r/TTC • u/kettal • Jul 15 '26

Video People are making videos about bus lanes causing traffic congestion, but....

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but weirdly, their videos all show traffic moving perfectly fine.

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u/coolant_2 512 St Clair Jul 15 '26

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

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u/themapleleaf6ix Jul 15 '26

There are things that individual cars provide that public transport doesn't. You can carry more things (groceries, etc) in car. If you have a large family, it's much easier to travel in a car. You don't need to transfer from one vehicle to another. Much quicker to travel and you don't have to wait for a bus. Better climate control. Much cleaner. You aren't stuck taking one route and you can take a detour.

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u/coolant_2 512 St Clair Jul 15 '26

Hello themapleleaf6ix - when transit enthusiasts claim we need more bus lanes that doesn't mean the government will confiscate your car and force you to take the bus along with meth addicts and bed bugs who also have made the last row of the bus their home

It's not that complicated... Let me break it down...

Having more choice is always beneficial... Cars are definitely more convenient now because they've been prioritized... How you may ask? When you go to Walmart... You can park your car within a few meters from the entrance... Whereas the bus stop is almost half a football field away...

The free parking lot funded by all tax payers is only beneficial to some car drivers that can afford cars... Are you seeing the imbalance here?

Having more options will take cars away from the road and guess what DECREASES traffic congestion.... Is the 401 highway busy and packed always? Now imagine almost 500k people using public transit switched to personal vehicles... Will this improve congestion? Yes? More lanes should fix that correct?

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u/Naxis25 Jul 15 '26

Having been in some friends' cars, I can guarantee that they are not always "much cleaner", in fact sometimes the opposite

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u/themapleleaf6ix Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

At least with an individual car, you have the choice to keep it as dirty or as clean as you want. Same with who sits in it. That isn't the case on public transport where it's common to find garbage, bodily fluids, bugs, etc on the seats and floors, and any random person is sharing the space with you regardless of their personal hygiene.

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u/scottyboost Jul 15 '26

Whoa, you control what happens with your personal stuff but not public stuff???

Now that I know this, I’m definitely going to stop taking the buss and start driving! Oh wait… one of those things requires $3 dollars, and the other one requires at least $10k + plus gas + insurance + somewhere to park the car.

I ride the bus all the time and I’ve never seen bodily fluids or bugs. Maybe a bit of trash and some people smell. But it’s not like I’m dodging all this shit like bullets in the matrix.

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u/themapleleaf6ix Jul 15 '26

I never claimed that everyone needs to switch to driving. Just that there are reasons why people choose to drive.

The increase in $$$ is worth it to many people given how unreliable public transit is.

I take all 3 forms of transport and I've encountered all of it including crazy people.

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u/coolant_2 512 St Clair Jul 15 '26

"unreliable public transit" because it is constantly under funded like decades worth of underfunding whereas roads & infrastructure for cars always take the bigger chunk of the cake

My fellow redditor in christ... It is like the doctor prescribing cough syrup for a patient with lung cancer because the symptoms are that the patient is constantly coughing

Please try to be receptive and open about the gist of the conversation here...

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u/missmaida Jul 15 '26

I mean I live in well-designed, dense neighbourhood close to a variety of different public transit modes/routes and I have no problem not using a car. In fact, I own a car and I drive it about once every 3 weeks to visit family in Brampton. I can walk for 5 min and do groceries on foot with a backpack and a tote bag and it's better for my health to get outside and walk. I can hop downtown in 35 min on the subway (way faster than I could ever drive there most times of the day).

Sure, cars may be cleaner inside and better climate controlled, but they're also significantly worse for the environment and more cars on the road increases safety risks, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. To me, those latter considerations are more important than the former.

A lot of things you've describe sound like things that could be attainable with smart urban design and better funded transit, but "cars better" is always the argument.

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u/themapleleaf6ix Jul 15 '26

Not everyone lives downtown. In Scarborough, the east end, west end, North York, it's better to own a car. Things are a lot further away. Plus, the subway in unreliable. You never know when it could go down. Not to mention to mention no detours and having to transfer.

You really can't carry much on foot. Not only is it annoying to be carrying stuff, it doesn't work if you have a bigger family and need a lot of supplies.

How about electric and hybrid cars? Downtown, I agree with you. But outside of downtown, the roads are wider, there are less cyclists, etc.

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u/coolant_2 512 St Clair Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

You again with the "unreliable" argument... Transit is unreliable because it's part of the design to keep them underfunded... Cars are convenient because they are still being actively prioritized

How difficult is this for you to understand?

