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Notorious b.s.d. posted:it's all very weird and french. yes, it perpetually reeks of piss. toronto transit time! TTC has swipe passes and has had them since the 90s. they cost $141/month or $1551 if you buy them all at once for the year. passholders have paid $20 in increases in the last four years while cash fares remained the same, service standards were cut to pre-2003 levels back in 2010 and still haven't recovered. after a decade of fighting the regional transit authority (metrolinx), TTC is finally implementing the multi-system contactless card that everyone else in the area (*GTHA and ottawa) uses. it might be done sometime around 2017, and it was an obsolete POS when it was created. "presto" is a completely offline system, the balance is stored on the card itself, the readers are updated daily, manually. it can take "up to 24 hours" to update a card balance online since the data has to go out to the readers, then get flashed on to the appropriate card the next time it's used (seriously). in practice this means your balance can be lost completely if you top up your card online, then don't travel for a week. in other news, nearby mississauga has a real BRT with dedicated ROW, it goes from the city center to approximately nowhere, where sometime long after my death toronto may have some kind of transfer point from the crosstown LRT (current plan has it stop about 2km away, because gently caress you). we have "high-speed" rail to the airport from downtown. it dakes 25 minutes to go 23km, with two in between stops, and costs $19 one-way, if you have a pass. no one rides it, and the trains operate empty except for crew throughout the day.
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Dec 12, 2015 20:04
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shaggar lives in a state with a population density of 40 people per sq. mile and a total population lower than some urban neighbourhoods, asking him about transit is like asking a sub-saharan nomad their thoughts on indoor plumbing
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Dec 12, 2015 22:02
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:surface buses are to transit what the honey bucket is to indoor plumbing. it's a notch better than nothing, but nobody chooses it over any available alternative. except in this metaphor we have cities with millions of inhabitants, all using honey buckets or just making GBS threads in the streets, because the government won't pony up the cash for anything better. alternatives are preferable, but ain't nobody gonna pay for 'em
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Dec 12, 2015 22:09
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also, buses are fine on many routes. if the bus sucks it's because your ridership demand is high enough for LRT or so low that route is being run as a token gesture for the six poor bastards a day that need it.
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Dec 12, 2015 22:12
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:people prefer private cars to buses for obvious reasons, and anyone who can afford one immediately stops riding the bus. a significant portion of the financial and professional district in downtown toronto disagree with you (and yes, they use buses, not just the streetcars and subway) Notorious b.s.d. posted:the only way to get regular people to ride buses is to make private cars unaffordable. singapore and denmark have done this. also not true, people voluntarily ride transit when it's faster or more convenient than driving, which in a dense city core it very frequently is, again see: toronto Notorious b.s.d. posted:it is admittedly something of a chicken/egg problem. much of the what is today the nyc subway was built speculatively. tracks and stations built into farms and cowtowns. and they spent an unholy amount of money to build it all -- the first bonds for subway construction were worth something like 50% of the property value of manhattan. weirdly while the system here developed similarly, we have the opposite issue at the moment. two extensions to the existing system are being built or planned to be built to buttfuck nowhere. they're guaranteed to lose money hand over fist, considerably more so than the rest of the system, because there's no ridership in these areas to support a subway and no realistic chance of future densification along the routes. their existence is purely thanks to pandering bullshit sold to suburbanites with a civic inferiority complex. meanwhile the city core where the system already is operating beyond capacity is being neglected for lack of funds.
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Dec 12, 2015 22:27
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:the only (transit) bus routes that work are routes that don't encounter any traffic. well there's a)dedicated row brt, b)time-of-day restricted transit only lanes, and c)routes with relatively low traffic volume (e.g. routes serving industrial and low density commercial areas) also bus routes to the rear end end of the ghetto at 4am so people can get home from their awful shift work
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Dec 12, 2015 22:30
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a) costs slightly less than rail upfront, and has lower operational costs, and lower maintenance infrastructure costs assuming you already have a bus fleet in operation. it's still p. dumb, but the point is buses aren't just for poors, they can be implemented well, and they're actually used by pretty broad demographics in places where, you know, there are more people than cows.
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Dec 12, 2015 22:56
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Chris Knight posted:looks like pop is officially rolled out on all the streetcar routes http://ttc.ca/Fares_and_passes/Fare_information/Proof_of_payment.jsp the last time i saw anyone from fare enforcement was when they introduced all door boarding on the 504. other than the homeless, who the hell is dodging fares these days? The Puppet Master posted:That's a good point. I believe one way they try to mitigate this is by providing a discount card for more frequent riders and students (40% off the usual cost). the TTC is tripping over themselves trying to figure out how to implement a discount plan for low income folks. they are very bad at doing anything that has to target specific groups, so they program will probably be both massively inconvenient and if possible very demeaning to use
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Dec 14, 2015 17:59
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assuming no one ever boards or exits, sure one single parent with a stroller and you're 5 minutes late
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Dec 15, 2015 08:47
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also, when the alternative is paying $30+ for parking and spending an hour in traffic just to get into/out of the city core during rush hour, people who can do otherwise will voluntarily take the bus. in fact they'll even pay double fare for express service on a bus.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:58
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Shaggar posted:in this mythological universe where a bus that doesn't suck exists then yes im sure people use buses instead of sitting in traffic. it's a mythological universe with a population density higher than 40 people per sq. mile. i.e. the civilized world the thing is the buses don't have to not suck, they're still better than the alternative, which is sitting in traffic for an hour after work to get the half mile to the highway while your blood slowly boils in your veins.
