Outer suburban road intersections - Toronto versus Tarneit

Maybe I should call this item 'Transfer Tuesday' since today's topic affects how easily one can change between buses or trams. 

Like the popular roundabout post the other week, I'm again going to talk about intersections. Unlike that post, where the emphasis was on walking, today's emphasis will be on transferring, particular between bus routes. 

The basis will be a comparison between Markham near Toronto and Tarneit near Melbourne. They have more similarities than differences. Both are about 30 km from the region's CBD, both are outer growth areas and both are ethnically very diverse. Both are built around a coarse road grid, both are served by their state's regional rail operator (with sometimes infrequent service) and the average bus in both runs about every 30 or 40 minutes. 

Governance though is very different. The Melbourne metropolitan area has multiple local government areas with none containing more than a few hundred thousand. None run significant public transport service, with this being a state government responsibility. Whereas Toronto has a large city council comprising about half the metropolitan (or GTA) population and several quite large surrounding councils. The nearest Australia has to this is probably Brisbane due to its large city council area. The latter is (unfortunately) of sufficiently large size that it runs bus services (instead of the state government), with network planning stuck in a time-warp and notoriously poor coordination with the state-run trains.  

In Melbourne the big divide is between trams and buses with the latter being the poor cousin, with even the premium 'SmartBus' routes sometimes wanting. But in Toronto it's more about whether you are in the TTC area or not. If you are you will probably get frequent bus service and may also have trams and the subway. Whereas in somewhere like Markham you might only have a third the bus service and the occasional GO train. Markham's Melbourne equivalent would have (probably electrified) trains every 20 or 30 minutes radiating about 40 or so kilometres out so is probably overall better served.  

Toronto's artificial boundaries also make themselves apparent with passenger information. Whereas Melbourne has reasonably consistent state-wide multimodal information provided via PTV, that part of the GTA beyond the TTC boundary is basically just a grey void on their network maps. Venture north at your own peril is I think what they're saying.  

As the late Paul Mees wrote 20 years ago the biggest differences between Toronto and Melbourne are in the services its middle suburbs receive, with service offerings in inner and outer suburbs more similar. Very roughly, and there will be exceptions, inner suburbs are slightly in Toronto's favour (due to higher frequencies and better buses) and outer areas probably lean in Melbourne's favour (due to our more extensive and less infrequent electrified rail network). 

How is a Toronto outer suburb like a Melbourne inner suburb?

Anyway (for a change) service isn't going to be today's main topic. Instead I'll focus on a certain trait that makes Toronto's Markham more like a Melbourne inner suburb than to otherwise similar Tarneit. 

The pictures below are to a similar scale. They show non-roundabout main road intersections that I consider representative for their areas. 

In Markham road junctions are often simple. Walkers need to cross once or twice to reach any point. Whereas in the Tarneit example they need to cross on more occasions and somewhat less directly due to the presence of slip lanes. In this junction the latter do have zebra crossings but these are not always observed by drivers who may still be travelling at speed as they are relieved at not having to stop at a traffic light.

The other thing you might notice is the placement of the bus stops. In three out of four cases Markham places them right at intersections. The outlier stop is about 40 metres distant. One route runs north-south while another runs east west. If you wanted to you could make any change without much walking (though waiting is another matter due to infrequent service). 

Another nice touch (possible at this intersection but likely not at others) is that the bus route numbers match the numbered street names. This makes catching a bus and knowing where they go easy, even for people who rarely use them.  

What about that Tarneit intersection? The picture before had no bus stops. Does that mean there are no buses in the area? Actually no; again there are two routes. 150 runs east-west while 160 runs north-south. Service levels are roughly similar to what Markham gets, give or take.

Below is a zoomed out map. Unlike in Markham less effort is made to put bus stops at intersections.  Instead they are typically 100 or more metres back. Therefore if you did want to change between buses you're walking maybe 200 or 300 metres rather than 30 to 50 metres. This is a large difference in passenger amenity, especially during inclement weather. 

Does Melbourne do the stops at intersections thing anywhere? Yes. The examples below compare an inner suburb of Melbourne (Brunswick) with an inner suburb of Toronto (Caledonia). Melbourne has trams while this part of Toronto has buses. But both have stops near intersections with Melbourne doing slightly better here (note that unlike the maps before the Melbourne map is more zoomed in with Toronto's showing a bigger area). 

Close stop placement, especially if accompanied by frequent service, makes public transport so much more useful as trips involving one, two or even three changes become more practical. 

Toronto does this well in both inner and outer suburbs. Even including suburbs where buses are infrequent and car use is high. 

Whereas Melbourne is not so good. In our middle and outer suburbs we build intersections that work for cars but ignore the needs of buses, their passengers or those walking for local trips. We do this by favouring roundabouts or building signalised intersections with slip lanes where they shouldn't be. Hence Melbourne gives suburban passengers a second-class experience with stops in less convenient locations compared to similar suburbs in Toronto. 

What are some other things I noticed? Side-views of the abovementioned intersections are below. Markham's has a narrow island that is unlikely to be wide enough for people to wait. Whereas this appears to be the intention for the wider one in Tarneit which also has a 'beg' button. 

I am in two minds on this. The slower walkers would prefer our arrangement with a better central refuge. But you don't want a case where because Vicroads engineers see a refuge they make walk times so short that they want pedestrians to cross in two turns. I really can't comment further on the walkability of these intersections without knowing (i) the worst case waiting time and (ii) the crossing time allowed versus the road width at both intersections. 

The next picture is a comparison of walking directness. The Markham intersection does not send walkers on detours. Whereas a roundabout, especially if the traffic engineers have been 'nice' and added a signalised pedestrian crossing, does. That's bad if you are interested in walking being a practical and useful transport mode as opposed to mere recreation. If you're pro-walking you must be anti-roundabout and seek to remove large ones with no less energy than we are doing with many road/rail level crossings.

As I said a couple of Fridays ago requiring a walker at 4 km/h to go an extra 500 metres is like making an 80km/h driver go 10km. Even smaller detours like we force by having bus stops away from intersections is not something that we should design for and accept. 

Conclusion

This has been different to the usual Tuesday offering but people appear to like reading about  road intersections, walkability and connectivity. The Markham experience has shown that even if you have otherwise car-centric suburb design and mediocre transit service you can still have road intersections that are less worse for walkers and bus users without the sky falling in. Comments are appreciated and can be left below.