On Sunday, when the first train leaves Finch West LRT will leave the station at 7:30 a.m., its long-awaited launch will face one question: Will the light rail line be faster and more reliable than the bus it is meant to replace?
In many ways, Finch West is a test case for LRT, a role that unexpectedly falls to Finch rather than to him. the long-awaited Eglinton line — who will have to prove they are more than just glorified Toronto streetcars, as their detractors claim. Passenger traffic per thistorical hose The number of vehicles remains dire, angering commuters who say they are too slow and unreliable in a city with such heavy traffic.
As Toronto and the province pour billions into new LRT lines, including the Eglinton Crosstown, Waterfront East and Hazel McCallion lines in Mississauga, commuters will finally find out Sunday whether the $3.5 billion Finch line was worth the headaches, disruptions and congestion it had to endure in exchange for the promise of faster, more reliable transit.
Although Metrolinx websiteWhile the provincial transportation agency responsible for building the new LRT line promises it will “reduce travel times and improve public transit reliability,” early data suggests that may not be the case—at least not initially.
Residents in the area have been waiting for years for the LRT to run from Finch West station to Humber Polytechnic's north campus. Its success depends on how well it can meet the needs of growing areas starved of transportation.
Journey to Finch West
The need to launch a fast and efficient new line — the TTC's first new line in more than a decade — is real, said Lawrence Louis, chief of service planning and scheduling for the transit agency. We hope Finch West will prove to everyone that “we don't have to just build a subway,” Louis said.
“We really hope that this will really set the bar for what we can do faster and hopefully create momentum for the reintroduction of LRT as an effective interim option or intermediate mode for rapid transit in the city,” Louis added.
Politicians, planners and commuters have long debated the effectiveness of light rail as a “golden” solution to Toronto's lack of transit infrastructure – an acceptable compromise between expensive, high-capacity subways and cheap but often overcrowded buses.
Both the Finch and Eglinton LRTs were first proposed as part of then-Mayor's project. David Miller's 2007 Transit City Plan.which would include a network of light rail lines in Scarborough, Sheppard East and Jane.
The Finch West and Eglinton LRT were originally part of then-Mayor David Miller's 2007 Transit City Plan.
Toronto Star Photo file
When Rob Ford took over as mayor in 2010, he abandoned Transit City. “Ladies and gentlemen, the war on cars ends today… Transit City is over,” Ford told reporters. “We will no longer build train tracks in the middle of our streets.”
Instead, he advocated burying any new light rail systems or trains underground. The rationale: Underground transit systems are faster, don't get bogged down in traffic jams and, more importantly for Ford, don't take away lanes from cars.
The late mayor's decision was repealed by city council in 2012and Metrolinx took over construction of the Finch West line, which was initially expected to open in 2020 but was later pushed back to 2021. Major construction actually began only in 2019, after which the opening date was expected to be sometime in 2023. The line was delayed due to car delivery delaypandemic and lawsuit.
Unlike its big brother, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT (which has been delayed for five years and still growing), the Finch West line will open just two years later than its originally scheduled opening date.
This is a sample of Canadian transit projects. especially in Torontowhere construction usually takes longer than originally expected.
“We start and stop,” said Matti Siemiatycki, a U of T professor and director of its Institute for Infrastructure. “It has a cost in terms of inflation, in terms of everything burning out before we even start, and then when you actually start physically building.”
The route is bursting at the seams
Meanwhile Finch, an area sandwiched between the city center and northern suburbs, has been left in decline by a bus service increasingly choked by congestion. Back in the 1970s, transit proposals were promised (but abandoned) for areas like Finch, home to many of the city's immigrants and low-income Torontonians.
Almost 40 years ago, Star columnist Rosie DiManno wrote: district: “One of the biggest criticisms of Jane-Finch as designed by town planners was that the community had no support services and that residents had to travel up to 25 kilometers through an inadequate transport system to meet their needs.”
