Many recent reports and proposals talk about the problems of long commuting trips, of the futility of attempting to move quickly around our increasingly congested city.
Back on August 24, Statistics Canada published their commuting study based on 2010 data. The study reviews not only comparative commuting times by mode, but also the attitudes of motorists to the transit alternative.
The average commuting time for all of Canada was 26 minutes, but this rises to 30 minutes for CMAs (“Census Metropolitan Areas” which are generally larger than actual municipalities) of 1-million or more population. Toronto and Montreal average 33 and 31 minutes, but this doesn’t tell the entire story as any Toronto commuter will tell. 27% of Toronto commutes take over 45 minutes, and 29% are caught in traffic jams.
When the data are subdivided by car and transit, the transit trips take longer, and this difference is heightened in lower density areas. That’s no surprise because low density areas tend to have poor transit service as a direct result of lower demand. Waiting times are an important part of transit trips when service is poor, and this is compounded by any need to change between routes that may not directly serve all travel patterns. The average transit commute in large CMAs is 44 minutes while the average car trip is 27 minutes. The figures are even worse for Toronto. Missing from this is any discussion of the length of the trip or the differences caused by trip location and density of demand.
Neither transit nor car users like traffic congestion, but the presence of rapid transit networks means that some trips are congestion-free (even though they may be subject to transit delays that were not part of this study). The proportion of commuters who were satisfied with their commute times is understandably high where these times are short and congestion is comparatively rare. Transit riders put up with longer commute times better than car drivers, but those with short trips tended to be less happy with transit than motorists were with their cars. This is easy to understand when one considers that a short transit trip is more likely to have a relatively large proportion of wait time, while at least some of the longer trips (notably commuter rail) allow the commuter to relax enroute.
The vast majority of motorists view public transit unfavourably, but this statistic is not broken down by region, let alone by sub-region where variations might be seen due to the availability and quality of the public transit option.
Media reaction to this report was quite predictable with stories about how bad Toronto’s commuting times are. Less clear is the question of what, if anything, can be done about the situation. Indeed, the most simplistic analysis might suggest that car trips are inherently faster and “better” than transit trips based on their average length. This would completely mask the effect of averaging together trips over a wide variety of roads and transit lines and the cost, broadly speaking, of increasing capacity for either mode.
The Star reported that Toronto has the slowest rush hour in Canada. One sample family living in Aurora has a 75-minute commute (5 minute drive to GO, 55 minute train ride, 15 minute walk). Just the train ride is well above the average commuting time for the GTA, and the 15 minute walk tells us something about the convenience and/or cost of adding a TTC trip onto the end of the journeys. Driving was half an hour faster. GO’s longer trip traded the stress of driving for the problems inherent with infrequent rail service. This is a serious problem for commuters whose travel is dictated by a handful of scheduled trips.
As long as GO Transit stays oriented to peak period, peak direction travel, and local bus systems focus on serving those GO trains, transit really isn’t an option for most commuters. Better off-peak service will address some of the stress problems by giving commuters more options, but the chance that one might add close to an hour’s waiting time to a trip won’t do wonders for average commute times.
The Star quotes the Board of Trade’s call for a massive investment in transportation, but there is little indication we will see this at either the Federal or Provincial level. Meanwhile, Toronto is obsessed with something-for-nothing schemes that address pet projects (the Sheppard subway, the monorail to the Port Lands), but not the overall need for much more and better transit.
Another Star article looked at commuting times for a reverse commute from downtown to Markham, and then back. On the outbound trip, from the Star building at 1 Yonge Street to McNabb & Birchmount, 1.6km north of Steeles, the writer had fairly smooth sailing with little congestion, and made the trip in 27 minutes. The reverse trip took 49 minutes thanks in part to a “fender-bender”.
This trip, of course, is not particularly well-served by transit. The closest GO stations, Milliken or Unionville, are some distance to the east, and the destination lies half-way between them. Trains leave Unionville southbound between 5:50 and 8:15 (5 trips), and there is no northbound service until the PM peak. The TTC’s 17A Birchmount bus serves this location during peak periods on roughly a 20-minute headway.
Google’s trip planner calculates that the trip would take almost 90 minutes by transit (subway, Steeles East and Birchmount buses). Oddly enough, it suggests our commuter walk from the Star Building at 1 Yonge to Union Station rather than walking to Bay for a one-stop ride on the Harbourfront streetcar. Probably a good choice, if not ideal in bad weather.
In a separate article, the Star looked at cycling and walking. Two factors leap out of this story. First, the trips tend to be short. People do not walk from the waterfront to Markham, and cycling would be only for the hardy. Also, for those with short trips, there’s a good chance that the transit alternative will be crowded or won’t even show up thanks to irregular service. These are short hops in the centre of the city where transit should rule, but it is not always a viable option. Indeed, even with reliable service, the access time — walk, wait, then walk again — is a big chunk of the trip. A cyclist sees transit as a poor option in much the same way as a long-distance motorist, only the scale is different.
The Sun’s take on the story focuses on growing transit riding. Their article lists many improvements in the pipeline at the TTC, but notably absent is much talk of better service. Indeed budget problems will constrain what the TTC can actually deliver.
The C.D. Howe Institute weighs in with a proposal that HOV lanes (a “High Occupancy Vehicle” has at least two if not more occupants) be tolled, and that in some cases, multiple lanes be dedicated for this purpose. Lone drivers could opt to use the toll lane(s), but they would pay for the privilege while multi-occupant vehicles would drive free.
That’s something of a stretch. Not only does this ask the notoriously lone auto commuter to share the vehicle, but also to pay for the privilege of using the road if he does not.
