The Metrolinx Board received a presentation today from their Chief Planning Officer, Leslie Woo, about the Yonge Relief Network Study. One item in this report raised eyebrows – the projection that GO RER and SmartTrack services would divert only 4,200 passengers during the peak AM hour from the Yonge corridor.
In the discussion, it was clear that service in the SmartTrack corridor would be every 15 minutes. Four trains per hour is hardly an inducement to change routes although at least if SmartTrack operates with TTC fares, it could still be atttractive.
However, I wondered just what that 15 minute headway meant, and so I wrote to Leslie Woo for clarification:
When you talk about 15 minute headways, does this mean an RER train every 15′ and an ST train every 15′ for a combined 7’30” headway, or is this 15′ for the combined service with a wider (e.g. 30′) headway on each one?
Her reply:
15 mins – combined.
Keep in mind that where Kitchener/Milton/and Barrie corridors converge we are already at less than 15 min headway in the peak.
This is a fascinating statement. SmartTrack is, among other things, intended to add stations along the GO corridors so that a more finely-grain service can be provided in Scarborough and at some locations along the Weston corridor such as Liberty Village. However, if the combined express GO and local ST services will only run every 15′, this implies a wider headway on ST, possibly every over train or 30′. With only a pair of tracks on the Stouffville corridor, and likely only a pair dedicated to GO+ST on the Kitchener corridor, it is impossible for express GO trains to pass local ST trains, and this limits how many trains per hour, in total, can possibly operate there.
During the press scrum, Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig was asked about the equipment to be used, and he said that both GO and ST services would run with GO trains. It would appear that the only difference will be where they stop. Of course we already have this type of arrangement on the Lake Shore corridor, and didn’t need an election campaign to get it.
When candidate John Tory pitched SmartTrack, it was to be a “surface subway” using, mainly, existing GO rights-of-way but operating with quasi-subway service level, speed and station spacing. There were claims made for 200k/day in ridership, and the whole project was pitched as if it was the one line to solve every problem. Ask about the weather? SmartTrack will fix it. Out of a job? SmartTrack will speed you more quickly to job locations you never dreamed of. Why don’t we have more buses? Buses are a waste of money and what you really need is a shiny new fast train.
The problem with these claims is that they depended on SmartTrack actually being “like a subway” with frequent service, something it is quite clear that it will not be, at least not as Metrolinx sees things. The challenge here is that unless there is a very substantial investment in infrastructure by Metrolinx beyond what is planned for GO/RER, the network cannot handle the very frequent service contemplated for SmartTrack and this limits the effect it will have region-wide.
Even if SmartTrack did operate more frequently (a situation that was modelled by Metrolinx), it doesn’t attract much more ridership away from the critical Yonge corridor. The basic fact is that the west end of SmartTrack (wherever it might actually go) is so far from Yonge Street that it addresses a completely different market. Even the eastern branch on the Stouffville corridor is a fair distance from Yonge and, if anything, would bleed demand from the Scarborough Subway rather than the Yonge line.
A vital but missing piece of information in the presentation is the count of likely riders on various routes in the modelled networks. This report tells us how many riders are diverted from Yonge, but not how many riders would be on the other corridors and, therefore, the value of and need for more service in them. This information should come out in a technical background paper expected in July 2015.
Although the Metrolinx discussion did not get into SmartTrack costs, there are fundamental questions to be answered:
- What are the comparative costs and benefits of serving the Eglinton West corridor with the proposed SmartTrack tunnel or with the planned westward extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT? (This should be answered later in the SmartTrack study of that corridor.)
- Will SmartTrack share GO’s corridor through Union Station, or will it split off into its own tunnel downtown? Would the more frequent service a tunnel implies actually be able to co-exist with GO operations when the line rejoined the GO corridors?
- What is the actual, likely cost of SmartTrack? For election purposes, this was estimated simply by taking the average costs of a few European “surface subways” or “overground” lines as London calls them, and scaling this to the length of the SmartTrack route. Originally, it was claimed that there would be no tunnels, but the campaign quickly learned that their research was faulty on that score. The cost is important because Toronto has volunteered to pay 1/3 of the total, whatever that might be.
