Finch West: "I think the bus was faster." Fair?

The Finch West LRT was the second of the region’s two long-delayed light rail lines to open, on a Sunday in December with free fares: eleven kilometres along Finch Avenue from the Line 1 station to Humber College, eighteen stops, connections to about thirty bus routes and, at the Humber end, to Züm, YRT and MiWay.

The day after, commuters told Global News the thing every surface LRT in North America gets told in its first month: the bus felt faster. The line runs in its own lanes but stops at signals, and a trip that used to be one crowded bus is now a train that waits at lights.

The case for it was never about speed alone. It was that the busiest bus corridor in the northwest of the city, through Jane and Finch and past Humber’s campus, deserved something with the capacity and permanence of rail. Nine months in, the people who use it are the only ones qualified to say whether it got it.

Sources: ReNew Canada, Line 6 officially opens · CHCH, free rides on opening day · Global News, “I think the bus is faster”