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Originally Posted by BaddieB
You can't throw around the word "efficiency" when the route is practically the same as a bus route that costs billions more.
On the ridership comparison, even the the project's own projections say this is a failure. They project about 51,000 daily riders by 2031 compared to the bus's 42,600 riders, which is really bad ridership growth for rail. Usually when a rail line goes in, the rail has ridership that doubles or triples the old bus routes (for example the Canada Line and Evergreen extensions). And no, there isn't a saturated transit ridership market, as evidenced by Toronto's heavy car traffic. There is a lot of room for growth and projects like these do nothing to boost ridership.
So we have the same ridership as the bus, the same speeds of a bus, slightly tighter stop spacing, at the cost of a Skytrain.
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I sure can use the word efficiency because that is the correct term to use. Just limiting the discussion to the passenger experience ignores that the upgrade helps to reduce operational costs since an extremely busy bus route requires so many more drivers, and labour tends to be the biggest operational cost. Plus buses are very damaging to roads, so a high frequency bus route also costs the municipality in additional maintenance costs. So the additional capital expense isn't just upgrading capacity but also saving money in other areas. By being more efficient.
In terms of ridership projections, it's also important to remember that Finch will just be a small part of most people's journeys since its main purpose is the connect people in the northwest of the city to line 1 which goes to many other places. By comparison, the Canada Line is a main trunk route that other transit routes connects to. Not really a useful comparison. We would need to compare the LRT's projected ridership growth with the projected growth for other mode options on the same corridor to make any relevant claims as to how future ridership would compare.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
Whereas a subway here is $518m/km, so you're basically just confirming what everybody already knows: that Metrolinx is good at throwing money down a hole.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BaddieB
$3.5 billion over 10km = $350M/km, which is about the same as the fully elevated Surrey-Langley Skytrain on a per kilometre basis ($375M/km), and is a better comparison than the Ontario Line since both SLS and Finch are on suburban stroads, whereas the Ontario Line is through downtown..
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My response was to someone who seemed to write off LRT as a technology by claiming that it it was as expensive as a subway but no better than a bus. But instead of people simply acknowledging that this obviously wasn't true, people are changing the subject to all this stuff that's irrelevant to the actual point.
The SLS is not a better comparison because it's not in Greater Toronto. The cost of a subway in BC is completely irrelevant to what technology Toronto should be using. The only thing that's relevant is what Toronto would be paying and getting in return for different modes. Unless of course you think that if they chose subway instead of LRT that they somehow would have gotten BC subway prices.
It's true that building in a dense central area can increase costs, and I thought about using the Scarborough subway extension as a comparison since it's not downtown. But it's also completely underground whereas the Ont. line has significant surface and elevated sections. Also,the Scarborough extension hasn't made nearly as much progress so it's harder to predict what the actual final cost will be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aberdeen5698
Maybe not quite, but it's sure more billions than a bus route that can provide competitive service.
If you're going to sink a lot of money into a transit route that has grown beyond the capacity of buses (and that's a lot of capacity, just look at the 99 B-Line), then you should at least get a decent service upgrade for your dollars.
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An upgrade to capacity is an upgrade to service. Not just because you can provide service to more people but also since you can provide a better experience to the existing riders. Not only is it uncomfortable to be stuffed into packed buses, but sometimes people even have to wait for another vehicle because no one else can get on which causes frustration and increased journey times. And I'm not sure the 99 B-line is the best example of how a bus route can successfully handle higher capacity when the busiest part of the route is currently being upgraded to a higher capacity mode. And while it's great that the Broadway extension will include higher speeds, that might not have been feasible with significantly higher infrastructure costs. And no, high costs aren't just a Metrolinx problem. High transit infrastructure costs have become an issue in many different places to the point where RM Transit and other creators have made entire videos on it.
Fact is, surface LRT is cheaper than subway and has advantages that buses lack. That doesn't mean it's appropriate for every application or that we can't criticize instances where it's a poor choice. But there are some cases where it's a good choice, so claiming that it's just a bad technology based on the higher costs in a place where all modes are costlier isn't accurate.
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