York Region Transit's Viva | Regional Municipality of York, Ontario

Viva is the bus rapid transit system in York Region, a regional municipality located north of Toronto.
Its routes are a critical connection that links the growing cities of Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughn, Aurora and Newmarket together. Viva also provides connections with GO Transit, the regional transit system of the Greater Golden Horseshoe region, Brampton Transit, and Toronto’s subway system.
Learn more:
- TransLink's bus rapid transit program: www.translink.ca/brt
- Viva routes: www.yrt.ca/en/schedules-and-m...
- vivaNext BRT: vivanext.com/project_nextBRT
Select footage:
- York Region Rapid Transit
- Rayson Ho/Wikimedia Commons, used under a CC0 license
- Youngjin Ko/Wikimedia Commons, used under a CC0 license
- Google Earth
- Adobe Stock

[@BurnedNoodle]

transit collabs are actually crazy

[@l3enjamin5in]

You know they have done a lot of research when they pronounce Toronto as Troll-ronald.

[@TheBurlingtonTransitFan]

Y'all giving a lesson on one of my systems, lol.
Come on over and take a visit!

[@Bloor25]

Frequency sucks though

[@AD_RC]

That doesn't happen with BRT here

[@Transit-Gaming]

The VIVA system clearly still needs more reworking in order to become a more attractive service. Its one major flaw though is the lack of good signal priority on the Rapidways.

[@mxhe9457]

I find the Viva buses are pretty quick once you are on them. My problem is they have bad frequencies. 15-20 minutes at certain times is too long

[@CharlieND]

Coming from someone who's used the Viva system a decent amount, I found the system to be very useful and noticeably faster and more reliable than conventional busses. Not all the lines have great frequency, but using it to go from Richmond Hill to downtown Toronto worked well for me. Also, the heated and enclosed waiting areas were really nice to have during the harsh Canadian winters.
We could really use proper BRT systems in BC. Both in Metro Vancouver as well as here on Vancouver Island.

[@vincentng2392]

Abandoned rail tracks in Greater Victoria could be turned into BRT lanes.

[@vincenta_2]

Are these videos meant as a primer for similar plans in Greater Vancouver?

[@jens_le_benz]

VIVA also has headways of 30 mins or more. If Imma be honest Translink, the frequency of rapidbusses more than makes up for a "less pretty" system

[@AD_RC]

They're gonna mix the TransLink headways with the brt system.

[@amosnider]

Despite having their own dedicated bus lanes, it's not any faster, sometimes even slower than parallel Toronto's TTC bus routes without bus lanes, no signal priority, serving more stops [ Compare VIVA Hwy 7 vs TTC Steeles Ave ]. The signal priority in VIVA bus lanes are for inefficient private single occupancy vehicles making left turns rather than for a bus with 50 passengers. With frequencies of 20 - 40 mins, it's not a bus rapid transit system, it's more of a novelty system. The idea is great, but the implementation sucks big time with all the decision makers in the region being motorists, rather than transit users themselves.

[@lukehalmrast7366]

Viva has the idea and vision, but the implementation sucks, mainly the frequencies. When Vancouver gets BRT, it needs skytrain-like frequencies. Our rapid bus system which is pretty much express buses with some priority and bus lanes sprinkled in here and there is way better than the current state of Viva.

[@Lumpology]

VIVA sucks don't base your system on it.

[@bigbandgapenergy]

Rapidbus is lightyears better than viva lmao