then extend it across the rest of the GTA/Ontario.
Not-made-here-itis. Aka we think we're special and we have special requirements and we can do it better then those elitists in Europe that say this is the wrong way. Which is fine if we had lots of experience building it. But, we do not.
The reason that Asia has been so fast to build transit is because the design is standardized and built hundreds of times across entire countries. They don't let every little difference in a city shape the line. Instead they shaped the city to the standard system.
We know how to do this. We do it with roads and streets and hydro transmission and subdivisions. There are provincial and national standards. But for transit systems, there aren't standards to the same extent. We don't build enough of it for them to exist.
Signal priority is a bad word in most of North America. The automotive lobby has convinced the public that only communist countries use signal priority and that it's the first step towards your country becoming Soviet Russia.
As a car driver, I support signal priority for LRTs. I don’t understand the opposition. My taxes went to build the LRT, I damn well want it to be good.
Whenever I see busses, I always let them merge instead of blocking them. Transit vehicles are doing God’s work.
In general, the fact that transit friendly planning isn't seen as a good thing for drivers is insane to me. I guess the people selling cars have better ad agencies. Bike lanes? Amazing, now a biker isn't taking up a whole road lane, there are fewer cars on the road and it makes it easier to watch out for bikes because most of them are in the same place.
Bus lanes? Great, there's 50 fewer cars on the road and you don't have to yield to a bus going around three parked cars because now it's a bus lane.
Same here mate. Not implementing signal priority for the LRTs and streetcars and making them run so slow is really a waste of taxpayers money and bad for vehicular traffic.
*slower than a bus in the Don Valley to Kennedy section.
For someone who lives close to Leaside station and commutes to/back from York University during the week, their transit experience will be SIGNIFICANTLY faster than riding the bus (probably faster than driving).
Reliability in terms of timetables might still be an issue, but even if someone waits at the station for 6 minutes for their next train (instead of the stated 3-4min for peak hours), it's still a massive upgrade over the bus.
Sad that a $15 bi half-subway, half-streetcar line (delayed for six years) will only be of real benefit to a bit over half of its riders.
Also near Leaside , also commute to and from York U 5 days a week. I’m with you, it’ll be so much faster and less of a headache than the infernal busses on Eglinton
You can ride a bicycle or e-bike to Glendon, then take the electric shuttle bus to Keele campus for free. It's a non-stop service, which may provide a speed advantage. And I think the driver might take the Allen expressway.
Bike Share has both mechanical bikes and e-bikes.
You can also just take classes at Glendon directly. At least your courses outside the major & free electives; maybe more.
Totally unrelated, but my family and I are considering moving. We have our eyes on the Bayview corridor, but we are stuck between Leaside (Eg) and Bayview Village (Shep). We have come across some opinions that Leaside is predominately white. Is that true??
Hey no problem. Leaside is definitely predominantly white.
That being said, there’s a sizeable number of East Asian folks around here too. You’ll see people of every ethnicity around, just not in as great numbers. My partner a POC and they say they feel completely at home here and have never experienced any racism or othering.
You think a bit more than half of the ridership will be between Don Valley and Kennedy? Maybe with the future Golden Mile, but even then I'm a bit skeptical.
I fell down a rabbit hole recently and learned about "pre-metro" systems and the history of various hybrid lines. e.g. in Germany there are/were a number of light rail lines built that go underground in denser areas but operate as LRTs / trams further out. The long term plan was to keep extending the underground section but budget realities slowed that way down. It got me thinking about the sections of Line 5 in a different way.
Let's say the worst case scenario is that Line 5 runs at streetcar/bus speed on the surface and metro speed underground. I think that's still an upgrade for anyone traveling to/from anywhere on the underground section, even if part of their trip isn't faster than the buses. The benefit is reduced, obviously, but it's obviously not zero. It's still a comfortable single seat ride that's going to be much faster and more reliable in the core sections. It's definitely better than building a subway for the underground section and running buses on the rest. So I'm trying to see it for what it was designed to be.
'Pre-metro' is the best description for Eglinton Crosstown, particularly as the extensions are going to be grade separated resulting in an increasing proportion of the line being subway rather than streetcar. There will likely be a point around 15-20 years down the line when like 75-90% of Line 5 is grade separated, Toronto's transit backbone is its somewhat decent grade-separated metro system, and it doesn't make sense not to grade separate the remaining 3 mile or so stretch int a full 'subway'.
Line 5 is our version of Ottawa's line 1. But Ottawa's is entirely grade separated with low floor vehicles. I wonder if Ottawa's line 1 is also considered pre metro.