Motoring commuters travel alone not just for some deep-seated psychological need, but because this frees them to travel when and where they like, including all those errands that are tacked onto the start and end of the workday. Add one or more carpool buddies, and the trip becomes constrained to the schedules and preferences of the passengers, not unlike the problem faced by a traveller using an infrequent, peak-only GO service.
The big assumption is that there is actually road capacity for this to occur, that the HOV lanes will be less congested, and that drivers would pay for the privilege of using them. The revenue would go to support construction of more infrastructure. While this scheme might be possible on the expressway network, there remains the issue of the local streets which form a good chunk of a typical commuter’s trip.
Finally, the City of Toronto is about to embark on a study of congestion downtown with the Downtown Transportation Options Study. This will look at the area bounded by Lake Shore, Queen, Jarvis and Bathurst with a view to finding ways to improve traffic flow in the core and the interaction of many transportation projects with road capacity.
I will be amused to see how much attention is paid to the degree to which roads are used for purposes other than moving transit vehicles, trucks and cars. Notable among these are curb lane occupancy for construction projects, parking restrictions that generously dedicate road space to storage rather than movement, and the absence of restricted parking/stopping on streets near a major obstruction that causes spillover traffic demand.
A common thread in all of this is the issue of the ultimate capacity of the transportation network, especially the road system. Admitting that there just isn’t any more room is an option few are willing to face, but gradually even a breezy reverse commute such as the Star described will only be a memory. Congestion is growing throughout the GTA, especially the outer 416 and the 905, and the challenge for transit to make a dent in this is considerable. Indeed, even Metrolinx’ “Big Move” if fully funded would only stem the growth of congestion, not eliminate it.
We have built a sprawling region, and it will be a decade at best before many current proposals and projects show any benefits. Meanwhile, traffic will continue to grow and congestion will be an even greater concern.
The “war on the car” was lost years ago with the GTA’s growth unmatched by good transit service. Planners talked about “transit oriented development”, but politicians built very little of it. Now we face a political class that views transit as a cost, possibly even a waste, rather than an investment. Today’s mantra is to get transit off of the public books, to reduce taxes, to avoid responsibility for the larger regional issues.
Enjoy your commute. It’s going to get a lot longer.
Steve Munro 
Steve, while I agree with your thrust on this piece…..
I fail to see the direct connection between infrequent train service and the ‘Aurora’ commute scenario.
The actual train trip by schedule with ‘0’ wait time for the train is 56min from Aurora GO to Toronto-Union.
I’m very much an advocate of adding off-peak service, but in so far as the issue presented is commute time, I don’t see a direct connection. More trains would not cut the time of the commute.
Steve: Part of any trip, and also an item mentioned in the Star article, is the wait for a transit vehicle. In the case of an infrequent peak only service, this means people must time their trips to meet the train, and have the chance of missing the last one. Even a move to hourly all day service will require people to time trips, rather than just going when they feel the urge. This is one big reason people love subways in Toronto so much — the TTC runs fabulous service even when the trains are mostly empty, and wait times are not an issue. Yes, the trip on the train will still be the same, but the wait for that train will be short enough that it doesn’t seem like a big disincentive to a would-be rider.
Perhaps, its worth asking if we should encourage or subsdize people living in Aurora commuting all the way to downtown Toronto; but of course, we already ready do that for both transit and drivers alike. Assuming we are committed to maintaining this choice; perhaps at least part of our focus does need to be making a certain transit trips ‘competitive’ with the car in respect to length.
In that spirit (and using this example)
How much time could we shave by electrification, assuming we didn’t eat it all up in new stations? ie. Faster acceleration/deceleration could shave what, 15%? off this trip time, maybe 7-8min? Does it make sense to offer express trips from Aurora? How much time might that save?
I’ll be the first to concede there are many other priorities, not the least of which is simple capacity expansion to facilitate latent demand for transit services, as offered. But asking what we can do to make the ride more attractive (if and where the cost is justifiable) is important as well.
Steve: I don’t disagree, but the points we seem to agree on are that we’re stuck with Aurora being where it is already, and better service is needed. “Better” can take many forms, and whether it comes through faster trips, more trips, express trips, these are all variations on a theme. My big concern is with those who feel that somehow we can “solve” the problem for motorists in a way that won’t hurt too much.
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I have noticed that the time references listed on some surface route transfers have gone up in time. Of what I remember, what was listed as 55 minutes, for example, is now 60 or 65 minutes. That means to me, the automobile traffic has increased the time required for a transit vehicle to serve that route, even without the driver acting as conductor (dispensing tickets, making change, etc.) from years before to just driving and collecting fares only.
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The problem is not the size of our rapid transit network, but the size and shape of our city. While there is demand for longer distance high-speed travel options across the region, actually building rapid transit to serve these needs is just not feasible or financially sustainable, no matter how much money we have.
We must allow the city to reshape into transit-oriented neighbourhoods before we can expect transit to play a competitive role throughout the region.
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Best solution to the long commute times is MOVE! I find it ridiculous the distances people are commuting and the costs involved, both monetary and physical stress. Nothing significant is going to happen otherwise to reduce travel time no matter how many GO trains are added.
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I think a lot of the commute times you cite are exacerbated by GO Transit’s over-reliance on trains over buses. For example, the GO express bus between Hamilton and Union Station is more frequent and considerably faster than taking the train. If Metrolinx were to provide similar bus routes for their most remote stations, then transit times could be improved considerably.