- Why should Toronto taxes be used to pay for a service which had among its objectives improvement of access to commercial properties in Markham and Mississauga?
- Can a local service that operates considerably less frequently than a subway route be expected to generate much development as associated tax revenue?
As things now stand, SmartTrack has all the appearance of a line on the map that fades gradually under the harsh light of actual planning, operational constraints, and the degree to which Ontario is prepared to build infrastructure to enable it.
Steve Munro 
Because Toronto residents want to go there, and to jobs there, too…
Steve: Except that the idea of SmartTrack is to allow the doubling of jobs in the Airport Corporate Centre. That’s a development benefit. If Toronto wants to encourage jobs, it can do this within its borders. We don’t need to encourage the 905 to build developments that compete with our own suburbs. How many times have people in Scarborough, for example, complained about jobs moving north to Markham?
Meanwhile, to turn your argument around, maybe people in Mississauga should pay for new subway lines in Toronto so that they can get downtown.
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It’s worth noting that adding a 3rd track to the Lakeshore West line was a prerequisite for express services on that corridor. There is no way that both Smart Track and GO can run on 2 tracks unless each station has a 3rd/4th service track … and one service (Smart Track, most likely) is able to wait while the other passes.
To further reinforce that question, are the benefits of a 1 seat trip enough to justify the cost of constructing the Eglinton West branch of Smart Track which will only have 3 stations (note: I suggested a 4th at East Mall because Park & Ride!)
Also, would such a tunnel (under Wellington and Front Streets, possibly the Esplanade) not affect the selection of the east-west corridor for the DowntownRegionalYongeLongShort Relief Line? This is of course a topic which is currently being “jointly” and publicly discussed (though perhaps without what might be a crucial bit of information).
Cheers, Moaz
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It seems to me that they already are, since senior levels of government are the ones laying out the bulk of the cost on this project. I seem to recall Toronto getting the rest of the Eglinton LRT as a gift from the province, so why is paying 1/3 of the western bit of Eglinton too much to ask? It’s a little rich, especially after TO council turned down a free SRT in favour of the higher cost SSE.
Turning things around would be getting local and regional governments to freight the full bill. Plus giving them the taxing powers to support the large-scale capital requirements of transit construction, so that senior levels of government are not involved, and the local pols accountable to their local constituents.
Only then might we be spared the silliness of arguing over whether Mississauga or Toronto should pay for rails that cross their borders.
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Good analysis. Sadly, it’s hard to be surprised by any of this. SmartTRack was never more than a doodle on a map by someone with a pretty-coloured crayon. The problem is, it got Tory elected, so it’s going to be very hard to put a stop to the nonsense now.
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To be fair, future GOtrains are probably EMUs, so “will run with GOtrains” is actually more-or-less correct.
Metrolinx is beginning to use electric GO trains in PowerPoints, like this and this.
Although clip art, that’s a pictogram of the Stadler KISS which is not a heavy rail train but a hybrid of sorts — lighter rail than a GO train but much heavier than a streetcar. Think, 160kph super-streetcar on steroids. So these aren’t your grandfather’s classic GO trains. It’s electric GO trains.
It may use European/Asian style commuter trains, as Transport Canada is showing flexibility to migrate to those types of trains in GO train corridors (page 38 of this document) and are documented in various later GO RER PDFs.
On a related note, one of the proposed Transport Canada requirements to permit ligher-rail trains on GO corridors (heavier than streetcar, lighter than classic GO trains), and get a Transport Canada waiver — they’re now planning Positive Train Control systems (one of the Transport Canada proposals), when I dug up several PDF links.
So all the light rail versus heavy rail talk sort of perpetuate from this — the future electric GO train might actually be a cross in between (but performs 20% faster than classic GO trains, as suggested in several documents).
Steve: A few notes here. First off, the 2015 version of the Business Plan is now online, and it does not explicitly refer to Positive Train Control, although it does allude to this:
I would caution against reading too much into some of Metrolinx’ documents. The flavour of the year is electrification, and so this shows up as part of the illustrations. Perish the thought GO might appear to be backsliding. However, the delivery date for electrification is moving off into the future, certainly further away than Premier Wynne talked about during the election.
