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stouffville suntribune thursday june 9 2005 3 r v staff photosjoerd witteveen ouft mmm wild fte aubwwbifo 25 per cent of york regions major arteries congested during much of the day roy green writes the state of its hard to believe york region once had a lightrail transit system running up yonge street from toronto to newmarket before swinging northeast and continu ing to sutton but that was more than 100 years ago and it begs the question what kind of transit system would we have now if we had built on the toronto and york radial railway system in the 1890s instead of abandoning it in for our love affair with the automobile were paying the price for that today in terms of traffic conges tion some experts say no one needs to be told york region residents are highly dependent on the automobile to meet their travel needs more than 70 per cent of households here have access to two or more vehicles and more than 12 million trips are taken by our residents on an average week day 64 per cent of them begin ning and ending in the region but about half of all the work trips in the peak morning period are headed for toronto resulting in congested northsouth roads in richmond hill markham and vaughan one regional report says 25 per cent of the major arteries are plagued by gridlock during much of the day thornhill resident dwight richards longs for the days when traffic on bayview avenue was stopandgo all morning thafs because most mornings now theres only stop no go from 730 to 930 am i cant even get on to bayview from willowbrook road traffic is just stopped he said weve lived here for 20 years and as the region has grown north of us bayview seems to be increasingly a major northsouth artery a weekday morning commute from vaughan to markham along hwy 407 takes less time than it does to go southbound on any of markhams roads said markham businessman john leonard sometimes it takes me half an hour to get from 407 to hwy 7 part oneofa fourpart series discussing public transit in york region were in the 10th year of a sixyear population boom and thafs only a short distance he said eastwest isnt a problem but its not unusual to sit at a southbound traffic light through three changes before i get to the intersection i think we need another highway like hwy 27 in markham but while there is a markham bypass in the offing and the region continues to build new thorough fares and widen others planners realize that is not enough to ease the problem you cant build enough roads and you cant build them wide enough said kees schipper commissioner of transportation and works our cao likes to say were in the 10th year of a sixyear popula tion boom transit has to play a key part as the region approaches a population of one million peo ple i dont know of anyplace of that size that doesnt have a rapid transit system the region will be introducing in september its bus rapid transit system viva along four routes yonge street hwy 7 and two cor ridors in vaughan and markham to enhance the service already provided by its conventional sys tem york region transit and although its easy to find people especially in the more rural northern areas who are criti cal of the frequency hours and ticket prices on yrt there have been considerable improvements since 2001 when the region inher ited 140 buses running in five local municipalities the ridership level at that time was about 5 per cent the worst in the gta after four consecutive years of ridership increases of more than 10 per cent yrt exceeded 138 million riders and has brought the ridership level closer to 10 per cent in peak periods the eventual target in the more urban areas in vaughan markham and richmond hill is 25 to 30 per cent even more important accord- ing to yrt general manager don gordon is that ridership now at about 55000 passengers a day is growing two to three times faster than population growth hours of operation have vir tually doubled and well have 350 buses operating by the end of the year with our own growth and the addition of rapid transit mr gordon said on most of the core routes buses run at least every 30 min- utes and in some cases every 15 minutes but yrt has a perception prob lem according to mr gordon of almost 7000 riders who complet ed a customer satisfaction survey last year 40 per cent said buses are not on schedule most of the time and they cannot make their connections our own audits show were on time 90 to 95 per cent of the time but the perception persists he said on a late afternoon visit to the yrt terminal near vaughans see few page 20