Subways

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Richmond Hill or Bust? The Yonge Subway Extension (Part 3)

Posts in this thread have examined the general design proposed for the Richmond Hill subway and the many demand estimates for this line.  Now I will turn to the impact of this line on the larger network.

As many have pointed out in comments to the previous items, the Spadina/VCC extension was supposed to offload the Yonge subway.  We now know, according to the TTC’s estimates, that the effect will be a reduction of less than 10% of the existing demand southbound at the peak point, Wellesley Station.  Meanwhile, the availability of a competing subway line in the established Yonge Street corridor will attract many more riders.

The TTC manages a rabbit-in-the-hat trick by claiming that demand relative to capacity on the subway in 2017 will be the same as it is today thanks to Spadina diversion and more commodious trains.  That’s a very big, very fat rabbit, and I suspect it’s more of a canard.

Development will continue in York Region, and if anything the availability of frequent transit service, both on GO and on the TTC, will offset any effect that long-term increases in energy costs and commuting might have on travel demand and the decision to live far out of the core area.  Demand will grow on the subway both from the 905 and from within the 416. Continue reading →

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Richmond Hill or Bust? The Yonge Subway Extension (Part 2)

In the first part of this series, I reviewed the general layout of the Richmond Hill subway extension.  Now I will turn to the question of demand on the new and existing portions of the Yonge line.

Information on current and projected demands is very hard to nail down.  Transit agencies have a bad habit of fiddling the demand models to produce the results they want depending on available funding, political imperatives and the phases of the moon.  Small changes in the assumptions in any model can produce huge swings in the outcome.

Probably the single most flagrant problem with Metrolinx is that the demand model is proprietary to a consultant, IBI, and is not available for general “what if” use.  At the very time we are making decisions about network structures and spending priorities, we are told (by Metrolinx) that budget constraints limit the number of model runs.  Detailed parameters such as the capacity and speed of modelled lines are hard to come by.

In this vacuum, any plausible scheme for transit gains political traction even though it may rest on dubious planning foundations.  I say this not to knock the Richmond Hill proposal itself, but to urge caution in looking at the numbers particularly where the interaction between several alternative lines is concerned.

Projections for riding on both the Richmond Hill extension and the rest of the rapid transit network appear in various documents.  One of them even changed between the point where it was presented at a public TTC meeting and its publication on the TTC’s website. Continue reading →

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Richmond Hill or Bust? The Yonge Subway Extension (Part 1)

The proposed subway to Richmond Hill has an odd history as transit projects in the GTA go.  Normally, we are lucky to see anyone pay attention to any scheme for a decade or more, but this subway has gone from a gleam in local organizers’ eyes (and a website) to a top priority transit project with amazing speed.

Along the way, the whole idea of “alternatives analysis”, that pesky part of an “Environment Assessment” that is only a memory, is completely absent.  It’s a subway or nothing.  That’s unfortunate, to say the least, because the whole idea of Metrolinx was to plan on a regional basis, to see how everything fits together and where money would be best spent to improve a transportation network.

The Richmond Hill subway snuck through into the new, fast-track transit project assessment process before Metrolinx had even approved the final version of the Regional Plan.  Somebody wants a subway really, really badly.

As I have said in a comment thread elsewhere, I am not convinced that this line is a good idea especially when there are alternative ways to get people into central Toronto from the same catchment area as the subway extension.  York Region itself has (had?) plans for an LRT network as an end state for VIVA, although I have never taken them particularly seriously.  This may change once there is some real LRT running within Toronto, but as long as it’s an unknown quantity (or worse, something whose “best” example is on St. Clair West), nobody is going to take the mode seriously.

An argument can be made for an extension to Steeles as a way to relieve the bus congestion feeding into Finch Station, but there is some point where a subway has to end.  We cannot keep building a subway north on Yonge Street until we find ourselves in Lake Simcoe.  The demand simply isn’t there, and at some point the idea of a one-seat ride becomes laughable.  Indeed, even going to Richmond Hill, many travellers will depend on bus feeders or commuter parking to access the subway, and the quality of their trip will depend a lot on the amount of local transit or the scarcity of parking.  This problem is already familiar to GO Transit riders.

GO Transit, for their part, plans to upgrade service on their Richmond Hill line to 15 minutes peak, 30 minutes off peak.  This is not the same as frequent subway service, and it will only take people to Union Station, but this is an important part of the mix of services in the corridor.

All the same, any review of the proposal needs to assume that it will be built and that whatever impact this has on the network will have to be addressed.  If we are going down this path, we need to understand the consequences.