So finally, in 2007, when Transit City promised to build the Finch West LRT, there was hope. But over the years, initial proposals to extend the line to Finch Station on the east side of Line 1, and even possibly connect to the Sheppard Line, were whittled down to today's Finch West LRT.
“Time and time again, when the chips were down … projects serving the inner suburbs in particular fell off the agenda and did not move forward,” Siemiatycki said. “The impact of this is significant because you end up just widening the social and economic gap.”
Passenger numbers on the Finch West bus have grown to the point where it is one of the city's busiest bus routes.
Toronto Star Photo file
And as those plans have been debated and delayed, Finch West's 36 and 936 buses (which the LRT will largely replace) have only gotten busier and the population increased. by almost 2,500 percent in some areas — and got even more stuck in traffic jams. An on average 40,000 people traveled on the Finch West bus on weekdays in 2024, the latest year for which data is available, making it the sixth busiest bus route in the city.
The ghost of slow trams
For both Siemiatycki and transit expert Steve Munroe, it comes down to how the TTC will operate the line.
“Trams and LRTs in other places, they just work better. Whether it's in the suburban areas of Amsterdam or in parts of France, they're just faster and more reliable,” Siemiatycki said. “If the TTC can manage this service this way and operate it like an LRT rather than a streetcar … it should provide better (service).”
Downtown Toronto's streetcar system has an “overly conservative operating philosophy” that reduces travel speeds – from not prioritizing transit signals at intersections to an outdated switching system, Munroe said, making the TTC's streetcar system one of the best. the slowest in the world.
If this philosophy “infects the Finch line”, people may wonder why the line was built in the first place.
According to Munroe, who advocated for the line, while it's a positive sign that it's not as fast or reliable as promised, people may wonder, “Why did we spend all this money when we're only getting half a loaf?”
In the first months of the new line's opening, when it will operate under what the TTC calls a “soft opening” of reduced hours and frequency, Finch West's operation bears little resemblance to the original vision for faster, more reliable transit.
Trains on the Finch West line will have priority signaling, allowing them to pass some junctions before cars.
Steve Russell Toronto Star
Although trains are much larger than buses and use exclusive right-of-way, they run less frequently than a bus: every six and a half minutes for the LRT and five and a half minutes for the bus.
The TTC says this is offset by the fact that the trains can carry more people on a single trip – a maximum of 336 people, compared to 77 on a long articulated bus.
However, it is unclear how quickly all these additional passengers will be able to complete the trip. Metrolinx web page says that trains will run at an average speed of 20-21 km/h, with a travel time of about 33 minutes.
But Munro, analyzing data from the TTS schedule, calculated that the average LRT speed Only about 13.5 km/h is expected.. At its current speed, the LRT will at times be slower than the current bus it replaces, and significantly slower than what was originally promised when the line was built.
The TTC did not dispute Munro's calculations, but said the LRT schedule was based on travel times “observed during the testing phase” when new infrastructure and technology are used in real-world conditions.
“As we move closer to full service and beyond, average speeds are expected to improve through familiarization and confidence in operations, as well as adjustments to corridor operations in collaboration with the City of Toronto,” added TTC spokesman Adrian Grundy.
The TTC's Louis also noted that the new LRT line will not only have its own traffic-free right-of-way, but will also have priority signaling at intersections— this means that trains will be able to pass through some intersections before cars. — so that they don't get stuck waiting for a red light, as trams often do.
As a result, the LRT ride is expected to take 46 minutes, which Louis said is a “marginal improvement” over the bus of about five to six minutes.
For growing parts of the area, the new LRT has another distinct advantage over the old, crowded bus route: room to grow. Current demand for Finch is about 700 passengers per hour, Louis said, but the LRT, due to its size, will be able to handle triple the number of passengers as demand increases.
“It’s really about attracting people who are just traveling around their area, not just commuters,” Louis said. “How do we build a city around public transport, where people use transport not only to commute to work, but also to live.”