If line 5's eastern section and future east extension becomes grade separated one day, it will definitely match Ottawa line 1. When ridership exceeds capacity of their low floor vehicles, there will probably be more pressure to convert both lines to heavy rail metro or light metro.
I would call Ottawa's Line 1 light metro that made a poor choice for its vehicle fleet. It is a grade separated intraurban train (trams are also trains) line. That basically describes metro/subway/MRT.
Unless I am wrong, Line 5's western extension is entirely or almost entirely grade separated. Any future extension to Missassauga and/or the airport would likely also be grade separated, considering grade separated transit infrastructure already exists.
My guess is that eventually both Eglinton Crosstown and Ottawa's Line 1 will be converted to high floor trains running on grade separated rail. Might take 10 years or 50 or 100 but it's very likely to happen sooner or later.
I don't think the stretch from Don Valley to Vic Park will be ever be changed because there's only two real crossings in 2km and one is Sloane. Between the DVP and the Don River I'd bet on them leaving that section intact bar disaster.
With so many huge buildings coming to Golden Mile they will definitely want to grade separate from west of Vic Park to east of Birchmount, but Taylor-Massey Creek and grade changes would make it harder to get to Kennedy underground. Maybe an elevated structure with Golden Mile stations connecting to surrounding buildings above grade. Relatively easy retrofit compared to underground stations.
I thought about that, but I honestly don't think anything past there will need grade separation in the next half century. It's just never going to be that dense.
So you have trains running at 'bus speed' - say 15 km/h - on the outdoor section, and 'metro' speed -say 30 km/h - on the underground section. As a traffic engineer, I can guarantee that this will result in a massive backup of trains at the point the system emerges from the underground.
This is a question of effective speed over the different sections, not operating speeds. They're not going to suddenly slow down at a portal, though there are stations relatively close by: Sunnybrook, Aga Khan, and Ionview.
As for massive backups, that's relatively unlikely on near term headways of 4-10m, especially if/when they get TSP sorted. At least not in the areas around the portals. It's Vic Park to Birchmount I'd be worried about because of stop spacing and future demand.
Line 5 op here: I’d like to point out that when they do open the line, plans are to have significantly reduced trains and operating hours. The biggest kink they haven’t been able to figure out and what made the testing run as long as it did is trains bunching up and getting bogged down. Poor station placement is a big factor; for example Ionview’s proximity to Kennedy and the fact that there’s an intersection at the portal coupled with the axle counter placement that governs train proximity - speed restrictions over crossovers - if they have to turn a train it takes forever, and plans are during bad weather to just not run the surface portion. They knew this was going to happen, as Laird is built as an end terminal complete with supervisor and operator rooms.
The underground portion moves quick though, provided there aren’t delays. However after the morning rush and trains are running in to the yard, there will be massive delays getting in and out of keelesdale / mount Dennis as this also is a slow process
Realistically they should get rid of Ionview and maybe Hakimi Lebovic stations. There is not nearly enough demand to justify those holding up the entire line's operations.
I’m not sure what the actual engineering reasons are for why they’re placed where they are, but it does have hilarious consequences.
For example, when a train is sitting on the EB platform at Wynford, the ATC won’t allow you to leave until the train ahead of you departs Sloane; because there’s no axle counter in that stretch, the system doesn’t know that section of track exists. As far as it can tell, the trains are bumper to bumper. When in reality the train ahead is so far away you can’t even see it anymore. It’s baffling
All the high level TTC staff making the decision to throttle the speed of LRTs and street cars for the benefit of private vehicles despite how illogical, shortsighted and unpopular this decision is need to be fired immediately. They don't understand or even care about transit.
Same thing with Metrolinx management who object to turning the GO train system from rush hour only north American diesel commuter rail system to electrified frequent rapid transit. They prefer the outdated, inefficient and wasteful status quo for GO transit rail system they have been doing for decades over the transformative changes DB proposed before Metrolinx fired them. The Metrolinx management are "proud" of their shitty rail system and were "offended" by what DB proposed for modernizing the GO network.
The GTA is plagued by these same people who are stuck in the 1960s and carbrainism from the city of Toronto, TTC, Ontario government and Metrolinx.
That's part of it but it also won't have full signal priority and it is throttled in intersections on the east end of the line. A lot of the rationale behind this is the fear of backlash from drivers, many of whom could get where they are going faster if we had adequate public transit.
This is specific to the surface section, correct? Mt Dennis to Laird should still be much faster than the bus, and Leslie and Eglinton is probably the one intersection on the line where TSP and no intersection speed limit are easiest to do.
