Now and then, word reaches me that some of the professional transit folk in these parts have their noses out of joint because Transit City wasn’t designed by their elite brotherhood.
Some of them want more subways.
Some of them want more Bus Rapid Transit.
Some of them think the lines are in the wrong place.
Well, I hate to disappoint them, but Transit City didn’t get designed to their liking for some very good reasons.
First off, there’s the small matter of Toronto’s Official Plan. The original idea was to include a transit plan, but the then-head of TTC management would not countenance the City planning where transit lines would go. Therefore, what we got instead was a reproduction of the then-official TTC plan consisting of some surface priority routes and a few subway extensions.
The surface priority routes were not chosen because they made sense from a planning point of view, only because they were routes that already had frequent service. Planning for future development only by looking at past service is a bad idea, and the Official Plan was looking at major changes with the Avenues proposal.
The two subway lines (Sheppard East and York University) were on the TTC’s map because they had been railroaded into the “Ridership Growth Strategy” when some TTC staff and other subway advocates got miffed that RGS might mean the end of a focus on subway construction. The Commission went along with adding these rapid transit lines — whose very premise was contrary to the RGS goal to produce low-cost short term improvements — as a fourth RGS category.
Former TTC chair Howard Moscoe told me “don’t worry, they will never get built because we won’t have the money”. Needless to say, the fact that the TTC endorsed these lines as their next subway projects gave them “legs”. Sadly, these lines did nothing to improve service to the city as a whole.
Some have argued for new transit corridors to be built in available rights of way. The Official Plan wisely designates streets where real people actually will live as areas for intensification, not hydro corridors, rail lines and expressways. Transit should go where people are and if this means taking road space to do so, then so be it.
Some have argued for increased use of BRT over LRT forgetting that the capacity of BRT, in a two-lane, middle-of-the-road operation cannot handle the projected demand for the Transit City corridors. High capacities claimed for BRT are only achieveable with multi-lane stations and infrequent crossings with intersecting streets.
Some have argued for more subways versus LRT forgetting that in the corridors we are considering, an LRT subway can handle the high demand in the central sections while surface operations are quite viable elsewhere.
Some fret that people will not be able to travel the length of the GTA at great speed on Transit City forgetting that it is designed for comparatively shorter trips, not to move large crowds from Malvern to Long Branch.
For my part, I have been waiting since 1972 to see a transit plan that really looks at the system as a network, that doesn’t try to spend a fortune on a subway-in-every-ward approach, that recognizes that there are many ways to provide transit service of which an important component is LRT.
Transit City was a political proposal, but one grounded in reasonable planning principles — put transit where the people are and where we plan for them to be, and scale the infrastructure to the needs of the corridors. Some changes will inevitably be made as the network is fine-tuned, but the basics are sound. If anything, Transit City suffers from not being ambitious enough. It was scaled to be financially within reach (a stretch, but not impossible) and with a construction timeframe where people might actually get to ride the network in their lifetimes.
It fundamentally altered the discussion about transit from “what line will we build next” to “what should the network look like” before Metrolinx drew its first map or Queen’s Park announced MoveOntario. Moreover, it broke the pattern of “more of the same” planning that gave us nothing but ruinously expensive subway proposals.
Operationally, we will have major debates about how streets should be designed, what real “transit priority” will look like at intersections, how far apart stops will be, and how road capacity will have to be sacrificed to transit to make this scheme work. But for once we will look hard at what we can do with something other than subways rather than dismissing this out of hand.
The “professionals” have a long history of throttling debate on alternatives and Toronto, nominally a “transit city”, continued to grow with an auto mentality because the transit schemes were too expensive and workable options to improve the network never saw the light of day.
I as a transit advocate and Toronto as a city waited 35 years to see a transit plan we could actually believe in. We don’t have another 35 years to haggle about what we should build, and those who try to undermine Transit City do us all a disservice. Discussion and debate, yes. But don’t dismiss it just because the “wrong” people drew the map on a napkin over coffee.
Steve Munro 
Some who complain (endlessly) about Transit City seem to like to pretend that people are acting like it is the be all and end all of Transit improvements in Toronto in the next 12 years.
I think the one thing that we lose sight of discussing it, is that it’s only one piece in the puzzle. The service and frequency improvements on buses that we are seeing this year, and in years to come are just as important. Also important are whatever scheme the TTC comes out with for transit on some of the lesser Avenues. And of course the Spadina and Yonge subway extension that have been promised for 2014 and 2020 respectively. And the automation of the existing subways to decrease headways. And the RT upgrade and extension. And whatever we all know has to be done with some kind of downtown relief. And all the various Metrolinx schemes such as the electrified Lakeshore line, cross-town lines, various extension, and full-day service on lines such as Richmond Hill.
The point is, that a network of LRT lines, is simply one part of the puzzle. That a useful LRT network get completed is important – but details about whether a particular segment should be LRT or subway, or whether LRT should run on street X instead of street Y is a detail. It’s quite clear that the Provincial and City forces seem to be coming together to make this a reality – along with many other schemes.
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While initially a skeptic of certain portions of Transit City, as you know, I am a supporter of Transit City (after some of the early debates). The places it goes, it seems, is having the right technology applied to it, including Eglinton being designed to subway grade (which is smart, since it is probably the biggest ridership cow in waiting).
However, Transit City is only really taking a network approach to the city if one looks exclusively north of Bloor-Danforth and ignores the south (WWLRT predates TC, so it can be an exception). If one looks at the overall city and the areas currently under unsustainable stress, Transit City is not going to do anything to alleviate the most stressed areas, and may make existing stressed areas even more stressed, assuming this is possible (it arguably isn’t), which would logically hinder Transit City’s own ability to see the ridership growth it expects, since network travel patterns and issues regarding to available space in key parts of the network for such patterns were never included the corridor studies.
I beleive there is some degree of concensus on the skepticism of capacity improvements to Yonge, the only really reliable increase coming from the new 7-car trains (assuming they got the fleet order quantity right). Eglinton and Sheppard, and maybe but to a much lesser extent Finch, are all going to up the pressure on Yonge, and there’s good reason to wonder if the in-progress capacity improvement measures can actually keep up.
While travel patterns are omni-directional, core-bound trips still exist, and growth in the core continues, which will inevitably increase core-bound trips as well (even while some will live in the core, it’s not enough space for everybody, nor within everybody’s price-range).
Transit City is positive, but only if the network can get its current issues resolved to actually absorb Transit City’s benefits. Until the DRL is built, Transit City’s growth will be comprimised in the east, and possibly to a lesser extent in the west. The idea that the DRL can be an LRT is not a sustainable proposal., and here’s why it isn’t sustainable;
If one targets alleviation on King, Queen, and southern Yonge via B-D (using an alignment that goes somewhere through the Financial District), at about 30% each (25% for B-D, which would alleviate southern Yonge at the same time but by much less of a %), a reasonable expectation given the problems with current service quality in the area, plus ridership from the Don Mills LRT at 2/3rd of projected ridership (the other 1/3rd would go along the original B-D instead), and estimate other ridership increases that occur from the public percieption of an increase in service quality (10% or so based on the Spadina LRT’s overnight ridership jump), you’re already cracking in the neighborhood of 10,000 ppdph… subway levels by TTC charts.
