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Episode 3 - Talking Mexico, Halifax, and Eglinton Crosstown (with August)
212 Plays12 days ago
While a Canadian did not make it on a round trip from Earth to the Moon just yet, the Eglinton Crosstown or simply "Line 5" did in fact finally open! Joined by August from TTCriders, we discuss our first impressions and how monumental this is for the Greater Toronto Area.
Denis talks about his time travelling across warm and sunny Mexico while Rodney speaks about his simultaneous visit to Halifax, which admittedly was nowhere near as warm.
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Learn more about August!
https://bsky.app/profile/auguststreet.ca
https://www.auguststreet.ca
https://bsky.app/profile/ttcriders.bsky.social
https://www.ttcriders.ca
Olivia Chow’s Thread on signal priority https://www.threads.com/@mayoroliviachow/post/DVHTrvbEqzh?xmt=AQF0OQVPeUKbmxz3XcQnAIMwRXtrl8GEL8-9HZMayk6ZlA
Canada Public Transit Fund cut by $5 billion https://environmentaldefence.ca/2026/02/02/statement-5-billion-in-transit-cuts-a-huge-step-backwards/
Halifax Transit Advocacy Group: It’s More Than Buses https://morethanbuses.ca/
Activate Transit Windsor Essex https://activatetransitwindsoressex.ca/
HFX by Bike https://www.youtube.com/@hfxbybike
Denis’s Thread about Mexico https://bsky.app/profile/denisagar.bsky.social/post/3megqagnqis2a
Jonathan English’s report for CSA for the show notes: https://www.csagroup.org/article/public-policy/making-the-grade-recommendations-for-addressing-the-high-cost-of-canadas-transit-infrastructure/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:17
Speaker
Hi everybody, welcome back to Dwell. Time! There we go. This is a podcast where we talk about transit advocacy and we have a special guest today to talk about everything transit advocacy. Welcome August. August, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit?
Meet August: Transit Advocacy Journey
00:00:38
Speaker
Hello, my name is August. I'm the Campaigns Manager with TTC Riders and I've been doing transit advocacy for your Just four years around. Yeah, around four years now.
00:00:51
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah. August is a big ah help in in TTC riders. I've been volunteering and working with August for a while.
00:01:04
Speaker
And the work that they do is amazing. And I think Dennis has met. Wait, have you two met? Yeah, we've met. You've been Vancouver. Yeah.
00:01:15
Speaker
Twice. And I've seen you twice each of those times. Yeah, I see August. August is prolific on TTC writers, blue sky. And or at least I see August's posts under your name. And I see posts under TTC writers name. And I'm like, hmm. Yeah, exactly. It's intentional. You'll notice that I'll post news either on one account or the other. And then I'll post it on the other account very shortly after.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, makes sense. You got to get the most audience you can.
00:01:51
Speaker
the thank conclude
00:01:57
Speaker
together
00:02:06
Speaker
step co Yeah, so we have some news items to talk about first.
Finch West LRT: Signal Priority Enhancements
00:02:14
Speaker
I guess we'll start with something positive and exciting. Olivia Chow on threads we think? August?
00:02:23
Speaker
transit update we're taking action to speed up finch west lrt and save you time as of today enhance signal priority has started to roll out on the finchw west lrt with new intersections being installed every day what do we think august That's amazing. Like we've been calling for this for quite some time, like even before the Finch OS LRT opened, we knew that it was going to probably be slower than the bus because the signal priority that Metrolinx had indicated that was part of the the line's opening was only going to activate when trains are running late.
00:03:00
Speaker
So we had we had our doubts. And during testing, we saw that trains were getting held up by red lights constantly. You could have imagined that signal priority just didn't even exist given the way we observed it. So, you know, this is really exciting.
00:03:14
Speaker
People on Finch are furious since the opening of December. So hopefully this actually makes the train work and work a lot better than the bus that used to run on Finch.
00:03:26
Speaker
I have a kind of a rookie question. is is there a street in Toronto that has like really good signal priority yet? Like a single one. Hmm.
00:03:38
Speaker
I have no expert on like the signal priority in Toronto, but I know that they're experimenting right now with transit signal priority on Spadina. They're doing this type of priority called phase rotation, where they're inserting new green light phases to let streetcars go if they're approaching an intersection.
00:04:00
Speaker
Usually how signal priority works in Toronto is that it gives it like a 15 or 30 second extension of a green light. which is kind of limited and also doesn't work well if your streetcars are stopping at the near side of the stop or buses too.
00:04:16
Speaker
So yeah, that's the state of things. So another big thing to change is far side stops as well, like moving buses onto the far side of the intersection? Yeah, that would be a pretty important change to make to allow signal priority to work properly.
00:04:31
Speaker
It's actually quite interesting that a lot of the LRT stops which were built very recently, some of them are near side. So, you know, that's great. Yeah, there's this really interesting map that shows all the signals across the city that have like signal priority technology like installed. And it's like quite a few intersections, but a lot of them are just not turned on or like very, very limited.
00:04:57
Speaker
um So it's frustrating to see that we already have the built-in infrastructure. It's just about... I know it's not as simple as flipping a switch. There needs to be like some testing and the reality of of kind of what's the term like integrating or aligning the signal times to make it all work out. But yeah, I'm i'm happy to see roll it out on Finch and on Spadina. I saw someone posting about some of the testing that was going on today. And yeah, it says she said Eglinton Crosstown is coming up next to August people are already saying is fast, like the no one's like super, as I understand it, super disappointed with the speed of the Eggington Crosstown. So if the signal priority can make it even faster, be great.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, like the the tunnel portion has was really fast. It was already hitting 50, 60 kilometers an hour. The surface portion wasn't like as bad as Finch, but was still could use some works. There were some complaints about being held up at um red lights. I see.
00:05:55
Speaker
But yeah, that's something that August and I can talk about more later when talk about Crosstown opening. Ooh, right. In other news, the Canada Public Transit Fund got cut by $5
Funding Challenges in Canadian Transit
00:06:08
Speaker
billion. dollars Dennis, do you want to talk about it a little bit?
00:06:13
Speaker
Sure, it's pretty convoluted. i mean, um the context may be going a bit way back is that since Trudeau was elected back in 2015, the Liberals went on kind of a funding bonanza for transit. And there was a lot of federal funding for a lot of different transit projects. And the stuff that we see getting implemented today is thanks to that funding. And That kind of morphed from like a project to project like oh I'm going to give money to that project and get money to that project. That morphed into a three billion. You get a bus. You get a bus. Exactly.
00:06:47
Speaker
um You get a light rail. From the Oprah method to something a bit more regimented where there is a a funding program. There's this much money you have to apply for it. There's a program. There's qualifications. That's how federal funding is allocated in the US. And sometimes it can have weird outcomes where the rules are like super weird. But we tried it out here.
00:07:05
Speaker
And the the Canadian Public Transit Fund was just so insufficient, like when it actually put that number to it, which was 3 billion a year for the entire country in a time when a kilometer of underground rapid transit costs like a billion dollars each, sadly.