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In 2010, quite relevant part from this PDF.
Since 2014, many Metrolinx documents proudly exhibit the idea of introducing EMUs (including this one which is the first big splash). And now the European EMU clipart found in many new electric GO train PowerPoint diagrams. Bombardier also makes EMU trains that are currently illegal to run on a Canadian railroad (until the Transport Canada waiver).
Since that happened, GO has been buying up corridors and they are doing the Positive Train Control upgrades as part of the electricifation resignalling. This satisfies two out of three bullets — good control over temporal separation — and automatic emergency-stopping trains (Positive Train Control automatically stops trains before they collide).
Connect the dots — and we’ll see spanking brand new electric GO trains for whatever route that they decide is arbitrarily labelled “SmartTrack”. They are still GO trains. Just not today’s classic GO trains.
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MERX government tender, posted by Metrolinx.
This may be your electric GO train (which Tory calls “SmartTrack Train”).
Steve: Metrolinx may have issued an RFI, but they are a very long way away from buying or operating anything.
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Let’s just rename the Kitchener and Stouffville lines “SmartTrack West” and “SmartTrack East” run them at 15 min frequencies and be done with this.
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As far as I can tell, “SmartTrack” is basically a replacement for the UP Express. The study shows an alternative route which serves both the airport and Airport Corporate Centre and obviously the purpose of this is to get rid of the limitation that allows only small trains to use the UP Express spur, and replace the UP Express with regular GO trains. I assume that if this is built that the Kitchener line would operate two branches with 15 minute headways on each branch. The Eglinton SmartTrack route is not feasible so I assume it will eventually get LRT and there will be two alternative routes to the airport area for higher capacity. Also SmartTrack calls for additional stations notably near the Unilever site development. GO electrification is a poor substitute for the DRL, and only a DRL going north to Sheppard or Finch will solve Yonge line overcrowding problems.
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I’m finally with you all on this, ST is a waste, should not happen. I do think the Feds should rescind their pledge of $2.5billion as that money was given solely for Smart Track, it certainly was not given for Toronto to dither around trying to make up it’s mind for another 10 years. City of Toronto should put a proposal forth like every other municipality for some Fed money. I do give Tory credit for getting the pledge of billions in the first place as the Feds would never, ever have given Chow a single dime and they would not have given QP anything either.
BTW, what is the status of McGuinty’s pledge anyway? Did he defer the entire $9billion gift package to 2017? or has some of that promised money started to flow into Eg Crosstown? I’m not sure where I read it, but I thought it was mentioned that the Lib promise had not yet started?
Steve: Who is that? McGuinty? Pledge? As for the Feds and ST, they said 1/3 of the cost up to $2.6b. That’s a big difference from just handing over a suitcase full of cash.
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RER makes more sense anyways … let’s double track the route … let the ridership build a bit before we go all in … protect for a triple or quadruple track and infill stations … the Lakeshore route wasn’t built in a day or even ten years … building a quadruple tracked express/local service sounds great with trains every 5 minutes but they would be running mostly empty for ten or twenty years – maybe longer.
Lakeshore needs to be electrified and can support shorter headways now … let’s get that started as well.
Speed up the planning for DRL – design should be done in parallel on all three sections (downtown, east of the Don, north to Eglinton) with work commencing on each part as it is ready.
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This sounds like great news to me–turns out the province was planning to fully fund SmartTrack all along! That should free up a few billion dollars that the city can now redirect to other transit priorities. Maybe a relief line, maybe some new bus garages, maybe some operating subsidies, maybe the Waterfront West and East Bayfront LRTs…
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I think that the ST idea was always really nothing more than a campaign item, and never a truly serious transit proposal, other than a re-branding of RER/frequent GO, with a portion in the west that was wildly unrealistic (deliberately?) – possibly to make it easier to walk away from later.