With LRT expected to max out at 13,000 ppdph by TTC charts, the DRL would not be sustainable as LRT, as only around 3,000ppdph (or less?) to spare from opening day is too little room to grow for a core-bound alleviator’s long-term future. This doesn’t even include what may (or may not) happen with east waterfront and portlands reurbanization developments.
I’m against stupid subways like most people here, but there is no good argument to be against all subways – like LRT, each has its place, and Transit City combined with a DRL subway (plus legacy network expansion in the core) is a city-wide (both sides of Bloor) network approach and solution.
Corridors must not be treated in isolation (my biggest criticism on how TC is being handled), nor can the trips that fall between short-haul and long-haul be neglected in the network. What’s critical to a good network is finding the right balance. Transit City is a step in the right direction, but neglects the south and the core (although there are other projects outside of TC that are in the pipe and in EAs right now) – I’d have to agree with the sentiment that TC isn’t ambitious enough, it could be a serious shortcoming.
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The main reason, of many, that I prefer the LRT scheme over BRT is that there is no local area emissions from these vehicles, and less noise pollution as well. I hope that as electric types of transportation increase, such as subway, SRT, streetcar and these future LRT lines, maybe Toronto might put a dent in the number of smog days it has. I know that electric generation produces pollution as well but, the McGuinty gov’t has talked of taking the coal fired electrical gerneration off line which will help the environment as well.
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Steve: Andrew Jeanes left the following comment in the Metrolinx thread, and I have moved it here.
You use the word professionals in quotes without further defining who these professionals are, and I think that’s an important omission. While some may be planners by training, the greatest majority of transit and transportation professionals in Ontario are engineers.
For decades, engineers have been conditioned to believe in their own exceptionalism and taught to hold all non-engineers in contempt. Right from their first year of undergraduate study, when they are issued their hard hats and boiler suits and taught their derogatory chants about “artsies,” engineers start learning to dismiss the views of others. Then they graduate and are expected to turn around and take guidance from politicians and the general public in making professional decisions? Never happen.
We need engineers for the skill set but culturally engineering is a corrupted profession. Until something is done to teach engineers a little humility, public transit advocates without that little iron ring will face an uphill fight every time.
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Just a quick response to the poster who said building DRL as LRT is not a good idea.
The TTC’s “max capacity” information is based on “normal” service. If you, for example, hook 20 subway cars end to end you could get a higher number. This, of course, is a ridiculous idea, and will never be done. LRT, however, can be extended in this way. Current TTC loading standards for the subway are for 1,000 persons in a train, or, around 166 in each car. The TTC says the subway has a capacity of 40,000.
Steve jumps in: Note that at 1,000 per train, a capacity of 40K/hour implies 40 trains/hour or a headway of 90 seconds. This is physically impossible on the Yonge line even with ATO without changes to terminal operations and to some stations’ ability to handle rates of passenger flow.
Next, compare a subway car (at 166) to an ALRV loading standard (which we will round down to 100). ALRV’s are just about as long as a subway car, so if you work the math, a 6-car ALRV train should be able to carry 600 people. If the subway has a max of 40,000, then logically, this LRT train should be able to carry 3/5ths of that, or 24,000.
Steve: Again, 40 trains/hour requires a headway that is unreasonable for surface running with frequent cross-streets. There are also major problems with pedestrian flows to and from the stations.
The only downside is that 6 car trains are not good for operating on streets. The other side of the argument is that LRT subways are cheaper to build then “regular” subways are, and therefore we should indeed build this as an LRT subway. Not because it’s LRT, but because it’s subway. Only LRT because it’s cheaper.
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No matter how much the “professionals” turn up their noses, that will never change the fact that these same professionals never. take. public. transit. Proove me wrong. Please. And if I am proven wrong, how come you professionals-who-do-use-public-transit can’t figure out what “amatuers” like Steve and others have understood about travel patterns and services for decades?
Steve: I was at a charrette for the greening of Union Station on Monday. At my table, it quickly became obvious that few of the professionals present actually used the station regularly. Sure, it’s possible to make generic recommendations about any site, but it sure helps to know the site physically and how it operates to put such recommendations in context.
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George S: A lot of the smog that routinely covers our city originates in the US midwest and other areas. So whether it’s a bus spewing exhaust or a coal plant outside of the city generating electricity for streetcars, the environmental impact is the same, and the smog ends up over our city anyway.
Steve: I agree with what you are saying, but I have a real problem with the fact that the city is misrepresenting Transit City. Today on the subway I saw an ad extolling the virtues of the planned Transit City network, and sure enough, it is described as rapid transit. Let’s be perfectly clear: Toronto has two types of rapid transit today. The first type is our conventional subway system and its three lines (Ok, two and a quarter). The other is the Scarborough RT. Transit City will, at best, be a slightly better service than our existing streetcar ROWs on Spadina, Harbourfront and St Clair. But it will certainly not be rapid transit (the only possible exception being the underground portion of Eglinton, assuming the TTC operates that stretch like a conventional subway).
The reason why I see this as such a big problem is that once the first TC line is built, people will very quickly realize that it is not rapid transit, and support for the other lines could be compromised. The City and TTC should be honest and upfront about what exactly Transit City will be, and stop misrepresenting it as rapid transit.
Steve: Those ads were not put up by the City, but, as I understand it, by the transit union as part of their campaign to show the great things transit does. They used the term “streetcar” and didn’t even use a new car for the model. Unfortunate, but not the City’s fault.
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LRT = Light Rail Train/Transit
BRT = ???
Steve: BRT = Bus Rapid Transit
Steve, one question:
The WWLRT goes up to CNE, then the regular 509 part up to Bay/Queen’s Quay then up to Front, but east of Bay Street, there is this “dashed” white/grey line, that continues east on QQ then goes up north to I think Lakeshore or Queen.
What do you think if the WWLRT/509 get combined then extended east of Bay Street then the Don Mills LRT gets extended South to meet the WWLRT? The Harbourfront LRT was merged to the 77 Spadina to make the 510 Spadina.
Steve: First off, that map is out of date. The WWLRT is now proposed to follow a separate route from Strachan Avenue to Union Station via Fort York and Bremner Boulevards through the basement of the Air Canada Centre into the Bay Street tunnel. Second, the dashed white line is the first stage of the eastern waterfront line that would run east from Bay and Queen’s Quay and north via Cherry to King, with a future branch south into the Port Lands. This area is still the subject of design studies. Other parts of Transit City are being reviewed for alternative alignments, and of course the Kingston Road project is completely missing from the map.