00:07:23
Speaker
You know, that's three kilometers a year for the entire country. That's really not enough. So that was the case up until Prime Minister Carney dropped his first budget. And then it it reduced the money dedicated to funding, shifted some of it to like... a general infrastructure pot where hospitals could apply for the same money. And there was a lot of ambiguity. We were asking MPs, what's the deal with this? And they're like, don't worry, there's plenty of money for transit. um And so finally, this um environmental defense put out a statement and I think really clarified that we finally got some clarity. And it was basically like out of the, I think, $30 billion dollars over years, now it's billion dollars over years. So it's like an insufficient amount of money and now it's slightly less efficient.
00:08:09
Speaker
I spend a lot more time doing my organizing and advocacy at the provincial and the municipal level because I'm, i don't i don't know, I think it's going to be a real uphill struggle to get the feds to really step up on this file. But anyway, i I'm curious what you you i you guys think.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, I was, I was thinking about how before we were even advocating for more because it was not sufficient. TTC riders, the group August is part of Dennis and I were in Ottawa, like a year or two ago for this, ah where we got transit advocacy groups across the country to come to Ottawa. for a summit organized by Environmental Defense with MPs and media and other people to try to lobby the federal government to double the fund and make half of it ah open for operational funding. That way, it's not just about buying shiny new buses and trains. It's also about
00:09:04
Speaker
the maintenance and running the service that these shiny new vehicles, we can actually use them and run them sustainably in the future. So seeing it be cut and instead of expanded is, is definitely little, a little heartbreaking, but yeah, like Dennis said, I think more money from the provincial and municipal level is definitely should be the focus these days. Yeah. I'd say like, I really like that point you made about, you know,
00:09:35
Speaker
This is a fund for shiny new vehicles, but often the biggest crises that transit agencies face is that they just don't have money to even run the service every year, and budget cuts are like a reality.
00:09:47
Speaker
Even with the TTC, we're always facing massive budget pressures, and thankfully they've been addressed in recent years, but you go back when John Tory was mayor of Toronto, the TTC was on the chopping block, and there wasn't funding support for it. so Yeah, definitely want to see funding for operations for transit agencies across Canada. Pretty urgent.
Halifax Transit: Budget and Advocacy
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah. And we have to do what we're going to do. Like, we we have we only have so many resources as different advocacy groups. And we have to focus that time in the level of government and on the issue that we think is going to have the most, like, any, you know, even any potential benefit. And and yeah, it's...
00:10:33
Speaker
For us, it feels elsewhere than it doesn't feel like the federal government is it right now. Yeah, and moving on to our next bit, some of us have been doing some traveling lately. Dennis went to Mexico, and also I also went to Mexico last year, so we can kind of talk about what we both observed, any like similarities or differences in our experience. And I also recently went to Halifax and got to take Halifax Transit, their ferries and their buses, and she got to attend a budget meeting there, and it was kind of sad to see
00:11:06
Speaker
the same old pattern patterns across Canadian cities of when I was there, it was about the budget. They were talking about cuts. What to cut next? Cause last year they had a 0% property tax increase. And to no one's surprise this year is like, wow, we're facing massive budget pressures. Cause We've like rated all the reserves. There's like, whatop we we've got all the debt and loans, like to the max. Like I think staff were recommending a 15% like tax increase, property tax increase. And council was like, no, that's too much. Let's try to get it down to 10 or five or even another flat one. And The only way to do that is to cut things and possibly things like transit and arts and other infrastructure. So it's kind of disheartening to see the kind of how cemented the austerity mindset is in the system across Canada. And even more disheartening is that the mayor, he used to be, he he was an urban planner for city of Halifax or in Halifax. Yeah. So it was kind of like a...
00:12:07
Speaker
yeah Brad Bradford situation where you would hope that someone knew who went to school for planning practices planning understands the importance of infrastructure, social services, transit doesn't understand the importance of and the worthwhileness of of investing and in these things. Why does the mayor of Halifax low-key look like an older version of Brad Bradford? Have you seen? Yeah, his name is Andy Fillmore. I was kind of like, so many cities in Canada are run by like older, balding white men. like Same thing with like the mayor of Windsor. Dilkins? What's his name?
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah, Drew Dilkins is also like big, big on cutting transit, cutting the tunnel. like yeah He literally used his strong mayor powers to cut the tunnel bus, even though the council voted in favor of saving it. That was tragic. And the great people at Activate Transit Windsor-Essex fought really hard to defend that one. Shout out to them for being in a great group.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of transit rider groups, Halifax has one named... It's more than buses. Yeah, it's a cute name. Yeah, they've been doing work and advocating for better transit in Halifax, which is what I kind of learned being there is how massive their regional municipality is, like they were also amalgamated.
00:13:33
Speaker
Being in Toronto, I think amalgamation was bad. And then you look to Ottawa and see how much that like dilutes the kind of urban voice. And then you go to Halifax. And I think it's and even bigger, i would have to double check, but Halifax is also a massive region. So you have rural and suburban and urban interests, and you can kind of see that dynamic on on council where you'll have a few urban progressives kind of trying to fight off the expectations of of rural residents who kind of expect the same level of service as as urban residents, even though their population densities may not kind of justify their own fixed transit route. So kind of juggling these priorities on such a thin budget always makes budget season hard and so am i to understand that you were on vacation and you went to a budget meeting yeah i i love that i was i also was in calgary the other ah like two years ago and i also went to a budget meeting the things urbanists transit urbanist nerds get into it's incredible i don't know i i
00:14:38
Speaker
I had fun.
Transit Innovations in Mexico
00:14:39
Speaker
Good. yeah um Were you there with someone from like It's More Than Buses? No, I was not. i was with there with Ben Hammer who worked for it's called like the Ecology Action Center. He does cool like mapping work of like all the active transportation trails in Nova Scotia. and whatnot and I also got to meet other cool like urbanist people active there from blue sky Kevin Wilson who has a really cool channel called hfx by bike talks about like ah urbanism and bikes and politics there and I also got to meet Ben Ben McCloid which was cool
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah, I got to ride the ferries. It's always cool to ride a ferry owned by the public transit agency. Yeah, know and always fun. Toronto, we're thinking about integrating the ferries with Presto, but it would be cool to ride a TTC-branded ferry. And there was recently, i don't know if you, ah ah there's recently a kind of a plan or a concept of more ferry routes by the city. i don't know, do you see that, August? Is it the the proposal to basically make a Toronto Aquabus that just like goes around...
00:15:49
Speaker
The harbor. Yeah. There's like, yeah, all around the islands, all around the harbor front. and Even Halifax has a plan for more different ferry routes and like higher speed ferry. And Halifax also has a plan for like a big, like a ah kind of core BRT network. But I think it's been unfunded and kind of it's been unable to be implemented the last few years. I also think the province of Nova Scotia has a plan for like a regional bus service, kind of like co-transit.
