No easy way around TTC buses
Patience is a virtue, but the daily traffic jams on Finch Ave. caused by TTC buses in front of Seneca College could cause some drivers to lose it. The TTC stop on westbound Finch at Au Large Blvd., near Don Mills Rd., is always busy with Seneca students, but the crush is worst during morning and afternoon rush hours. Just how bad is it?
Robert Herscovitch emailed to say “there are often two or three buses parked in (the curb lane) at one time, and because a large number of students get on and off at this stop, they are often parked there for several minutes.
During rush hours, “this often creates a backup in this lane all the way back to the (Hwy.) 404 off ramp,” a distance of several blocks, he said.
“It also causes impatient drivers to pull into the next lane and attempt to go around the buses and then try to pull back into the curb lane — often when the buses start to pull out, creating problems and congestion in two lanes.”
There’s a large bus loop on Seneca property, right next to the TTC stop, he said, that is used by Seneca buses. He’d like to know why TTC buses don’t use it too, since it would allow them to pull off the street and keep the curb lane open to traffic. We asked the same question after we went there to take a look at the start of the afternoon rush. At times, traffic was backed up past the school, while the bus loop was vacant, except for one red Seneca bus.
It looks like the loop was built with TTC buses in mind; there’s even a city transit shelter at one end of it, with a TTC post marking a stop next to it. STATUS: We asked TTC spokesperson Stuart Green why its buses don’t use the loop, instead of the curb lane. Green said using the loop would cause just as many problems as TTC buses in the curb lane. The stop was moved to its current location “because motorists were trying to make illegal right turns around the buses from the (middle) lane.
“The loop was originally built to accommodate a scheduled end of the line for a branch of the Finch service that was discontinued in 2016. It was also for buses turning back from either east or west … when needed. It was never used by through buses on Finch because diverting off the main road to serve the stop in the loop would add to travel times with no offsetting transit benefit,” he said.
“The 39 Finch East is a frequent service, so even short delays in peak service periods would impact the schedule significantly,” he said, noting that buses “help reduce road congestion by giving students (and others) an option to driving.” He added that the TTC is “constantly reviewing service standards and the concern raised by your reader is something we can look into with respect to the location of this stop. However, using the loop for all of our Finch Ave. E. service would cause more problems than it solves for 2,500 customers,” who use that stop every day, and the 52,700 daily riders along the Finch TTC routes, said Green.