If we build a DRT (downtown relief line, aka Don Mills), it should most emphatically not connect into the Harbourfront LRT lines as these are street-running routes that cannot possibly handle the demand on a DRT. As for through-routing the WWLRT and the DRT, that is a possibility, although I would want to see the service branch with a line up the Weston Subdivision. The demand on the DRT east will be much higher than on the WWLRT.
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I could go on at length, but I will only say this: if one can put “professional” in quotes, one can also put “transit advocate” in quotes. Nobody involved with the TTC in the past 35 years, yourself included (perhaps especially), should hold their heads high.
I wasn’t going to say anything and just leave quietly, but your posting of the cheap shot against engineers was uncalled for. This will be my last message. I won’t let the door hit me in the ass on the way out.
Steve: The quotation marks are deliberate. There are complaints that Transit City wasn’t designed by professionals, but by politicians and their advisers. It may not be perfect, but it fundamentally changed the context for talking about transit improvements. That’s a political act, and an appropriate one given the dearth of ideas coming forth from the pros.
The issue with any group, be they pros or pols or advocates is that nobody has a monopoly on good (or bad) ideas. Starting in 1972 with the era of transit subsidies, the pros had lots of time to recommend and build a true “transit city”. They sat on their hands and built a few subways, and did little to show what alternatives were available. Some politicians want subway lines built to their wards and ridings, and some of those projects even get funded and built draining resources from the larger transit system. Some advocates have a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn’t recognize that many different components and technologies make up a transportation network.
No group is perfect.
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I find such comments about engineers ignorant and offensive, I am sorry Steve, but I wish you hadn’t posted such comment. I find the engineers’ chants against “artsies” distasteful, but put it in the correct perspective; it is usually done by frosh that are still pretty oblivious of the world as a whole.
From my own experience I see a lot of problems due to the fact that engineers’ ideas and solutions are actually ignored for political reasons. Let’s not forget that the majority of decision makers are actually lawyers, engineers only come up with propositions and solutions to problems, the politicians are the ones who make the ultimate decision and in Toronto’s case they have been constantly bungled. Politicians will not choose the engineers’ preferred solutions due to costs and votes.
Andrew Jeans is as bad (or even worse) that those frosh making fun of the “artsies”, he generalized a whole group of smart hard working people who find themselves in straight jackets and unable to do their jobs at their best of abilities because we are ruled by a whole class of out of touch lawyers. Engineers look at things long term, lawyers and politicians only see as far as tomorrow, so put the blame where it correctly belongs. In my opinion we should actually have more engineers in government instead of a bunch of MBA’s and lawyers, them maybe things would get done. Engineers do, lawyers don’t.
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There is no doubt the “pros” know how to design things and design them well (comments on the Lady Godiva Band can be left to another time). But my question still has not been answered: How many of them actually take the transit they design? We know the politicians don’t, hence the SRT and the Sheppard Subway (and the CLRV, and CNG buses, and….). They question is not whether engineers know how to design a service, it’s do they know where to put it, who would use it, and where would it go?
Steve: To be fair, a large number of engineers are good, upstanding professionals with the good of their clients at heart. Note that it was not I, but one of you who left a comment picking on this profession in particular.
There are times, however, when some engineers have used the reputation that comes with their title to advance some rather flaky positions. They are supporting their clients, in the sense that they are making up a plausible story to justify what the client wants (I could take the alternate view that they are fibbing, but I prefer to think that they are just misguided).
I have several examples from my decades of experience with the TTC, but one of the better ones, because it is so transparently wrong, was the claim by TTC engineering that the Union Station Loop could handle 7,000 passengers per hour. They neglected to allow for losing half of the platform to car swingout. They assumed that people would only ever be travelling in a “peak” direction and the entire corridor capacity would be available for unobstructed flow. They neglected to explain how a headway below one minute would enter the station, discharge, move around to the loading platform, pick up and leave.
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I thought a charrette was supposed to be run by someone with an outside perspective – so at not to have preconceived ideas. Most people who use Union Station daily use a very specific part of it – so in getting a big picture needs all kinds of people.
It sounds if the development numbers were picked to somehow generate the right number of trips to justify LRT as opposed to other alternatives. But does the result as a whole make sense? If the plans mean that we need a very expensive ($8 billion) non rapid system of streetcars – and if this isn’t justified for the benefit – then we should go back to the drawing board with the whole plan.
The inner burbs are full of streets that could have some densification – not just a few. Surely this should be looked at holistically.
Steve: No, actually, the streets for Transit City were picked based on where the development is today and where it is planned to be in the future. The whole matter was looked at as part of the Official Plan.
As for the cost, remember that a big chunk is the subway on Eglinton, on the south end of Don Mills and on the south end of Jane in the original scheme.
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Re: 6-car LRT trains for Downtown Relief line?
Although such trains can approach a subway’s capacity, the infrastructure that can handle them will likely approach a subway’s cost.
For the 6-car trains, we need long stations, wide turning curves, stairs that can handle large passenger volumes etc. Basically, that’s almost a heavy-rail subway, except it uses LRT type rolling stock and overhead power collection. No case for a substantial saving over a conventional subway (perhaps a little – due to narrower cars).
Steve: I concur. We should not be trying to duplicate a full subway in corridors that don’t need that level of service.
Note on the planning: although TC is a good plan, neither engineers nor urban planners nor even politicians should be blamed for not coming up with an LRT plan 20 or 30 years ago. The main obstacle back then would be the public perception: bus is good, subway is better, streetcar is very bad.
It is the combined effect of the rising subway construction costs and increased road congestion that gave the streetcar, this time on its own right-of-way, a chance to redeem itself as a viable alternative to both subways and buses.
Steve: Actually, the problem back in the early 1970s was that the boffins at Queen’s Park didn’t know what other cities around the world were doing with LRT, and they wanted to spend a fortune on the maglev personal rapid transit system. It was a complete disaster in many ways that I won’t go into here, but the negative publicity for streetcars came from TTC management who resented the fact politicians had forced them to keep the streetcars, and from high technology promoters who sold Premier Bill Davis on the idea that a completely new transit mode was needed to solve our problems.
With appropriate publicity and a positive outlook, we could have had LRT decades ago. First would have been the Scarborough line, then others adding to the network. Instead, the original GO Urban maglev scheme was stillborn, then revived a decade later as what we now call the RT. That line cost over twice what an LRT line would have, and large cost overruns were buried in budgets outside of the main project.
I will be gracious and suggest that not all of the Go Urban proponents were engineers, but the technical folks, with their we-can-solve-any-problem approach certainly propped up the dreams of new technology.
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Nick J Boragina wrote: The other side of the argument is that LRT subways are cheaper to build then “regular” subways are, and therefore we should indeed build this as an LRT subway. Not because it’s LRT, but because it’s subway. Only LRT because it’s cheaper.