I used to think your obsession with network design and the conservative obsession with buses over trains were quixotic, but my opinions are beginning to turn around. I don’t really see the point of having a government subsidized transit service if it only serves the most profitable routes of middle-class car owners commuting to downtown.
Steve: Just to be clear, I do not have a “conservative obsession with buses”, although they do have a legitimate place in any transit system.
Metrolinx really needs to step up its game if it wants to fulfill its mandate of providing regional transit in the GTA. Routes like downtown to Markham, Scarborough to Mississauga, etc. as well as service along their primary commuter train routes could be improved dramatically if GO transit were to put more money and attention into the design of its bus routes.
Steve: Part of the problem here is the question of Metrolinx competing with local systems. It’s worth remembering that the Yonge route now operated by Viva used to be a GO Transit route. As for buses and trains on the Lake Shore corridor, it would take a lot of buses to provide the capacity of one train. Just as there is a point on local systems where rail (either surface or underground) is preferable to buses, the same considerations apply to the longer distance commuter network.
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The CD Howe Institute advocated HOT (High-Occupancy Toll) lanes, which are often “free” to carpoolers but single-occupancy cars can also use them if they are willing to pay a toll based upon the demand (traffic). This type of operation would be quite suited for the well heeled Bay Street banker (the type of people that fund the CD Howe Institute), who will pay the premium to use the lanes.
Not that HOT lanes do not have their purpose, but would make more sense in a congestion charging environment (where higher capacity vehicles are exempt), and if good alternatives are available for the proletariat (the rest of us), such as higher-order transit.
Steve: I have modified the text to clarify what is proposed. My concern is the underlying assumption that HOV lanes are underused today, and that they could be added to roads somehow manufacturing capacity where none exists.
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The C.D. Howe report is not very clear (and perhaps not accurate) on the issue, but the principle behind HOT (High-occupancy toll) lanes is that HOVs travel for free, while single-occupant motorists can “buy their way” into the HOV lane by paying a toll.
Steve: See my remarks in the previous comment.
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@Raymond Kennedy
I find the ‘why don’t people just move’ rhetoric to be problematic. People work wherever they are able to find jobs. Furthermore, they live in areas that they can afford to. It is not always economically feasible for someone to work and live in the same part of town. Add in the fact that moving is expensive.
To use an example, hotel workers who live in the inner suburbs (i.e., Scarborough and Etobicoke) but work at hotels downtown, do not earn a lot of money. As a result of their low wages, they live in apartments in the inner suburbs where the rent is not as high as the core. Many of those people cannot pick up and move as moving is costly so they are stuck with long commutes to and from work.
The solution is to improve the public transit network and find new revenue tools to pay for it. If politicians are unable to provide reliable and convenient rapid transit to different areas of the GTA, maybe they shouldn’t have approved sprawling subdivisions that are dependent on car ownership.
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@Richard
I am not referring so much to commuting within Toronto as I am talking about ridiculous travel such as crossing Toronto (Pickering to Brampton etc.) and the really ridiculous such as Brantford to Toronto on VIA at a cost of $800 per MONTH and FOUR hours of daily travel! Buy a condo downtown and put that $800 to better use. Then, WALK to work!
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There is no doubt that improved transit would reduce commute times. However the biggest issue with increased commute times is not transit, but rather job sprawl. As Toronto has decentralized jobs at an unhealthy pace, our commute times have increased.
We do not have a study for Canada, but The Brookings Institute has a great report on job sprawl in the United States and the issues with jobs being so decentralized from the central city.
Contrary to what most people think, decentralized jobs does not mean people live near work. In fact it usually means they commute farther, or are willing to move further out, and use that new highway.
One major place leading to increased commute times is Meadowvale out in Mississauga. The Meadowvale Business park alone contributes over 70,000 car trips a day. Keep in mind that many of the people working in that business park used to work in downtown Toronto and take trains to work.
Same goes for the Beaver Creek Business Park out in Richmond Hill. A lot of the business in that park used to be in downtown Toronto, and now the people who were moved out there are driving instead of taking transit.
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I disagree. The problem with the rail service for the family in question is that it takes longer than driving. That’s nothing to do frequency of service.
Steve: The article specifically mentions the need to time one’s travel to suit the train schedule, and this is a particular problem for peak-only services. Even with hourly off-peak service, there’s a chance of a missed train. Yes, for this family, the longer trip is an issue, but nothing is going to get train travel from Aurora down to the time of driving. Just look at the access time at both ends which adds 20 minutes for starters.
Are all local bus services focused on serving GO trains? I had a quick look at GTA bus maps, and York, Barrie, Hamilton and Brampton all seem to serve the GO stations only when it happens to be near a route. Burlington, Oakville and Milton do seem to focus all their routes on GO stations. Mississauga and Durham are somewhere in between.
Steve: My reference is to the need for GO to consider how people will get to and from their trains when service runs all day long, and parking in lots that fill by 7am isn’t an option (let alone the problem of reverse commuters who arrive at a GO station and need to complete their trip). Metrolinx has fixated on the cost of expanding and operating its own network, but needs the local systems to provide a collection/distribution function just like they get from the TTC free of charge at Union and from the proximity of the financial district in walking distance.
By analogy, think of the TTC without the surface feeder network. Enjoy your walk from Kennedy Station. GO has concentrated so much on parking lots, and now on garages, that it forgets this addresses only one type of trip — early day inbound commuting — and that there is a finite space available. Metrolinx talks a good line about “mobility hubs”, but the built form of their network is far from that ideal.
Raymond Kennedy says:
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the jobs closer to where people live? There are many municipalities where the number of houses is vastly greater than the number of jobs, which means most people who live there have to commute elsewhere.
