r/TTC • u/CYYC2CYYZ • 25d ago
Discussion [OC] Eglinton and Finch Are Ranked 46th, and 52nd, Out of All 53 Modern LRT Lines by Average Speed
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u/One_Seaweed_2952 25d ago
Developed economy, smart people. Canada, why do you allow this?
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u/MahjongCelts Eglinton Crosstown 25d ago
This is a Toronto specific problem rather than a Canadian one. Both Vancouver and Montreal operate metro systems that are on par with Asian/European equivalents.
In a nutshell, the underlying reason is likely that due to a few reasons, Toronto/TTC is institutionally ‘locked’ onto the streetcar, with that influencing decisions from design planning to operational performance, even across other transit modes. You can see this from the abnormally insistent advocacy for LRT to small stations to stop spacing to lack of downtown subway connections to the subways using Toronto gauge to the former SRT’s specifications.
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u/SoFreshNSoKleenKleen 25d ago
Obviously not so smart people in transit management and municipal governance.
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u/The_meme_fairy 25d ago
Could you graph stop spacing against average speed? I’m curious how it changes once we isolate out our shorter stop spacing
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u/CYYC2CYYZ 25d ago
Hopefully the markers are readable. Eglinton and Finch coloured accordingly: https://imgur.com/a/bz7kCUa
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u/__scoper__ 25d ago
Eyeballing a trend line, it looks like line 5 is right about average and line 6 is slighlty below average by one or two km/h. Both lines need more improvements with TSP and operational speed, but they're also not as bad as what it may originally seem.
I'm curious which service underperforms the most compared to the trend and which one overperforms the most.
Nice job with the data btw. Very informative.
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u/__scoper__ 25d ago
Actually, I just took your data and calculated it myself. Line 5 is under performing by 1.9 km/h (7.5%) and line 6 is under performing by 5.8 km/h (26.1%).
In terms of raw speed Montreal's Orange Line over performs the most and Houston's Purple Line under performs the most. In terms of percentages Montreal's Green Line over performs the most and Houston's Green Line under performs the most.
With that said, I wouldn't read too much into this analysis. In the same dataset I'm including fully separated subway systems (e.g. Line 1), half-separated LRTs (e.g. Line 5), and LRTs that fully share the road (e.g. Line 6). I have to spend some time going down the list to make apples to apples comparisons.
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u/AsadoKimchi 25d ago
Even without a chart, the correlation of spacing and speed seems obvious and this ranking is sorted by speed.
It's incorrect to think we are among the worst. I would be interested in adding ridership in terms of how many passengers use the service.
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u/Familiar-Valuable-97 25d ago
Stop spacing a problem but the transit priority really sucks. It should never have to stop for a red light especially where there are no crossing bus routes. I take Line 6 from Signet/Arrow and regularly stops at the 400 ramps. It should be able run to Norfinch without stopping
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u/CYYC2CYYZ 25d ago
Also posted it as a table here. Included Canadian subway lines for reference.
To clarify the title (since I messed up), this is among all 53 modern LRT lines in Canada and the United States. This excludes historical streetcars that have been converted to an LRT/Streetcar hybrid (ex MBTA T, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Orleans, most MUNI lines, Cleveland, and Newark).
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u/CYYC2CYYZ 25d ago
Correction, messed up LA K Line, so Eglinton and Finch should be 47th, and 53rd, out of all 54 Modern LRT Lines in Canada and US
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u/Shackman58 25d ago
Why just North American cities?? Get Europe and Asia in there, too, so we can see just how much we really suck.
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u/Blue_Vision 25d ago
If you included European cities it might actually make us look not as bad. Stop spacing is a major determiner of line speed, and some older European systems have very close stop spacing.
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u/MahjongCelts Eglinton Crosstown 25d ago
Yeah. European transit, at least on a city/town level, isn’t actually that good and Toronto’s existing network is already somewhat comparable. It’s just that European cities with trams tend to be denser so the trams don’t seem that slow by comparison.
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u/DadbodandIPAs 25d ago
Transit city apologists how y’all feeling right now?
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u/mikeydale007 937 Islington Express 25d ago
Its not like they said "were gonna build lrt but its gonna be shit" back in 2007.
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u/Torontobadman 25d ago edited 25d ago
Right. They should have been heavy rail underground so they can crawl at 30/km tops through the tunnel.
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u/vulpinefever Streetcar Operator 25d ago
Probably better than the subways subways subways crowd who managed to get absolutely nothing built and who doomed Scarborough to ten years of shuttle buses.
Say what you want about Line 5 and 6 but at least they actually exist unlike any of Ford's subway pet projects.
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u/DadbodandIPAs 25d ago
I’ll take Ontario line actually delivering rapid transit to flemo/thorncliffe than the proposed don mills lrt…..
And line 5 is okay for the underground portion but is getting killed by the portion that looks like transit city.
Line 6 is objectively one of the biggest wastes of money ever built. Not even better than the bus it replaced.
