RYAN'S TTC PHOTOS

rflores:

I don’t understand why people are saying St. Clair turned out to be a ‘disaster’. It definitely wasn’t. Having said that, it didn’t exactly make everything better about St. Clair either. Then again, there’s always positives and negatives to any sort of project done in the city. Look at the picture, for example. Streetcars are not supposed to be in clumps of 5 along the route. They’re supposed to be more spread out along the route, but this is very hard to achieve with the many traffic signals along the avenue.

Also, whoever said that these streetcars are slow… it’s not like the new streetcars will travel any faster. Yeah, the maximum speed of the new LRVs is 70km/h, but since when do streetcars go 70km/h anywhere in the city? Yes, streetcars can be traffic obstructions in downtown, but they are less so when they have their own ROWs. In fact, part of the reason of building ROWs is to get rid of this problem. And lastly, cars will always take up the majority of the road. St. Clair is 4 lanes traffic, and 2 lanes transit in most parts… so I don’t see why drivers are complaining when you have more space…

brent-gilliard:

St. Clair Avenue no disaster, councillor asserts - Globe and Mail

I moved here just after the ‘disaster’ when the new streetcar was finished. If anything, the final project was compromised by the unquestioned need to maintain two lanes of traffic and as much parking as possible, to the exclusion of wider sidewalks and bike lanes. And still, the people who hate it the most are the drivers who are trying to pass quickly through.

But I can depend on this streetcar, removed from the random delays caused by traffic, with greater confidence than any other line in the city. And for the 32,000 people who ride it every day, that’s no small improvement.