Similarly, downtown Toronto has far more jobs than residential units, which means anyone who works there has to commute in from elsewhere.
Either we get rid of a lot of houses/jobs at one end, or we create new jobs/housing units at the other.
Steve: In theory, I agree. In practice, we are stuck with the region as we have built it, and have to provide transportation that can move people to and from their homes and jobs. Also, many families have jobs where they can get them and in multiple locations. The idea that we could rebuild the GTA as a series of small, self-contained towns with mainly local commuting is quaint, but impractical especially when you think how long it would take to make a substantial change in the land use patterns.
Ming says:
The 7:14am GO train from Hamilton GO centre to Union takes 1h19; the 7:16am bus takes 1h30. The bus is quicker during the day because of the required transfer at Aldershot from a train that makes all stops. To me, that means GO needs to speed up its off-peak train service somehow.
Steve: That’s where electrification comes in, although there’s a point where “faster” is not practical. Also, a bus-to-downtown comparison works well for the Lake Shore west service because of the route taken. The Barrie train takes 1:35 to get to Union while travel by bus takes 2:00, both measured from Barrie South station. Trains from Milton and Georgetown are faster than buses. In all cases, one must also consider the degree to which either service has an express component to its trip.
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Raymond Kennedy said:
Last year’s top-selling Lowe’s Home Improvement location for the whole of Ontario was Brantford IIRC. Now you know where people are spending their money. Scary.
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Steve:
Electrification is an essential part, but off-peak express services may be worthwhile as well – it would be 7-10 minutes faster than the off-peak non-stop bus.
Steve: Frequent off-peak service is essential too so that folks at the inner, local stations don’t spend their time watching the express runs whiz by.
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@Tom,
The jobs already are where the people live. While Toronto is a more centralized city than many North American cities, the majority of jobs are still however outside of downtown Toronto and already in the 905 region, etc.
The thing is that people do not choose to always live near work for a number of reasons. One being people change jobs a lot. Second, people live somewhere and get a job somewhere else. And two income families, mean that one spouse is almost always going to have to commute farther.
When more jobs were downtown, this was not an issue, as you just hop a train to downtown.
But with suburban jobs, it is not as easy due to the decentralization. So the kicker is that jobs have moved out to where people are, yet our commute times are increasing, and transit usage going down.
Downtown is in fact becoming a more attractive option again for jobs, because it is central to the entire metro area and easy to get to via transit from everywhere.
People act like everyone has to commute into Toronto everyday, when it is not the case. In fact if everyone was commuting into Toronto, a lot of the traffic we have would not be there, as people would be on trains.
An interesting stat to end this post on. Out of 2.5 million 905 residents. Only 100,000 905ers commute into downtown Toronto for work.
Toronto’s downtown now only accounts for 20% of metropolitan jobs. This is a very troubling figure. And this is high for North America. Most cities are in the 10% range.
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Maybe the city has just grown too big for it’s own good. Only solution now is to stop growth and spend big bucks. In the right ways though. This is where a lot of people lose face (not just in transport). Our leaders and bosses have a bad record when given big budgets. It feels like they don’t even seem to know how to handle the situation. The public is scared of giving the power and money to screw things up more. Tough spot we’re in now.
Somebody keeps mentioning electrification of the GO train to solve the slow transit problems. But I have noticed that today’s Lakeshore schedule is considerably slower then it was in the 1980’s. The trains were diesel then, and diesel now. I fear that one day they will electrify at huge cost only to restore transit times to 1980.
Also I have noticed in other cities, frequent mixed trains with half hourly stopping service and more express trains all on double track. Well GO transit (and VIA Rail) like to depart their non-stop trains a few minutes after the stopping GO train has just left. This requires extra track to “overtake” on route. In other cities they run the fast trains first, then the slow trains. So we are paying for 3 tracks when 2 would do. Three tracks is nice if you can afford it, but it’s not necessary. It has become hard to trust “them”.
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@383:
In 1980, trains were 6 cars long. Today, they’re twice as long, which gives the locomotives a harder time at station stops. Even when trains were extended from 10 to 12 cars, schedules were impacted. With EMUs, power is distributed and so doesn’t get penalized by train length.
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A couple of questions for you Steve … GO ALRT proposed a northern “beltline” that seemed to die with it. I know this was planned for the Finch hydro corridor, but what about the York sub and an alignment through Mississauga and Brampton along the 407/410/403 etc? Would this be desirable and do you think it would have a large effect on travel patterns within the 905? ie transit modal share for long distance commutes.
I keep thinking about it and wonder why it doesn’t seem to be part of public discourse.
Steve: There are constraints on what will fit on the CN York corridor both because of existing rail traffic (it’s the main CN line through the GTA) and because the width of the corridor has been compromised by development in a few places. Unless governments are willing to freeze/expropriate land for a wider transit corridor, there would be problems. The Finch hydro corridor might have made sense as an east-west line back before the city developed out into what was once farmland. However, the major traffic generators are now on the arterial roads, not along the hydro lands, and any new route in that corridor would depend on feeder services rather than walk-in trade, while failing to serve the high density developments. (The TTC had an LRT line on the same corridor from northeast Scarborough to Kipling Station with an Airport spur in their 1966 plan.)
A related issue is that Hydro is less entranced with the idea of rapid transit lines in their rights-of-way than they once were. It would be useful if Hydro would actually make a policy statement one way or another on this so that planners could decide whether to include those lands in their thinking or, at best, regard hydro corridors as parking lots and bike paths.
