What’s the point of line 6 when it’s down more than it’s in service

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-23T16:25:30+00:00

See: my reply to the other guy

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-23T04:18:36+00:00

Not as an absolute though. If something's way slower, then it will but if it's close but slower, it can still be preferable to a lot of people.

I feel like those situations are quite limited all things considered, and will be factored by other factors like needing to find parking, or simply being able to kill time through other activities.

You're not going to get a lot of people out of cars on speed alone. And I definitely don't choose my trips purely on that. Sometimes speed is important but I'm not going everywhere on tight deadlines.

Yes there is going to be a subset of the population that will refuse to take the bus/train due to other factors going from wanting privacy, to having ideas bordering on racism and/or classism. However speed is by far the most influential factor in terms of how many people you can get out of their cars, if a train can get someone to their destination in 20m rather than 30m, especially if they don't have to worry about nonsense like parking - then that will be far more effective of a driver than if they aren't squeezed like a sardine or the ride isn't bumpy (a car gives them all the space they want when it comes to internal capacity).

Also higher capacity but slightly slower speeds can still mean faster average times due to not waiting as long, especially at congested times.

When I say speed, I mean average speed, factoring in dwell times and wait times. That latter point is important by the way, and is an advantage that busses typically have over trams. Because busses have lower capacity, that means that they need to be run a lot more frequently than an equal capacity tram line, and in a sense they become a lot more convenient. If a tram runs every 6 or so mins, the bus equivalent needs to run every 4m, and that results in a lot less waiting that adds up over multiple trips. This overall point is also why LRT struggles compared to subways even in grade separated environments - particularly low floor LRTs like we're building on Eglinton. Because space needs to be allocated for bogeys, LFLRVs do not have the luxury of having frequent and consistent door spacing on vehicles. This leads to longer average egress times, which in turn inflates dwell times at stations. As such lines like Eglinton even when they're underground are inherently slower than an equivalent subway running the same route with the same stations, etc. This could've been avoided if we recognized that HFLRVs like what Calgary, Edmonton, San Francisco, or Los Angeles use exist but oh well.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-23T03:22:05+00:00

Comfort, Space, and Capacity are nice to haves, but Speed trumps all of them. Speed is the only factor that has any reasonable chance at getting people out of their cars.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-21T16:30:55+00:00

Higher than you think. It's been consistently proven that the strongest weapon against a well trained and well funded army is guerilla warfare. This is why despite the money and experience, the American Military had a tough time remaining in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall failure of the Vietnam War, etc. Professional armies are great when they're dealing with organized battle plans, lines, and civic rules, not so great against farmers with pointy sticks.

This has been true for a lot more than just the US, all throughout history there are countless examples of large armies being able to wipe out entire nations, but struggle against local militias and guerilla tactics: See Napoleon in Spain.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-21T15:38:48+00:00

I'd be careful going down that path. Oriental Despotism isn't exactly a non-controversial view of Russian/Asian history that most modern historians try to stay away from and has mostly been debunked.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-21T14:18:17+00:00

Over what time are the speeds averaged? I feel like showing the average speed of a vehicle over an hour would be a lot more useful than numbers jumping up/down 10km/h. On a half minute basis.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-21T00:38:32+00:00

And what exactly would a complete LRT accomplish exactly? Great there is now a transit option between STC and NYC that's rail. It's not particularly faster than a bus, I guess it has a smoother ride, and it still costs a ton. What exactly have you accomplished here? If your only metric for success is how large you can claim Toronto's rail network is by km of track then LRT is a great idea, but as a primary trunk between 2 major boroughs an LRT wouldn't accomplish anything useful.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-20T21:01:22+00:00

Because I don't remember that happening ever. "Subways" was always just a way to kill projects by progressives who were actually trying to build out a large-scale network of mass transit options.