00:16:20
Speaker
i don't know if you heard anything about that while you were there. they had like a study I remember hearing a study for like ah some sort of rail or commuter rail, but I don't know where that is going. I know they just removed tolls on their bridges. Great. Wonderful. so Well, maybe that'll make traffic so bad in the city center that it'll paradoxically build the demand for transit. Yeah, no, that's another weird thing is that Halifax is kind of like a peninsula like Vancouver, but Vancouver has the SkyTrain that like funnels a large amount of people into the downtown core. But Halifax doesn't have that higher order transit. So you have, if you look at the map, it's kind of like 10, 15 routes all converging onto like one street. And it makes for bus punching and traffic. And it's kind of cool when you're in the street, you can see like a bus coming by like every, every like 10 seconds.
00:17:12
Speaker
And the bus terminals being like full of buses. And so when I was first there i was like, wow, I didn't know there was that like good of transit. like You didn't recognize Halifax game? Yeah. No, I didn't. No, it's it's such a metropolitan area. um Yeah, but yeah, that's the issue. It's like one of Canada's oldest cities, right? It's like right on the East Coast. It's kind of where colonization and and and kind of European settlement began. So you have like these narrow streets and you have a lot of constraints downtown. And without the higher order transit, there's like kind of a lot of tension between cities.
00:17:46
Speaker
sidewalk and bike lane and transit priority and cars so like whenever you try to put a bus lane in you kind of have no space for cars it has to be like a transit only street and they tried doing that there was like a pilot on i think spring garden where they made it like bus only for a few days, but because the pilot was just for a few days, like people didn't respect it. People did change their behavior. there was enforcement issues and council was just like, oh, okay, well it didn't work.
00:18:15
Speaker
Let's put cars back in the road. And it's like, well, pilots usually require at least a few months or like a year for people to learn the changes and then maybe shift to transit or shift to different routes. Kind of sad.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah. Dennis, you went to Mexico. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I went to Mexico for a week and I went for a concert, but ah that was really almost like a very thin pretense.
00:18:39
Speaker
i went to see the Hives, which is a Swedish band, oh but they're very popular in Mexico. And so I wanted to see. that I love globalization. i honestly i was thinking that about how. All of the Mexican fans knew all the English lyrics, but the band was doing all their crowd work in Spanish. And the moment I stepped outside the doors of the concert, there were like probably 20 different vendors selling knockoff, like like niche knockoff stuff from like a Hives tour like 10 years ago. Like it was really quite something. um
00:19:12
Speaker
but But did you take transit there to the concert? um Oh, actually, I walked. Oh, yeah. eager We love that too. Yeah, even better. um But that was just the thin pretense for this trip because um the concert only one night and I was there for six days. And my intention was to just ride a bunch of new transit. Mexico as a nation has been building transit at on on a tear like ah really quickly. And I think at a rate that is faster than than Canada, I would say. yeah.
00:19:41
Speaker
So I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Palenque, Merida, Guadalajara, and had an amazing time through the whole thing. And I'm not going to run through every single city because that would make a really long and boring podcast, but it's all posted on my Blue Sky. I've i've put like a kind of a thread of all of my whole trip.
00:20:03
Speaker
And some of my main takeaways are, first of all, that like building a lot of transit is good and it's really incredible what they're doing. Like Mexico City now has five gondola lines, um which are really remarkable because they run through neighborhoods that have not a lot of road infrastructure, right? Like gondolas average speed is like 21 kilometers an hour. It's not fast. But when you're going through territory that has almost no roads, you can massively save people time. Like people that might have taken an hour to get out of their community.
00:20:33
Speaker
Now taking 10 or 15 minutes and all you have to do is just run some wires over top. yeah it's real And the views are amazing. Yeah. Double as like both tourism and also like actually helping local people get around. Yeah. It really feels like a like luxury in in some of the most low investment neighborhoods. You know what i mean? It's just going from zero government investment to like, wow, we have this luxury like thing that other places are envious of.
00:21:00
Speaker
I also rode El Insurgente, which is a new like regional rail train to Toluca, which is a city outside of Mexico. And what's fascinating about that is that it's like you matt you can imagine a go train style service. Like it's about 60 kilometers away and they don't have a schedule because it runs every five to 15 minutes.
00:21:17
Speaker
ah It's just like, ah the train comes so often. Yeah. Oh, my God. And and ah so they they just opened a new link between that line and the metro a couple of weeks ago, just before I had arrived. And those those the trains on that link, that new part, were already packed.
00:21:38
Speaker
You know, like, what were all those people doing before that? You know, like, it's it's ah just kind of an instant demand for service. And there's kind of a darker side to that, too, which is that there are lines that I think were built in a way that like under delivers. um You know, there's there's a ah big theme of putting bus rapid transit in Latin America, ah which I want to see that here in Vancouver, we don't have bus rapid transit yet. And the TransLink has proposed three lines and I'm excited about it. But it has kind of a cap on capacity like there's only it's only good for so many people per hour. And once you get that point, it's like, oh, maybe we should have built a metro. And I i wrote on a few BRT lines in Mexico City that I was like, oh, like we might have should have. You know, this line is only in in one for one of them. There is a trolley bus elevado. There's like an a trolley bus that's on a viaduct. So it's it's literally like a SkyTrain, but with buses on it.
00:22:39
Speaker
And the idea behind Eglinton Crosstown. Yeah, <unk>s it's really unusual because if you're putting all that money into a viaduct, usually you put a train on it because it's way higher capacity. And these aren't even the cool biarticulated low like level boarding BRTs. These are just normal buses. So they don't have a lot of capacity. and part part of the line is just a year old and already just crushed loads. Like the buses are leaving people behind. it's just one bus after another in the station. You're waiting for the bus in front of you to clear before you can get into the station. So it's already it already has this feeling of like, boy, we really underbuilt this.
00:23:16
Speaker
One question I had, were you able to navigate the buses in PV? Yes, Puerto Vallarta is interesting. I was only there for a night. I flew in there because I found a cheap flight there, but also because it's the beach and it's beautiful. So it's like kind of a bonus. And the buses are unbelievably complicated. i think it's like akin to like Australia. I know they're really known for like having hundreds hundreds of little bus routes going in all directions and they're come every hour, but then they all combine on one corridor. And then, but it's just, it's just a lot for your brain to like process. And they're, they're just so lucky. It's just like a, like luck of geography that the airport is on the main highway. And so is the downtown. And so most of these buses just funnel onto this main highway and most of them end up downtown. So you can go to this airport stop and the buses are coming all the time. And you can just ask the driver like Central Zona Romantica, like whatever you want to say, like what wherever your hotel is. And they'll be like, yep.
00:24:17
Speaker
And then you give them your, you know, 12 pesos or whatever, and then you get moving. But that that was the only saving grace for that system in PV. how What was your experience there? Yeah, it's pretty simple from the airport because there's just one stop.