As for the CN corridor, I think the real debate has to be which of the east-west alignments that might be possible make the best connection with existing and future developments so that there is a mixture of local and long-haul demand. Any new service will require good connecting local service because, just like the BD subway, the line cannot depend entirely on local trade.
As a general observation, corridors that are not on streets present major problems for access by riders. Pedestrians cannot walk through highway interchanges, and land for stations (not to mention bus/road access) may be hard to come by if this was not designed into the roads at the outset.
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383onthetree’s remark about GO train schedule actually slowing down over time is something that’s often overlooked. As GO has “improved” service by adding additional AM/PM peak trains and moving express service on Lakeshore East from Rouge Hill-Union to Pickering-Union, people who were already taking the train have seen a service degradation because if you get on west of Pickering you see 2/3rds as many AM/PM peak trains as you did 10 years ago (thus the remaining ones are more crowded, take more time to load and are bizarrely scheduled to burn precious minutes waiting for express trains or VIA trains to overtake).
If we are ever going to see vastly improved GO service on the Lakeshore, it’s going to take more than just a few more trains and parking structures. Electrification seems to be GO’s equivalent of the TTC’s PEDs – a panacea that will solve all GO train service quality issues when all it will really do is shave a few minutes off everyone’s trip (to be fair, PEDs won’t even do that).
Steve: And unlike PEDs, a pet project of some in the TTC who are better at cooking up make-work projects than producing useful system improvements, electrification is strongly resisted by GO management. They are now caught in the intriguing problem that they need to electrify in order to run more frequent service on all the lines they are improving, but they are running out of capacity at Union Station. Catch 22! There are schemes for another level of GO service either at Union, or in a parallel “GO subway”, but both of these require electrification as a pre-requisite. GO’s plans, such as they are, for electrification, are dragged out over such a long time that many of us may not live to see them completed. It’s ironic that Queen’s Park balks at the billions needed for this project, but is happy to spend billions on a completely underground Eglinton “LRT”.
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I agree with you Steve that commute times will likely get worse, at least in the short term. Even if we had political will to invest in transit expansion, the 50+ years we’ve spent building car-dependent sprawl would still mean a lot of trips would be by private auto so long as most people live great distances from where they work, especially when many employers still insist on employees always being physically in an office (when instead they could at least for some days work from home).
Two years ago I found myself once again working in downtown Toronto (transferred from our datacentre offices near Don Mills and York Mills). Before the move I either biked (12.5 km) or took TTC (minimum 3 buses) from my home near Kennedy and St Clair. I now work at Yonge & Dundas, a 14.5 km commute by bike and now have either TTC (bus + subway) or GO as viable option, yet I still prefer the bike. The reason is simple: I have a door-door inbound trip of just under 40 minutes while both GO and TTC take longer (time includes walking to the station or bus stop and waiting) . My wife has an enviable commute of about 7 km and all of 15 minute (by car, but I can do the same distance in almost the same time by bike).
Phil
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I think it is incredibly telling on just how massive Toronto’s urban area has become. In many cities, places like Aurora and Newmarket would be outer belt commuter towns, not full blown suburbs engulfed by the city’s sprawl. From Yonge St. and Davis Dr. in Newmarket to Yonge St. and Queen St. in Toronto is about 46km! Even by car with good traffic conditions, you are still about an hour from downtown according to Google.
I think the best solution we can do right now is build more residential in and around office parks, turning them into mixed use communities. Not only would this allow people to live closer to where they work, but it also means transit can run through these areas at much less of a loss. For most office parks, local transit only services them during rush hour and infrequently during midday. Rapid and express services will tend to skip servicing them entirely. The reason is because outside peak times, they are virtually ghost towns.
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There seems to be discussion here that the GO trains schedules are slower than they used to be. I wish I could find a good source for historic schedules, as this doesn’t match my recollection. I know they added 3-4 minutes to all the arrival times at Union a couple of years ago … but they didn’t change the (Lakeshore) departure times – or the departure times at Exhibition or Danforth, so there was no real schedule change.
Looking back at the 1994 self-published work by Wilfred Sergeant, who was Superintendent of Commuter Services for CN in the 1960s.
He talks about trains leaving Union at “departures to the east at 13 past each hour, and to the west at 43 past” He also notes that each arrived at their terminus (Pickering and Oakville back then) 37 minutes later. Today the departure times are unchanged (for off-peak service) and these trains depart Pickering 38 minutes later (presumably still arriving at Pickering 37 minutes later), and departing Oakville 39 minutes later.
At worst, there’s been 1 minute added to the Lakeshore schedule since the 1960s – and I expect if one checked the Rouge Hill and/or Clarkson, the times haven’t actually changed.
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People need to look at the difference in travel times between EMUs and electric locos. Electric locos deserve any criticism they get; they provide negligible travel time savings and are generally a waste of time and money. EMUs were never properly evaluated in the electrification study due to an absence of adjusting the fleet size relative to the average travel speeds of each technology (which make a very big difference to capital cost). EMUs offer the real benefits of electrification.
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GO Transit will never be a major player in Transit service within the 416 area. Union station does not have enough capacity for many more passengers and their tracks do not have the capacity for many more trains as long as they operate under FRA DOT rules.
GO claims it can only get 6 trains per hour per platform for through routed trains and, I think, 6 trains for platforms per hour when they come in from opposite ends. Can you imagine the problems on the subway if the TTC could only operate a train every 8 to 10 minutes?