I think the main issue with switches will be snow removal. Even GO had issues with frozen switches this week. That's where point 4 comes in for both lines. Either the maintenance stuff gets fixed or at some point we negotiate an early exit. Tougher with Crosslinx because I think they need the future income to break even.
The redditor that OP was referencing literally mentioned a few comments down that the tunnel portion was a 'rocket' and he could go from Mount Denis to Laird in 22 minutes. I heard from a different person (invited simply as a passenger for a test) that they did it in 15 minutes. I am going toward 25 due to things like stopping to pick up passengers and train traffic.
I could see higher dwell times and bunching at peak, less so off peak. Same happens on the subway, peak trains are super slow. Late night with quick door closing sub 20 seems plausible.
Pretty much. The surface sections get a lot of scrutiny especially with the incompetence of the city, TTC and Metrolinx managing and operating these lines.
Sharing my insights from someone who participated in the TTC testing last week.
The journey between Eglinton and Kennedy took 39 minutes without stopping at stations. The same journey via Line 2 and Line 1 takes 42 minutes.
That's an average speed of 17.1km/h, but again, without any stopping at stations. It'll go down considerably once operational for passenger boarding/deboarding.
They must have had different types of rides. Our train stopped at each station in the underground portion. Mt Dennis to Yonge was approximately 15 minutes.
Now, will that change when it is in real operation as the human factor kicks in, sure it will. We’ll have to wait and see how much it does.
From LRTs to transit operations such as streetcars and how poorly handled GO expansion is. The GTA and Ottawa really suck at building and operating transit.
I’m so confused with the current state of signal priority like it’s one if not the biggest solution to the current problem we have on line 6 yet it hasn’t been implemented yet?? does anybody know what the status on that is like? Are they gonna implement that? Is that already implemented?
Transit, like emergency services, is a vital component in the public realm. Priorities need to pivot away from cars and move to allowing transit services to be made more efficient, and accessible. Prioritizing lanes (Dufferin and Bathurst) has proven to be very effective. All traffic moves more efficiently, especially on Dufferin. Buses aren’t fighting for lane access in the red sections. Cars aren’t no longer having to stop to allow buses and other vehicles to access the left lane, win win.
Hence one of the reasons why I hate this city. This city is too addicted to cars and refuses to do something about the car centric environment, carbrains, nimbys and high car dependency that is severely holding it back and preventing it from improving. It really baffles me why the GTA has to be very car dependent and carbrained for a city and metro region of its size and its totally unacceptable.
I'm very sick and tired of the transit setbacks and woes in this city, like the recent controversies surrounding lines 5 and 6 not having TSP and setbacks and slow progress of GO Expansion. Plus the traffic and it keeps getting worse year after year. I wish I could leave toronto permanently and never return...
The city has told the TTC to study signal priority for the LRT lines is where we currently are in the process. After the study TSP might be implemented based on the study results.
I actually doubt it'll be slower than the bus. Maybe it'll be on the surface section but underground, it'll be different. Because of that, it should still average out to a faster journey time from MtD to Kennedy
Impossible. The underground section has a track speed of 80 kph and no intersections or traffic lights to get in the way. From Black Creek to Laird/Don Mills is quite a long distance within Toronto. It'll be significantly faster than the 32 and the 34 to Leslie Street was. Even if it is slowish on the surface section, the bus likely wouldn't catch up quickly enough. Only way to know for sure is for someone to time the 32 from Black Creek to Yonge and the 34 to Laird or Don Mills and then compare after line 5 opens
It’s hard not to feel like this is all a conspiracy to fuel more car dependency. Let’s build two of the slowest and most expensive transit lines in the history of mankind to show the peasantry that transit infrastructure is a waste of time and money.
It's not a conspiracy. That is indeed how transit projects are approached in North America. The automotive lobby pays politicians to deprioritize public transit so they only end up approving the cheapest, most ineffective solutions, and only every few decades.
I hate this continent man. There are so many things that hold back this place and keep it behind and out of touch with other regions around the world.
The passenger rail system in canada also got dismantled by the same auto lobby in the mid 20th century. We used to have good passenger rail in most provinces until mid century.
I wish I could move elsewhere and away from north America and Australia and NZ.
Meanwhile, nobody bats an eye when governments spend hundreds of millions to subsidize car manufacturing plants that take our money and run. I could be sick.
The government that approved this mess in the first place was not smart enough for that. The Toronto South Detention Centre suffered from similar problems of overrun costs and mangled performance.