Actually, it isn’t cheaper, because the cross-sectional area for the tunnels would be about equivalent. Subways are expensive because they involve tunneling (and stations), and LRT underground still has these tunneling costs. Pape is going to be underground, and Jane likely will too, south of the CPR, even along the Weston sub (where GO would get protective of space for its trains), and these underground sections will be as expensive as subways except for station-related costs (due to shorter vehicles, 60m vs. 136m, big difference).
As someone who rides the Tokyo subways regularly, and 9 out of 12 lines are pantograph routes, let me tell you, verified first-hand, that these tunnels are indeed quite tall compared to third-rail models in Toronto. What the LRTs save in width, they lose in height.
Eglinton is actually going to be more expensive in its central portion than if it were just a regular subway (but if it were a regular subway it would have to terminate at Laird in the east and Weston in the west, so there is a benefit to this cost), since it will be desigined in a way to allow it to be converted to subway later (which is prudent), meaning it saves nothing on the width and still adds the height, creating a larger cross-section.
Since no money would be saved in tunneling, and a 6-car LRV would end up making stations’ costs in the same ballpark as well, there is no cost argument in favour of LRT when it is underground. There is no room in the core for surface LRT routes, Pape and Eglinton are proof, so there is no good argument to make the DRL as LRT since the demand projections would surely reach subway levels and before long would certainly exceed LRT’s maximum (if going by the charts).
We also know that, by demand projections, the service levels between the DRL and Don Mills would be at least a factor of 3.5, or greater, so operating these two as the same line becomes impractical with such a large difference between demands.
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Just as society gradually sloughs off racism, we develop professionism. My vote for the master profession is the tiny group of IT pros who can write lucidly in a human language. 😉
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“They question is not whether engineers know how to design a service, it’s do they know where to put it, who would use it, and where would it go?”
Yes, they do. Just because you don’t agree with them or yell louder than them doesn’t make you any more right.
“But my question still has not been answered: How many of them actually take the transit they design?”
More than you think.
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Steve, to be fair, I think it’s about time you stop using your stories from the 1970s to bash today’s “professionals”.
Steve: I could talk about the way that the EA process is abused by claims about what can and cannot be done, but must reiterate that my complaint is more generally with “professionals” in the transit business who abuse their presumed expertise to throttle debate.
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Because of the gas prices, Sacramento has experienced a 20.2 % increase in total ridership over last year. However, bus ridership only went up 2.5 %, while their LRT ridership went up 43.3 %. Toronto does need to build more LRT (and HRT) especially in the outer city, since that is what the ridership wants. We do not like riding the bus, but do like rail better.
It is a good thing that the TTC has been designing Transit City, because it will serve more ridership across more of the city than a HRT would.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2008/05/12/daily15.html
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The amount of anti-engineering bias out there is impressive, particularly the passage written by one of the other posters about frosh week ‘hard had and jumpsuit wearing derogatory remark chanting’ students.
I’ve spent more time than I’d like to think about at postsecondary education institutions as a student as an employee and first of all I’d like to clarify one major point: drunk, obnoxious, loud students are extremely annoying to deal with regardless of their majors.
Secondly, engineering is remarkably similar to most other jobs in that there’s this thing called a ‘boss’ who assigns work, decides on projects and so on. In public transportation, the bosses are the political masters. For example, if an engineer working on the Scarborough RT thought the exposed linear induction motor was a bad idea, the choice comes down to suck it up while suggesting other alternatives or look for employment elsewhere – after all, the political masters – the bosses – originally wanted a full blown Maglev, right? I don’t think engineers were the key principals behind the Sheppard Subway or the York U. extension into Vaughan either. Those were priorities set by politicians, who then hand over the task of making their vision fly to the engineers who have to design and build what someone else – the boss – wants to someone else’s – the boss’ – schedule and to someone else’s – the boss’ – budget.
In case anybody was wondering, I don’t work for the TTC and I do take the subway to work.
Steve: To a point I concur, but must ask that if someone is using their technical qualifications and prestige in support of a scheme they feel is not right, that is an abuse of their professional privilege, if not outright prostitution. If someone says “I am a professional” and therefore my opinion cannot be challenged, that’s arrogance.
I have great respect for all of the experience, training and dedication throughout many professions, but this doesn’t mean I have to treat everything any “professional” says as gospel. They might have their own agendas be it keeping their jobs or advancing projects on which they will get fat fees — either way they have a conflict of interest and their advice is suspect.
Coming back to what triggered this thread: There is a group of professionals of varying backgrounds who have been slagging off Transit City because it wasn’t designed by one of them. This is short-sighted. No plan is perfect, and even those of us involved with TC’s creation know this. Changes have already been made in some proposals, and they will continue to be made.
Dismissal of TC as a bunch of streetcar lines shows bias, especially when in the next breath, we hear about bus rapid transit. If the aim is to build limited stop, congestion-free, grade-separated systems, then say so consistently. The idea that once we exceed bus capacities, we jump immediately to subway or RT is as bankrupt today as it was in the early 1970s.
Once upon a time, a former Mayor of North York could get away with saying that “real cities don’t use streetcars”. Today people know better and such comments should land the speaker in hot water surrounded by laughing citizens chopping veggies.
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If it was my comment about Lady Godiva Band that rankled TTC Passenger, I apologize. And the basis of my points commented by many above was not to criticize engineers per say (and Frosh Week at U of T for Engineers is enviable fun) though I do agree completely with Steve’s comments on how professionals can get carried away. The common demonator of problem makers seems to be the politician who knows more than anybody, just like MegaMel, where a subway line should go. I also wanted to know if any engineers actually use public transit. Perhaps I should have qualified the question to mean engineers who design transit, and whether THEY use it.
The arrongance that has to be watched for coming from anyone in any profession is whether or not they know what the transit rider needs better than the riders themselves.
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I’m on the fence on whether or not a DRL should be built as a full subway or as a “U” connection between the Don Mills and Jan Transit City lines.
Unlike other current subway proposals (which are extensions only), the DRL would have justifiable numbers and would be a true network link and not just an extension.
On the other hand, there are some clear advantages that come from interlining capabilities with the Don Mills and Jane TC lines.
I would like to address a couple of comments: Karl Junkin wrote about LRT subways, “these underground sections will be as expensive as subways except for station-related costs”.
That is not true. Underground LRT construction costs between $130M and $160M per kilometre to build. A full metro line (“Subway”) can cost more than that to build at grade ($150M to $200M per km). I have put together a cost page and a capacity page on LRT versus full Subway on the Toronto LRT Information Page at http://lrt.daxack.ca — and took care to lean on the high side for LRT while leaning on the cheaper side for full Subway just to avoid being accused of bolstering claims for LRT.