Union Station is a major bottleneck as its has very narrow platforms and stair wells. If GO could get a signal system that would allow for trains closer than 10 minutes apart I think that they would be better to remove tracks 3 and 6 and put in wider platforms and stairs to allow the platforms to clear faster. This would be lot better than trying to cram more people down the existing narrow platforms and stairs. GO would have tracks 1, 2. 4, 5 and 7 with wide platforms and stirs. This should be enough to operate 60 trains per hour on a 5 minute headway while allowing the platforms to clear between trains. Of course would have to change their operating paradigm.
GO owns the entirety of the Newmarket sub, the Uxbridge sub, the Weston Sub, and The Malton sub from USRC to the West Toronto Diamond, the Kingston Sub, to Pickering plus the GO sub, plus the Oakville Sub to Willowbrook. GO needs to seriously looking at operating non FRA DOT compliant service on the lines that are totally their own. There are numerous reasons for this:
1) They would not need to meet the stringent 93 day inspection rules for locomotives. This make the use of EMUs more attractive as they could be treated like rapid transit cars. (Cab cars count as locomotives.) This would result in about a 15% reduction in equipment required to operate the same service.
2) By increasing the number of trains per hour per platform they could get 12 trains per hour per platform on a 5 minute headway and 60 trains per hour for 5 tracks.
3) Non FRA DOT compliant trains could do a turn around in the time required to unload and load the trains because they would not need the full brake tests,
4) They then would have the capacity, hopefully, to start offering more service in the 416 area,
I like all the talk about commuter rail service to Peterborough run by some unnamed private company in 2 years. I would like to know where this train is going to go in Toronto. The 1100 or so foot long bridge in the Don Valley on the Belleville Sub is condemned. Have they figured the cost of replacing it into their calculations? Have they asked CP about putting more trains on their main line from Agincourt to Leaside or perhaps to the North Toronto Station? If the latter what are the costs of putting a passenger terminal back in there?
A more logical plan might be to tie them into the Uxbridge sub at Agincourt and bring them down. I love it when Politicians plan transit routes without asking any of the parties involved if it is feasible.
Remember that no matter how bad it seems we are a lot better of than almost all other North American cities. Can we replace Bob and Doug Ford by the original brothers with those names, the McKenzie Bothers, Hosers EH?
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I think the commute time thing is really being blown out of proportion. Toronto is a large city, and I am sorry, but an average one way commute of 33 minutes does not sound that long.
Data can be used to make an issue out of anything, and someone decided commuting should be the issue of this month.
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In 1981 GO train schedual shows a GO train Leaving Union at 1803 arriving at Hamilton at 1906, one hour and 3 mins with 7 station stops. Compare today with 6 stops 1 hour 15+ mins. Two other GO trains made it to Hamilton in 50 and 51 mins, faster then the express bus schedual of today. The Toronto to Oakville all day service with stops was 2 mins quicker then today. And back then it was max 25mph track from Union to the Ex. Today we have more triple track, 90 mph locomotives and 90mph track wich all costed money but…… our transit times are slower.
Back in 1981 you could get off the GO train and be gone from Union Station in moments, now we are trapped for extended time to inch our way through the maze they have built. It has gone slower and costlier.
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R Wightman
Source?
As for the EMU vs loco issue, perhaps one option would be to use smaller power cars of about 2000hp at either end and convert cab cars back to trailers or resell them. There would probably be more power at the rail because of the extra powered axles (useful during leaf fall etc) but still only have two 93 day units in each set.
383:
I’m not seeing your point – the alternative was what? Not expand the rail network to bring tens of thousands more people to an expanded Toronto business district?
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One of things I recall in my two visits to Paris (France) several years ago was that in addition to the Metro, they also had a region rail line (RER) with four lines (I think) criss-crossing the city and going out to the town/cities just outside Paris. These were convential EMU trains with pantograph pick-up, similar to the Duex Montagne line in Montreal, though I seem to recall the French trains might have been bi-level. What was interesting was that the operated like subways within central Paris – indeed the first time I rode it (1999) I though I was on their Metro, only to later realise I had in fact ridden the RER. Paris has three railway stations so there was no central hub as there is here (then again Paris is much, much bigger). One of the highlights is that one line on the RER goes right into CDG airport (and so it seems does one of the TGV lines). I did not stay within Paris but in Versailles and another nearby town but it was easy to travel to central Paris via the RER.
I’m not sure we could replicate that here, but it does show some interesting possibities – something like an Eglinton crosstown line running underground in the central part of the city and then at grade in its own right of way, either on the road or in an off-street corridor and still using LRT-type trains.
Phil
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My point is what they have been building has not resulted in improved transit. Basically the Ontario government does not know how to fund or run public transit . Ok, fine maybe it is not their fault for not having a good background to know how to. But they have an attitude also, our government will not learn from others. We feel we need to reinvent our own shaped wheel when the rest of the world has proven that round works.
What was their intention with running narrow stairs all over the place and renumbering the tracks so they don’t make sense anymore ? There was an earlier time when there was better planning, I find the foresight to build the Yonge subway, and the way it was built was excellent. It didn’t look like Toronto invented the subway, but it combined the best ideas that were around back then. The original idea of having an hourly GO train was good with light quick proven diesel loco trains, as a start, didn’t improve much since then mind you.
We are still headed for more increased costs and decreased service based on the plans they have.
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The main problem with job sprawl in my opinion is less job decentralization per se, but car-dependent job decentralization, that is suburban office parks near freeway interchanges in the 905. This sort of development is typically very poorly served by transit because it is low density, inherently not very pedestrian friendly and because the large expanses of free parking encourage driving. I think that by encouraging more growth in centralized suburban job nodes (e.g. North York Centre, Mississauga Centre, and similar nodes along subway and GO train lines) that this can eliminate a lot of the problems caused by job sprawl, while this sort of development has some significant advantages over putting as many jobs as possible in the downtown core.