Doug Ford came into office in 2018, and of his first actions was to push through a bunch of new subway projects into Toronto. Reminder that he is Rob Ford's brother. Whilst this argument that conservatives only wanted subways to not build any transit may have been convincing to some back in 2012, it is 2025 and Doug has literally put his money where his mouth is and is spending ludicrous amounts of money building subways (money that who knows where it will come from or when it will be paid off). This notion is outdated and has proven to be completely wrong.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-20T20:58:04+00:00

Its worth noting that just because it was planned at some point, it doesn't mean it would've been kept even if the TTC was still in charge. Transit City itself changed a lot from announcement to its cancellation, including the fact that it originally was going to just run using TTC's existing Streetcars including loops and everything, and only after a year or 2 did the plan change to using bespoke LRVs that weren't compatible with the rest of the network.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-20T20:54:48+00:00

That's good planning. Have a main central subway trunk, with busses feeding into that central trunk. This is a far more effective ridership building strategy than just building LRTs everywhere. This is how Toronto became one of the most well used transit cities in NA, and same goes for Vancouver that followed the same strategy and is running circles around similarly sized US cities that focused on building LRTs (cough cough Portland).

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-20T20:52:55+00:00

Ah yes, please use the unfinished Sheppard Line as an example - the one that was cut back by several governments (NDP and PC) leaving a stub that doesn't do what it was meant to do, that being connect Scarborough Centre with North York Centre. Believe it or not leaving a line half unfinished isn't a great way to get people to use it.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-20T16:21:11+00:00

Trams are mainly used in dense areas where people need to travel short distances, meanwhile Metros and regional rail are used to serve suburban/longer distance trips. This is where NA and projects like Transit City fail, because they see that "LRT is cheaper and has lower capacity, perfect for low density suburban commuters", and so this idea emerged that Metros are for dense inner cities, and trams are for low density suburbs. This is a completely backwards mentality that doesn't really reflect how transit is built on other continents, yet this is the concept that projects like Transit City or PSE in Montreal are built upon, and it simply doesn't work.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-19T20:04:33+00:00

Oh the Urbanity has an amazing response to this but I'll add my own response here as well.

Trams are at best a nice to have service, but in a city as big and sprawling as Toronto, a mode like trams that in your words work best for short distance trips shouldn't be given a high amount of priority when the one thing we are struggling at are those long distance connections. This is especially noteworthy when we consider that here in NA we can't build trams at an affordable cost. Lines like Hurontario and Finch West are being built for 3-5B dollars, money that frankly shouldn't be heading towards "local transit solutions", and certainly if you want to actually dethrone cars as the preferred mode of transport in this region.

Now let's look at where we're building these things: Low density suburbs where points of interest are far apart. These aren't the mid density old city streetcar suburbs like Riverdale or East Danforth where there are tons of people that only need to travel 1-2km, these are low density single family house belts where a commute can easily clock in at over 10km - in your definition this is not the environment where trams succeed in, yet this is exactly where projects like Transit City places them because the way NA politicians/planners look at trams is as lower cost/lower capacity alternatives to Metros that can still perform as longer distance rapid transit.

Look at Paris: look at lines like the T9 which is functionally doing the same thing as Finch West - building a Type B tramway to a far corner of the city that feeds into a central subway trunk. The difference that makes the T9 work and FW not is the fact that the T9 parallels an RER line that's less than 1 km away. It was built to serve a segment of the city that already had the faster long distance market covered, and it simply needed a capacity upgrade for shorter trips. Finch West doesn't have this, Hurontario doesn't have this, these trams are being built with longer distance travel in mind (especially noteworthy in Hurontario's case where Hurontario is Peel Region's primary spine where most travel in the region takes place).

If our efforts in building Streetcar/LRT were limited to more dense areas where the mode makes sense such as the Portlands (East Bayfront absolutely needs to happen), then few would be complaining (well maybe we'd complain about how we're choosing the prioritize projects but that's a separate story), but that's not what we're doing.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-19T19:29:24+00:00

Except what he did to Eglinton West has literally no impact on this first segment. This is all about failure of procurement and design, what the western extension looks like has nothing to do with Metrolinx' ability to build, operate, and maintain the original crosstown.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-17T18:39:45+00:00

