An Idea: Bay Bus BRT

A northbound Bay bus at Dundas, with a bunch of cars illegally using the lane behind it (source: Michael Chu / flickr)

The Bay bus has an enormous potential to reduce congestion on the Yonge and University Subways and the transfer points at St. George and Bloor-Yonge Stations. Once the downtown’s lone trolley route, it ran as frequent as every two minutes. The Bay Street Clearway was implemented in response to the high volumes of buses on Bay Street, to get cars out of its way. However, since the removal of the trolley wires in 1993, a number of things have occurred that have diminished the potential of the Bay bus for the downtown transit system:

Service cuts in the mid-90s dramatically reduced ridership across the entire TTC network. Although ridership, in general, has now recovered, and gone to all-time highs, the Bay bus is not back at its old-time glory
Zero enforcement of the clearway lanes: despite the ‘clearway’ status, there is seldom enforcement of motorists encroaching onto the lanes, other than the symbolic, and ineffective, blitzes once a year

The result is a slow, unreliable service - most TTC passengers would rather walk to Yonge or University to hop on the subway and brave the congested interchange stations.

So whereas all the major mayoral candidates, with the exception of Joe Pantalone, are proposing grand, unrealistic, far-off schemes for new subway lines across Toronto, how about an idea that is simple, effective, and achievable?

In the first of my “transit-ideas for Toronto election candidates to steal” series, I propose this: a Bay Street Bus Rapid Transit line. It is a low-cost, achievable, and visible improvement to downtown transit.

Bus rapid transit, or BRT, has been very successful across North America as a quick-win, effective way to increase the visibility and competitiveness of transit in urban areas. York Region’s VIVA system is heralded as a key part of the huge growth in transit north of Toronto, Brampton’s Zum launched today, and Mississauga is starting up MiExpress. Across Canada, BRT is in many centres: Vancouver (the Richmond B-Line was the precursor to the Canada Line), Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Halifax, to name a few. A BRT line on Bay Street has many advantages: the bus lanes are already in place, and only require added enforcement, great connections to higher-order transit through the streetcar lines and Bay and Union Stations, and a growing residential and commercial population along the street.

A Bay BRT could include:

Reduction of stops between Queens Quay and Bloor Street from 19 to just 8, improving travel time. Local service to other stops could still be provided, supplementing BRT buses.
Introduction of transit service to the East Bayfront, which has begun development, but will not see streetcar service for another several years.
Development of highly visible bus stations, integrated with real-time service information and with off-board fare vending machines
Off-board fare vending means proof-of-payment on buses on Bay Street and all-door boarding at stops. This would speed up service times at stops, with limited loss of fare revenue, as, similar to the Queen Streetcar, the bus does not enter any fare-paid terminals, and the majority of passengers would be entering the subway, or transferring to another service.

The cost of implementation of the service varies according to the design parameters, such as shelters, vehicle design, and signal priority which I will leave for others to have fun doing. But in terms of day-to-day operation, costs will be similar to the existing Bay bus service, which would be scaled back to meet local demand. Enforcement of the clearway can be partially self-funding, as in, the cost of the officers covered by the fines incurred by violators.

Simple idea, but achievable, realistic, and supplements existing transit initiatives. These are the ideas we should be talking about.