The TTC's Director of Corporate Communications, Brad Ross, explains why our bus and streetcar routes must stick to the grid.
Last week, I floated the idea of the TTC introducing diagonally oriented (or, more accurately, step-like) crosstown bus routes (like those that exist in London, UK), as a means to both connect popular Toronto neighbourhoods and relieve congestion on our streetcars and subways. Prior to publishing the piece, I contacted the TTC’s Director of Corporate Communications, Brad Ross, about whether the commission had ever considered the notion; he said he’d consult the TTC’s service-planning department and get back to me. He wasn’t able get the required information by press time, but true to his word, Ross sent in this reply yesterday:
“We have a very grid-based system because that is the way city’s road system is laid out, and our transit route network, over the last century, has developed in a way that maximizes the benefits of this feature. It seems to work well for residents of Toronto and we believe it is one of the reasons we have such a high ridership per capita. We have a very highly integrated system that relies on customers taking several modes of transit to complete their trip, and our fare system and our stations are designed to make this as seamless as possible for customers. By using buses and streetcars on grid-based routes that feed into the subway, we provide for the greatest range of different journey opportunities, as our grid network provides access both for trips destined to the subway while at the same time accommodating customers who are travelling locally along their street, or connecting to other bus or streetcar routes. By focussing our service on grid routes, we are able to operate very frequent services on these routes, thus minimizing overall wait times and making transferring as convenient as possible.
“’Cross-country’ bus routes that do not follow the grid require a diversion of resources away from the grid routes, and proposals for such services need to be evaluated in this context. As passenger origins and destinations vary widely, such routes typically attract lower overall ridership than our grid routes because the number of specific travel patterns they serve well, is relatively small. They would, in some cases, duplicate the subway system although at a higher operating cost and with very low passenger-carrying capacity compared to subways or light rail. We have tried several ‘L’-shaped bus routes in recent years—190 Scarborough Centre Rocket and 199 Finch Rocket—that follow the grid but make a major turn to connect two main destinations. These have worked well, and if we can find other pairs of origins and destinations that match up well, and if we have funding, then we would try additional examples of this.
“The Toronto and London experiences are very different in two major ways. London, like many European cities, does not have a street network that forms a regular grid, so they could never operate a system like ours. Equally crucially, the bus and tube network in London is not closely integrated, and for most of the time that the two systems have existed the fares on buses and tubes have been entirely, or largely, separate. This has naturally resulted in bus routes that duplicate, not feed into, the rapid transit network.”