Having said that, GO needs to better support 416 stations beyond Union, with frequent service, that can be had for either TTC fare, or only a very small increment above it, as part of an integrated purchase. Transit within Toronto, especially in the outer 416 needs to do a much better job in supporting GO as a destination, and even as an origin. The Crosstown for instance should be extended onto and along Kingston Road in a manner that would support at least a connection to the Lawrence Bus the Guildwood, Eglinton and Kennedy GO stations. That would make it much more evident that locations along Eglinton would be easily accessible by transit from those coming from beyond Toronto, and make for easier transit integration for those originating in Scarborough. The Sheppard LRT should similarly support Agincourt, and the fare should be such that it makes more sense going to the core, to transfer to GO than continue to the Yonge subway.
These stations should see all day 15 minute or better service (10 minute service with smaller trains – as part of the 10 minute network would be better still). Toronto Transit and GO must see real service integration, so that the two systems are treated as one by users. While this will not divert nearly enough riders from Yonge, it will make for greatly improved service in a wide area, without furthering burdening the Yonge subway, and to the extent that core bound riders opt for GO with better access and a more favorable fare, it would also somewhat reduce the burden at Yonge/Bloor. However, the need for a greatly improved local transit serving these stations and more favorable fares is critical.
Also – we should not kid ourselves, if even a 5-6 k diversion was achieved, this will not eliminate the need for more capacity parallel to Yonge, merely buy a little breathing space, especially if we are smart and pursue an active effort to grow transit’s share.
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It’s been done many other places before . Use faster accelerating trains as frequent stop trains wich can match the average speeds of the slow heavy GO trains we have now . I have seen express service be completely replaced by all stopping trains because the new speeds matched the “older express” trains and to save on costly extra multi track lines and stations . Double track has huge capacity if the average speed of all trains is always the same in each direction.
Steve: This planning exercise would be so much simpler if (a) Metrolinx didn’t push the date for electrification out beyond the supposed service date for SmartTrack and (b) if we were not talking about two separate service with their own fares running on the same track with the same equipment and sharing some stations. It is this basic scheme which is full of holes, and we really need to address the basics rather than trying to plan around the shortcomings.
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Why should GO/RER/ST whatever be a “TTC fare”? These proposals are all premium services and like the 140-express buses, they should charge a higher fare don’t you think? Those that cannot afford the fare, you can always take TTC for 3 bucks. Those people that for any reason, do not wish to take UPX, well, the 192 is 3 bucks. Again, trip takes longer but it gets you there and that is the important feature,so nobody is shut out. Like all of the City user fees, if you want to use it, if you want to get anywhere faster, you are going to have to pay for it, otherwise, take the TTC.
Steve: Because John Tory ran on a platform, and has since reiterated, that SmartTrack will be a TTC fare with free transfers to and from TTC services. The incongruity of this with other premium services in Toronto is quite obvious, but what the hell, it got him elected, and that’s all that mattered.
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Regarding the proposed SmartTrack tunnel: Inserting 2 tracks in between Track 1 and Track 2 west from Rogers, elevating them above the GO tracks, including a platform for station, then turning westwards it is much cheaper as a tunnel. Compared with a similar elevated extension of the LRT has the disadvantage of 3 level, 8 tracks station vs. 2 level 6 tracks. Could be interesting to add to the proposed path a loop going to Pearson using the hydro corridor west of Redgave.
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The issue is 1 – the one that Steve already made clear and the other is that if it is going to come close to having the desired impact, the current higher fares for short inside 416 rides, will prevent it from being used to the extent that is really required to make it work. A small premium for express service is fine, so long as it offers a truly fast ride, and the premium is small enough that a large number of people will actually opt for it. Otherwise it will not divert any riders from the currently overloaded services, and will not reduce the pressure to further extend the subway, and waste large capital dollars. If it is offered on a 15 minute or better basis, and a no more than 4-5 dollar fare from anywhere in Toronto it will likely hoover up riders in the outer areas of Toronto, and offer a much better connection, if it is a 5 dollar fare plus a TTC fare, it will not divert nearly as many rides.
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Regarding “introducing EMU”: On 2015-06-11 railway-news.com : Stadler Rail to deliver 8 FLIRT 3 trains to Texas – Floor height 780 mm.