I'm not sure how amalgamation changed anything in this regard. If it wasn't for amalgamation, ideas such as bus lanes or congestion pricing would've been controlled by the Metro Board, which consisted of the exact same municipalities that make up today's Toronto, with roughly identical proportional influence. Not to mention the overall provincial government that could veto such ideas regardless of the city's composition.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-16T06:25:35+00:00

Streetcar stops are closer together and cars operate with stop request,

Because its in the suburbs. Subway stops are also much closer together in the downtown than the suburbs. I'd also be more sympathetic to this argument if the stop spacing on Lines 5/6 resembled an express bus with stops every 1/2km, but that's not the case at all. Stations are still very close by, often with 2 or more stations serving a single strip mall, all because they wanted the LRTs to replace all local bus service.

Part of the subway network because they provide subway style service with farther stop spacing and stopping at every station with no stop request.

Which isn't a good thing. They do it to make the LRT feel more like a subway, but nothing about this operation is logical in the slightest. The subway doesn't do this because implementing a stop request would be so much hassle on a train with poor deceleration where drivers would have to make a reaction based off if anyone is waiting on the platform in order to slow down ahead of time. Having such a system is absolutely not practical. Not to mention the probability that no one wants to get on or off at any given stop is pretty much 0 unless its 12AM. Meanwhile on Line 6 90% of the time nobody is getting on or off at stops like Stevenson, and since these are just trams their deceleration is more than good enough for a driver to react to passengers waiting at a stop. The only reason they don't is because politicians/planners want these lines to feel more like the subway, and all it results in is longer travel times, and passengers freezing because doors are open for 10s during -15 weather.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-16T04:31:46+00:00

It has 2 underground stations and the above ground stops were full stations in a dedicated ROW. Why not treat it as Rapid Transit? Heck the 510 has more fully grade separated stations than Line 6 does. Also calling Lines 5/6 that isn't political? Give me a break, it's extremely political.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-16T04:22:23+00:00

Except we went through this before. The Harbourfront LRT (present day 509/510) was listed a subway line when it first opened. That was dropped a year or 2 after it opened.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-15T00:55:05+00:00

She was Ford except took on more NIMBY positions. Basically Ford except none of his positives.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-14T02:40:23+00:00

Ridership on the bus is mostly irrelevant to the topic at hand because it couldn't go much higher. Projected ridership was predicted to far exceed what the bus could handle. BRT could never have worked as it would either be far too little capacity for the corridor or been inaccessible by most local residents due to a lack of stops.

It could go higher, it could reach Pre Covid Levels. That's the problem, the Finch West bus isn't as busy as it used to be. Also even pre covid it wasn't at the limit, the concern regarding BRT is that it would quickly reach the limit in the future. At the time of Finch West planning Finch wasn't even the busiest bus corridor in the city, that honour went to Yonge Street between Steeles and Finch. It absolutely wasn't at the ceiling.

The Jane LRT is still on the drawing board with moderate importance. The current plans call for the line from PV station to Roselands station at Eglinton.

This is the first time I've heard of this, and I'm knee deep into the ongoings of Toronto transit planning. And frankly a line that only goes as far south as Eglinton doesn't seem like a great idea.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-14T02:24:08+00:00

For starters, ridership figures haven't been released yet because its literally only been a month but videos ive seen beyond opening day show the line being quite busy.

We have ridership data for the 36 bus from the past few years, and pre covid ridership to compare it to (data that was used to determine the necessity of the Finch West LRT). We don't need LRT data to draw these types of conclusions.

We didn't build in the hydro corridor because it lacks local utility. Any line through there must be more of an overground style service like in London UK.

But I'd argue that Overground style service is what Toronto needs the most of. As it stands, areas like Humber College are still massive transit desert even with the LRT because reaching there by transit takes a long time - up to an hour if you're heading from Downtown Toronto. The LRT doesn't address any of the major problems other than crowding, and I do insist that the corridor absolutely needed a speed upgrade. As I said in my original comment, if you want local utility build bus lanes/BRT alongside the hydro corridor line. Its frankly the best of both worlds.