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Dec 15, 2015 20:31
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see, we give buses a ROW lane during rush hour. anyone parking in it gets towed immediately, and anyone driving in it gets a whopping fine. turns out enforcement is very effective, and at worst revenue neutral so buses don't sit in traffic
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Dec 15, 2015 20:33
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Smythe posted:what if a bus had cool helicorper rotors like a chinook and could fly + hover they'd get fuckin' rekd on the streetcar lines
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Dec 15, 2015 20:41
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:this works great on highways 15% is not "practically useless". these are things we have in toronto, i use them. they work, and they work better than a cab in the same traffic because of the ROW
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Dec 15, 2015 21:16
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:this is called a commuter bus, and people already ride those voluntarily yes, that's the point. people do ride them voluntarily
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Dec 15, 2015 21:16
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Shaggar posted:that 15% probably also came at a cost of 30% increased car traffic on the remaining lanes that's fine, because the bus is moving significantly more people than each inconvenienced vehicle. that's the whole point actually.
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Dec 15, 2015 21:28
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:ok this is a fair point. 15% is a lot more than nothing. i wouldn't want to see the mta give up on express buses because the improvements are more modest than hoped for. a person like shaggar is irrelevant, because shaggar lives in a semi-rural wasteland. saggar isn't being inconvenienced by rush hour ROWs because there aren't any where he lives.
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Dec 15, 2015 21:42
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Notorious b.s.d. posted:there are shaggars everywhere  and no doubt, we have plenty of suburban shaggars up here. hilariously their constant stonewalling of transit expansion (NO NEW TAXES!!) is the whole reason many of these lines are still buses on the street instead of higher order transit that's not in their way.
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Dec 15, 2015 22:01
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unfortunately, buses are the cheapest, the better kinds cost more, which means more of those dreaded taxes, tolls, and fees
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Dec 15, 2015 23:15
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Shaggar posted:like if you're a big enough city that you need public transit you can afford subway or etrains. otherwise you're kidding yourself about your size and everyone can just walk. no, that's some bullshit from someone who has never lived in an actual city in reality there are routes you need to service to have a proper network that will never have the ridership to justify an LRT or subway. people still take transit, but not enough of them to offset the massive capital and operational costs of dedicated infrastructure. unless you really want to be paying taxes, tolls, and fees high enough to cover $50+ subsidy per fare so that people in low density semi-urban areas can ride underground too.
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Dec 15, 2015 23:27
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we have a joke of a subway line up here, built as a gift from a former suburban mayor to his old constituents. it has ridership in line with our busiest bus routes. the per fare subsidy for the line is ~$8, or more than double the actual fare i.e. the TTC loses $8 every time someone takes it
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Dec 15, 2015 23:31
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Chris Knight posted:and well soon have another courtesy of our most recently former mayor & the spineless council who was too chicken to remind him that he couldn't unilaterally make change to the transit deal *actually* our former mayor had nothing to do with that one. he supported it, but it's not his project either. the trans scarberian railway is thanks entirely to a vote buying exercise on the part of the provincial Liberals during the by-election. long after it was dead an burried the first time, they started talking about how they'd pitch in to fund it, and got then TTC chair Karen Stintz to float it around council. that led to the grudge-match debate that ended in it tentatively being approved (but not actually planned or funded). it's still in that state today, it it likely will be long after the wheels fall off the SRT it's meant to replace
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Dec 15, 2015 23:45
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Shaggar posted:I once went to a big city. The three places I went to were all on the train. So all places must be right on the train in big cities.
