Szymon Stachniak of
Toronto writes:
“I usually don't like
to complain about transit, however the last few weeks at York University
have angered me immensely. Recently, while waiting for the 196 express in
the rain, two Keele 41 buses and three 60 Express buses came before a 196
did. With enough people waiting to fill three buses, we still had to wait
over 35 minutes for a single bus.
“The next day, I
waited for one of the 60 Express buses. This time the buses that showed up
were two 196's, one 106, two 41's and one Jane express. When the 60 did
come, it was short turned. Then an out of service bus taunted us, until
finally a 60 Express arrived. I got to Eglinton station roughly 1.5 hours
after I left work.”
At the York University
campus near Keele and Steeles, an extra-large crop of first year students
have joined another 50,000 students and staff, most of whom commute to
school by car and bus. The centre of campus now acts a major hub for buses
from GO Transit, York Region Transit and the TTC -- around a thousand
arrive every day.
Most students who come
by transit use the TTC, many by the 60 Steeles West bus from Finch subway
station and the 196 York University Express, which is supposed to leave
every two and a half minutes from Downsview station. Formidable traffic
congestion on streets between the subway and the university can cause bus
schedules to collapse under the pressure, resulting in big gaps in service
and buses bunching together.
Bill Dawson,
superintendent of route planning for the TTC,
says that even if
there were an unlimited number of vehicles to throw at the problem, it
wouldn’t necessarily make service more reliable. “We really can’t cope
with the road congestion between Downsview station and York University in
any reasonable way right now.” He says that the 196 express buses can wait
through as many as five to eight traffic signal cycles before turning left
at one of the city’s worst corners, Finch and Dufferin.
York spokesperson
Nancy White says that university and transit officials are considering
adding alternate bus stop locations to reduce transit gridlock in the
centre of campus. At the same time, she says that York has been working to
secure support for extending the subway from Downsview station, including
from the principal candidates for mayor of Toronto. At a campus debate on
Sept. 18, Barbara Hall, Tom Jakobek, David Miller, John Nunziata and John
Tory all “recognized the need to extend the Yonge-Spadina subway to York
University,” according to a university press release.
In the interim, what
the TTC really wants is an exclusive bus route that bypasses the worst
traffic bottlenecks, perhaps using a nearby hydro corridor, says Mr.
Dawson. Although this project can be completed much sooner than a subway,
it would not be in place this school year. So it falls to transit
supervisors to do everything they can to smooth out buses when they start
bunching, a major problem across the city. In Transit will focus on these
“bus convoys” in future columns.
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