00:24:29
Speaker
I had some pretty funny experiences. Since they're so packed, like they kind of run with the doors open. Yeah. And between the stops that are short distances. And I was like, okay, like vibes. Oh, that's just Latin America. And that's how buses run. Ventilation. I'm familiar with them. Yeah. And it's like, it's like so packed.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You can use 12 times. But yeah, people some of the buses were so packed that people are like standing at the bottom of the back stair with the door open. And I'm like...
00:24:59
Speaker
get get your Get your fresh air in. But yeah, people, the the front door, that's like you pay your fare at the front door. There's no like back door. ah But people still pay. Like people pass like a coin down the front. Like I was part of one of these chains where you pass a coin down the front and then get like the paper ticket or proof of payment and you like send it back. I also got a guy who got on the bus, paid the driver with a tamale and just started selling tamales on the on the bus.
00:25:26
Speaker
Brilliant. And that was great. I love that vibrancy. We need we need someone to like start selling patties like yes just down the train. I love yeah but that. Yeah, I was kind of disappointed that there wasn't like a coherent like wayfinding system or like there's no like system map I found. Yeah.
00:25:43
Speaker
like an old map on Pinterest and like an old government video from like seven years ago. But, and Google maps and Apple maps doesn't really work. You can have to use like the move it app, but it's still, yeah. Like I found,
00:25:55
Speaker
I ended up having to take an Uber back to the airport because I was going to be late. I was like waiting at the bus stop, which doesn't match with what's on Google and like asking the driver, like, does this go to the airport? And like none of the buses. I tried like a few different stops and I was like, OK, I'm going to miss my flight. I got to take an Uber back.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, so like I was drawing in my mind. I was crayoning what it could look like in Puerto Vallarta for like an actually like good system. And it would be kind of like Ottawa's open BRT where Like, because there's just one highway yeah that covers the length of the ah like the most key destinations in the region. And so you can have median lanes for that whole thing and stations and like, you know, kilometer wide stop spacing. And then buses could branch on and off of it as you wish, just like how Ottawa's BRT worked.
00:26:42
Speaker
But yeah, it really feels like they're a long way from dedicating lanes on the main strip for that. I looked through the news if anything was being discussed on this along those lines. And the only thing that's been announced is like more articulated buses, like basically newer, better buses, but with no with no actual priority for the buses.
00:27:03
Speaker
But Mexico City, it was like night and day that the wayfinding and the yeah the brand identity is so strong. And it's all like linked together with that card. August, have you been to Latin America before? And your thoughts on on transit there? and I'm from Latin America. Well, yeah, I was born in Guyana.
00:27:22
Speaker
And I have gone back quite a few times. I'm quite familiar with how the minibus is run over there. And it's quite similar. um they all run with the side doors just blasted open so the dwell times are really quick people just hop on hop off there's very informal stops the way it works is you know you kind of just have to know your operator and your stop and you just get on that way yeah there were no bus stops on something like there was no sign in a lot of the places people were just standing they knew where it was yeah it's a very like
00:27:55
Speaker
it's a system that's like a local secret, I guess. Like it's a local secret to understand how to use transit in a lot of South American cities. And this is similar in like Venezuela to where my family's from. So it's it's quite an experience and it's a lot different in here.
Informal Transit Systems: Trinidad's Case
00:28:12
Speaker
I thought the pinnacle of that, like maybe the the best implementation I've seen of that is in um in Trinidad, where kind of the whole island is a bit of a suburb of Port of Spain, like the capital like Everyone's commuting in and they have an abandoned railway that they converted into ah a bus only corridor, but there's not necessarily formal buses like the kind we would see here. There's just all these informal vans that that trickle out into every single little neighborhood. And then they all have this priority bus route that they can use to get into the city center.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah. Fun story. actually used that bus route a couple of times because getting to Georgetown, Guyana from Toronto. Often you have to do a layover in Trinidad in Portis Bay. Sometimes the flights don't line up like on the same day. So you have, so we often would take like a stay at the hotel in downtown or somewhere in the city. So we ended up using those chaotic mini buses. remember using it like when I was really little before they had the priority bus corridor and it took forever to get into the city. And there were just lines and lines and lines of mini buses, but then, you know, coming in later,
00:29:18
Speaker
when they actually put in the formal busway, it was so much better, it's so much better. The one thing that I really would like to see there is like an actual formal bus system because we have the infrastructure now. Why not run bigger, better, you know, by articulated buses? We need Metro bus in Portis Bay.
00:29:35
Speaker
I mean, it's and it's kind of that. Yeah, the same problem in Mexico is that like the the technology and the the way that we've decided to run this currently has a cap on capacity. And I feel like they're probably there in Porta Spain that there's only so many vans you can fit through that.
00:29:53
Speaker
one corridor. And the next step after that is just about way more people onto one vehicle with an articulation in the middle. And then eventually think about putting tracks back down because it was a railway at one point.
00:30:04
Speaker
Even in Mexico City with a formalized like public transit system, i I found there to be also still quite a lot of informal vans and taxis and informal buses, like courting people like, oh, there's this
Civic Engagement Through Public Transit
00:30:16
Speaker
destination. So there's there's probably still like quite a lot of spillover excess demand that that could be accommodated.
00:30:22
Speaker
ah But one last thing before we move to the crosstown, the minibus conversation got me thinking about minibuses in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has like, right, super high ridership. They have like, like underground and overground metro, subways, LRT,
00:30:39
Speaker
like street cars, trams, everything, you name it, cable cars, but they also still have like little minibuses because they have some so super mountainous region. So you still have some neighborhoods that are only served by these small minibuses.
00:30:52
Speaker
And they're super chaotic. They're driving on winding roads. You feel like you're going to like fall off the mountain anytime. The drivers are like super skilled. They like know every turn. So like, they're like, going like 80 kilometers an hour with these like tight turns with like a cliff next to you and like one thing it's it's it's horrendous for people with social anxiety because there's no like button to like request a stop you have to like yell at the driver like next stop or like this is the stop i'm getting off at so yeah don't don't take the bus if you have social anxiety or just take it to the terminal
00:31:24
Speaker
just generally That's your only choice if you don't want to say anything. You literally cannot be an introvert and ride the bus in many countries. It's just not an option. Yeah, but I think that also kind of, if you grow up there, that kind of creates a kind of social environment where, yeah, I think taking public transit really instills a kind of civic sense in people of how to interact with people in public and see different people of different walks of life. And think that's something that can all appreciate.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah! Proxima estacion, Poliforum.
00:32:04
Speaker
But yeah, Crosstown opening. TTC Riders had had a first day Crosstown ride-along. was there with August. We didn't get a selfie. And also TriTag. We brought a crew of people who took the weekend go train in to ride out the Crosstown. Yeah, it compares to the Ion. Yeah, pretty pretty positive results. I mean, considering most of us were like still feeling Finch West and our expectations were on the floor. so like a semi-functioning system was kind of 10 out of 10 in our heads. But in case there's anyone in the audience who doesn't know what the crosstown is, should you give them like a little crash course?