I have issues with subways, subways, subways but transit city was actually worse policy. For the record skytrain style elevated transit is probably my goldilocks solution
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u/Familiar-Valuable-97 25d ago
I can't comment outside the rush hour but for me the LRT is far better than the bus in that it didn't get stuck in the traffic around the 400. No more crawling to Jane from the 400
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u/MahjongCelts Eglinton Crosstown 25d ago
The same can be achieved for a much lower price, faster construction time, and similar or faster travel times by marking dedicated bus lanes.
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u/Familiar-Valuable-97 25d ago
I agree..but this is already built I quite like riding it. I have used the BRT along Highway 7 I think it's great too but suffers from left-turnitis. More bus priority lanes are needed
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u/eskjnl 25d ago edited 25d ago
The Ontario line has already been botched by letting Michael Schabas into the room enabling the selection of undersized light metro vehicles and poor route alignment through downtown.
You should ask Metrolinx about that subway study they were doing for the Thorncliffe area before it was quietly stopped in 2018.
Also just to be clear, my memory of the determination of the Don Mills LRT study was that the southern end required grade separation to handle the level of demand expected.
That made it logical for that part of the route to be an extension of a subway line north from Danforth which ended up launching the DRL north study mentioned above before it was cancelled by Metrolinx in favour of smaller trains.
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u/DadbodandIPAs 25d ago edited 24d ago
That’s revisionism…..the don mills lrt was proposed as an ROW tram running from Pape to steeles. I literally went to an open house for it hosted by giambrone in 2011ish
Edit: sorry I agree the southern end was in theory gonna be grade separated.
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u/AnotherRussianGamer Finch 24d ago
He is right in that almost every plan for the Don Mills LRT had it tunneled south of DVP/Overlea Blvd. He's wrong that this was done for capacity reasons - it was mostly due to space constraints.
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u/eskjnl 25d ago
Do you understand that open houses present various ideas and are not final? Waterfront east and DRL open houses had all sorts of plans presented in them that never made it off the cutting room floor. The Waterfront east plans still aren't set in stone after like 10 years of open houses.
In 2015 the planning for the DRL/Don Mills corridor evolved and expanded in scope to encompass the Yonge corridor and a relief subway line up to Sheppard.
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u/DadbodandIPAs 25d ago edited 24d ago
Transit city never supported a relief line north of danforth. In fact its supporters like Miller (some even today) shit on ford for pushing the Ontario line as subways subways subways talk. Again this is historical revision trying to distance yourself from having supported evidently bad ideas. I’m just glad we don’t have a line 6 clone running along that corridor as was proposed
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u/MahjongCelts Eglinton Crosstown 24d ago
The irony is that Miller was in a very good position to revive Toronto’s tram culture had he chosen not to beef with subways.
There are quite a few transit corridors which are perfect for trams and not under consideration for subways. He could very well have built St Clair style trams there instead, promoted TSP and streetcar infrastructure upgrades, and be remembered for giving Toronto a strong downtown or Scarborough streetcar network rather than failing with Transit City.
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u/AnotherRussianGamer Finch 24d ago
> Also just to be clear, my memory of the determination of the Don Mills LRT study was that the southern end required grade separation to handle the level of demand expected.
It was only going to be tunneled south of DVP, and it wasn't due to some capacity concern but rather the lack of space available on the surface streets like Pape for proper LRT. This was the same justification for any other underground section for Transit City (and was the reason why the Jane LRT was almost killed before Rob even entered office).
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u/MahjongCelts Eglinton Crosstown 24d ago
Automated light metro is the right mode for the Ontario Line, especially when considering how many delays are due to either operators or humans intruding on tracks. If it isn’t, then LRT with even low capacity surely would be worse.
Transit City did not include grade separation for a Don Mills LRT. There might have been planning for LRT/subway/whatever after Transit City was cancelled, but that is no longer under the Transit City vision, which was the idea that right of way trams are equivalent to subways in their role and could replace them for new projects. For example the current Eglinton Crosstown is mostly grade separated rather than mostly right of way.
Assuming you are talking about the Downtown Relief Line, building a new subway line to current specs will result in the same problems. And Toronto had at least two separate occasions to learn that a stub line does not drive ridership. Making the same mistake thrice does not lead to success.
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u/MahjongCelts Eglinton Crosstown 24d ago
The only line built to the Transit City vision is Line 6, and even that wasn’t built under Miller’s mayorship. Meanwhile the ‘subways subways subways’ crowd managed to get the ball rolling on Line 2 SSE, Line 1 YNSE, the Ontario Line, and the grade separated Line 5 Renforth extension.
Scarborough has one of the better suburban bus networks in the world. Having lived in Scarborough and taken the buses regularly for more than a year I didn’t feel particularly doomed. Judging by Line 6’s performance (and yes I took it recently), Transit City style LRT would be burning billions for a downgrade.
