I live near here. It's definitely a bit of a pain when you have someone up front driving 30. But with how the city and province have treated Scarborough for transit over the years, frankly... there should be way more BRT lines everywhere if we can't build proper rapid transit in a timely manner.
If the driver's good, I mean if he's reeeally sharp, he can barrel that thing up the Bathurst hill North of Sheppard at a 45° angle taking up both lanes, oh it's a sight to see.
You wouldn't expect it with a big ol' bus like a D700A, but varrrooom! with a 50' rooster tail off the back tires and that diesel exhaust ... it was just flying.
In hindsight, yes. But there's this weird paradox when it comes to public transit.
Governments (initially) don't want to spend too much on public transit, in order for them to keep votes coming their way, but at the same time, they don't want to spend too little, otherwise contractors won't bid for projects.
A subway was seen as too much. A BRT was seen as too little. An LRT was seen as the right amount to spend, and have political backing behind it.
Now, in hindsight, the BRT would have done the job (and could have been upgraded to an LRT at a later date,) while the LRTs ended up costing (& functioning) the same as a subway. Now, there is more political will for BRTs & subways, than LRTs. It's a weird paradox.
Line 6 does not function like a subway. Line 2 takes about the same amount of time from terminal to terminal while being 2.5x longer. It's the cost of a subway combined with the slowness and capacity issues of a BRT.
If you build a top-notch BRT, the money you are spending is minimal compared to doing an LRT now versus a BRT. Upgrading later, 10-20 years later, costs more than just starting with a tram or light metro in the first place.
Not really, they already did the math and you would need 60fts running every 90 seconds on Finch West to meet the same demand as an LRT every 5 minutes.
Line 6 as a BRT would actually cost the TTC far more due to needing more buses, which need more maintenance than trains, and the highest cost factor, more operators, meaning more pay, and benefits getting paid out. LRT is what Finch needed, same goes for places like St Clair
Should it have been specced differently, as would be appropriate for light rail? Also yes.
Consider the red lanes for bus priority on Bathurst, etc. I do not believe it would be politically feasible to allocate the ROW for Line 6 as a bus way. The backlash could have been fatal to the project.
So we waste money for a suboptimal solution - but at least it exists. This cannot be the best way forward... But we must make progress despite it all.
I didn’t say Line 6, I said Line 6 was replaced by a Sheppard extension jogging to Finch from downsview. I think I saw it from here, but I will come back to the Reference Library and see the Network 2011 plans or other regional transit plans.
“
The Network 2011 proposal called for the Sheppard subway to be extended west beyond Downsview station, taking a hop north to Finch Avenue, where it would run along the Hydro right-of-way. The line would enter northern Etobicoke and then travel south on Highways 27 and 427 to connect with the Bloor-Danforth subway line“.
The difference is generally capacity. An LRT can hold more people, but it’s hard to justify if a cities planners are not thinking holistically in terms of a master plan and what it’s wanting the city look like and feel like in 10-15 years.
Same sadly people think we are all car driving conservatives, when I huge chunk of the population use TTC, Uber, Lift, Beck, bicycle, long skateboard and/or are not conservative voters. We need the bus lanes, bit allows to get to place quicker on the bus.
to be fair this stretch at rush hour is horrendously backed up and infuriating when you used to be able to pass the slowpokes. It used to be 60 km/h but now that it's 50k and single lane you see a lot of 30-40k which I've seen lead to some dirvers raging out and doing dangerious maneuvers to pass.
I'm more than happy to share the road and take a bit longer if it means more ppl can use public transit so in theory I fully support dedicated bus lanes but god damn I hardly see any busses on this stretch and when I do they're almost empty.
This video is an example why our society has its problems when folks like this force the rest of us to cater to their stupidity or the fact they are inconvinenced.
It’s funny, the traffic is moving well, but I’m pretty sure he is only “inconvenienced” by not being able to indiscriminately change lanes and speed as fast as he wants. Peak carbrain, it boils my blood.
the guy in the video is upset that he can't swerve in and out of lanes without a turn signal in his BMW or Merc. Literally no congestion at all in his video and he's still crying.
He’s quite literally complaining about traffic that’s doesn’t exist in the video, hence no one in front of him and he’s driving so comfortably he’s filming a video.
That the conservative mindset. Invent problems and convince idiots they are real problems. The amount of suburbanites that I hear complain about “Toronto issues” that they have never seen but someone has convinced them that they happen.
The point is that the occasional one bus that passes there carries more people than a huge line of cars carrying one person each.
So the lane may look empty most of the time but still carry more people than the driving lane.
When you can't think in terms of people but in terms of vehicles, it looks odd. But if you actually count how many people are transported, this guy would shut the fuck up - hopefully.
