A Grand Plan

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Upcoming Transit City Open Houses

The following open houses have been announced for June 2008:

Sheppard LRT

Tuesday, June 3 at Agincourt Collegiate (Midland north of Sheppard)

Wednesday, June 4 at Malvern Community Centre (Sewell’s Road east of Neilson)

Scarborough RT Extension

Wednesday, June 4 at Malvern Community Centre (Sewell’s Road east of Neilson)

Thursday, June 5 at Scarborough Town Centre Station

Don Mills LRT

Tuesday, June 10 at Rosedale Heights School for the Arts (near Castle Frank Station)

Tuesday, June 17 at East York Town Centre

Wednesday, June 18 at Don Mills Station

Details are available on the project websites (linked above).

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Rapid Transit Service Changes Effective June 22, 2008

Yonge Subway Early Closing

Effective June 22, the Yonge subway will close early north of Lawrence Station.  This will allow work on tunnel liner replacement and repair to proceed at a faster pace than before and to complete while the condition of the tunnel is still acceptable for regular service operation.

This arrangement will be in place until February 14, 2009.

The following service changes are planned:

Yonge Subway

Monday to Friday, Sundays and Holidays (but not on Saturdays), service north of Lawrence will end at about 12:30 am.  On Saturdays, regular service will run until the normal closing time.

The bus terminals at York Mills, Sheppard and Finch stations will remain open.

North York Centre station, as well as the York Mills south entrance, and the Poyntz and West entrances to Sheppard station, will close when Yonge train service ends.

Sheppard Subway

After about 12:23 am, to allow the Yonge line platform to be closed, all Sheppard trains will load from the north platform which can be reached directly from the bus loop and station entrance.

Replacement Bus Service

Buses on 36 Finch West, 39 Finch East, 53 Steeles East and 60 Steeles West will operate to Lawrence Station.  The 97 Yonge bus, which normally goes to York Mills via Yonge Boulevard, will be extended from York Mills to Finch and will operate through Lawrence Station both ways.

The combined service on Yonge from Lawrence to Finch will be between two and three minutes.

Other Service Changes for June 22

Seasonal Subway Service Reductions

On the Yonge line, two of the four AM gap/standby trains will be removed.  This has no effect on the headway.  In the afternoon peak, six trains will be removed (four scheduled plus two gap trains) and the headway will widen from 2’31” to 2’46”.

On the Bloor-Danforth line, seven trains will be removed from the AM peak service widening the headway from 2’24” to 2’53”.  Five trains will be removed from the PM peak service widening the headway from 2’34” to 2’57”.

On the Scarborough RT, the running time will be increase “to improve reliability in hot weather”.  The round trip will change from 21 to 23 minutes and the headway from 3’40” to 3’50” during peak periods, and from 5’30” to 5’45” at off peak.  Step back crewing will be dropped, and the extra time is needed for the longer terminal time this causes.

The RT will close at midnight every day to permit continued work on the power rails, and frequent bus service will run in place of the RT.  This arrangement continues until August 29, 2008.  The shuttle service will not operate into Lawrence East station, and all intermediate stations will close after the last RT train.

I am not going to list all of the surface route of which there are many in the usual pattern of cuts to routes serving post-secondary institutions, increases for seasonal traffic to the waterfront and CNE, and general cuts in service to adjust for lighter peak loads in the summer.  The details of these will appear on the TTC website in due course.

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New Carhouses for New Cars (Updated)

The TTC Supplementary Agenda for May 21 includes a report on the Master Plan for new carhouses.  These will be needed both to house the replacement fleet for the existing downtown network and for the far-flung Transit City system.

In brief, the proposed scheme involves the building of five new carhouses:

  • One in either the Portlands or in New Toronto to house the downtown network’s fleet.  The New Toronto option is mentioned only once in the text  (with “new” in lower case), and the map shows only the Portlands location.  This would be the primary carhouse for the core area routes, but Roncesvalles and Russell would continue to have a role as regional yards for new cars once the CLRV fleet starts to retire.
  • A Sheppard East carhouse would initially operate the Sheppard line, but later take on the Scarborough/Malvern and part of Eglinton once the Malvern link was in place.
  • A Finch West carhouse would serve that line and, eventually, part of the Jane line as well.
  • An Eglinton West carhouse would serve the Eglinton line initially, and later the Jane and, possibly, the St. Clair line.
  • A Don Mills carhouse would serve the Don Mills line and possibly part of Sheppard.  By the time we get this far into the plan, there will no doubt be more Transit City proposals on the table and it’s anyone’s guess what the real carhouse needs will be.