As for capacity, a five car LRT train on two minute headways can provide capacity for more than 26,000 passengers per hour. I would expect that DRL-only trains from Jane to Pape would run with this length, and if the Don Mills line were underground to Eglinton, then trains as far as there could also run at that length (or even six cars, if preferred – I only limited analysis to five as that is the length Edmonton chose to build their underground LRT stations). Trains from further north at both ends, naturally, would be only two cars long (or three, if such an extension of capacity would be feasable in the future). This would lower the PPH capacity, but headways can be shorter than 2 minutes if necessary.
In Melbourne, the tram stop at Melbourne University has seven routes terminate there plus two routes pass through. At rush hours, headways are often below 60 seconds. This is accomplished by having THREE pocket tracks north of the station platform, allowing each arrival to have the time needed for the operator to change ends and re-enter southbound as needed.
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Well, this thread of comments is a little different. Often it’s the “bean-counter” accountants who come in for all kinds of slagging for apparently criticizing or cancelling transit plans outright. This is usually attributable to “excessively high costs” or or so-called “unaffordable frills” and in the context of controlling budgets. While we’re at it, keep the response to the portrayal of engineers that was in an earlier comment in mind when the urge hits to blame things on “bean-counters”. At least engineers don’t have that sort of derogatory term commonly thrown at them (at least not that I’m aware of).
Professionals of all disciplines are involved in making things work and sometimes some do go about defending their “turf” a little too aggressively. Having professional credentials does mean expertise in a specific area, but it doesn’t mean that good ideas can’t come from others as well.
Steve: By the way, until my job moved to Scarborough thanks to amalgamation, my office on College Street looked out on the Mining Building. I was treated to many parades by the Lady Godiva Memorial Marching Band and feel that they are an important part of Toronto’s cultural life. Not necessarily to everyone’s taste, but we need the variety.
Fortunately they do not try to tell the TSO how to play Beethoven, although I suspect the effort would be highly amusing.
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As an actual practising electrical engineer, I have to laugh at all the comments from people who are so offended by Andrew Jeanes’ comments. I work as an engineer and work with engineers every day, and he’s exactly correct. The arrogance is stunning.
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Now here’s an idea: How about having the Lady Godiva Memorial Marching Band perform at the opening of all new Transit City lines!!!
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Steve, I guess we are all, in a way, prostitutes in this life. Because if everybody decided that their assigned work goes against what they “feel” is right then nothing would be done.
It is easy to disgruntle engineers and get angry at them when things don’t work smoothly, but the majority of people can’t understand the complexities in making things work, from your cell phone to the design of a transit system and to the generation and distribution of electrical power (August 2003 blackout comes to mind).
Engineers are always caught between what costumers want, what the technological realties of the time are and the big issue of money. It is not about prostitution it is about getting things done using the resources given to you. An engineer can design a good system quickly, but it will cost you tons of money. If you aren’t willing to spend the money then you must choose between quality or speed of construction, there is no way around it.
Every profession has its merits and is useful to society. But our economy and way of life would come to a complete standstill without the scientific and technical knowledge of engineers; no television, no internet, no highways, no cell phones, no cat scans and definitely no streetcars.
Everybody thinks they have the solutions for all our problems, but I find it interesting when most of these people can’t even grasp simple principals of physics (idiots who refuse to wear their seatbelts come to mind, they don’t know what momentum is…)
I wish people would watch the discovery channel a bit more often before trashing engineers…
That being said there are plenty of bad engineers out there, but probably in the same proportion as bad doctors, bad journalist, bad teachers, bad plumbers and even bad prostitutes.
Steve: The issue in all of this is abuse of position — I have title X which gives me the right to dismiss your opinion. Notably absent from your list is lawyers who are the second oldest profession for hire.
As someone who has worked most of my life in IT, I understand the issues of complex technologies, the need to get things right, and the total ignorance of the wider community about how things work. I also am appalled by IT people who think they know the right “solution” for every problem without actually bothering to understand what the clients actually do or need.
I am perfectly prepared to discuss what is best for Toronto and the GTA with any number of people, professional or otherwise. I am not prepared to listen to them slag off my position simply because they have a title. The idea that we should abandon all decision making to a such people is laughable.
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Thickslab, you should probably change your workplace, because where I work I don’t get that feeling at all. While studying in school I did get that impression, but what do you expect from a bunch of young males who suddenly find themselves away from home? (the sad fact is 90% of engineers are male)
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I can see why the professionals are up in arms about Transit City. I had to basically call City Hall personally to get an answer as to how fast T.C. really will be.
On the Sheppard corridor for example, someone would only save 10 minutes over taking the current bus. And that is only if you ride from one end of the line all the way to the other.
The professionals have a right to worry, because with stats like that, people are not going to switch to transit, trains or not.
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The Professionals who developed the White Elephant that is the Viva system need to be disqualified from their position. This after spending a good 2 hours to get down to Finch Station from Newmarket.
I have to ask them: what were those guys thinking when they designed this joke of a rapid transit system anyway? Never mind it is buses, but not even a right of way to get around a simple fender bender at Yonge and Clark.
This is a word of warning to what will happen to Toronto if those “professional” hackjobs get their way with their proposed “BRT redesign” of our great transit system.
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Eric: the ROW for Yonge Street is coming. Be Patient.
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Hi Steve
I have been following the thread concerning the attitude of engineers.
I distinctly remember when the MAGLEV scheme was first floated and there was a meeting at a high school in Don Mills. Afterwards, we talked with one of the designers and my friend argued with this guy for something like fifteen minutes on how the switches for the centre guide beam would take too long to work. We compared their guide beam switches with a street railway switch that threw automatically within seconds, or a bit longer if thrown by hand. We were assured that the switching mechanism proposed for MAGLEV would function as efficiently as a track switch. When the scheme was modified and the guide beam was dropped, one of the reasons stated was that it took too long to throw a guide beam type switch. I also mentioned to this designer about the Queensway right of way and that he should ride the line to find out how a streetcar could function and that this was how it was being done in Europe. The designer had never heard of such a thing but assured me that he would ride it.
With comments like this from the people who are supposed to know, I think that it is just as well that our leaders outlined what we need. Lord knows what we would have if the attitudes of that generation of planners still exist.
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From what I’ve seen of the operation of Toronto City Hall, I’d hesitate to put politicians at the top of the hep in decision making. City staff often go out and do things and then obfuscate when questioned by politicians or committees. If the politicians/committees aren’t diligent and persistent in questioning, then staff gets their way.
There’s a dispute about the safety and effectiveness of some extra bollards placed on the Martin Goodman Trail by the Boulevard Club. These went in after City staff met with the Boulevard Club GM, and possibly someone from Gord Perks’ office. Well, bicyclists have been unanimous in calling these a hazard, and there were a couple of deputations to the Cycling Committee, including one from me. The staff at the meeting mumbled on about “it’s all done to standards” without actually referring to the standards used — my search of City regulations didn’t find any.
The Cycling Committee was not nearly persistent enough in questioning City staff, and deputants are not allowed to ask questions, so the item got shuffled off to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee where it currently languishes in limbo, as the report requested by PWI is now two months overdue with no indication why.
