‘Hearing the feedback’: Chow planning motion to speed up Finch West LRT trains – Toronto
After complaints of sluggish travel times on Toronto’s brand-new Finch West LRT, Mayor Olivia Chow says she’ll be moving a motion to give trains signal priority and lift speed caps.
The new transit line, Toronto’s first since 2002, opened on Sunday, taking passengers from Finch West Station on Line 1 to Humber College Station in northern Etobicoke.
The launch of the trains has been met with concerns from some, with examples of buses and cars making the journey from one end of the line to the other faster than the light rail vehicles.
The current journey time for the LRT is 46 minutes to ride the entire route, with trains scheduled to run every 10 minutes. By comparison, around midday, the journey takes 20 minutes by car or 45 minutes by bike.
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Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria, who led construction of the route but is not in charge of its operations, said he expected travel times to decrease as drivers gain experience.
“The speeds will increase as the drivers, the system continues to get used more, which happens with almost every transit system,” he said at an unrelated event in Caledon on Tuesday.
There are also steps, he said, the TTC and city can take to improve how the trains operate.
“One of the things we’ve noticed is, for example, the green light for the LRVs is shorter for the LRT than it is for vehicular traffic (or) if you look at signal priority on the LRV,” he said.
“Those are two easy steps that could be used to speed up the speed of the train. That lies with the officials at the city.”
Chow said she had ridden on the trains, which she believes can be faster, and will make a motion to put into action the changes the province has pointed out.
“The train is not as fast as it can be, absolutely. I’m hearing the feedback,” she said on Tuesday.
“I am bringing an item to council asking for transit signal priority, removing speed caps where possible and increasing service frequency.”
Chow said a similar motion would go to the TTC board meeting on Wednesday, while her motion would be made public on Thursday.
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