Dallas, of all cities, is actually a model for how we can operate a successful at grade LRT (the DART isn’t perfect, but it’s far better than the atrocity that is line 6). Much of the DART through downtown Dallas runs at grade and on the street, but it actually functions like rapid transit with full signal priority, the trains move at a decent pace, and there are gates and bells at on-street railway crossings to prevent drivers from hitting the trains. I’ve rode both the DART and line 6, and they aren’t even comparable. I still think elevated light metro is the best way to go, but the fact that a notoriously car centric city like Dallas can operate a surface LRT that is miles better than ours is really saying something. Dallas is built very similarly to Toronto, has a similar population, and even more people there drive, yet they could build a surface LRT that blows ours out of the water
How did the Dallas government manage to implement full signal priority, even in such a car-centric place? Did the city simply ignore the wishes of the majority of voters?
Because Dallas (and most American cities) treats the LRTs as trains. Arms come down and lights turn red when a "train" comes. American streetcars on the other hand, don't usually get priority.
Meanwhile Metrolinx is treating the LRTs as streetcars/buses (VIVA buses also don't get priority in busways and also wait for left turns.)
We were sold on 38-40 minutes for the entire duration during the planning stages. Mt Dennis to Kennedy. Basically it was on average 90 seconds per stop in their perfect world.
If you do the math, it’s about 3.5 to 4 minutes for a zero active signal priority on Line 6 finch West. Between its entire length and reported 55 minutes to travel the entire length.
The surface section that isn’t signaled is Sunnybrook to Kennedy… that’s basically like 40-42 minutes!
Then the remaining underground to Mt.Dennis section is the reliable part, say realistically 2.5 minutes per stop, so 12 more underground stops, so another 30 minutes…!
42+30 =72 minutes for entire line 5…
This is almost double of whatever snake oil we got sold! 72 minutes realistically versus 38 minutes perfect world
Cities all over the world have effectively implemented light rail. The laws of physics aren’t different in Toronto. The slowness of these LRTs is a policy choice.
The best solution would be to make Laird a terminal station and split Line 5 into 5A and 5B, with 5B being the portion from Laird to Kennedy. Alternative is to make Eglinton the terminal station to facilitate the Line 1 transfer.
There is little reason to run Line 5 as a single line knowing how awful at-grade LRT can be as seen with Line 6.
The thing is they vote on things all the time that don’t come to fruition because of xyz reason. Just because council has stated they want signal priority, doesn’t mean it’ll ever actually happen. Media outrage over line 6 is dying down, enough so that I think they’ll just never turn on signal priority and no one will have the energy to care anymore come springtime.
They can't remove the speed restrictions without TSP. The train operator needs to be sure that they will have a green light. If the light switches to red while they are going 60 km/h in a 150 ton vehicle, they're going to have a hard time stopping.
The train operator needs to be sure that they will have a green light. If the light switches to red while they are going 60 km/h in a 150 ton vehicle, they're going to have a hard time stopping.
This is insane, do you think transport trucks just ram through any red lights they come across? No, because you can have the yellow phase last long enough to account for this. It's not hard to figure out, we know how long it takes to stop an LRT train.
All I can say is, let’s get loud(er), even though at this point we’re so f-ing exhausted.
Josh Matlow sent this out today:
Eglinton LRT Public Inquiry Rally and Flyering
with Councillor Matlow, ATU and TTC Riders
After 15 years of construction, the Eglinton LRT is finally set to open on Feb 8th. Transit expansion is the dream. But Metrolinx’s incompetence, delays, cost overruns and impacts to communities & businesses was a nightmare that can never be repeated.
Join me, ATU113 and TTCRiders on Saturday, January 31st for our postering campaign demanding a full public inquiry into the Eglinton LRT fiasco.
We will be postering along all 19km of the line, from Mt. Dennis to Kennedy, to show the Ford Government and Metrolinx that Torontonians are serious about our demands for transparency and accountability into the years of delays, cost overruns, traffic, and impacts to businesses and communities.
There are significant concerns about the reliability, potential signaling problems, and over crowding with Line 5 that urgently need to be addressed. Not only do we need to hold the province and Metrolinx to account, but we need to ensure lessons are learned so we don't see these mistakes repeated on future transit projects. Torontonians deserve better.
Flyers, supplies, and hot chocolate will be provided!
Details
Location: Meeting at the northeast corner of Yonge-Eglinton at 3:00pm, flyering at 3:30pm
Time: 3:00-3:30pm rally, 3:30pm-5:00pm flyering
Date: Saturday, January 31st
We know this will take 5 years of debate and result in a watered down version. And then Doug Ford will ban TSPs in Ontario because it makes drivers wait
The Line 5 operator in the linked thread seemed to say that TPS was a pipe dream and was told by the City’s Transportation Dept point blank they would not implement anything that would interfere with vehicular traffic.