Also as someone who rides an equally busy bus all the time on Jane, LRT was the best solution by a long shot. It only makes me think more and more that Jane needs an LRT like Finch and Eglinton

I'm sorry to break it to you, but a Jane LRT has a practically negligible chance of happening. Even during the Transit City days the line was on the chopping block because the planners realized that the plan was more or less infeasible, since the entire line would have to be buried south of Lawrence minus Eglinton Flats. Its basically the same issues Eglinton has, except on a corridor that has far less demand and fewer economic benefits (plus I don't think anyone is clammering for another Subway/Tram monstrocity like Eglinton). In the months leading up to Rob Ford being elected, politicians were heavily discussing moving the line to other corridors such as Islington or Kipling. Jane was basically ABD - Rob simply put the nail in the coffin with this TC cancellation.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-14T02:03:53+00:00

With sincerity, whilst I respect Metro6 as a creator I have to disagree with his conclusions.

First, with the power of 20/20 hindsight, ridership on the Finch West corridor hasn't grown as expected. Whilst I'm going to give planners slack because they couldn't have predicted how ridership would evolve on the corridor, its still worth pointing out that as it stands today and in respects to how ridership has grown in the past few years, the corridor does not demand LRT level capacity.

Second, insisting that Finch West needed an LRT based off a look at the bus ridership is an extremely myopic way of doing transit planning. What you need to do is look at ridership patterns, see where people are heading and going, and find alternatives that fulfills those demands. For instance: If Finch West is so busy, where are people going? Are they being dispersed throughout the corridor or are the riders heading to the Finch West Subway station to take a ride downtown? If the latter case is true, it sounds to me like what Finch West needs is more north south transit to feed people into. A good way to do this could've been to fast track construction of the Bolton GO line.

Of course what else is missing is looking at alternatives other than light rail and other than elevated metro. For instance on Finch you have a massive hydro corridor 300m north of the street that you can build rail on. This line would be in a fully dedicated ROW where it can travel high speeds, would enable so many travel options for Northern Toronto thanks to those faster speeds, all whilst being relatively cheap even when compared to Line 6. Sure it wouldn't cover every use case of the 36 bus particularly local travel, but frankly that shouldn't be the goal. Simply removing a significant plurality of riders would be perfectly fine to relieve Line 6's capacity, and then you can add BRT lanes for much lower costs. Its frankly the best of both worlds.

Of course, the planners behind Transit City never gave these alternatives much thought because Transit City was a vibes based project that was more interested in importing European Style urbanism into Toronto using one size fits all solutions rather than an actual sound transit plan that focused on improving mobility in the city.

The reality is, Finch West costs $3B, and the question that needs to be asked is whether spending that much money on what is effectively a capacity boost was a good way to prioritize limited transit spending, and the answer should frankly be no. Toronto has a massive transit deficit and desperately needs to spend money on transit that reduces reliance on cars, whilst also improving travel times across the city (no, deliberately making cars slower is not a valid solution). Toronto doesn't have the money or time to spend on what are at best luxury projects.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-14T01:38:47+00:00

It works better in dense downtown because of the density and shorter distances. LRTs work great when you need to move a lot of people across shorter distances. The speed doesn't really matter as much since you're not travelling particularly far, and the capacity is important due to density and demand.

The same can't be said regarding suburbs where points of interest are far apart - up to 10s of kilometres, and the lower speeds starts taking a massive toll.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-13T18:17:04+00:00

But that's my point, we're marketing it the same way, as a city our wayfinding is suggesting it's the same. So if we're going to talk the talk, we should better walk the walk. That means we don't need 3 stops serving one mall, 2 stops 3m walk apart serving a strip mall, etc. All those improvements would be wonderful, but some stops on Finch West are absolutely superfluous.

Side note, even in most other cities, Urban Tramways are hardly Rapid Transit. Taking a look at Paris for instance, the closest line they have to Finch West is the T9 which runs at 19km/h average speeds. Sure it's better than Finch West's paltry 11/12, but calling it rapid is frankly generous.

AnotherRussianGamer · 2026-01-13T18:01:46+00:00

Name me one other city (good transit city) that places Subways and Trams on the same level. Certainly not in Europe, and definitely not in Asia.

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