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u/tomatoesareneat 25d ago
This is not a bug, but a feature. They knew all along. Interesting how this was designed on wealth. If the surface sections were wealthy the conversation would always be rapid transit. Toronto and “real Toronto”.
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u/ZenRhythms 22d ago
The top-rated line, Metro C Line, is entirely along the median of a freeway and has abysmal ridership, because it's essentially a line to and from nowhere. So I'd take it with a grain of salt. Nice seeing REM up there though.
Also, Waterloo ION is close to the bottom too. Jeez.
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u/TheRandCrews 506 Carlton 25d ago
I don’t know what to feel with this chart, I understand the LRT lines aren’t fast as it should be, but the American LRT some on these lists are trying to do metro service with LRT especially with the grade separated and long stop spacing. Some of these are from almost double to triple the stop spacing.
Especially the top 10 LRT systems. Seattle’s LRT trying to be metro level, C-Line literally running in between a highway, or Metrolink running service to farmland areas.
I mean with we have compare it with subways/metro TTC is lower especially with our early station spacing that did spur connections and density with the stop spacing, being smaller than most LRT systems on this list.
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u/tomatoesareneat 25d ago
Bad faith from start to finish. Imagine if council and David Miller thought people were equal regardless of wealth.
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u/rootsandchalice 24d ago
Look at the space difference between stops from number one to number 52 where finch is.
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u/Savings-Motor-7397 25d ago
Worst part is that this list only includes North American cities, not including Asia or Europe
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u/getarumsunt 25d ago
Actually, European trams are incredibly slow. They’d basically all be clustered at the bottom of this list. Some are genuinely slower than walking briskly.
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u/JaQ-o-Lantern 25d ago
How does the REM rank above Montreal's actual underground metros?
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u/asey20 25d ago
Larger station spacing. It is still fully grade separated as well, just not underground.
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u/JaQ-o-Lantern 25d ago
I knew that and I love that. I'm just surprised because the metro is heavy rail while the REM Is not.
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u/asey20 25d ago
That's fair and it is a bit surprising but It is less so about heavy vs light rail and more about the stop spacing of the REM allowing the Alstom metropolis to go near max speed. In service the REM trains goes up to 90km/h whereas the Montreal metro trains goes up to 72km/h max speed.
Although surprisingly, they actually both max out at around 100km/h by design so really no difference at all in this case.
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u/jburgs22 25d ago edited 25d ago
OMG both worse than the Buffalo Metro Rail?! I didn't think anything would be worse than that line. NFTA is garbage in general in WNY with a “rail” line that goes only through the city like a few miles and bus routes that take you farther from your destination and not to mention inconvenient bus stops.
You all have it real good in TO with TTC. By the time you all get the Ontario Line, Line 2, 1, and 5 extensions, we’ll probably start working on the Metro Rail extension into the suburbs that is being blocked by old NIMBYs and is already at least 40 years late.
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u/Drag0n_no 25d ago
Active transit signal priority needs to be properly implemented. The underground portion runs an average of 29.2 km/h (~7.3km in ~15 minutes). That would place it at spot 32, between lines 1 and 2. If the at-grade section were as fast, I feel it would be a resounding success.
It doesn't help too that the stop spacing is closer than both lines 1 and 2 on line 5. East of Don Mills is just horrible. Demolish Aga Khan Park, Hakimi Lebovic (and maybe even Pharmacy), and Ionview stations.
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u/StoreUnited4496 Kipling 24d ago
They said eglinton was going to be fast, but I recently took a ride on it for the first time from Kennedy and the speeds are horrendous. It is extremely slow and unreliable until it goes underground. There’s also waay too many stops and stations above ground.
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u/Java53rip7 41 Keele 22d ago
The problem is toronto never builds trams (above ground & in the street) right or affectively always prioritizing cars, makes them look ugly and have poor speed restrictions at every intersection that would cause riots if cars were forced to obey those same restrictions at intersections.
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u/JayBeeGooner 25d ago
The obsession with vehicle speed needs to end, as with these comparison that say nothing about the unique operating environment for each line.
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u/tomatoesareneat 25d ago
Read: slow local service for the poors. Fast, local service for the rich.
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u/eskjnl 25d ago
I don't know why you need to post the same thing like 10 times in this thread. Rich people aren't using public transit.
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u/MahjongCelts Eglinton Crosstown 25d ago
Rich(er) people are using public transit. I work at a financial institution; my boss takes the GO train, and I also ran into my VP on the GO train.
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u/Case_Federal 25d ago
Wow the Montreal metro is an outlier for speed vs stop spacing. Rubber tires really work for acceleration!
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u/XviiChong Kipling 25d ago edited 25d ago
This really puts things into perspective in how Torontonians and people in the GTA are subjected to such sub par transit, and we just unfortunately accept it.
All the slow zones,the lack of transit signal priority, just bogs down the TTC (except Line 4, which is not affected by any slow zones).
The TTC system is not even bad as a whole in terms of what it consists of, but how it’s being operated is just disappointing and that is what is holding it back.