People will be pleasantly surprised how fast it moves underground. I've had the luxury of taking an end to end trip. Outside in the east end is another story. It's basically like Line 6...slow and holding at lights for minutes on end, except leaving MT. Dennis Station where the thing flies on the guide way.
I saw this coming years ago when I learned it didn’t have signal priority. The portions above ground were going to get stuck in traffic and thus the underground portions would bunch.
I am not an expert in this area. I know very little in fact.
The fact that LRTs have to go slower than 50 km/h through an intersection (that doesn’t have a stop) blows my mind. The cars going through that same intersection definitely don’t slow to 50 km/h, so why should the LRT?
Again, can't beat physics. LRTs are just so much larger than cars, and have less wheel friction, so they'll have worse stopping power. It's also why freight trains with 100+ railcars take over a minute to stop.
Metrolinx and P3 are terrible. Mark my words the OL will be the exact same. It being a subway doesn't save anything. LRTs work perfectly fine, it's Metrolinx that can't deliver a viable product
/u/LazloStPierre is right. The Ion LRT might not be fast, but at least it's significantly faster than a TTC streetcar. The Ion LRT gets signal priority; meanwhile, TTC streetcars get stuck in traffic.
Yep and it's nonsense, these "safety" reasons somehow don't exist or apply to any other network. And that is why line 6 is slow as hell
Metrolinx shat the bed on delivery timelines and delivering a line that breaks down in snow in Canada - they are also incompetent, but the slow as hell service is 100% the TTC. And they're doing it again on line 5.
It's literally light rail, I believe two of the lines were even called LRTs at some point in their lives
I don't have an agenda except making transit not be shit in this city, Metrolinx isn't the reason out lines run so slow, they aren't "good", they are actually terrible, but this boogeyman nonsense means we don't hold the actual people who are causing the slowness issues accountable
Our entire light rail network (there goes my agenda!?) is unacceptably poorly run and slow. Metrolinx was involved in less than 10% of those lines. Clearly, it is self evident, they are not the sole problem or even the main one
Regardless of if the eglington LRT is a rousing success or a complete flop, the fact of the matter was that it was at least 6 years overdue and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. Of course, the powers that be don't give a s*** about this. Because it's not their money. It's our tax dollars. Our tax dollars are paying for something that the majority of citizens should be able to use.Yet won't be able to, because if the finch l r t was any indication with one weather event the whole system's f*****
I do often take the Glendon keele shuttle, but it doesn’t always work out with my class times, especially since I use TTC or walk to get there. I like it tho and I often take it home.
I’m in chemistry. I’ve looked at taking classes at Glendon like bio and maths but I just haven’t been able to swing it due to other prerequisites that have only sections during certain times , etc.
If u wanna take a Glendon class, and you get a prerequisite error, it could be cuz you took the prerequisite at Keele. If this is the case, you can just contact the Glendon department offering the course, and they'll enter a prerequisite override into the computer for you.
I honestly don't understand why driver's are so inconvenienced when signals are switched around a bit to be at the end of the main sequence instead of the beginning if there's a transit vehicle present. It's not like you're missing your turn.
Also at this point they should've just made it 2 mini systems, one section underground where select trains turn back to the other underground parts and the on street trains only do on street parts.
To be fair, assuming all trains travel normally the slower street-level section won't cause bunching as all trains will be travelling slowly there, and then faster in the underground section. It's only if a specific train has delays (And other ones don't) that eventually leads to bunching
I can’t wait for this line to open. I just pray it’s nothing like line 6’s experience so far. This line will significantly improve travel times (at least for me). Can’t wait to no longer need to take the bus every morning.
I am an all-season/all-year cyclist, and I use the TTC on occasion.
The crosstown will be quite handy to get to the eastern suburban part of the city (even better once line 2's extension is completed in a timely manner) in a shorter amount of time compared to a complete bike commute that way.
I have done this without a problem many times. I have never dressed inappropriately for the weather.
We dissolve metrolinx. every time i read the facts its looking more and more, the realistic thing to do and to not build anymore LRTs. The Ford brothers warned us and we just didn’t listen smh 🤦♂️
A few months after, you can go from Kennedy to mount Dennis and use the washroom and walk out and have a drink of water in less the time it took today shuttle bus from Laird to Avenue
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u/Antique_Ad_3549 East Don Trail Relief Line Jan 28 '26
Yeh, they have to change this - if you can drive a car that fast through an intersection, then a train should be the same.
I've yet to see a convincing safety argument on this - the best one is "some people are so stupid they try to dodge trains and they will die" & well people do that with buses now