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Dec 16, 2015 00:04
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also, boston is loving tiny. of course you could get around it just fine by walking, you could walk across it in like two hours tops
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Dec 16, 2015 00:06
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yeah, if my earlier network effect post didn't make it clear, it's very important to have transit stops within~250m of any given residence. that will always mandate the use of buses in anything but the highest density ubran core areas, but it's critical to making the system usable for the people who need it most. i was just making fun of shaggar for saying everything is in walking distance of the boston subway
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Dec 16, 2015 01:06
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Shaggar posted:everywhere worth going is same in toronto, but you know, some folks have to live in the outlands and they need to get to places worth going too
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Dec 16, 2015 02:02
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also, industry tends not to be built in high density corridors. but they still need folk to operate the machines, those people need to get to work somehow
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Dec 16, 2015 02:04
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Shaggar posted:or maybe consider that steetcars are a bad form of transit sure, in the same way you should consider the earth might have been created in six days and be only 6000 years old. laughably absurd and provably untrue, but you know, teach the controversy
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Dec 20, 2015 22:32
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one of my favourite bars is within drunken stumbling distance of my apartment. another is a 10 minute streetcar ride away. cities are great
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Dec 21, 2015 02:28
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minivanmegafun posted:doesn't Toronto already have a rapid transit system similar to Chicago's Metra out to the suburbs? why would that need to be a subway, just run the stupid trains at grade basically, yes, it's called Metrolinx or GO. there's buses on many routes too. practically speaking, it depends on which "suburbs" and when. only a couple of lines have all-day two-way train service, only one has 20-minute peak service. everything else is into the city in the morning and out in the evenings, buses the rest of the time. also, when people say "almost rural suburbs" in reference to toronto, they usually mean the old boroughs that amalgamated into the city, and not the actual suburbs. back in '98 the province decided to extend a middle finger to everyone in the metropolitan area by amalgamating the six municipalities into one city. scarborough and etobicoke were small cities in their own right, but very low density. since the amalgamation the residents of these places feel that since the dense city core gets high-order transit, they should too. usually the arguments are centered around what they deserve, as opposed to what the ridership actually dictates. so we get them scuttling dedicated ROW LRTs in favour of a subway that goes nowhere, serves no one, and seemingly will never be built because the same suburban jackholes refuse to pay the taxes needed to fund them. also the mayor used his imagineering skills and a whole pack of crayons to devise a plan to use the GO/Metrolinx network for rapid transit within the city, and has been slowly discovering what everyone said when he first came up with it, it's literally impossible to do as planned.
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Dec 29, 2015 04:39
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i take via along the windsor-montreal corridor every couple months to go visit some friends out in the boonies. the trains top out somewhere around 130kph, but thanks to dozens of at grade crossings out in the sticks you'll only see those speeds in the urban parts of the corridor. still, it's about an hour and fifty minutes to make a ~250km trip and business class is comfortable and roomy enough. travelling on a friday evening is the best because the crew will make 4x the usual number of rounds with the drink cart, and if the crew is from montreal they're mighty generous with their pours. via had a high speed rail service back in the 70s and 80s, it managed to plow through a truck on its maiden voyage. it was hamstrung to half speed thanks to the level crossings, and eventually died out because of it.
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Dec 30, 2015 19:38
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Moist von Lipwig posted:god I loving love transit chat I LOVE TRANSIT CHAT
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Dec 31, 2015 10:47
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bartlebyshop posted:counterpoint on the Pearson - Union train line: I flew into pearson at 5am and took the UP, and it was pretty dece. If I had arrived at human-hours, I would have just taken the real bus but. UPX is great, too bad it has less than half the minimum level of ridership needed to make it feasible. there's a reason snc lavalin backed out of the P3 to operate and manage the line, and metrolinx is loving stupid to think they were somehow going to manage 100% fare recovery and still have anyone ride it. maybe after another couple years of ghost trains riding empty night and day metrolinx will decide to take the money they're burning running trains with no one in them and use it to subsidize the fare down to like $5 so it's a practical alternative to an airport limo.
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Dec 31, 2015 22:32
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well generally people don't pay that to ride it during the day, that's the thing. it goes pretty much directly between my place and a client's site near the airport, so i take it occasionally, and the busiest i've ever seen it was 7 other passengers on the whole train. approx 2500 people per day ride it, and that's with ~8 trains per hour (4 in each direction). metrolinx projected 5000 ppd by the end of this year, and the breakeven at the current fare price is 7k or 8K ppd. it's basically hosed. the main problem is the for $19-$27 dollars per trip, basically going only from union to the airport, it's not competitive with anything. TTC is 1/5th the price and you'd have to take it anyway unless you're staying right downtown, and an airport limo is ~$60, meaning it's price competitive as you as you have two or more people and it has door to door service. upx only makes sense if you're travelling alone during rush hour, where at least you won't get stuck in traffic on the 427
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Dec 31, 2015 23:38
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it also only runs from 5:30am to 1am. so 78 two-car trains to move an average of 2500 people
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Dec 31, 2015 23:41
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triple sulk posted:shags lusts for a world that is devoid of bikes, buses, and trains shags already lives in this world, it's called maine
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Jan 9, 2016 17:20
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we can't afford that kind of expense in north america, because of unions you see
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Jan 16, 2016 01:51
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Wild EEPROM posted:they're just switching away from honor system here and people are pissed. even better, the studies all show that it will cause massive peak hour congestion in the stations, and more importantly, will not generate enough revenue to pay for its implementation and ongoing costs they're literally losing money to make the system less convenient.
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Jan 18, 2016 19:55
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Shaggar posted:is there something that prevents all these transit weenies from using the same chips/nfc stuff from credit cards? NIH syndrome. everyone's gotta roll their own, because they're all special flowers. or, more commonly because someone's friend runs a consulting company that can guarantee big savings! over licensing an existing platform
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Jan 20, 2016 02:45
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Shaggar posted:sounds like these guys are ripe for disruption yeah, sv is just dying to get into the lucrative pubtrans racket
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Jan 20, 2016 02:48
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