Challenging bad decisions by City staff is not easy at all. And if you don’t think staff can make bad decisions, take a look at these cycling facilities set up in Great Britain.
Every one of the horrors was planned and implemented by experts on municipal and council staff.
I don’t think it’s professional qualifications per se that are the issue, but rather staff who figure they know best, even though they are either mistaken or advancing some other agenda.
Although politicians are often not to blame for bad projects (with obvious exceptions such as the Sheppard subway), they *are* to blame for not holding staff to account. I bet some of the dissatisfaction that Steve describes concerning Transit City is simply that staff and their consultant cronies are getting done unto them what they often do unto the City and public.
Steve: If staff had to make their presentations in five minutes and suffer the abject indifference of their “audience” and listen to the public tell the Commission how misinformed they were, the shoe would really be on the other foot. Alas, it happens far too infrequently.
This blog is one major response to that situation, and I should have started it years earlier when the TTC brass were not as kindly disposed to me as they are today.
I recommend including a set of really embarrassing questions as part of a deputation in the hope that a friendly member of the committee will ask them on your behalf. They are also handy if the press takes up your cause because there are specific issues for them to badger the politicians with.
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Speaking as one who was trained as an urban planner, I would say that from my angle, it’s easy for a professional to have a certain amount of arrogance. And it’s not totally undeserved. We spend at least four years of our life, often more, learning the ins and outs of the profession, the history of what worked and what didn’t, and we carry a lot of highly specialized skill into a variety of settings, only to have individuals who have no experience in our field tell us to our faces that we’re wrong.
But that’s the trap that planners and engineers must avoid. As skilled as we are, the fact remains that ultimately, the individuals who don’t have our skills are the ones we work for. I left the University of Waterloo believing that I could change the world. It’s a dangerous, heady feeling, especially if you ever forget that you’re supposed to be changing it in ways that the average person wants.
I talked about this, and gave some examples of arrogant planners, here.
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If you used the term “consultants” instead of “professionals” I would agree with you entirely.
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Calvin Henry-Cotnam wrote: I would like to address a couple of comments: Karl Junkin wrote about LRT subways, “these underground sections will be as expensive as subways except for station-related costs”.
That is not true. Underground LRT construction costs between $130M and $160M per kilometre to build. A full metro line (”Subway”) can cost more than that to build at grade ($150M to $200M per km). I have put together a cost page and a capacity page on LRT versus full Subway on the Toronto LRT Information Page at http://lrt.daxack.ca — and took care to lean on the high side for LRT while leaning on the cheaper side for full Subway just to avoid being accused of bolstering claims for LRT.
I took a look at the site, and I would have to counter that yes, what I said earlier is true (I’m more than happy to get into details here).
The Eglinton Crosstown undeground portion cited is from the first public release of Transit City’s concept. What the costs will actually be is not yet known, but we do know yet know what the cost will be until later stages of the EAs, and we know that the costs will be higher already since the subway compatibility element wasn’t included in the original debut as far as I know (can anyone confirm this? My understanding is this idea came later). This makes a difference in cost since it will require more concrete and more powerful ventilation.
The inflation-adjusted Transit City cost on the site linked added up to around $6.5 billion, but I’ve read that the costs have already hit $8 billion as more details get worked out, such as parts of Jane and Don Mills going underground near the Bloor-Danforth line, and the bigger cross-section for the Eglinton.
HRT at grade and LRT underground is not so good to compare; it creates an apples to oranges comparison that distorts your case. Also, vehicle lengths were not included in the site, and that is a noteworthy variable.
The site is wrong on the inclusion of vehicles; the Spadina Extension does include vehicles according to the EA documents for the Toronto portion upto Steeles West – it is budgeted in at $108Mil (2005-$) of the $1.4Bil (2005-$). The site linked stated the opposite, and was presented in a manner that tried to draw extra attention to highlight this false claim (It does LRT advocates a great disservice when stunts like this are carried out, LRT has a strong case without using lies to make a case).
The costs of the tunneling itself, I maintain, is about equal, with the big differences come from stations, and I’d like to submit some information to back this up:
For example, compared to the Spadina extension… are underground LRT stations going to have bus terminals? No, unlikely. Are they going to have parking lots at the underground LRT stations? No way. Are they going to have pick up and drop off facilities? I don’t think so.
I’ve got some more detailed breakdowns to add to your cost analysis in these departments (source info are EA documents that are downloaded from the TTC website’s dedicated section on the Spadina extention):
-Steeles West and Finch West stations have pick up and drop off facilities (45 spaces and 10 spaces, respectively).
-Steeles West and Finch West have commuter parking lots (2,500 spaces and 400 spaces respectively).
-Finch West includes a large 10-bay bus terminal. Steeles West includes a gargantuan 37-bay bus terminual (which is actually 3 terminals at one station).
These costs are included in the subway construction costs, but are only relevant to the station, these have nothing to do with the tunneling; this is all surface construction. These elements can also alter road networks, and such road modifications costs also get factored into the costs of subway construction, even though they are not part of the station proper.
These are large and very significant costs that jack up the price. I disagree with the TTC’s position that this much parking is necessary, but that’s beside the point; these not being tunnel-related costs is the point.
There’s a chart for the breakdown in 2005 dollars that includes the separation of costs between stations and running strucutre (which is predominately the tunnels, plus some utility-related costs like signalling), with the stations alone taking up 33% of the costs, meanwhile, tunnels accounted for 47.5% of the project, at $665 million (2005-$). That means that the tunneling without stations costs, at 6.2km, the per-km construction cost is about $107Mil/km. The stations alone are (on average) over $120Mil each (2005-$), largely due to bus terminals and parking facilities along with their associated property aquisition costs.
Underground LRT in Transit City is not going to have these facilities (because we’re talking about central Eglinton, not suburbia like the Spadina extension). The site you linked cited $143Mil/km for LRT tunneling. Stations are going to be pretty basic, no large bus terminals and no massive parking lots, no drop off facilities, and they’re also going to be shorter since trains won’t be 137m long (they’d be 90m tops), so stations could easily be less than half the costs of a 6-car HRT station providing all these car-culture-catering facilities since the extensions are taking place in the suburbs instead of downtown (where such facilities wouldn’t be necessary, except maybe bus/streetcar terminals). How about $40Mil on average for an LRT station? That means the running structure is $103Mil/km, about the same as HRT.
Like Transit City’s underground sections, the DRL would not have parking or pick up and drop off facilities either. It may or may not have bus/streetcar terminals (south of Bloor, Yonge and University Lines don’t have them either, except at Wellesley and Union). So the cost per-km could easily be a fair bit less than the Spadina Line.
So there is no cost-savings in the tunneling for a DRL between LRT and HRT, so the DRL should clearly be HRT.