Eglinton Crosstown: Delays and Expectations
00:32:47
Speaker
how long Yeah, August, you want to tell us a little bit about that glitchy crosstown? Oh, you really assigned the worst task. So the Eglinton Crosstown is like the flagship line from this plan called Transit City that came about 15-ish years ago or even longer than that. Dennis briefly talked about it in episode one.
00:33:10
Speaker
i had a yeah i had a map of Transit City on my wall in planning school because I was so excited about it. Yeah, it was supposed to be like the main line and it was going to run from Scarborough.
00:33:21
Speaker
It was actually going like replace the RT at some point. It's going to run from Scarborough all the way to Mount Dennis, and then eventually it was going to get to Mississauga and the airport. And they are building those that Western extension now. But yeah, after 15 years of construction... That's the Renforth, though, not the airport.
00:33:38
Speaker
After 15 years of construction, it finally opened. And it's five years, five or six years longer than when it was actually supposed to open. So it's been like a running joke in Toronto. Like, when is it going to open? Like, I remember going to a rally of, like, a few years ago, and someone had a sign that was like,
00:33:56
Speaker
we put a man on the moon in 13 years. What about the Eglinton Crosstown? When is that going to finished? No. I saw skeet saying, oh, who's what's going to be done first? Eglinton Crosstown opening or we put a Canadian around the moon because of the Artemis launch? Thankfully, the Crosstown opened first, but I think the moon launch is happening in a week or so. And then there was also, I think, a meme of like...
00:34:25
Speaker
Never stop working yourself working on yourself no matter how inconvenient it is for other people. Just like the Eglinton Crossed Out. Oh my god. Although I wonder if the McCallion line is going to beat it. I heard i that's another line under construction in Mississauga and it's going really bad. I heard someone say 2029. They call it that.
00:34:45
Speaker
Not Queen. was supposed to. McCallion line. Yeah. It was supposed to open in 2029. It's the Hero Ontario line. Yeah, that's also, it's also going really badly where they took out the loop and now they're putting back the loop and that's going to cost an extra like one point something billion dollars to put that loop around square one.
00:35:05
Speaker
There's been like some news stories recently about more delays and escalated costs and Yeah, I don't goes by my father in law's house. And he's like a huge car guy. i mean, he just kind of drives everywhere because he lives in Mississauga. But he knows I'm a big transit guy. And so he's like, Oh, yeah, it looks so good. When it when it comes in, I'm gonna just go and ride it and ride it and ride it.
00:35:26
Speaker
And but you know, but the construction is pretty bad. and I'm sure he's grumbling to all of his other friends about how bad the construction is. And that's like, sorry, man, it's gonna be another like five years beyond when it was supposed to open. Also worried about how fast it's going to be and how competitive it's going to be with driving, especially comparing to the speed of the buses it's going to replace. Do you know anything about the story?
00:35:50
Speaker
I am concerned as well that it's just going to become Finch West too. So that's a big concern, but it does have, yeah, like that big loop that goes around square one, that can't possibly be a quick travel time.
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah, I know the service pattern is still not set in stone of if it's going to have some routes bypass it or all of them are going to go through or yeah, it's it's still kind of up in the air. But now that the I think the province is funding funding the like Brampton underground portion extension, which should be faster, even though it's going to be an exorbitant cost to bury that. Brampton deserves a subway, Rodney, just like Scarborough. Oh, yeah. my apologies uh yeah if vaughn gets a subway brampton should get one too um mean brampton brampton deserves a treat for how much ridership they've spurred with their service decisions over the last decade yes but i don't know yeah as a treat
00:36:53
Speaker
yeah in ten years maybe fifteen twenty i don't Yeah, so how was the Crosstown ride? I think we'll have some Crosstown announcements and chimes playing throughout this episode. Thank you, Cariad, for putting those in. Please stand clear of the doors.
00:37:16
Speaker
While the train is in motion, please remain seated and hold on to the handrails.
00:37:25
Speaker
I'm going to focus on the positives and you can pester me about the negatives later. But right now I'll say that it is so much better than riding the Finch West LRT. A lot of us are really worried that it was just going to be a repeat.
00:37:39
Speaker
But it wasn't. Like we boarded the trains at Eglinton and they were fast. It runs like 60-ish in the tunnels, which is pretty fast. And apparently they're raising it to 80 soon in, I think, may March or May. But that's faster than what most of the subway operates. So that's pretty good news. and When we get to street level, it's a bit slower.
00:38:00
Speaker
But you can tell that the operators are still like running it at the speed limit as opposed to crawling like a snail on finch. They're gunning it. Yeah, and there's no real like signal priority right now, so it still gets stuck at red lights, but because it's just like a smaller section of the line, it feels more bearable. It is the section line that goes through Scarborough, though, so we do need to speed that up in order to make commutes better in the East End.
00:38:27
Speaker
But overall, pretty good line. pretty important. It's really transformative because it's the first crosstown line that doesn't go through downtown Toronto, which is really unique in North America. There's not a lot of cities that have lines like that. There's Montreal with the blue line. Mexico City has a lot of lines that does that, so kudos to them.
00:38:47
Speaker
But other than that, yeah, I don't... it's it's I mean, does the Millennium Line count in Vancouver? Well, it's so close. Depending on how you define downtown. Yeah, it feels like The Millennium line honestly reminds me a bit of like the Bloor line, kind of, at least after Blame was extended. It's like on the peripheries of downtown and you can kind of exactly group it into that category.
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, but even though the tunnel is great and there's only a small portion that's ah surface and kind of slow running, the saying goes that like your system is only as good as weakest point. And I think we saw some of that. I know some of it was like opening day, like different crowding and stuff, but you could you there was already some like bunching and i even past opening day, there were some issues with spacing on on the cross town, which you shouldn't really see in a completely grade separated metro.
00:39:44
Speaker
So when you have kind of trains getting stuck or slowing down in the surface section, it kind of creates unpredictability even in the fully grade separated underground part.
00:39:56
Speaker
And it's kind of sad to see that where Leslie is, there's kind of this left turn area where cars can turn left in front of the train. And it kind of breaks the kind of completely grade separated section, which could have been all the way to Science Centre, now Don Valley. And that's the connection with the Ontario line. And having this section with kind of its highest ridership kind of be fully grade separated and us choosing not to because the cars just had to turn onto Leslie. They couldn't go on Don Mills and connect later. Or I think Chrisanne has a good sub stack post about
00:40:35
Speaker
is Kevin Rupassane. Kevin Rupassane. Or not not yeah not Kevin. and chris I mean, not Chris. Kevin, yes. yeah Kevin about how to better plan so cars can still have access, but just might have to make a few more turns. And that's completely normal in a lot of European or other cities worldwide where you're so spending billions of dollars on this train, kind of want to prioritize it and make it fast.
