Council plus TTC equals LRT, BRT, SRT
A primer on the acronyms used by city councillors during transit debates
Toronto has an alphabet problem. Instead of discussing our transit needs (spoiler alert: we need higher reliability, accessibility and capacity, especially in priority neighbourhoods), council wastes time arguing about LRT, BRT and SRT.
Let’s define those so you can tell if your councillor’s done his or her homework.
BRT, or Bus Rapid Transit, is an upgrade from regular city buses. It uses reserved lanes to avoid mixed traffic and has higher passenger capacity and speed, compared with city buses.
True BRT also has traffic-signal priority to avoid red lights, station platforms that are level with the bus for easier boarding, sidewalk ticket machines for faster boarding and stations moved out of traffic, usually in the centre of the road. Larger vehicles are often used, with a different design than the regular buses to set them apart.
Painting lines on the road is not enough to keep lanes clear for BRT, so the roadway is typically rebuilt and widened. York Region’s Viva BRT is a great example of this. Ottawa also has BRT, a 27-kilometre private highway across the city called the Transitway. It was designed to allow an LRT upgrade when ridership grew, and that upgrade is happening right now. Ottawa’s Confederation LRT Line opens for business in 2018.
What about LRT? Light Rail Transit is a bigger upgrade than BRT, with some higher costs but also bigger benefits. Larger electric vehicles, sometimes linked together in trains, have a far higher passenger capacity and reduced emissions. According to some studies, LRT can lead to increased economic and retail development along the route. LRT brings more travel predictability and comfort for riders, and less diesel fuel and fewer drivers can bring improvements to city budgets too.
LRT has more design flexibility: it can travel on the road surface in dedicated lanes like BRT, or on elevated track or in a tunnel, adjusting as needed. The Eglinton Crosstown, currently under construction, will do all three!
LRT is used in all climates, in more than 80 cities including Calgary, Minneapolis, Portland, Dublin, Seattle, Houston and Paris. Kitchener-Waterloo’s ION LRT opens in 2017 and Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown will open in 2021.
Finally, the creatively-named Scarborough Rapid Transit, or SRT. It has some similar features to LRT, but most transit experts consider it too different and outdated to use that name today. The SRT was designed by a Crown corporation owned by the Ontario government, and was forced on Scarborough residents under threat of massive TTC budget cuts. The government needed a working example to help sell the system worldwide.
But here’s the sad punchline: Ontario later cut TTC funding anyway, and then sold the corporation to Bombardier. Since then, Bombardier has upgraded the technology, but due to city council doing what city council does, we’re still using version 1.0: loud, bumpy and lowcapacity.
You’ll be glad to know that the SRT will be retired within the next 10 years. The current plan is to extend the Bloor-Danforth subway by three stops and dismantle the SRT entirely.
So let’s review: BRT means an upgrade from regular buses, with a rebuilt and expanded roadway. LRT is a bigger upgrade for more capacity, better development and cleaner air. And the SRT is an unwelcome 31-year-old pilot program that needs to be shut down and replaced with a more modern, reliable option. Cameron MacLeod co-founded the transit advocacy group CodeRedTO, works at a Canadian software company and is @c_9 on Twitter. To reach him via email, write to wheels@thestar.ca and put his name in the subject line.