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Karl Junkin said, “the Spadina Extension does include vehicles according to the EA documents for the Toronto portion upto Steeles West – it is budgeted in at $108Mil (2005-$) of the $1.4Bil (2005-$)”
If that is the case, I will see that it is updated to reflect this. Every attempt was made to show the lowest possible cost for HRT and the highest possible cost for LRT in order to avoid accusations of stretching the facts. Of all the information gathered, subway plans and figures either had a clear notation that vehicles were not included, or did not explicitly say they were. If this was overlooked then I will be the first to say mea culpa, and Karl will be credited for providing updated information.
The costs per kilometre for TC still stand, as their breakdown for the original $6.5 billion price tag are not far off the new total of $8 billion when changes are made to make other parts of the line underground plus larger standards for the underground portion of the Eglinton line (a waste of money, IMHO).
As for the DRL, I am not overly convinced that it should be either HRT nor LRT. If there was a pot of money available tomorrow if the construction had to start tomorrow, I would say definitely build it HRT. However, in the context of beginning it after TC is in operation, or nearly in operation, I believe it would be most prudent to look into possible interlining benefits with TC routes, even if the cost would be virtually similar to HRT.
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Eglinton is a special corridor in this city, I think most people would agree with such a statement, and these forward-thinking provisions by the TTC are anything but a waste of money IMHO. This will prove to be a saving grace, probably by 2040-2050.
Would you have called the provision for transit in the Prince Edward Viaduct a waste of money back when it was first designed? Eglinton will be just as valuable.
There seems to be this attitude that only LRT has interlining options. Just because the TTC had a failed experiement, or according to some people that were around in 1966 “sabotaged” (I wasn’t there, I can’t judge), does not mean interlining is not possible with HRT; interlining is not a unique feature of LRT by any means. The TTC chose a bad way to do it with Bloor-Uni, but that’s no excuse to dismiss it. If we just dismissed stuff like that, we wouldn’t have Transit City. 🙂
As I’ve stated before in other topics, while not an ideal setup but still functional (it can do the job, and trying to build another wye elsewhere is not practical at all), it is possible to interline the DRL with the B-D via Greenwood yard, and this would provide a transfer-free alternative to getting to the foot of Yonge from the east end, the most attractive and most effective option at seriously addressing the long-term capacity issues between the Don and Dufferin south of Bloor. With a renovation at Keele, it can interline back in at the west end (which can avoid some of the problems that were inherent in the 1966 setup… not all of them, but way more flexibility). New turnback points at Keele and at the first station south of the Greenwood yard would keep service levels on the central B-D at current levels or higher.
If we’re going to seriously address the capacity issues at the dangerously congested transfer points today, we need something that can put a real dent in the crowding levels. Skimming off the top with an LRT line is not going to alleviate it by a sufficient margin (we’ll be back to square one within a decade), it would be a complete waste of money because it would be bursting at the seams in no time. This is a core-bound line we’re talking about, not a higher-order suburban feeder to the backbone.
Also, if the LRT is going to be over 3 cars long (over 90m), I believe it has been posted here (correct me if this is incorrect), it probably can’t run safely in Toronto’s streets anyway, meaning that LRT in fact cannot interline with the DRL, since the demands on it would be much greater than the suburban routes of Transit City and requires a much longer vehicle. So it is actually HRT that is the only candidate that can interline with existing routes in the network for the demand levels in question. Demand levels need to be somewhat compatible for interlining to take place in a practical fashion.
Transit City is great for addressing the needs outside the core. However, inside the core it would be no different from a subway anyway (it would be underground, we all know this… GO is not gonna take kindly to the TTC using their busiest ROW either, they’d have to go underground there too). There is no point in avoiding building a subway just for the sake of avoiding a subway; that’s counterproductive. A network requires a mix of technologies appropriate for their place in said network. Sheppard doesn’t have a use for a subway, but the over-stressed core is another matter.
Steve: I have left my comments to the end because I didn’t want to interrupt Karl’s flow above.
Re the Prince Edward Viaduct (of which I have a spectacular view just outside my window): The lower deck was originally built to accommodate a proposed radial car (e.g. streetcar) for a network that Hydro never got around to building. Whether it would have been a subway or an underground streetcar line had it been built in the 20s is hard to say given that there was also provision for streetcars on top, and the Bloor-Danforth cars ran across the bridge until 1966.
The subway has its own bridge between Castle Frank and Sherbourne Stations because the curve at Parliament Street would have been too sharp had the TTC used the Rosedale Valley Road span for the subway.
Interlining at Greenwood Wye is possible, but there is a catch here. Assuming that you are also running a local service from Greenwood to Keele to fill in the central part of the route, there is a level crossing in the wye between the north-to-west and east-to-south curves. Unlike the wye at Museum, this one is not completely grade separated because it was designed only for yard moves. Your service scheme would require two services to cross within the wye, possible, but a potential source of traffic conflict.
At Keele, the situation is even trickier as the access from Keele Yard to the westbound track requires trains to cross the eastbound main line. Also, there is no simple way to handle turnbacks of a local service for the inner part of the line. This is not a simple piece of engineering, and you are proposing major expansion of the subway structure within a residential neighbourhood.
There are two separate approaches to dealing with passengers whose trips require interlined operation. One is to attempt to make the trains serve various origin-destination pairs, and the other is to divert traffic off of one line so that the need for interlining is reduced.
In the west end, there are opportunities to siphon downtown-bound traffic onto the Weston corridor and onto GO rail if only we would stop the assinine separation of GO and TTC operations and fare structures. We feed people into the subway at Kipling and Islington even though there is a perfectly good rail corridor nearby. We feed people in further east who could have transferred to a service in the Weston corridor without the long trek down to Bloor Street.
Before we start the engineering for interlining infrastructure, let’s start talking about integration of services. Much ink is wasted on the problems of cross-border travel to the 905 while we do nothing about the existence of two separate systems within the 416.
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Karl Junkin said, “There seems to be this attitude that only LRT has interlining options.”
I’m not so sure that this attitude exists. I strongly suspect that interlining options is only for OTHER cities. It has always bothered me that other cities can have great service with interlining operations, not just with LRT, but with HRT and commuter rail.
One of the thing that worries me about Transit City is that many of the possibilities that would make this an excellent system simply may not be taken advantage of. Interlining is one of those. By the same token, a DRL built as full subway SHOULD be interlined with the eastern and western portions of the BD subway line – but would they?
I’m not convinced that building the Eglinton LRT line with full subway specifications is really all that forward thinking. The comparison with the Prince Edward Viaduct is poor and perhaps disingenuous for one simple reason: the provisions on the bridge were not to be used immediately, with expected increase in use to a point where all use would have to be halted for a period of time for conversion to take place. Think of the Bloor-Yonge station. Forward thinking in 1954 would have been to build a then-unneeded centre platform. They didn’t, now we need one, but I don’t see the line being shut down for six months to add one. Some for of DRL – new construction, not the temporary closing of what is currently overcapacity – is the way to go.