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Moaz writes:
It’s worth noting that adding a 3rd track to the Lakeshore West line was a prerequisite for express services on that corridor.
No, but it helps. Express services have been around since before the line was fully triple/quad-tracked in 2008. If anything, the arrangement of rush hour trains (express+local) has not changed much since 1999.
The triple tracking East of Oakville was completed, I imagine, for the 30-minute service. The triple tracking West of Oakville, was completed to deal with freight traffic so local service could be extended to Burlington.
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I never understood why the Province underestimated the importance of funding this extension in the Transit City plans for many reasons.
And although ST is likely a wasted exercise in the Political transit planning circus hopefully it has helped secure some much needed capital for the DRL.
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I don’t believe the SmartTrack sold to us in the campaign is viable, but in my mind, there are two things which I hope SmartTrack accomplishes and which I think would make it worth the effort.
The first is 15 minute service on more lines within Toronto (Kitchener, Stouffville, and Lakeshore East and West would offer 4 more rapid transit corridors into the downtown that operate at a frequency where you don’t have to plan ahead to make your train).
The other is better integration with the TTC. This doesn’t have to be operating at TTC fares across the board, but at the moment if you want to take a bus to the GO station and then take the subway from Union, you have to not only pay GO fare, but two TTC fares as well. That kind of costs is prohibitive for most people’s daily commutes. In Mississauga and Oakville, if you transfer from GO to a bus, it costs less than a dollar. That kind of integration would make commuting via GO much more viable for large swaths of the suburbs.
Steve: Actually, a transfer from your TTC bus to GO is valid at Union to get back on the subway (and vice versa), although it wouldn’t hurt to bring a printed copy of the TTC Times Two page along with you because just in case you meet TTC staff who don’t know how their own system is supposed to work.
I also don’t mean just fare integration. Better integration of GO stations with TTC routes would be huge too (every GO station with regular service should have at least a bus loop if possible).
I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir here, but this is where SmartTrack could have a real positive impact. The TTC, Metrolinx, and the city are already jointly studying/planning RER in conjunction with relief line and SSE because of SmartTrack. The mayor has a vested interest in championing fare and system integration and ensuring that RER tangibly benefits Torontonians. Without that champion, does it still happen?
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If SmartTrack / GO RER will run on 15-min combined frequency, then it should not cost 8+ billion to build.
If they are spending 8+ billion on SmartTrack, then they should focus on building a high-capacity line; that almost certainly requires a downtown rail tunnel.
Or, they can build a minimal version of SmartTrack (basically, GO RER + a few infill stations + better fare integration with TTC); but then the cost should be limited to something like $3 billion, and the rest should be used for DRL subway.
Steve: Here is where they got the $8-billion estimate. Tory’s advisors started from the premise of “Overground”, which is not far off of GO Transit, but generally with electric propulsion and more frequent headways, from London UK. Even Olivia Chow’s campaign was buffaloed by this, and cocked up her technology references, but that’s a sideline. Anyhow, they took construction costs from London, as well as for similar lines in Berlin, I believe, multiplied by the length of Tory’s line, and voila! $8-billion. Then they found out they might need some tunnels, but they kind of faked it from that point on in the campaign.
There has never been a proper explanation from an engineering point of view of the alignment ST will take, the degree to which it will share GO trackage, the additional tracks it might need to permit mixed local/express operation, or of course any sections that will require tunnels. It also includes curves on some maps that should raise eyebrows if these are going to be GO transit trains.
The claimed 200k riders per day would require vastly more service than Metrolinx is talking about running, and if ST is going to get down to that level and really be a “surface subway”, the infrastructure investment on the GO corridors will be quite substantial, and not just a matter of building a few stations here and there.
Until the work now being done by the City and Metrolinx, SmartTrack has never progressed beyond the crayon and napkin stage.
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It strikes me, not for the first time, that if any private business were to echo the TTC’s “pay up, operators are always right” fare dispute policy it would quite possibly be fraudulent and certainly not accepted by anyone as a fair or reasonable practice. Why transit operators get away with not knowing fare policy, and get backed by the organization while they refuse to learn is beyond me.