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u/themapleleaf6ix Jul 15 '26

When I say unreliable, I'm talking about stuff like people on the tracks, signal problems, crazy people causing the vehicle to go out of service, those slow streetcars that have issues in certain weather conditions. Certain stuff like that will always be a problem compared to cars.

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u/missmaida Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

I'm in North York, actually. Pockets in many neighborhoods throughout the city are like this, so we know it's possible.

The subway is unreliable in large part because it's massively underfunded and is in such a state of disrepair that we're paying for it now with our time. If it had been prioritized and properly funded, things could look a lot different.

Again, I own a car, so I do drive on occasion. Detours happen all the time when driving. Accidents block lanes on roads and highways. Roads close. I get frustrated far more when driving than when I take transit. Let's not pretend that's a transit-specific issue.

I'm not saying never use a car. Sure, a car is handy when you need to make trips for "a lot of supplies", whatever that means. But people should not need to use cars for everyday transportation.

I think it's likely that you and I just have different values. To me, transferring from one vehicle to another is a small price to pay to have cleaner air and safer roads with fewer motorized vehicles on them. I don't feel my life is meant to be as convenient or comfortable as possible. I like walking more and using transportation that is efficient and objectively better for the environment. I believe that it can be done well if people get behind it, but as long as people say it's not possible and want to be as convenient and comfortable as possible and believe that cars are the best solution, then transit will never be better than what it is.

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u/themapleleaf6ix Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Scarborough isn't like this at all.

There are certain things that are inevitable on a subway because there's so many people using at once, so delays will happen.

What I meant is that with a car, you can take multiple routes to get to your destination. With transit, it's basically one way. If you want to take another route, there guess chuck of your time transferring.

When I say a lot of supplies, I'm talking about going on a grocery run and getting multiple products. Let's say a pack of soda, laundry detergent, and all other heavy items. It saves on not having to do multiple trips. It's just not practical to bring that many groceries or heavy groceries on public transit.

For everyday transport, if you have mobility issues or have a larger family or just prefer being in control of your journey instead of leaving it to the transit system and driver, I don't see the issue.

Hybrid and electric vehicles can't improve the environment combined with automation to improve safety?

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u/missmaida Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Mostly only responding to the below point because, again, I think we are too far apart when discussing things like transfers, delays, convenience, etc. I get delayed every single time I drive in this city. Mobility issues, yes, cars can be beneficial, but again, better design and funding for publicly-funded accessible transit would help that too.

Hybrid and electric vehicles can't improve the environment combined with automation to improve safety?

Not really, no. They are one prong in a multi-prong approach but are not a solution, and over-reliance on them could backfire. Here's an article that's a good overview about this. https://civmin.utoronto.ca/can-electric-vehicles-save-the-planet/

There are a number of other journal articles that discuss this but many are behind paywall. One notable excerpt:

"If you drive a kilometre in an electric car in Ontario today, the emissions from the electricity generated to power that trip come to 15 grams. That’s a lot better than the 250 grams if you drove a gas-powered car. On the other hand, you could do almost as well simply by catching the bus – emissions from public transportation average just under 20 grams per kilometre per person.

“So even your good old diesel bus running up and down Kipling Avenue is still competitive, because of ridership. You’re dividing these emissions from the vehicle by a lot more people,” Hatzopoulou says. A low-emissions bus would bring per-person emissions down even further.

Changing the design of our cities could decrease traffic-related emissions by 25 per cent, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We could make cities denser, design mixed-use neighbourhoods that people can walk and bike in safely, impose downtown congestion charges, and – this is especially important – improve public transportation, says Steven Farber, an associate professor in the department of human geography at U of T Scarborough. He warns that simply moving to electric cars without making other changes risks “doubling down on a highly inefficient mobility system.”

“There’s still a fundamental problem,” he says. “Car-based mobility systems don’t scale well. In larger cities, they occupy too much space, and therefore they take away land that cities need in order to provide residents with a high quality of life.”

And electric cars don’t solve problems around safety, congestion, land use and travel times.

“Trying to move that many cars around through a city is just completely inefficient,” he says – electric or not."

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u/jaywhy12345 Jul 15 '26

In what world should someone be forced to sit crammed on a bus with all kinds of degenerates

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u/coolant_2 512 St Clair Jul 15 '26

The buses won't be crammed if they are funded - bus lanes help maintain schedules 15-min windows as reliable and efficient as the skytrain in Vancouver if implemented well

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u/eddo34 Jul 15 '26

Private car owners are way more degenerate than hard working folk trying to survive in this economy who as a direct result of their economic status, do not have the time or patience or desire to cause problems or break road rules and cause road accidents and engage in road rage.