Real forward thinking would be to either build it now as HRT, or if the number show that a five or six car LRT train would be the way to go, build it with platforms designed for that. I am not dead set against any HRT construction, only radially expanding existing routes further and further out. A true network-expanding HRT project has merits (i.e.: a line that connects with the existing HRT system in at least two places – both Eglinton and a DRL fit this criteria). That said, this city needs to play 40 years of catch-up in improving the overall network, and Transit City fits the need to fill this priority.
One other note to Karl, can you point me to where exactly the budget details that include vehicle in the Downsview to Steeles part of the Spadina extension are in the EA? I have found reference to needing more cars, but not the actual budget. Though I remain to be convinced that the cars are not budgeted somewhere else (like in an option to extend the current subway car replacement contract), I have had the $108 million, inflated to 2008 dollars, removed from the calculation.
Steve: Interlining was not included in Transit City because that would have created dependencies between parts of the plan that could have derailed the whole. Don’t forget that it did not include replacement of the Sheppard Subway by LRT (now under study), LRT in the Weston Corridor (something that could have been included only if Blue 22 died its well-deserved death), a potential southern extension of the Don Mills line, or some of the changes proposed for Finch West that are now under study.
People seem to think that plans should spring forth complete and fully formed, but that road leads to the Planner-As-God problem discussed elsewhere. The purpose of Transit City was to get people thinking about alternatives to the existing “build two subway extensions and then figure out what we will do” plan that preceded it. In that, it has succeeded quite well.
There are obvious interlining possibilities once we have more than a few lines built of which the most obvious is Airport/Eglinton/Weston/Downtown. However, when Transit City was announced, the idea that LRT would be the primary route to the airport was not yet politically acceptable. It takes time to get people talking about alternatives.
Now, out in SRT land, there is a proposed LRT alternative to the Malvern extension which will make it much easier and cheaper to go further north. Whether we will actually see an LRT proposal for the SRT corridor remains to be seen, but the only way to make the RT replacement even vaguely cost-effective is to keep it to its present length. The moment you extend it, the numbers fall apart.
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A few thoughts regarding the DRL:
1) Use of GO in 416 to mitigate the need of another subway downtown: this sounds great in principle, but reaching the passenger volumes comparable to subways means a huge growth from the present GO ridership level. That might hit roadblocks in several dimensions: the capacity of Union rail station, the number of tracks and the width of rail corridors, competition from the freight trains, and even the residents opposing increased train frequencies if the line runs close to their backyards.
Therefore, the most likely scenario is that the GO frequencies and capacity are upgraded to some degree, but those increases are largely consumed by the growing tide of 905 riders, with some but limited benefits for the outer 416 areas. In that case, DRL will be needed anyway.
Steve: The intention is not to reach subway levels of loading, only to shave the top off of the demand peak so that the existing system is not overloaded. If the Lakeshore east corridor gets very frequent service and has an integrated fare structure, it can bleed loading from Scarborough that would otherwise take the subway downtown. Similarly, improvements in the Richmond Hill, Stouffville and Agincourt/Seaton (the CPR) corridors could each take some long-haul trips off of the subway. It’s a lot cheaper than building a completely new line just for downtown, and it serves a wider catchment area.
Meanwhile, Union Station’s redesign is intended to at least double its capacity. The new GO concourses will be more than double the size of the existing one, and there will be a completely separate concourse for “through” traffic between the subway, the ACC and the new developments south of the railway corridor.
2) If the DRL is built as light rail, we should keep in mind that the goal of increasing capacity using longer (say 5-car) trains will conflict with the goal of through-routing shorter surface-section trains (Don Mills, Jane, perhaps Eglinton West – Airport) to downtown. Those trains coming from the surface sections will likely be just 2-car long, but each of them will occupy a time slot that otherwise could be used by a longer train.
Therefore, if the cost of HRT in that corridor is not drastically higher, then perhaps HRT is the best choice.
Steve: As I have said before, there is no reason for the DRL to operate with extremely long trains. Once the line gets into its exclusive right-of-way section somewhere south of Thorncliffe Park (possibly sooner depending on the alignment), frequent service can operate without consideration of interference at intersections. This would allow a less frequent surface operation on Don Mills to mix with trains that only operate on the section with exclusive right-of-way.
A two minute headway of 60m trains (two-car units) would give a capacity of at least 8,000 per hour depending on assumptions about the design capacity of vehicles.
3) If the interlining between DRL and the Bloor subway is too complex, then perhaps this is a good alternative: build just the eastern wing of DRL subway in Phase I, but extend it to Eglinton / Don Mills or even further north, and do not interline. Such a line will intercept more travelers from the areas north of Bloor and east of Yonge, and that will make up for the lost benefits of interlining.
Steve: Actually it won’t intercept as much traffic as you might think because the only point where it would be fed by an east-west route is at Eglinton. The critical catchment area for traffic diversion from the subway network is further north and east, right where GO could provide a direct link to downtown.
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Steve, btw what are those changes proposed for Finch West that are now under study? Entirely on-street versus partly in Hydro corridor? And, do they consider routing the line to Yonge-Sheppard to improve the east-west connectivity?
Thanks,
Steve: There is no intention to put the Finch line in the Hydro corridor, at least not until, and if, it turns southwest through Etobicoke. The Hydro corridor is a long way from the developments the line will serve and it includes a very difficult crossing with the west branch of the Don River.
However, a Sheppard West LRT could swing up to Finch somewhere west of Yonge (location TBA) to provide a through route across the city. This assumes conversion of the subway to LRT which I will address in a separate comment below.
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Well, that was an interesting little interjection you threw in there, Steve. The replacement of the Sheppard subway by LRT is now under study? That is news to me. At the open houses there was no mention of this at all; the question with the subway was not whether to convert it, but whether to extend it one stop to the east. The only conversion to LRT even being floated was with the SRT (and only by a brief mention in the list of FAQ). Is this a new development in the study, how seriously is it being considered, and how likely is it to happen?
Steve: It was Richard Soberman, actually, who suggested converting the subway to LRT in a paper he wrote earlier this year, and my understanding is that this is getting serious study. One big problem with the compressed EA process, the number of projects running in parallel, and the options that are thrown on the table for each of them, is that what gets presented to the public can be somewhat behind what might be under active discussion.
Apparently, it is physically possible to fit an LRT into the tunnel although from a tour I took last week to look at this idea, there are some tight spots. Headroom could be gained in these places by removing the double-tie suspension of the subway tracks and building a simpler, but still vibration-insulated, track structure directly on the tunnel floor.
There is a huge push to decide, definitively, on a Regional Transit Plan as soon as possible, and this is driven by the desire to have shovels in the ground well before the Provincial Election in 2011. We are ill served by this sort of planning. Nothing prevents us from identifying important “stage 1” projects and taking a bit more time to get the whole plan right.
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