1. I’ve taken the Airport rocket a bunch of times to Pearson, and it is always the weak link in the trip. Standing at Kipling, with a bunch of people with huge bags wondering if we’ll all fit. Airports are not fun on their good days, these days—but this bit sometimes turns it into an even more unpleasant cattle car experience.

   Another problem is the busses the TTC uses…standard low floor deals—- so if you have a suitcase, it rules out the whole upper area, as all it takes is on bag to block it. It becomes a terrible experience. whenver somebody says “hey, i can pick you up with my car” i’d never decline.

   Other city’s that rely on bus transit to their airports buy a bunch of busses equipped for luggage. Edinburgh, a small city of around 450,000 has a fleet of double deckers, with special luggage areas below, that run ever 15min during most of the day. It was 5 pounds return, and run by the city bus company (Lothian—which i believe is private). Similar in Glasgow.

   I think more people must get picked up at the airport than get dropped off, because my trips back into the city on the rocket have aways been super fast, and not over-packed (though i think i come in at night mostly). Sometimes as fast, or faster, than in a car.

   Nothing can be done about the variable that 427 traffic presents to the rocket until a fixed link is built—but until then, some new busses would go a long way in properly linking Canada’s most important city with it’s most important airport.

   Posted by Shawn Micallef  on  10/17  at  11:19 AM

2. Another way to access the airport inexpensively is to take the Greyhound bus from the bus terminal at Yorkdale shopping centre. It costs a little more than the TTC but is more reliable and comfortable. It’s also more convenient for anyone living in the north-west quadrant of the city. I believe Greyhound offers other shuttle buses to the airport, including some leaving from downtown as well. Greyhound’s website is at http://www.greyhound.ca .

   I’ve taken both routes and have generally had an adequate experience with the Kipling express. But I agree entirely with Robert and Shawn’s views that it’s a real failure if the City can’t provide reliable, comfortable, rapid, or convenient public transit access to its own international airport.

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  10/17  at  11:42 AM

3. We have lousy transit policies because we make policy by sound bite, wishful thinking (which we frequently dress up as “visioning” and give fancy names like “charettes”) and competing NIMBY groups. On too many issues that affect transit and transportation in this city, we try to cut the facts to fit our desires, rather than the other way around. We allow community groups to sabotage the policy of “intensification” at every turn, and we have not even begun to try to work with other communities in the region to develop a comprehensive transportation policy which would include a rational assessment of what rail, lake, road and air transportation facilities we need.

   The problems resulting from this vacuum should surprise nobody. We don’t have viable public transit at Pearson at least partly because the GTTA doesn’t want it there; they make a large part of their money from parking fees. We accept this situation because nearly everyone agrees with the theory behind a “user pay” model for air transport. We just don’t think the consequences through. That one sentence could describe just about everything wrong with the transport planning in Toronto.

   Posted by John Spragge  on  10/17  at  02:56 PM

4. Buses are okay if you can’t do any better.

   Why not an LRT running from Kipling to Pearson along the Hydro right-of-way? It could later be extended through Mississauga for commuters, removing tens (hundreds?) of thousands of cars from the 401, 427 and QEW/Gardiner every day.

   Posted by Diane  on  10/17  at  04:52 PM

5. Any version of a rail link is so controversial and expensive and would take so long to realize that one might as well be talking about the subway to York University. It’s not necessarily a bad idea, but a decade(s)-long implementation horizon does nothing to resolve an immediate problem.

   In the meantime (while longer term transportation issues muddle through committees), it would be so much easier and relatively inexpensive for the City simply to fund adequate bus service between the airport and the subway line, and/or to run shuttle buses directly from downtown.

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  10/17  at  05:47 PM

6. I’ve had mixed experiences with the TTC’s service to the airport. One trip took exactly an hour from Davisville (leaving at 8:00am.) For $2.75, this was acceptable, although they really should equipe the buses on this route with proper baggage racks. I caught the same bus when I returned to Toronto at 11:00pm and the trip back to Davisville was also an hour, no complaints from me.

   On another trip I had to fly out of YYZ at 6:30am, this required me to catch the Blue Night bus to the airport. I tried to figure what time I had to be at Yonge/Eglinton to catch the bus, but since the TTC website DOES NOT tell you how long it takes the bus to run the route, I gave up and took a cab. The fact that they lost me as a passenger because they can’t tell you how long it takes to bus to go from Yonge/Eglinton to the airport in the middle of the night really pissed me off.

   The TTC frustrates me to no end, its like they try actively to lose passengers and create the reputation that they are unreliable. Why do they insist on requiring exact change AT THE AIRPORT??? I flew back from Europe and had every currency except Canadian, basicly I was S-O-L. Funny how I was in London a few days earlier and after arriving at Waterloo on the Eurostar, I was able to get an Underground ticket with my VISA card and cross the city to St. Pancreas to continue north without having to get hard currency and buy a coffee just to make change.