Yes, before I get yelled at I know these disputes are rare and the vast majority of operators are fine. The problem is that the guys who can’t be bothered to handle fares properly don’t get called on it. I can count on one hand the number of disputes I’ve had with operators, but at the same time in none of those cases have I been in the wrong or has the operator admitted so much as the possibility that he could be mistaken (on one occasion actually pointing at that asinine line about paying up anyway and demanding a second fare — I jumped the gate, he yelled like crazy person and got on the bloody train. I’d do it again).
Steve: Because I am a Metropass user, I don’t run into this sort of problem, although I have seen ops who piss people off by closing the rear doors at what is supposed to be a PoP stop. The situation I run into now and then is that TTC staff, especially supervisors, don’t seem to know about the “personal use” provision of the bylaws related to photos on TTC property. It’s in two separate places on the website.
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I wasn’t aware of this. Though I suspect it’s telling that it doesn’t look like they keep this page updated (the 198, in service for almost a year now, isn’t on there). It’s still not as good as places like Oakville or Mississauga, where there is some true fare integration, but it sure beats paying twice.
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If the GO train express service from Markham/Stouffville were to be converted into a local SmartTrack line, then the trip to downtown from the suburbs would become slower. That would mean less people from York Region using the proposed SmartTrack and more people taking their personal vehicles.
GO trains are very useful in getting people from the suburbs to downtown Toronto in a quick amount of time. Once it converts to a SmartTrack line, the express portion of the line disappears.
Steve: It has been argued that electrification will save running time and allow the insertion of stops, but electrification as a project is drifting off into the next decade. Left hand, right hand?
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Its any ones guess how SmartTrack evolves now, I can only reflect on the con the whole thing was and is, and which won an election. We are all still deciphering it.
Several things are clear though:
• The east and west legs will be combined into a single service, like Lakeshore GO, such that two tracks through the USRC and Union Station should provide capacity of 10 trains per hour each way, providing that routing conflicts in the USRC are eliminated.
• The Eglinton bit makes no sense at all. It needs to be quietly dumped on a Friday afternoon, shrouded with a big news story.
Interesting to note that rolling stock referred to in pictures are both electric and both MU. Platform height however becomes a potential issue as examples are both high and low platform. This needs nipping in the bud: Low platforms only!
SmartTrack always referred to itself as a ‘surface subway’, puzzling, and a far cry from heavy rail GO trains now planned. On the Markham line some 4 tracking is said to being investigated to allow non-stop GO trains to pass slower all stop SmartTrack trains.
But instead, how about making the Markham line two tracks all the way, and extending the BD subway from Kennedy, north, using RT RoW, on the surface as far as possible, and then tunneled, to Finch or Steeles. Thus two completely separate sets of two tracks.
The subway would be a ‘surface subway’ with frequent stops and frequent trains, while the Markham GO line would have stops only at the end point of the proposed subway (say Steeles), and at Kennedy. The GO train should achieve a decidedly faster schedule downtown from Kennedy to attract riders going downtown.
The subway extension then is ‘SmartTrack’, a surface subway, not the GO line. Such a subway plan could include a later branch to STC and beyond using the RT RoW, while the GO line would have capacity to one day add trains from Peterborough and Seaton including the proposed airport.
Steve: Aren’t you mixing up rail corridors? Peterborough and Seaton are on the CPR line, not the CN/GO line to Markham.
As for a subway going north rather than east to STC, you forget that STC is the centre of the known universe, and any new Scarborough line must go there. More seriously, taking the subway straight north concentrates on the demand SmartTrack thinks it is going to get, and forgets that there are people further east in Scarborough.
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The corridors cross just north of the 401, and it appears a fast north to east connection is feasible provided space exists to get around CP’s McCowan yard.
Steve: It’s the “provided” part that is the problem. CPR has been loath to even contemplate GO service through their yard.