One, housing is unaffordable near the downtown core, and increasing downtown core employment will make this worse. If housing prices are too high close to where people work, then people will be forced to commute further. Two, office rents are expensive in downtown Toronto. One of the main reasons that office parks in the suburbs are so popular is that rent is cheap there. Three, transit capacity in the core is limited, and expanding transit capacity in the core is extremely expensive because of the need for tunnelling. Toronto is fortunate to have many underused rail corridors where off-peak rail service to downtown Toronto can be expanded at relatively low cost, but significant expansion of peak rail service will likely need building a tunnel, which costs billions of dollars. Reverse commute rail service, on the other hand, can be expanded very cheaply. Finally, many jobs inherently need to be located in the suburbs. Retail, teaching and manufacturing are industries where most jobs will always be in the suburbs.
Statistics Canada has datasets showing commuting flows between cities in the GTA at . My impression is that overall, for the majority of people decentralizing jobs reduces commute times as people can afford housing close to work. For a minority however, it seems to increase commute times, if two-income households cannot find jobs near each other and because of the costs of moving house when jobs change frequently. Suburb to suburb commuting and reverse commuting from Toronto is common but it seems like the really insane commutes (e.g. Pickering to Mississauga, or Brantford to Toronto) are pretty rare. Sensible people choose to move or not apply for jobs that are too far from where they live.
Virtually every major city in the world, even cities with excellent transit systems and large amounts of city centre employment, has most of their jobs in the suburbs. Paris, Tokyo and Osaka are good examples of this. All three have lots of core employment, but all three have major suburban employment nodes (more like satellite cities than suburbs) and all three have extensive rail systems that connect the various suburban employment nodes. A decentralized city structure, where many jobs are concentrated in several major nodes (e.g. North York Centre, Kipling/Bloor, Mississauga Centre, Vaughan Centre, Markham Centre, Scarborough Centre, Pickering GO station, Oakville GO station) in addition to downtown, where each of these nodes is connected to downtown Toronto in about 30 minutes or less by frequent GO trains or the subway, which are connected to each other by frequent express buses on the 401 and 407, and which have many feeder bus connections, could work reasonably well.
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383onthetree
I addressed this above. These were the same as 1960s. And these are the arrival times in Oakville. Today’s schedule has the departure time from Oakville. How does the Toronto-Clarkson schedule compare to 1981? How does Union to Rouge Hill compare to 1981?
Hamilton is a different issue. Didn’t 1981 service run to the old Hamilton CN station on James north of Barton, rather than the current station at James and Hunter? That was on the CN mainline, so presumably quicker to access. Not an apples to apples comparison.
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Further to Phil Piltch’s comments about Paris. I first saw the RER in 1980 when only two lines existed at the time. They are operated by the RATP, who operate the Metro and the buses. Think of RATP as their version of the TTC, more or less. The RER lines were quite new at the time and extensions were already under construction at that time. They were described to me at the time as being “express metros” as their stations were further apart than typical metro stations were, and their lines reached beyond the core of the city that is served by the metro. Being part of the RATP system, one can transfer from metro to RER and back again quite simply. Given that there are a variety of different types of RATP metros (some rubber-tired, some not), it is easy to feel RER trains are just “another metro”. If I recall correctly (I haven’t been there since 1998), the two newer RER lines (C and D, I believe) use different equipment than the original two.
In addition to the RATP, commuter rail service is also provided by SNCF (think GO service, but operated by VIA). As Phil mentioned, instead of one central through-station, Paris has three stub end stations.
Steve: The term “express metros” says it all. Unlike GO and the TTC, the RER was seen as an integral part of the Paris network, not a competitor.
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.. Front St. transitway/Downtown Relief Line?…
this century?!
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I wonder what current, representative “minimum” and “maximum” car ownership costs for the GTA would be? It takes time to earn the money to own a car* as it takes time to earn the money to travel by transit or by bicycle, could this time not be added to commuting time? “Net time expenditure for transportation” replacing “commuting time?”
*unless you’re 17… or floating your lifestyle on a huge wave of consumer debt.
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This is a very good point.
As the city grows outwards, the average travel time for those commuting to downtown jobs inevitably increases, and so does the real cost of their transit trips. That cost has to be recovered, either by raising fares or by increasing the operating subsidy. In contrast, a significant part of transit trips to alternative nodes could be served by the currently underused counter-peak capacity at a very low marginal cost, and that might even improve the TTC’s bottom line.
We still do need a new Downtown subway line to cope with the growth that has already occurred, and the growth that will occur in the coming years. However the public policies should be neutral towards the job creation in downtown, and rather encourage job creation at alternative transit-friendly nodes.
In addition to the nodes from Andrew’s list, I would mention Bloor/Dundas, Eglinton/Don Mills, and Kennedy subway/GO station in Toronto, as well as the Richmond Hill centre.
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what’s a TTC PED?
Steve: Platform doors. This is one part of a large, expensive set of changes to the YUS needed to achieve the extra capacity the TTC keeps talking about.
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It was some right-wing moron(s) in the media that are behind it, at two of the crappy ‘newspapers’ that unfortunately are what dominate news in this city.
Steve: It also plays to the “Toronto is broken” mythology used to justify the “war on cars” mentality and the claim that road space is too important to use for transit.