The four Transit City carhouses are estimated at about $770-million (reference year not stated), while the new downtown carhouse is estimated at $330-million due to the larger fleet it must house.    It’s clear that the long-term status of the existing Russell and Roncesvalles buildings is dubious both because they are not suited to house and maintain the new cars, and because of building code issues if they were to undergo major changes.  However, these properties provide a few advantages over a consolidated operation in the Portlands.

  • If they are used as yards with basic servicing facilities, the dead-head time for cars entering and leaving service will be shorter than if everything funnels back to a Portlands carhouse.
  • As riding grows on the existing system, the TTC needs somewhere to store more than the initial 204 low flow cars they plan to order this year.  The existing yards will provide an overflow.  Whether both of them are needed once all of the existing CLRVs and ALRVs are retired is another question, but that’s almost a decade away.

Note that the map used in this report is the original Transit City map and does not reflect any of the optional changes that have cropped up in discussions about some routes.  It also doesn’t show the new Waterfront East lines, nor the Kingston Road project.  With luck, one of these days, the TTC will start using a new base map for all of its surface rail project reports.

Updated May 21:

The dates for new carhouse availability are driven both by the expected arrival of the new fleet for the downtown system and for the opening dates of the Transit City lines.

The demonstration prototype cars are to arrive at the end of 2010, and it is likely they will be temporary stored and serviced at Hillcrest.  The first 20 production cars will arrive by the end of 2012, and they will need a carhouse and shops.  This sets the date for the Portlands carhouse to be available.  The complete replacement fleet arrives by the end of 2017.

There are seven Transit City lines (not to mention other plans such as Waterfront East and Kingston Road).  The startup dates and estimated fleets for each of these lines are:

  • Sheppard East:  2012 / 35
  • Finch West:  2013 /37
  • Eglinton:  2015 /129
  • Waterfront West:  2015 / 23
  • Don Mills:  2016 / 46
  • Jane:  2017: /41
  • Scarborough Malvern:  2018 / 53

At least 90% of this fleet, possibly with the addition of cars for the St. Clair line, will be housed in the four new carhouses all of which should have room to accommodate growth in requirements.

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Sheppard East LRT / Scarborough RT EA Meetings in June

The next round of meetings for the Sheppard East LRT and Scarborough RT Extension Environmental Assessments have been announced.

The Sheppard East LRT meetings are on June 3 (Agincourt Collegiate) and June 4 (Malvern Community Centre).  They will include presentation of:

the recommended design for the Sheppard Avenue East LRT, including stop locations, the proposed grade separation of Sheppard Avenue at the Agincourt Go Line and the preferred option for making the LRT/subway connection.

The Scarborough RT Extension meetings are on June 4 (Malvern Community Centre, jointly with the Sheppard EA) and June 5 (Scarborough RT Station).  They will include:

The rationale for selecting the preferred network: an SRT extension to Malvern Town Centre, and SRT alignments to be considered for detailed evaluation.

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Station Redesign for Pape and Islington

The TTC agenda for May 21 includes full PDF versions of the reports on the planned redesign of Pape and Islington stations.

The file for Pape Station is about 5.5MB, while the one for Islington Station is about 2.8MB.  A notable change at Islington is the disappearance of the proposed SNC-Lavalin building on the former bus loop site, although this remains available for development.

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Subway Entrance Identification (Update 2)

In an unusual move, the full version of a report (almost a 70MB PDF) of a design charrette on entrance identification is available on the TTC’s report website.  If you want it, grab it while it’s still there as this situation may not be permanent.

I will add comments here after I have a chance to digest it.

Update 1:  I got all the way down to the last page after the file downloaded, and there was a pair of photos of the existing sign at Osgoode Station and a proposed replacement.  The “new” one looked terribly familiar.