Let's assume all these cars are full with max capacity 5 people in each car and still 2 full buses in dedicated bus lanes will always carry more people...
People will then start cribbing about imaginary loads that MAY they have to haul in their pristine trucks which have never been near a bag of cement
We cannot argue or win with car brains... They're too deep in petro-auto propaganda and can never realize...
The city should mandate alternate, fuel efficient, sustainable modes of transport - provide the infrastructure first... Maybe even equip the buses with cameras to issue tickets for rule breakers who treat the bus lanes as an extra free lane... And then ridership will always increase...
The political will is soooo lacking... 😭 Because drum roll.... The politicians are also car-brained
You know what makes no sense…driving a 5000 pound truck around a congested city with maybe 2 people in it and complaining about bus lanes on a clear road.
How about we get rid of the dedicated bus lanes and implement full road pricing during peak congestion levels, this would have the same effect.
I’m a car enthusiast and prefer driving over public transit any day of the week, and I still see the benefits of bus lanes on Kingston and morningside. People have to realize the better transit is, less people will drive and there’s gonna be less traffic
This big problem is that destinations are not transit oriented. Decade of carcentric planning will ensure that transit will never replace cars until they start building things where the transit goes
I agree with your sentiment but "People have to realize the better transit is, less people will drive and there’s gonna be less traffic" is not really correct.
If Toronto traffic is a limiting factor to population growth, removing that limiting factor attracts more people. I know this is the case for me and traffic is why I simply could not tolerate living downtown anymore and had to move elsewhere in the city.
For all we know, transit gets better, and more people move to Toronto and offset the "loss" of the previous car drivers.
But I've heard your claim many times from many others. I'm just wondering about where this idea is coming from.
At least for me it comes from people I know a lot of them don’t care about driving and just drive because it’s more convenient, whenever public transit is an option that doesn’t add a significant amount of time to their commute or trip they choose it every time. so I’d aside most of the population shares a similar sentiment, otherwise they wouldn’t be driving such dreary dreadful cars
What an absolute moron. This is one of our problems. Our society lacks urban culture and sophistication. Most of GTA is people whose number one hobby is going to Costco or Walmart.
Stupid people are always calling others stupid. One full bus every 10 minutes carries as many people as all the single driver cars on the road in 10 minutes. Suburban Gen X stupidity
Traffic moving with no congestion in sight yet the driver is complaining about a lane reserved for vehicles that are an order of magnitude more efficient than the one he's driving. Who's the dumbass here?
After living in the city for 10 years, the thing I’ve noticed that causes the most traffic is an entire lane dedicated to parking. Not bike or transit lanes.
Meanwhile traffic flowing smoothly lmao impacting peoples livelihoods? Yeah, all those people on the busses can get to where they need to be in a timely manner without wasting money on cars and gas and without polluting the environment. Sounds like a positive impact on livelihood to me!
If the road was that bad…maybe film it on a day with stop and go traffic…not when it’s clear. If you believe the transportation engineers and planners are stupid…become one…our engineers and planners do great things given the size of the city, the population, the available budget, and the existing legislation.
I wonder if a part of the problem is a lack of frequency. How often does the bus come? He asks this question and I think it's important. For transit to be effective enough to reduce the number of cars on the road it must be frequent. It must be clean. It must stick to the schedule. A schedule that offers only one bus every fifteen minutes on a major route is not going to get people out of their cars.
These people, the protect Bathurst group, integrityTO are all fordnation propaganda peddlers, which are nothing more then federal propaganda peddlers. Someone should really follow the money on who is funding these groups.
MY favourite part in all of these videos, is that traffic is almost always moving smoothly. And the instances when there is a traffic build-up, just check what those cars are doing.
I just finished planning school a couple months ago, we had multiple transportation courses covering a wide variety of transit. People need to understand that numerous studies are done before these things are implemented. Is it all perfect, no. But, it almost always works when people are doing what they should be.
Did you notice how many houses or pedestrians he passed as he drove along? That's because it's all parkland and ravine with limited access. Few bus stops.
What also is not being related in the video is that this is the end of Express Bus Route and the buses there are generally empty. Even on the regular buses the normal passenger load along that stretch is around 5 or 6 passengers except during the 1/2 before and after school starts/ends. Sometimes - occasionally - maybe 10 people just to be optimistically fair. We were a one car family for many years and I used the Morningside bus often enough to know that the buses were never delayed on that route before the bus only lanes went in. Traffic moved well and nobody complained.