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I’d like to ask two questions pertaining to infrastructure design, and being applicable to the larger question of cost versus service quality in light of budgetary constraints. Recently, I’ve moved to become living nearby the St. Clair line. Accordingly, I’ve noticed that pantograph-compatible overhead power supply appears to require more suspended hardware than does overhead suitable for use by trolley poles. That will eventually require costly adjustment and other sorts of maintenance, and, then, replacement. What is the purpose of converting to pantograph power pick-up, other than that it might allow more convenient bi-directional operation with double-ended cars, and other than how today’s tram manufacturers simply seem to want to use pantographs? Is the T.T.C. thinking of using double-ended cars and bi-directional operation on the legacy parts of the streetcar system?
Steve: There are various reasons to use pantographs versus poles, and pans are commonplace all over the world. First off, in the context of the new cars, pans can draw more power from the overhead than a pole and shoe arrangement because of the contact area between the pan and the wire. This was actually a constraint even for the ALRVs whose extra power requirements could not be handled through a trolley pole, and which therefore have lower acceleration capabilities than smaller cars.
Next, the elimination of frogs (places where overhead lines cross or branch) gets rid of dewirements and the associated delays while an operator puts the pole back on the overhead.
Third, although this is not applicable to the way the overhead has been strung here at least while compatibility with trolley poles is needed, it is easier to provide self-tensioning overhead that will adjust to changes in temperature (and hence length) of the wire. This eliminates problems with sag in hot weather and breakage through excessive tension in cold weather.
Finally, although the legacy streetcar system uses single ended cars, there are occasions where they do have to reverse for emergencies. This is much easier and safer if one does not need someone walking behind the car to guide the pole especially at intersections where the possibility of snags is higher.
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The overhead Bruce mentions is only as complicated and bulky as seen now because it is being made completely dual-mode, in other words fully compatible with poles and pantographs. (St. Clair also suffers from an over-kill quantity of closely-spaced line poles.) This is to allow a gradual migration to the new fleet and not wasting money retrofitting pantographs to the current cars shortly before retirement. Pure pantograph overhead is extremely simple. It remains to be seen if the Ashbridges Carhouse will be fitted with dual-mode overhead even though realisticly it would not be a requirement.
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There’s more to be done besides retrofitting the overhead wire. I was walking around with a friend of mine and we were looking at the number of other objects that present clearance problems for pantographs due to being located near the wire. There were many things like traffic lights and hanging signs next to the wire that the trolley poles pass by without issue but are too close to let a six foot wide pantograph pass by.
I’m kind of concerned about service disruptions when pantographs are introduced and trouble spots in the overhead are found. I.e., when a pantograph mishap happens, it’s usually pretty spectacular. Maybe the TTC should retrofit one or two of the existing cars with pantographs so that the new pan-compatible wire can be properly tested at off peak hours so whatever issues do get found can be fixed sooner rather than later, before rolling out a whole fleet of pan-equipped streetcars.
Steve: The prototype cars will have both pans and trolley poles. What you suggest is exactly what is planned.
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First time commenter, to add another datapoint and some observations.
I’m one of the crazies with a suburb-to-suburb commute from Kennedy to Clarkson. I have a slightly more than ten minute walk on either end to the GO station, but I give myself 15 for getting there because you can’t be later than the train is. This makes my commute 85 minutes. The drive takes about an hour, and you still get to go straight through the heart of the city. I take the train eight or nine times out of ten. We bought our home when we were two-income (her commute was 45 minutes on foot or 7 by car), but probably would have picked something out here because that’s where a lot of both of our families are.
Another point is the discussion about what to do at the other end of the train ride. Same goes for driving. What happens when you get off the highway? Eglinton from the DVP to Kennedy usually takes twice as long as DVP from Gardiner to Eglinton despite being about half the distance. And it’s not a speed limit thing because we’re talking about Northbound DVP after 5 PM. So we’re not only at capacity for the highways, but the arterial and feeder roads are pretty much full up too.
I think local transit at the other end is really important. Clarkson has about 10 acres of parking lot, which is smaller than a lot of GO stations. That’s 10 acres of land use which is by definition within walking distance to a rail station. If you can get more people using local transit to get to the station, you’d free up lots of prime real estate, the type that would be really useful for a decentralized node model of a city. Take Scarborough Centre for example – while the mall has loads of parking, the LRT stop itself is in the middle of the mall, the civic centre, and a batch of condo towers and it’s co-located with the bus terminal.
Finally, the DRL? It’s 19 minutes from either Scarborough or Kennedy to Union on the GO and 14 from Danforth. It’s also 21 minutes from Long Branch, 16 from Mimico, 13 from Dundas West, and 9 from Exhibition.
More frequent GO service for the inner stops is your DRL. Unfortunately the inner stops are the ones most frequently skipped by express trains and have no service outside peak times. I suppose this would also require some major fixes at Union, but a DRL would need that too. Also, some method of increasing capacity for that stretch of the Lakeshore corridor, but that sounds like a less difficult task then running an entire new rail corridor through east end Toronto.
I grew up in Riverdale so I love the idea of a Gerrard St. subway stop, but if the purpose is to relieve the load through the downtown routes especially at Yonge-Bloor, wouldn’t an express service for people from Liberty Village to Long Branch and from Main & Danforth out to Midland do the trick?
Steve: The problem with the Lakeshore line as a relief is twofold. First, the GO stations are not the easiest things to get at and they are poorly served by feeder routes. Second, there is a limit on how many trains we can push through Union, and that capacity is needed for other routes. Any DRL must come into the core area via a net new route. A line running east and north to Don Mills and Eglinton would not only provide a good transfer opportunity for riders on the BD subway, but would also intercept Eglinton line riders and act as a new focus for routes in the Don Mills corridor.
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