TTC rolls out new bus-only lanes. Here’s what you need to know

Yorkregion.com
October 7, 2020
Ben Spurr

TTC bus riders finally have a lane of their own.

The first bus-only lanes installed under Toronto’s RapidTO program are now up and running on Morningside Avenue in Scarborough, part of a wider installation on the Eglinton East corridor that should be complete next month.

Reserved lanes for buses are common in other cities, but Toronto has historically been reluctant to embrace them. That changed this summer when city council approved a plan to accelerate their implementation, with proponents arguing that improving bus service would reduce crowding on TTC vehicles and help limit the spread of COVID-19.

Ahead of the bus lanes’ official inauguration on Oct. 11, here’s what you need to know about the latest addition to Toronto’s transit network.

Where are the new lanes?

The lanes are being installed on an 8.5-kilometre corridor between Brimley Road and the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, via Eglinton East, Kingston Road, and Morningside Avenue. They will eventually be extended from Brimley Road to Kennedy station once the Scarborough subway extension is complete.

The city and TTC plan to install bus lanes on at least four more corridors, starting with Jane Street, between Eglinton Avenue and Steeles Avenue next year. Lanes on Dufferin Street, Steeles Avenue West, and Finch Avenue East would come later.

Bus routes on these corridors serve lower-income communities in Toronto’s inner suburbs where transit ridership has remained high during the pandemic as a result of employees in essential sectors like health care, manufacturing and food distribution relying on the TTC to get to work. Some of the neighbourhoods have also been hardest hit by COVID-19.

“We need to support communities in the suburbs of Toronto who really do rely on surface transit to get around,” said Coun. Brad Bradford (Ward 19, Beaches-East York), who sits on the TTC board and advocated for the new lanes.

The Eglinton lanes are expected to cost almost $8 million, and are being installed as permanent infrastructure, not a pilot project.

How will the lanes affect bus service?

Prior to COVID, four bus routes operating on the Eglinton corridor carried about 47,000 people per weekday. Crowded buses were frequently stuck in a sea of single-occupancy private cars, which experts say is an inefficient use of road space.

The TTC projects that by giving buses their own lanes, the Eglinton East project will reduce travel times on local and express routes by 16.5 and 6.5 per cent respectively. For example, riders on the 905 Eglinton East Express would save 4 to 5 minutes on a trip from Kennedy station to UTSC.

The lanes should also help alleviate crowding by ensuring buses operate at regularly spaced intervals. The goal is to “get to more evenly distributed crowding” so that a packed bus isn’t quickly followed by a half-empty one, said TTC senior planner Eric Chu.

The TTC doesn’t plan to add service to routes operating in the bus lanes. Instead, the agency hopes the lanes will allow it to operate the same number of bus trips per hour using fewer vehicles.

As a result, the city expects the lanes to generate $2.5 million in annual savings for the TTC. According to Chu, that will allow the agency to reintroduce express bus routes that were cut earlier in the pandemic as ridership plummeted.

Why is the TTC removing stops?

The TTC plans to “consolidate,” or remove, 24 of the 69 stops along the Eglinton corridor. Transit agency officials say removing some less busy stops is necessary to allow buses to move quickly through the new lanes. But with fewer stops people will have to walk farther to catch a bus, and transit “could become less accessible for some riders,” warned Shelagh Pizey-Allen, director of the TTCriders advocacy group.

Chu said the TTC takes those concerns seriously, and the agency is consulting on the stop-removal plan. But he said there are always tradeoffs when the TTC changes its service. “What we try to achieve is the balance that overall more people will benefit from these changes than people that are inconvenienced,” he said.

How were the lanes designed?

As of Friday, the section of bus lanes on Morningside between Kingston Road and UTSC that are already operational were marked with signage and eye-catching red pavement treatment. Diamond and “bus only” pavement markings, as well as RapidTO pole banners, are being added.

Striped red pavement treatment designates sections of the lanes where drivers are allowed to enter in order to access driveways or make right turns.

The design is based on provincial and national standards, and doesn’t currently include physical barriers to separate the bus lanes and regular traffic. That means it will be up to car drivers to pay attention and obey the rules. The penalty for improperly driving in a bus lane is a $110 fine and three demerit points.

Allan Abrogena, project lead with the Toronto’s transportation department, said the city is open to tweaking the design if necessary, but its priority was to get the project operational. “We want to get this rolling first,” he said.

On Friday, compliance was spotty, and a minority of drivers consistently occupied the bus lanes on Morningside. The city and TTC are planning an education and enforcement campaign to alert drivers to the changes.

“It’s not something we can just roll out and expect people to figure it out on their own,” said Bradford.