Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveils the new Finch LRT train in Toronto alongside Mayor Olivia Chow and federal minister John Zerucelli, on Dec. 5.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Toronto’s transit agency once used the marketing slogan The Red Rocket, which actually began as a snarky description for the generation of colourful but less than speedy trains that started running in the 1950s. The city’s newest rail line is so slow that its vehicles, with their more muted styling, could spawn an equally sardonic nickname. Perhaps The White Whippet?
How slow is the Finch West light rail line that began carrying passengers on the weekend?
Transit-watcher and blogger Steve Munro parsed its official schedule and found it will be slower during some times of the day than the buses it replaces. A CBC reporter found it was so slow over its 10.3-kilometre route Monday morning that a decent jogger could have outpaced it.
This is a problem not just for the beleaguered commuters of the city’s northwest – about 40,000 of whom rode the Finch bus on the typical weekday – though they certainly deserve better. It’s also a warning to all Canadian cities that spending large amounts of money to build transit is only half the battle.
Success is not measured by the number of transit lines. They need to be appealing to attract lots of riders. They must be affordable, come often, have enough space on board, go to the right places and, crucially, get to their destination quickly. Fall short on any of these and it becomes much harder to convince people to take transit instead of drive. And that is as recipe for perpetual gridlock, a threat to any growing city.
Opinion: Toronto’s transit failures are no joke
Allowing expensive infrastructure to underperform also makes it harder to convince higher levels of government to invest in the next round of transit expansion.
This concern is particularly potent in cities that have been waiting years for projects to be finished. In Toronto, the opening of the Crosstown LRT has been postponed so many times it’s become something of a municipal joke. When it finally opens – the latest promise is early next year – it needs to wow riders, not make them wonder what they waited for.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow announced Tuesday she would bring an item to council next week to look at speeding up the Finch LRT, including by letting its vehicles proceed through intersections ahead of other traffic. City staff had reportedly been unsure whether what’s called transit signal priority would be necessary on the route. This reluctance is baffling, but better late than never.
Harder to fix is the culture at the Toronto Transit Commission, an agency that does not appear to value speed. The TTC set a schedule for the Finch West LRT that was distinctly slower than what had been projected by Metrolinx, the provincial agency that built the line.
The TTC has said it may be able to shave time off the schedule as its drivers become more familiar with the vehicles and the route. But it’s hard to be optimistic. Too often the TTC purports to be rapid transit but is content with being torpid transit.
Ontario hands over operations of long-delayed Eglinton Crosstown LRT to TTC
Some of these problems are due to limited funding and have grown over time. It’s common for subway trains to slow down over stretches of older track. Safe operation is crucial, of course, but allowing this situation to have festered is unacceptable. The appeal of transit is particularly undermined in open-air sections of track, where subway riders can see drivers whiz past them.
In other ways, the system is designed to be slow. The automatic gates that allow passengers out of subway stations don’t open in time for anyone approaching at a brisk pace, forcing them to break stride. Doors on streetcars and subway vehicles open slowly. The ramp that extends from streetcars to allow passengers easier access is deployed in person by the driver, who must go outside to do so.
The problem is not just that these issues have been allowed to happen. It’s made worse by the fact that TTC executives and city leaders don’t seem to grasp how big of a problem they are.
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani won in part because he had an obsessive focus on improving life for transit users. His promises included free bus trips – an idea that is controversial in transit circles – but also making these vehicles faster and their arrival more predictable. Speed and frequency are key to transit desirability.
Some of that urgency would be welcome in Canadian cities as well. How about a politician promising to make transit faster than driving? Or at the least that riders on a $2.5-billion rail line couldn’t be passed by someone in running shoes?