A quick visit to the City Archives confirmed my worst fears:

You can see a sign that looks remarkably similar at the opening of the Yonge Subway in 1954, or at the opening of the University line in 1963.

Here is the original entrance on the south side of Bloor east of Yonge.

The old signs used the shape of the TTC flying keystone (the wings were added for the “Rapid Transit” image to the original 1921 design), and this was simplified to make the signs cheaper to build and maintain by the time the Bloor line opened in 1966. The main differences between the 1954 and the 2008 versions are the use of the “modern” TTC colours in 2008, and the absence of the word “SUBWAY” across the wings of the sign.

Update 2: As a public service, I have put a condensed version (1.3MB) of the TTC’s file on my site.

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Why “Professionals” Didn’t Design Transit City

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. Continue reading →

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Metrolinx White Papers Available for Review

The official version of the Metrolinx White Papers 1 and 2 are now available for review and comment. 

For those who read the draft versions in the agenda of the April 25 Board Meeting, the major change lies in the addition of appendices discussing alternative test cases and the challenges of achieving the Ontario targets for reduced environmental impact of the transportation network.

Appendix E reviews two alternatives to the test cases already discussed.

  • Model B2 starts with the original “radial” network, but adds six major highways highways plus a ten percent increase in regional arterial capacity through road widenings in the 905.  It is also based on the land use scheme from the “linear” network because the population densities of the radial and web schemes would overwhelm the road capacity in the 905.  More about that later.
  • Model C2 starts with the original “web” network , but omits planned provincial and municipal road improvements, the highway 407 east extension, and the proposed 404 and 427 extensions.

The results are not very surprising. Continue reading →

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When Is A Plan Not A Plan? When It’s A Test Case!

Today’s Metrolinx board meeting actually produced some interesting debate about the draft white papers for the Regional Transportation Plan.  There was little discussion of the Goals & Objectives paper, but the Preliminary Directions & Concepts really got people going.

Two items attracted particular interest.

First, how are we going to pay for everything?  The options listed in the White Paper do not include some rather obvious options such as a higher gas tax and or a regional sales tax.  The boldest of the bold plans will cost close to $4-billion annually in capital costs and a comparable amount in operating costs.  At that level, I think we can reasonably assume that naming rights will not raise the money we need.

There is a separate Investment Strategy paper that will be published concurrently with the Draft Regional Transportation Plan in early July, and it will address the financial issues.

Second, David Miller led off a critique of the White Papers noting that the option of not building more roads was completely absent.  Indeed, the authors assume that since all of the road projects for the forseeable future are funded, one way or another, these should be assumed as part of the base plan.  This is a strange state of affairs for an organization that recognizes, quite strongly, that the problems of the GTAH will not be solved by road building. Continue reading →

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Welcome to Walmart Station

It really was silly season at the TTC yesterday.  Commissioner Peter Milczyn asked for a report on naming rights for stations in return for corporate sponsorship.  A short debate ensued during which the Commissioners seemed to forget that barely an hour earlier they had approved a report entitled TTC Corporate Policy Review – Policy 2.8.2 Identification of Routes, Stations and Stops.  This report states quite clearly:

Normally, the station name will incorporate the name of the major cross-street at which it is located, so that the location of the station is clearly identified to customers as they travel through the system. If this is not possible (because, for example, confusion would result with existing station names, or because there is no major nearby cross-street), then the station name may be related to the area in which the station is located, or a major destination nearby.

A good example of the last class of station name is “Museum”.

I have a fundamental objection to corporate sponsorships on the basis of equity.  If you want to build a subway station, it will cost anywhere from $70-100 million, and even more for a large terminal or interchange, not to mention ongoing operating costs.  If Pepsi or Walmart wants to sponsor a station, let them shell out at least 2/3 of the cost so that, on an after tax basis, they’re paying at least half the price of the station. 

Meanwhile, you and I, who actually pay for the station through our taxes should expect that naming rights will stay in the public sector.

No sponsor wants to shell out $35-50 million, and they hope to buy a station for a few million.  For that they get a couple of escalators.   Maybe they could actually pay to maintain the escalators so that their logo isn’t associated with a machine sitting in parts all over the floor more often than it actually carries passengers.