   The TTC is a great service and they do amazing things based on the criminal neglect that the Provincial and Federal goverments have committed. But they need to understand that basic customer service, image projection, and attitude will do just as much for the service as new buses and money. Getting rid of those shitty hand written signs all over the collecter booths costs NOTHING!!! Having their employees not yell at people who are new to the country when they can’t find the bus at Davisville (even I got lost) costs NOTHING!!! Simply posting signs that say “Don’t Litter” instead of printing a picture of a guy with a facking pig mask and a Jerry Seinfeld look-a-like costs NOTHING!!! Why is it so hard for them to understand this?

   When will they get their act together?

   Posted by  on  10/17  at  11:21 PM

7. Clide> Ha. When in the UK i look at my Visa card and call it a slut, because i stick it in so many machines that let me easily get on tubes and trains, like you say, without ever having to deal with hard currency.

   Posted by Shawn Micallef  on  10/18  at  12:23 AM

8. “The TTC is a great service and they do amazing things based on the criminal neglect that the Provincial and Federal goverments have committed. But they need to understand that basic customer service…”

   There’s the contradiction that allows the TTC to continue sucking—yes, sucking. Just stating things in those terms reinforces the TTC’s own sense that, if things look OK to a technocrat engineer, things are OK. They aren’t, clearly.

   Sure, the TTC is underfunded. As you say, Clive, doing things better would not be expensive—but the TTC will never change its culture unless somebody, i.e. the commissioners, makes it change.

   All of us riders should stop the excuse-making and begin complaining more and louder about such basic, essential things as those Amy and Clive mention.

   Posted by  on  10/18  at  03:52 PM

9. Hong Kong built their mass transit/subway from scratch 25/30 years or so ago. Right from the beginning they were using some form of smart card.

   All the paper signs and notice signs as mentioned from previous posters sure make TTC look and feel world class.

   Posted by  on  10/18  at  09:02 PM

10. Having come back from London the other week, there is a lot to admire there, the connectivity, the schedules, the access are all for the most part fantastically realiable and easy. The Oyster card is brilliant, the TTC is truly in the dark ages when it comes to fee collection, the system here is basically a make work project for an outdated network. The London Transport Journey Planner website is vastly superior for a transit network of much greater complexity. Why does this not happen here? because we are a parsimonious bunch? because we have an ambivalence about the city as an organic entity that one can and should be influenced with our voices and wallets? If these structures don’t get built soon, its all going to be held together with duct-taped signage printed with Algerian and Comic Sans, giving us directions to nowhere.

    Posted by  on  10/19  at  11:24 PM

11. Ms. Harris (in comment 5 above) says: ”...while longer term transportation issues muddle through committees…”, implying that committees, somewhere, exist to study, evaluate, and plan for the transport needs of the GTA. In fact, at least officially, no such committees exist. Mayor Miller claimed (when asked point blank at a public meeting) that he could not create a joint planning committee, not even one to study the issue (he claimed the other municipal governments would not agree).

    While hardly a fan of our current mayor, I don’t blame him for this state of affairs. I blame us. If we accept a public planning process dominated at all levels by the voices of NIMBY, if we routinely refuse to face facts or take the needs of others into account, then we will have a poor planning process in any case, and one which will certainly not work across civic boundaries. If we choose not to compromise or face facts, we choose not to plan. If we fail to plan, we plan to fail. And the next time we feel like complaining about poor TTC service to the airport, we should look in the mirror.

    Posted by John Spragge  on  10/20  at  03:40 AM

12. John Spragge wrote:
    “n fact, at least officially, no such committees exist. Mayor Miller claimed (when asked point blank at a public meeting) that he could not create a joint planning committee, not even one to study the issue (he claimed the other municipal governments would not agree).”

    Interesting. I recall that Mississauga’s mayor has complained numerous times that Toronto’s mayors (and she would be referring to several successive TO mayors) have refused to even discuss LRT links to Mississauga. And this despite Mississauga offering to bear the majority of the development cost.

    Posted by Diane  on  10/20  at  09:50 AM

13. Interesting, perhaps. Hardly surprising. Nobody wants to convene an objective process to study transportation, precisely because politicians (throughout the region, but I would say particularly in Toronto) go in terror of NIMBY groups. And the NIMBYs have the power they do because most of us who speak about local politics say they ought to have it. On nearly every issue, the overwhelming voice of those who speak for and about this city backs the claim that “local” interests ought to rule.

    If you really want to do that, fine. Get used to a deteriorating city in a stagnant region, planned for failure.

    Posted by John Spragge  on  10/20  at  06:24 PM

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