As TTC riders begin using the newly launched Line 6 Finch West LRT, there are growing calls to address the lengthy time it takes to ride across the entire line.

CityNews spoke with residents who attended the grand opening on Sunday as well as on Monday, and while many praised the new infrastructure, issues about trip times kept being raised.

On social media, some reported trip times between Finch West subway station and Humber College station — the two ends of the 11-kilometre, 18-stop line — of around 55 minutes.

According to a Metrolinx website on the Finch West LRT project, light rail vehicles “will take approximately 33-34 minutes to travel from end to end, for an average speed of 20 to 21 km/h (including stops).” It also said the top speed will be around 60 km/h.

To get a better idea of the current travel times, a reporter and a camera operator from CityNews Toronto both left from Finch West station to go to Humber College station just after 11 a.m. on Monday.

The camera operator drove a car to Humber College station along Finch Avenue West and Highway 27. The westbound trip took approximately 23 minutes.

When it came to riding a light rail vehicle on the dedicated right-of-way along the same roads, it took the reporter just shy of 47 minutes due to stopping at several red lights along the alignment and briefly holding at a few different street-level stops.

TTC staff, according to a spokesperson with the transit agency, put in place Line 6 shuttle buses across the entire route for the first two to three days of service only to have redundancy for the LRT line.

For the eastbound trip back to Finch West station from just outside Humber College station at around 12:25 p.m., the reporter used one of the shuttle buses to assess those trip times. It took them just over 31 minutes to make the trip while it took the camera operator around 29 minutes to make the same trip by car.

CityNews spoke with Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, about rapid transit systems in general and what’s needed to lure riders out of their cars.

“Speed is up at the very top, making sure that you can get there quickly and that it competes with the car and other modes of transportation. Same with reliability, that’s really important. It’s not that it’s fast but that it’s the same length every time. And then cost … the fares to make sure they’re affordable,” he said.

“It’s important that it’s competitive on time or they’re going to look for other options.”

When asked about instances when buses outperform LRT trip times, Siemiatycki said that’s problematic for ridership and operational interventions may need to happen to address concerns.

“The expectation was always with LRT that we would be pushing the envelope on the technology to make sure that travelled at a fast speed, that you’re going to get subway-quality service at LRT prices and so far we’ve received subway prices and worse-than bus service,” he said.

Based on new operations over the past two days, he said Line 6 Finch West might benefit from transit signal priority along the corridor. Such a system would see lights change to green as a train approaches so it doesn’t need to wait alongside nearby traffic and therefore improves trip times. The calls for transit signal priority have also been made by advocacy organizations like TTCriders.

Chris Drew, a transit advocate, was among those who lauded the new system.

“I’m thinking about my brother who went to Humber College for culinary and this would have been game-changing for him, so I’m so happy for Humber students,” he said.

“It’s smooth unlike the bus that deals with potholes. There [are] no potholes on this thing, and the rails are smooth.”

Drew said he contacted Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria and encouraged ways to find ways to increase the speed to light rail vehicles.

“Some of this is political and politicians get the vote, so if we want better speed tell them to make it faster,” he said, adding operations now fall under the jurisdiction of Toronto city council.

CityNews contacted Metrolinx, the owner of the TTC-operated line, to ask about trip times and transit signal priority. A response wasn’t received by a broadcast deadline, but a statement was subsequently sent along by the TTC.

“The opening-day LRT schedule was built on travel times observed during the testing phase. The scheduled travel time of 46 minutes, which is faster than the bus during the busiest times, ensures that service can operate reliably during the soft opening,” TTC spokesperson Stuart Green wrote.

“This will allow us and our partners to test the new infrastructure and technology in real-world conditions so that any issues are resolved. As we move towards full service and beyond, improvements to average speeds are expected through operational familiarity and confidence and adjustments to corridor operation in collaboration with the City of Toronto.”

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and TTC chair Jamaal Myers held an announcement about fare capping on Monday and CityNews asked them both what they would be doing in response to the concerns raised.

“I do not believe that the TTC has complete control over the transit priority signalling, we do now and we’ll make it so much better,” Chow said.

Myers noted the Line 6 Finch West system was designed in the 2010s and said the TTC is looking at updating transit signal prioritization across Toronto. When pressed about the timing of maybe adjusting signals, he didn’t provide a rough timeframe.

“I would say there’s things that we have to look at in terms of also looking at the speed limit reductions. Does it make sense that it has the same speed limit reduction that has its own right of way as it does on the road? So there’s a whole set of policies that we have to start looking at, not just for the LRTs, but the streetcars,” Myers said.

“We want to make sure that it’s in a more fulsome way. Some of the things we can’t are beyond our control, for example, the distance between the stops, which prevents this training from maybe getting up to the full speed of its potential. But other things we can look at, for example, the transit signal prioritization, which are going to start very shortly.”

Construction on the Finch West LRT project began in 2018 at the tail end of the previous Liberal government. Metrolinx staff said the system was expected to cost $2.5 billion, which included construction costs plus maintaining the line and its infrastructure for 30 years. A report at the provincial agency’s board in November showed as of Sept. 30, $2.45 billion in costs have been incurred to date and the current baseline cost after “exclusions” sits at $3.75 billion.