3.7 billion light rail line<\/a> opened Sunday after years of construction work and delays. However some initial reports said travel times along the line were just under an hour to go the full 10.3 kilometres. <\/p>\nSarkaria noted that operational control of the line rests with the TTC now that Metrolinx has completed construction and line has opened. He said there are things the city can do, however, to speed up operations. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo when we talk about signaling priority, one of the things that we\u2019ve noticed is the green light for the LRVs (light rail vehicles) is shorter for the LRT than it is for vehicular traffic,\u201d Sarkaria said. <\/p>\n
He added that signal priority could also be given to LRT vehicles at intersections to help speed up the line. <\/p>\n
\u201cThose are two easy steps that could be used to speed up the speed of the train. That lies with the officials of the city and the transportation planning departments there. I\u2019ve been encouraged by what I\u2019ve heard from their teams on that,\u201d Sarkaria said. <\/p>\n
Asked about the slow travel times Tuesday, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow acknowledged it could be speedier. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe train is not as fast as it can be, absolutely,\u201d Chow said. \u201cSo I\u2019m hearing the feedback. I rode the train, and I know that it can be faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019ll be bringing a motion to council asking for transit signal priority, removing speed caps where possible, and increasing service frequency on the Finch West LRT.<\/p>\n
Chow said she\u2019s also spoken with TTC officials, who have said they will be looking at ways to speed up the line. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe board is meeting tomorrow looking for ways to get the train going faster,\u201d Chow said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to note that the city and the TTC did not have full operational control until a few days ago, so we could not do what we want to do, because it belongs to Metrolinx. So the trains belong to them, but we now have operational control.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria says he expects travel times to improve on the newly opened Finch West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[712,45,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-335061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}