00:41:00
Speaker
I do think it's really odd that that busily stop just sticks out like that in the middle of the road. Like, it really makes me question what Metrolinks was thinking when they designed it. Because when you look at it, you know, it it exists above ground. were thinking Yeah, it exists above ground because of the valley. So it will be on the surface. But why didn't they open the portal on the south side of Eglinton so that the trains don't have to interact with the intersection at all and then build a surface stop?
00:41:25
Speaker
at the South Side intersection and then go under and connect the Science Center. It wouldn't have cost much more money, but they didn't. And this is why we need a full public inquiry into the Eglinton Crosstown, something we've calling for for a while.
00:41:39
Speaker
This and other issues, including the cost overruns, the countless delays. Yeah. There's so many questions. I know TTC riders and Councillor Josh Matlow have been pushing for a public inquiry, but the Ford government has said no, they're not going to do a public inquiry, which is kind of sad, not even just for political reasons, but like...
00:41:59
Speaker
if you're going to be continuing to build LRT and transit projects, like you have to be looking in what you did right, what you did wrong, if you want to continue delivering projects in the future that are better and not over budget. I know the auditor general did, I wrote an assignment for class a few years ago, and there was like a small audit bit on the auditor general's report of, the Eglinton Crosstown when it wasn't even like halfway done construction and i was already criticizing the way contracts were written and the relationship between the consortium and Metrolinks and if they had that many problems back then already just like if there was another inquiry today I wonder how much more room for improvement they could find Yeah, Doug Ford can't just look at the crosstown and pat himself on the back and be like, yeah, that's a fine, normal transit project. There's nothing to learn. like we need They all look so proud at the like announcement pictures.
00:42:53
Speaker
But yeah, how what do you think of the the layouts of the trains and the announcements? and Oh boy, I'm sure you're all familiar with how fried the announcement sounds. It's actually kind of funny. It sounds like the trains have literally been sitting there for 15 years with the same speakers. Next station. Prochaine station.
00:43:12
Speaker
Eglinton. Eglinton station. so Change new lane 1, PN That's how frightening it sounds.
00:43:24
Speaker
They sound they like vibrate and shake some of the panels so it sounds like deep fried. like it's kind of And they're played at the first day. They were really loud. I think they've turned it down a little. But yeah, it's it's not great. It's kind of like on line one or two when the operator is like, there's an emergency. It's just like muffled and you don't really know what they're saying. It's almost like Metrolink's was learning from the ddc with that they were like oh this is what the subway announcement sounds like i think we have to bring the eglinton line announcements to the same level of yeah and that's why the trains are also gray because underground means gray yeah when i see the gray train when i see the grange the gray trains rolling on finch i'm like oh my god it's so fast this will totally deliver me on time to where i'm going right gray makes me think fast absolutely well both finch and eglinton have bilingual announcements which is fine but it gets to a point where between the next station and the please hold on the train is or whatever like it's just kind of endless announcement especially when it's telling you to hold on to the train every single stop which honestly was kind of needed because the first day
00:44:42
Speaker
I was there, like there were multiple trains that had an emergency break. One of them, i think it was like at Chaplin or somewhere in the middle. The system has no platform screen doors. So, and because it's like low floor LRT, the like tracks are just like right off the platform. It's not like a subway where there's like a big,
00:45:01
Speaker
dip where if you like fall in you kind of it's hard getting out and it's both like a double-edged sword where like if you walk in it's easy to get out but it's a lot more tempting to like walk onto the track so there were some kids like literally playing on the track which like caused the system to detect it and the train kind of like automatically breaks and that these trains have like this their emergency brake is really harsh like everyone falls falls over that's why when there was like an issue a few weeks ago about the like weird thing where the trains would randomly break like some operators got injured because they just literally flew like into the like front window and so when i got onto that train like people were like make sure you hold on because everyone just fell over like a few minutes ago so it's kind of disappointing to see no platform screen doors yeah but that the announcements i think they've kind of reduced some of the unnecessary bits and turned down the volume
00:45:54
Speaker
bit but I don't really know what they can really do about the speakers unless like maybe screw in some of the paneling that's vibrating a are they still under warranty I'm calling to reach out regarding your car's extended warranty bring it into the shop
00:46:14
Speaker
um I mean, what interests me about ah projects like this and and the the kind of string of openings that we're seeing across the country is how many people in Canada will now have like a significantly faster transit trip and how many additional people will take transit over
Optimism and Challenges in Canadian Transit
00:46:32
Speaker
driving. And that's in the context of not only Eglinton Crosstown opening and drawing a bunch of people on Finch West, maybe didn't draw too many people, but ah A for effort. um There's in an Ottawa opening. There's the new REM line that opened a couple of ah weeks ago, and then another one opening in in a few months. And next year, we have the Broadway subway opening in Vancouver. Like, how
00:46:58
Speaker
I think this is going to be like hundreds of thousands of Canadians riding transit that didn't before. this will mean like cities that haven't recovered to their pre-COVID ridership levels will like shoot past them. Like, I don't know. I'm really stoked about all of it.
00:47:12
Speaker
It's the Canadian transit renaissance. who We're living through it. Yeah. yeah it's It's an exciting time to be a Canadian transit rider. Please, federal and provincial government, please fund phase two of ION in Waterloo. We deserve a renaissance, a second renaissance as well.
00:47:29
Speaker
i mean that Cambridge deserves a rent well yeah cambridge deserves deserves a renaissance as well. it's It's hard to talk about the good things because i don't want to give anyone the impression that we're doing well on like any kind of an objective scale. Right. Like Canadian cities, population growth has been way faster than most other cities in the world. And we were already behind in transit. So a lot of this is just catching up. and And, you know, you look at cities like Seattle and Los Angeles, they have these big, coherent, cohesive transit investment plans that are like, we're building this and then this and then this all the way out to 20, you know, 90 or whatever. Like, we don't have a Canadian city that's really thinking in those terms with the possible exception of Toronto, but like barely. Yeah.
00:48:17
Speaker
still a lot of ground to cover in Canadian cities, like a lot more investment that's needed. Yeah, I feel like Toronto, the last five decades have just been a long term visioning process. But that process restarts every four years on every level of government. That's so depressing. Yeah, the government in BC says that they are investing more in rapid transit. I think that they say we're investing more in rapid transit construction than any other BC government in history, which on one hand is true, and it's because rapid transit is has never been more expensive to build on a real basis than ever has been in the past.
