Canada Is 40 Years Behind The Times With Public Transit
Being a member of the Light rail transit Association for 45 years, one has just more than a passing knowledge of transit.
I find that Canadian politcans must be dragged kicking and screaming to provide a modern and user-friendly (oh that damned phrase again) public transit service for the public. Yes, Vancouver’s SkyTrain seems modern, but also is a dated proprietary light-metro system, based largely on 1960’s transit philosophy and trends – News Flash: It’s 2026 and travel tastes and demands have changed, yet the transit that has been provided, has not and cannot due to the massive investments made for the guideways and subways.
Result: Ridership is in decline as the transit system is deemed user unfriendly by potential customers.
The following is an excerpt from a North American transit group I belong to, regarding transit priority.
One comment: The Light Rail Transit Association’s 1990 video, Light Rail, Today’s Way Forward, shows several examples of signal priority in action, simple and effective, yet in Canada one would think it was like designing a moon rocket!
TTC has no Priority for all bus routes. TTC does have Priority for St Clair, Spadina streetcars routes and a few other locations close to 2 decades, but the City, mainly Transportation and Works (TW) has refused to turn them on until the Finch mess. The mayor has order TW to deal with all transit priority issues and report back to council by 2027 how to improve service. The only change so far, TW has move left turn singles from first to last.
As far I know and seen, there are no systems in NA and Europe using a true transit priority signal system all the time. It is only use when vehicles are behind schedule.
Finch Ave was a 5 lane road before construction started to 7 lanes now that require major rebuilt of everything including bridges and new retraining walls. I never knew this until construction took place that the Islington/Finch intersection is a bridge on a 45 degree angle that was widen for better water flow.
Finch like a number of Toronto roads that could easily support an elevated line but it had an CPKC bridge to go over as well a 12 lane Hwy 400.
Since Finch, Eglinton and Hurontario lines are own by Metrolinx, they call the shot how the line was to be built and the technology under the P3 process to reduce the cost to build the lines. Operations was to be under the control of the P3 group and awarded that way. Near the completion of the Eglinton Line, TTC and the City started to call for TTC to operate the line. The Province decided to change the operation contract to allow TTC to operate both Eglinton and Finch lines under a 5 year contract will a renewal 5 year extension and this is where the lines went off the rails.
TTC demanded various changes to the lines as well bring in out dated operation policy that down graded operations. They require speed reduction for all intersections that can handle full speed in the first place for both lines, but chose to reduced the speed like they have done for all the streetcar lines. The original operators of all Metrolinx lines were to be outside sources who operate systems worldwide.
Sadly, I do not see any appetite for change and doing the same thing over and over again, ever hoping for different results, is the Canadian way forward.