The Subway idea is to make SmartTrack a real surface subway, just as its author said. It would extend from the existing Kennedy station and run on the surface on RT RoW to Ellesmere and then continue north, beside GO, on the surface as far as possible, thence in tunnel, as far as say Sheppard or Finch. This is instead of trying to squeeze passing tracks etc into the GO line.
The SSE, instead of going east on Eglinton and north by whatever route, could instead branch off at Ellesmere, and follow the RT RoW to STC and beyond. SmartTrack however has the momentum at this point and would get built first.
Markham GO trains would stop at the Surface Subway end point (Sheppard or Finch) and at Kennedy, (Milliken and Agincourt become Subway only stations), thence fast to Union in a time that, given equal fares, would attract riders off the Subway.
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The Mayors of Cambridge and Milton have a “plan” for the province to build “The Missing Link,” a line to join the CP freight line from somewhere in Halton into the CN’s Halton Sub near Bramalea. One report sounded like they wanted to follow the 407 right of way. This would make for an interesting connection to CP’s MacTier sub given the grade separation and also to CP’s Agincourt (McCowan) Yard. This might free up the CP track on the Weston Corridor, the North Toronto sub and the inner end of the Belleville sub for GO RER or SmartTrack with a connection to Seaton and Peterborough. The left honourable Dean Del Mastro, moving force behind the Stagnant Waters railway that was supposed to open to Peterborough last year, could do the honours of riding the first train. Mind you my unborn grandchildren will be dead long before it happens.
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Yes, it seems to make no sense, and of course, by shortening a route like the Crosstown, and proposing other construction, they really do create the impression that it will be a much longer time (if ever) before they come back and address the need that the route would have addressed. This to me was one of the issues in the way the Crosstown and the Big Move have been planned. I think they have created a political morass, in not building the Crosstown as a truly cross town LRT. If they had built the full length of it, and included a Malvern line as an extension and included the portion out to the airport (Renforth Gateway), they would have hugely enhanced their credibility. The other thing is that this permits a much better link to other possible routes into the core, and hence a greater potential increase in ridership, with a smaller impact on the Y/B connection. The same being true on the west side, where they could link to the UPX corridor at Mt Dennis, and perhaps pull a substantial portion of demand from the Northwest of the city and beyond into a corridor other than subway. It would also have provided better access to a substantial number of employment opportunities.
The process feels very reactive, driven by politics, not demand or planning. The idea of a service increase in the GO corridors, seems natural, and planning a system to encourage that seems equally logical. Fare integration would seem equally logical, however, there needs to be an awareness that the burden of supporting 905 riders cannot fall unduly on 416 taxpayers, when this extends beyond the 416.
Making use of the GO corridors, and implementing ongoing service improvements, allows for increased density and a gradual diversion to transit, without massive overbuilding. This approach permits a reasonable planned expansion in each corridor, and substantial service improvements at a much lower capital cost. Instead we get massive announcements – that place huge promises in the distant future. Lakeshore East needs an extra track and electrification, Stouffville needs double tracks and 15 minute service – electrification can wait. Scarborough needs all trains in both corridors to stop at all Toronto stops and quality transit integration – meaning a goodly amount of local rapid transit. Can we please have a plan that can be afforded, works, and has political credibility {reducing the outer portion of LRT hugely undermined the last}. I suspect that building the entire length of the Crosstown, and including both the airport extension, and a Malvern connection, would have been better in terms of credibility than starting 2 other LRT projects at the same time.
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Despite all the comparisons with London’s Overground, I have a feeling, ST will look more like SEPTA’s route 100. 15 minute or better service and short DMUs that serve the suburbs from an existing rail corridor. Philadelphians ride the “Premium” line for the princely sum of 2.75 USD or bus/subway/trolley token +50¢.
Interestingly the SEPTA 100 line has an interesting express-local setup on only two tracks by alternating the services.
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I think one of the basics that needs to be remembered in the debates surrounding the various options, including Smarttrack vs subway vs LRT, is exactly what we have to work with regarding streets and other ROW.
This city map makes it very clear why there needs to be different approaches taken in the different areas of the city. Note the very wide ROW on all the major streets to the North East and west, and how virtually all of the major streets in the downtown are 20 meter rights of way.
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