00:48:58
Speaker
Like when you compare that to our population growth, like we're still way behind. Like the government we should not be comparing ourselves to ourself like 20 years ago. It's like the, you know, Seattle region or something. bars on the floor. yeah exactly Speaking of expensive, August, what do you think of the stations and how they were built? Are they overbuilt, underbuilt? What do you think of the design? oh overbuilt. Absolutely. It's, it's quite,
00:49:27
Speaker
I invite you, i don't know if you've done it yet, but have you gotten off at Kennedy Station, walked between the Line 5 concours and the Line 2 concours? Yes, I have. There's some massive, that there a lot of these stations are cavernous. they're so These hallways are so wide. There was no reason for these it requires so much more excavation and cost and you kind of see that with the Vaughan as well I think it's also kind of a product of kind of tunnel boring where you have to have your stations much deeper which means more excavation and if you excavated all this stuff already you may as well have like higher ceilings and whatnot but yeah some of yeah like Kennedy is kind of
00:50:08
Speaker
And like, atroes to put a ah really fine point on that, like, I think we're really circling on that as one of the big reasons why transit costs have escalated so much in North America that we use board transit lines underground so much more than we used to. Whereas line two in Toronto was a cut and cover line, I believe. or maybe some part of it or mind, but but where you're you're just digging a hole from underneath, like you're closing the street, digging it all up, putting down train tracks and then putting a cap on. So they're so close to the surface. The stairs you need to go up are really short.
00:50:42
Speaker
And as a result, to make a station, you don't need to create this enormous cavern. You just boop stations right there. And so it's like exponential, the amount of cost increase to build a station when the the station is so much deeper into the earth. And that's why like Seattle, they're they're announcing they might be able to shave half a billion USD off the cost of one station by making it slightly trapezoidal.
00:51:08
Speaker
That's what this slide said. Instead of a rectangular station, make it slightly trapezoidal. They have to they don't have to do as much excavation. They can save half a billion dollars. Yeah, that's why you can like, it's not even like cost, like you were talking about the user experience of going down like 10 flights of stairs rather than two, you can kind of tell what stations are cut and cover and what are bored. yeah I don't know, August, where were you at Avenue Station?
00:51:31
Speaker
Avenue Station is really deep. And I was I used it one time, it took several, several minutes to actually reach the surface. And that really points out to how this kind of transit construction, not only is it expensive, it's less accessible. And it's also you know less ideal when you consider the broader travel time savings. Like someone taking the bus on Avenue who now has to transfer it to the Eggleton Crosstown has to spend so many extra minutes going down underground.
00:52:01
Speaker
So like you have to factor these in, right? yeah and then just to go back up at the next underground station. It's actually so bad at Avenue that so there's like a main entrance with like an elevator, thank God and escalators. And even with the escalators, it's like multiple, multiple floors. But the secondary exit is just stairs. And it's so bad that there's a sign outside that says like warning, like, there's a lot of stairs here, like use the main entrance if you have any mobility issues or if Yeah, it's it's kind of ridiculous how deep these stations are. And I talked about a little bit about it, like in the last episode or two episodes ago. But yeah, like we kind of choose tunnel boring because it's kind of seen as the least disruptive. But when you have stations really close together on the crosstown, like especially between the little Jamaica area where you still have to like cut and cover the station boxes,
00:52:53
Speaker
And because you tunnel board, you have to like dig really deep in, you need like a larger staging area. You kind of have created like entire corridor of a massive staging area that's disrupting businesses. And Little Jamaica is still kind of, and a lot of businesses along the corridor still haven't really fully recovered.
00:53:10
Speaker
I'm hoping that like Metrolinks will do like or the city or or anyone will do like a marketing campaign to like kind of showcase businesses along the Eglinton Crosstown Corridor. and It's both like a double like take transit to support businesses, but also help these businesses that are kind of affected by like over a decade construction like metrolink sometimes does like presto discounts at like union station where you show your presto card you get like 10 15 off like i hope they can like partner with some businesses to be like i'll like take the cross down here and get like i don't know a dollar off your patty or lunch or whatever i mean the exact same thing is happening here and i hope it that you're right like i hope this triggers a bit of a introspection but like the The Broadway subway in Vancouver, the station boxes are so enormous and they have to be cut and covered. So they create immense obt disruption for the businesses. And the province was like, oh, don't worry, we're not going to disrupt you too much. We're going to do tunnel boring compared to the last one, the Canada line, which was cut and cover and was very disruptive. But the additional cost for shorter amount of time.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, but but the the disruption remains extreme. And, they' you know, they're going to have to close the street for four months to cover the station. And the businesses are all up in arms. And all of this, you know, at an additional cost of, what, a billion dollars over...
00:54:33
Speaker
you know, just cutting covering the whole line and, you know, potentially saving all that money and just compensating the businesses for their trouble for a couple of years. It seems like a a much better deal. And I hope we have more conversations along those lines in Canada. I was reading last night the um Jonathan in English's report for the CSA, the Canadian Standards Association. I don't know if you all have seen it, but we'll put it in the show notes. And it's like a crash course on how to make transit lines cheaper to build. And that was one of the big, big things. I was really happy to see that in there.
00:55:02
Speaker
I have to imagine that if they were to build a subway cut and cover, it would also take less time, so less disruption in general. absolutely Rather than building like these cut and cover stations that are really deep because you have to reach the level of where the deep bore is, and then that takes forever. Yeah. And you also have to wait for like the TVM's to do their like what, like five centimeters of progress like every day from like end to end or like, and or you have to buy multiple of them to.
00:55:30
Speaker
And then also like you have to have these massive like launch shafts and you have to like yeah dig it out at the other end. But yeah, I see we're approaching an hour. are there any last thoughts or anything that TTC Riders is doing now that the Crosstown is opening or has opened besides kind of the public inquiry and TSP? Is there anything you would like to highlight, August? You know, we're going keep working on making sure those lines have effective signal priority because it still remains to be seen how effective it will be. So there might still be some advocacy around there. And we're also
00:56:05
Speaker
beginning to you know think about a campaign for Line 6 that goes beyond just the signal priority, because there's other issues with that line. the The trains operate slowly between stops. They operate slowly through intersections because of slow zones. And we have to ask whether that's rational, because if you really want to win people on transit, it ought to be pretty fast and reliable. And so you know addressing those would be pretty important.
00:56:30
Speaker
The Eglinton Crosstown vehicle, the LRVs, are also they have a terrible layout because the 100% hundred percent low floororid nature of it is that the bogies take up a lot of area.
00:56:44
Speaker
So you have to arrange the seating in a strange way and the kind of like hallway in the middle is like very skinny so people can't really go by each other. So people kind of tend to huddle at the doors.
00:56:57
Speaker
creates this really poor circulation, which August, do you want to talk more about it? Yeah, I've been riding the line somewhat fairly regularly because I don't live very far from it. And during rush hours, it can get so bad that there's like really long dwell times at major stations like Cedar Vale and Eglinton. There's tons of people waiting on the platform.
00:57:22
Speaker
There's only four full-size doors on every crosstown train, plus the half doors, which are kind of useless because you can only enter her ex or exit at once. So it actually takes quite some time to disembark and board at the East Station, and it's adding up but to a lot of delays on the line. So, you know, hopefully we can get tree car trains, but there's still that issue where you have limited doors on a really long train and it's messing up well times.
