Most of us are familiar with the concept of Traffic Inducement in which new roadways not only serve to alleviate the traffic on existing roads, but also generate new traffic by making trips more appealing due to the reduction in travel times and the provision of better access to new locations (see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand) for a brief overview). I've often heard this used as an argument against road projects.

My question is, is this something that's commonly considered when planning new public transportation projects? It seems that many of the feasibility studies I've encountered focus mainly on existing ridership and don't consider things like the development of new homes and businesses in the area as a result of the increased/improved service.

Another thing I've noticed is that the discussion about rapid transit in Toronto seems to be framed solely around capacity. There never seems to be a mention that rapid transit has the ability to both increase capacity and improve quality. Rapid transit's ability to make trips faster, quieter, more convenient etc. often seem to be overlooked. For instance, some subway systems were built mainly to take capacity off of roads (streetcars/buses) and have very short stop spacing, while others are to made partly to transport people larger distances with ease, and therefore have stops far apart. Commuter rail can also fulfill this role in some cases, but in Toronto's example, trip frequency is too poor (due to sharing with freight) for it to do it well.

So why is it acceptable to spend money on rapid transit to increase capacity but not to improve quality?

Btw, when I say rapid transit I'm referring to all types inc LRT, metro, and light metro and all varieties of these inc. elevated, subway, and at grade.

I can take a stab at your first question.

A lot of transit systems today focus on transit oriented development (TOD), which is the pratice of encouraging new development around exisiting transit hubs and planning for development around new ones. To be most successful, it takes a proactive transit agency that can invest its own money into adjacent land surround new and existing transit, and aggressive planning from municipalities. Robert Cervero writes a lot about this stuff.

Both the TTC and GO Transit do look at TOD, but neither has been great at it in the past. I believe such a model is being used in developing the area around Langstaff GO station in Richmond Hill to some effect though.

I think that some good examples of ridership inducement that focuses on the quality of the experience can be seen with plans to upgrade streetcar service or convert streetcar to LRT.

When the Harbourfront streetcar was introduced it was originally branded as the Harbourfront LRT and even had its own orange line on the Subway/RT map (renamed the Subway/RT/LRT map).

But the Harbourfront LRT also used streetcar vehicles which did not have Subway/RT/LRT maps, and there was no distinct "LRT livery" that made the vehicles different from any other streetcars.

As I recall, the plan was to offer service using PCC cars so it would be distinct from other services but that fell through.

Once the Spadina streetcar was introduced, the TTC pretty much abandoned Harbourfront as an LRT and reintroduced it as a streetcar (509).

However, in the future there is a plan to change the design of Queen's Quay West so that the traffic lanes will be redirected to the north side and an expanded pedestrian & bicycle area will be found on the south side. That could certainly be seen as an example of improving the quality of the experience without much of a change in capacity.

I believe that a few years after that some serious consideration will be given to moving some stops on the Spadina streetcar route, eliminating some mid-block stops and converting it to an "LRT" with signal priority - which might improve service quality without much in the way of changes to capacity.

The St. Clair streetcar project is probably another good example of "quality" improvements that did not see much change in actual capacity. Streetcars are more reliable now, although they still bunch. Of course, bunching is probably more of a line management issue rather than a congestion issue and the fact that streetcars in their own ROW (and even subway trains in their own tunnels) can bunch is proof of this.

Cheers, m

PCC's were used on the Harbourfront line for a while, until they were replaced by CLRV's due to complaints from residents about track noise.