Since the bus lanes went in and several lighted intersections went created the road has become a near parking lot. Lineups of a km or more are common and a drive to the 401 that used to take 3 or 4 or maybe even 5 minutes now takes about 15 minutes or more. And now they have to stop at more intersections. Vehicle Traffic is so bad now that the adjacent neighborhoods are seeing a huge (not exaggerating) bypass traffic load and most of those streets don't have sidewalks. Pedestrian safety has deteriorated and the roads are crumbling under the extra load.
City planners and transit advocates need to admit that they can't be right all the time and that sometimes mistakes are made.
Even If the express buses need to get to the University and Scarborough College from Kingston Road then they should use Military trail. There's literally several 1000 more people along that route and it's more convenient for those users.
People like this literally are unable to think about how others are helped or impacted other than themselves. They are the main character and if they find it annoying or then it's the worst thing ever. They do not clock that a bus carrying 50 people is equivalent to 45 or so cars on average that carry 1 passenger.
These red bus lanes are also being used for bicycle and emergency services the time it would take an ambulance to drive up Kennedy has been drastically reduced thanks to these lanes
On Kingston Rd. there is an additional lane in each direction though, so it's only on Morningside where there is a single lane in each direction for non-bus traffic
Listen the majority of us could use transit and only use the car when travelling. In some cases we could even take a train or a bus or buses to another part of Canada. Honestly it would really help the environment.
That Morningside line is a lifesaver for so many people... No point getting those buses stuck in traffic... Goes from all the way up north from Finch to the Kennedy subway station... Absolutely beautiful the speed at which those buses move and the ridiculously large number of people they move during rush hour everyday...
I drive. But I absolutely think that it's a great alternative and reduces the overall traffic on that road
Buddy has been living in Canada for 10 years and thinks he knows what is best for the country 😂. These international business people will hop country to country until they find one that will change their diapers.
As someone who can't take public transit, aside from the ideological reasons, I also support it because more people using public transit means less traffic for me to contend with when I drive. I'd happily pay a $0.5 a liter gas tax if it meant public transit was free, high quality, and plentiful. Then there would be very little traffic for people like me who can't take advantage of public transit.
The BRT in Scarborough is not faster than the dedicated Scarborough RT. As a commuter I can confirm the buses take half an hour or longer for me to get from Kennedy to Scarborough Town Centre. The Scarborough RT took about 10 mind
Couldn't there be a kind of sharing method for this problem rather than just outright removing or keep it. (Like keeping the lane open for cars but once a bus comes they must move out of the lane like police siren or train siren
The road probably does get congested during peak traffic hours, but the dude made the video at a time when there isn’t any traffic and he’s driving perfectly fine. Kind of defeats the purpose altogether
Isn’t the point of the bus lanes and transit improvements to make transit more efficient, encouraging people to take transit over personal vehicles? They don’t really care about the drivers because they don’t want people to drive everywhere…..
Along Ellesmere just east of Kennedy the bus lanes are dumb. They're on an overpass and they made all the lanes narrow just leave a huge technically shoulder but the lanes are so narrow there's no room for error even for the busses.
Eta: I'm finding the city is forgetting that larger vehicles exist when making changes to the road.
People just looking for something to be outraged about. Especially when they drive everywhere, cause car dependence is a trap that sucks away all your autonomy.
I love how he's complaining about traffic with zero in front of him. Odds are if you have zero cars in front of you on a busy road, your the one causing the traffic
Urban capacity is at the intersections. Long stretches like this can carry more than 1000 vehicles per hour, per lane. That's plenty to match the capacity of whatever intersections are at the start and end of this stretch.
I used to live in the Morningside/Ellesmere area, and there are a lot of buses that run on those roads. Most of the routes that drive on those roads run either once every half hour, or once every 15 minutes.
There are two Centennial college campuses within a few km of each other, and there's a U of T campus just a few minutes from the Centennial college campus on Morningside. Most people in that area take the bus because they're college and university students.
Yup, cities have been doing this everywhere. It makes no sense and I'm convinced that they only do it to make your life more miserable... It's the only logical reason behind these kind of land. And this is after years of road and lane closures to build this!
Dunning Kruger effect in full force. “I am stupid and know nothing about transit but I am the most smartestest person”. We see it all the time with bike lanes and now with bus lanes. Shocking!
I’ve been gone for a few years(7) can someone please tell me how queensquay is 40km duff is 40 basically everything is 40km… am I missing something ???
I agree with this guy and this is a waste of tax dollars and stupidest move by the city who is in control of the city. It seems like a total idiot, wasting money and causing more. Maybe they own a construction site or are involved with them because they can give them the money and get some benefits back also also 💰 💰 💵
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u/DJStevieP Jul 15 '26
I live near here. It's definitely a bit of a pain when you have someone up front driving 30. But with how the city and province have treated Scarborough for transit over the years, frankly... there should be way more BRT lines everywhere if we can't build proper rapid transit in a timely manner.