00:57:53
Speaker
yeah that's all time it's kind of crazy that the dwell time even though it's like it's like 30 like no because when i'm on the first day when people were mostly staying on and riding the doors were like open at like cedarvale and eglinton for like 30 seconds or a minute and even at like some of the minor stations they were open long way longer than the subway would ever be open and i'm like why is it dwelling at the station for so long but like With the kind of poor passenger circulation inside and some of the overcrowding we're already facing, it's like, okay, like, maybe they do need to have the doors open this long. But this is...
00:58:30
Speaker
kind of sad that like we're kind of stuck with this system even though it's we're going to add another car soon but i i hope that we as a city and metrolinks and ttc all learn that when you kind of have a very high capacity crosstown line that should maybe have some things like platform screen doors and high floor light rail or metro This is another point of evidence for Canada Line supremacy, i believe, that a lot of people have been saying that, like, ah the capacity of the Eglinton Line and' as it currently designed is about the same as the Canada
International Comparisons and TTC Success
00:59:06
Speaker
Line. And if you've ever seen the Canada Line... It's two car trains. They're very short little trains. They look like a joke, but they're all high floor. So there's no like wasted space in the train and they're automated so they can come really frequently, much more frequently than the crosstown. And the stations can be built to be much shorter because they're much more
00:59:28
Speaker
efficient use of space. And so the station size is a big factor in the cost. And so it made it cheaper. So yeah, I've heard people use that argument that like, oh, the dwell times are so bad. It would be better if this was a Canada line. Yeah, the Canada line generally.
00:59:44
Speaker
brings a smile to my face every time I land in Vancouver and I see that train full of, I'm like, oh, I wish we had this. on behalf i think I think it would function better. And honestly, it does it does bring up this issue where we view transit capacity as like just the general space in the train, as opposed to how long are the trains going dwell? How are the doors placed? So that we can make sure that trains of high capacity actually can move through stations quickly when it's really busy. And I think with the crosstown, we're like,
01:00:13
Speaker
really pushing the limit of what a low floor tram can do. Because this line is going to carry 200,000 plus people when the extensions are finished on a daily basis. That's crazy. That's like halfway between the Expo line and the Canada line in terms of ridership.
01:00:31
Speaker
yeah yeah the and the platforms are like a hundred meters long which are kind of it's kind of crazy that we are digging the station boxes to be this big to accommodate like i think each of the trains are like 30 33 meters long to accommodate such long trains that are could same capacity as two car canada line trains well we'll have the ontario line trains who will be kind of similar with platform screen doors and automated metro and that's that's something that brings a little hope to my heart there were some renderings released of the elevated sections and it looks like construction is going decently if they're showing us everything i mean they've been showing pictures of excavation and stuff which have been cool that's that's lovely i can't wait to see it open i can't wait for the dwell time in 2035 or whatever. We get to review that line. Yes. Yeah. Stay tuned. for
01:01:32
Speaker
And hopefully Dennis can come and all three of us can review the Ontario line together. i would also love to give August and team their flowers for fair capping in Toronto that the the mayor recently announced fair capping and a reduction in the monthly charge over over today, which was like really excellent work on TTC writer's part to make that happen.
01:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, we have the, I believe the most, or one of the most expensive monthly passes in Canada is 156 bucks. And, you know, very few people were actually buying it after 2020. So, you know, fair capping is a great win and it's going to go down from 47 trips a month to 40. So saving a lot of money, especially if you're someone who's a youth or a senior, so much money saved.
01:02:18
Speaker
And you don't have to spend yeah all that upfront money at the start of the month for a pass. You don't have to line up at Boundary Station early in the morning to get that pass. Yeah, i remember writing the TTC Riders Fair report about kind of post-pandemic ridership recovery and like seeing that how expensive Toronto's system passes compared to the rest of Canada and how even like the the fair, like it's been like ah almost was a decade or over a decade where groups like TTC Riders have been advocating for
01:02:51
Speaker
fair capping it it's great to see it finally implemented but there's still the issue with the the fair f-a-i-r pass with the low income discount is only like 20 and 20 off 156 dollars isn't it's still very unaffordable so that's another thing to keep fighting for like a lot of other cities have like the low income discount is 50 off or even free In Calgary, it's $5 a month for the lowest tier of like the lowest. Yeah. Calgary, Alberta.
01:03:23
Speaker
if If you're being dunked on by Alberta, you should do a little introspection. There's a couple places that actually have like their low income passes free in certain cases. Like I think in Seattle, if you qualify for the lowest income group, you don't pay at all. And honestly, we need to like, start thinking about these kind of progressive discounts where people can't afford to take transit.
01:03:44
Speaker
Making sure that the means testing isn't like an intentional barrier. Like in a lot of these places, it's intentionally difficult for people to get these passes, but it doesn't have to be that way, right? Like when you sign up for a driver's license, you immediately get a conversation about organ donation. And it can be the same thing when you sign up for social benefits or when you step foot into a hospital for any reason or anything like that. Like there are ways to like make it on people's way as opposed to like this diversion they have to do.
01:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's a big issue with the FairPass. And that's why we, TTC writers, we often hold workshops to let people know how they can apply for it. We've also discovered over the years that the FairPass budget is lower than the number of people who are eligible for it. So we kind of know that they've designed this program in a way where they expect the uptake to be low. And that's something that really has to change. That's a really good point about the news testing. thing Yeah, I'm glad that we talked about some of the big wins that TTC riders have had, but there's still many battles to fight.
01:04:42
Speaker
So yeah, if you're in Toronto, join TTC Riders. If you're in Halifax, join. It's more than buses. Get organized, get involved, and we can continue seeing more wins. And it's hopeful, like we kind of talked about, we're kind of seeing kind of Canadian transit renaissance, at least capital project-wise, but we need to keep fighting for the operations and maintenance funding and the priority measures.
01:05:07
Speaker
And if you're in any Mexican city, start a transit rider advocacy group because I actually tried really hard to try and just go for coffee with someone down there while I was there that that runs a group like that or something like that. And I didn't come up with anything. So please start groups. Or let us know if there is already other transit advocacy groups internationally in in Mexico or Trinidad. We'd we'd love to know.
01:05:32
Speaker
Still very in our North American bubble. Totally. Or when I say North America, I mean Canada and the US. August, is there one in Guyana? No, not at all. I do remember there being one in Trinidad, though, to reactivate that rail line because they wanted to see commuter train service on it again. Right. That's cool.
01:05:50
Speaker
All right. i don't I don't know. d dwell Dwell you later. time time out dwell dwell time Dwell time out. Dwell up. you later. twelve walk times up well you later Exactly. we'll use them Bing, bing,
01:06:12
Speaker
You've been listening to Dwell Time. This show is hosted by Rodney Chan and Dennis Agar. Producer and editor is Carriette Heather Keir. Thank you for listening. Details about our social media and content mentioned are in the show notes.
01:06:27
Speaker
We would like to recognize that this show is written, recorded, and edited on the ancestral lands of First Nations peoples across Canada.