The case for thinking small, the potential benefits of light rail - and why we don't see them.
Light rail should be about value and flexibility, but too often it is not.
Earlier this week, I went up to Finch Avenue West in Toronto to check out the testing for the new tramway along the street. While I will say that I get excited at pretty much any new transit which opens (ultimately, even Toronto is transit scarce and more transit — especially electrified — is good), I think the Finch West line is a great example of why light rail in Toronto often frustrates me (alongside many other modern tram systems, especially in the English speaking world). That’s even putting aside arguments about whether a streetcar-esque service is really the best way to serve sprawling suburbs!
I don’t personally think we’ve really optimized the light rail we are building to take advantage of what the approach can offer to the transit system, and I think that’s unfortunate. While examples from Paris are frequently brought up in advocating for trams, it seems that looking in detail at the actual design of infrastructure in Paris is something we are not nearly as interested in. And I think that’s too bad, because with transit you often (especially here in Toronto, it seems) only really get one chance to get it right, and clearly when building so much new stuff that should be a priority!
I think sometimes there is a bit of dogmatism which questions the value of tunneling transit (or grade separating it) that I think a quick ride on a modern streetcar route in Toronto should make you question (alongside a look at social media from transit agencies in cities where rail interacts with cars a lot — theres usually a fair few crashes and the like). Nonetheless, while I don’t think subway-style tunnels need as much scrutiny as we have historically give them, at least within the city of Toronto itself, what doesn’t get criticized — and probably should — is tunneling that has no real service quality value, which I would argue is the case on the Finch line.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s nice that either end of the Finch West line will be below grade, but it’s certainly not necessary to provide a high-quality transit experience. It will mostly reduce disruption to drivers in the west, and provide a more seamless connection in the east. But that being said, I have not seen any very critical assessments of the infrastructure design at Finch West station, even though there really should be one. While I love that on several TTC streetcar routes the streetcars dip below ground to make transfer to the subway more convenient (at Union, the transfer requires precisely 0 vertical movement to get between the northbound Yonge line, and at Spadina it is only one short flight of stairs to get to both directions on the Bloor line), the Finch West LRT connection will not really be all that convenient. It will be weather protected, which undoubtedly has value in Toronto’s climate (which will only get more harsh), but it will also require going up and down several times to go from subway to tram, which is crazy when you realize that the subway station was designed to accommodate the LRT in the future and could have done something much more interesting like a cross-platform transfer arrangement, or at least a transfer that didn’t require so many stairs and so much walking. At the same time, this design does not seem to acknowledge the trend of absolutely exploding construction costs for underground transit infrastructure in Toronto. While it might not have been as nice, a surface terminal could still enable weather-protected transfers at Finch West station without going through the fare gates (as it already does for buses) while saving a ton of money.
There are other things I would like to see too: I remember seeing videos years ago from Metrolinx talking about the flexibility of light rail, but I don’t actually think we’ve seen as much of that put to use as we could.
For one, there is the fact that the Finch hydro corridor — which runs just north of Finch Avenue for a large portion of the route — would have been a great place to run part of the LRT in a more typical rail right of way, providing opportunities for faster travel times, less street crossings, connections to greenways and active transport, and a close connection to the density which tends to already be north of the street. But there is also the fact that I am not certain that running all LRTs in the city down the middle of the street is always the best option. There are certainly places such as near Don Mills on the Eglinton line where that design is actively problematic, and given how much of Paris’ tramways run adjacent to rather than in the centre of the road I am skeptical that we shouldn’t be pursuing that approach more.
Another thing I frequently mention in videos that I really think is missing here is modern features from day one. Sure, if the wayfinding is dot matrix instead of LCD, riders probably won’t lose sleep, but better wayfinding should be the sort of thing that we just default to when buying new vehicles and building new stops, and the improved fidelity of LCD screens allows more info (like delays on other lines as seen in London) to be communicated to passengers more clearly. As far as I know, the stops won’t even have this technology, even as other systems built in English speaking
countries that are already open like the Sydney light rail do!
Something else that I wish we were doing is actually introducing some colour to the trains on our new light rail lines, whose trains will unfortunately be white and grey. The type of composite body panels seen on the vehicles can easily be painted any colour and yet we have chosen one which does not stand out in the already very grey Toronto landscape (especially in winter). And what’s worse is that the same will be true of the tracks, which will not feature grass even as this design element (and climate measure) is featured on the Eglinton Line.
Now, I do think that these things can be fixed or at least that they didn’t need to be this way, and we actually have a lot of good examples we can run with if we are willing to just look for them.
Somewhat ironically, I actually think the best executed light rail project when it comes to using the technology to its max is the ION line in Waterloo Region west of Toronto. Not only does the line actually embrace a lovely blue colour on its trains, but it also uses a number of off street right of ways, one of which is still actively used by freight trains, to enable higher speeds (though there are silly speed restrictions that may justify a future post). It’s certainly interesting that the planning for a project that is the urban light rail serving the smallest urban area in North America is better than in Toronto (though maybe that has to do with it being designed from a clean slate). It’s also much more cost effective and at a substantially lower price than Finch despite being a longer line. Smart value engineering features like not fully building out stops for the initial service (additional shelters will be added later) and reusing those rail right of ways helped a lot.
When it comes to digital wayfinding, we can look to Sydney for at-stop screens, and also Edmonton for its integrated onboard LCDs, which will be very useful by showing passengers the next several stops: This helps get you ready so you can comfortably depart without rushing and, is deployed on trains which are nearly identical to those that will be running in Toronto!
I mentioned before that I think that getting things right in the first place is important, and it absolutely is: but it’s worth noting at the same time that it would be less of an issue if we embraced more regular incremental improvements. Instead, changes often happen in a highly formalized and scaled up way. For example, when ordering trains in Europe and other parts of the world, it appears much more common to do small orders, slowly bringing in more vehicles and ensuring everything runs smoothly (and that an unnoticed problem doesn’t take half or more of your fleet out of service, which is something we have seen in Washington DC with devastating results). In North America, we seem obsessed with economies of scale, even if that risks worse and less reliable service.
There’s actually a great precedent for a more incremental approach to building out “light rail” of a very different — and arguably better — style in Calgary and Edmonton. These cities were among the first in North America to adopt the modern German interpretation of a traditional interurban, and managed to grow their networks and service consistently over the years often by placing small vehicle orders and with piecemeal expansion, extending lines a few stops at a time, which limited risk and also meant a constant flow of work and much lower construction costs. This is something that is not appreciated nearly enough!
So yeah… while I am excited to see new transit being built, I still think we are missing the mark, and I look forward to the day when we get a bit more serious about analyzing what other places are doing before trying to carve a unique, but likely inferior path.