In the sections to follow, I will review the TTC report and presentation from December 17.  Parts of York Region’s original EA for this area make interesting reading, especially the ridership forecasts. Continue reading →

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Yonge Subway to Richmond Hill (Update 2)

Update 2:  The presentation from the Commission meeting is now online.  (4MB PDF)

I will write up comments on this project on the weekend.

Update 1:  Here is the text of the motion made by the Commission including the various caveats and requests for additional information.

Original Post:

The TTC staff report on the Richmond Hill subway is available online.  (Warning 15M PDF)

Today, the Commission voted to endorse this report in principle with futher discussion and deputations to follow at the January meeting.  The Commission also reaffirmed that Transit City was its first priority for system expansion, and sought a number of additional reports to clarify the impact of the subway extension on the existing network.

I do not have time now (Wednesday evening) to write this up in full, but will do so over the next few days.  Some material was presented at the meeting which is not in the linked file.

Of particular concern to the Commission is the haste with which this project is rolling forward based on an assessment launched by York Region that had very little consideration for how the line would fit in the overall scheme of the network.  I might be forgiven for thinking, only a month ago, that we had turned away from “my line first” planning to a network view thanks to the Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan.

An argument can be made for extending the subway, but the true cost and impact are lowballed.  Yes, the staff report raises many caveats about service and capacity impacts, but there is no real alternatives analysis, no sense that anyone has looked seriously at larger issues.  I will turn to this when I discuss the report in detail.

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Trams vs Skytrain: A view from Vancouver

Today’s Globe & Mail includes an op ed article Rethinking the Need for Speed reporting on a recent study comparing the cost of transportation modes.  The study and the article conclude that trams (streetcars) are the best choice, and that Skytrain (also known as the “RT” in Toronto) is a distant choice.

Those who know me well know that any chance to give the RT/ICTS/Skytrain advocates a black eye is more than welcome, but in this case I have to put a bit of context on the discussion.

The Skytrain vs LRT debate has consumed Vancouver transit advocates, planners and policitians for decades.  The original Skytrain was a combined product of a premier who didn’t like streetcars and of lobbying by the Ontario government to get its then-new ICTS showcased for Expo in Vancouver.  Certain characteristics of the original Skytrain route including the availability of a tunnel under downtown that could handle stacked Skytrains, but not LRT, an available right-of-way that kept down elevated construction costs, and the operational advantage of close headways of short trains tipped the balance in Skytrain’s favour.

Having said that, I must also observe that the technology was used to its maximum during Expo with a far more sophisticated operating model than anything the TTC has ever implemented on any line.  This was automated transit really shining, but only for a brief moment.  Probably the most important thing about the Vancouver system is that the people running it really wanted to make it work.  From the day it opened, they analysed operations (including automatically produced charts such as those you see in my TTC route studies) looking for ways to handle demands and unusual events better.  The idea of throwing up your hands in resignation, the TTC’s approach to line management, was totally foreign.

Skytrain works not just because of the technology, but because the people running the system care to make it run well.

All the same, the love affair with Skytrain wedded Vancouver to high-cost system expansion, and a route design skewed to handling commuters more than local trips.  Indeed, most of the original Skytrain line does not follow city streets, and it depends on local redevelopment, walk-in trade and bus feeders for passengers.

The LRT vs Skytrain debate heated up recently with a proposed east-west line along Broadway, a major bus and trolleybus corridor.  This is a street with much local development and Skytrain foes look to LRT as a way of achieving better local access and support for the community throiugh which the line will pass.  Elevated construction is out of the question, and a Broadway Skytrain will almost certainly be underground adding considerably to its cost.

This is the political background to the Skytrain vs Trams study, and it’s important to read the study in context.  The study itself does not address specific corridors, but simply looks at the operating and capital costs of each mode, as well as the environmental effects.  When the numbers are combined, trams come out on top (or more accurately on the bottom with the lowest cost and carbon impact).  Skytrain is much higher, primarily due to capital cost.

The basic debate in all of this is one of philosophy:  should new transit lines be built to serve long trips where speed between stations is paramount, or should lines serve shorter trips and local demands with easily accessible stations?  In the ongoing debate here, Transit City comes under fire because the lines won’t be fast enough for long trips.  Should that be their purpose?  What role does GO have as a regional carrier within the 416? 

Some Transit City proposals call out for redesign, especially regarding the Sheppard/Finch transfer and the dubious nature of surface proposals for the south ends of the Don Mills and Jane routes.  Work on new proposals is already underway as a spinoff of the Metrolinx studies, but the old plans still get lots of play including the TTC’s own Transit City campaign all over the system.  The TTC needs to update the proposals to remove the less credible options and to indicate that they are not just drawing lines on maps.

Finally, I hope to see the Metrolinx study of options for the Scarborough RT published soon.  This is an ideal chance to convert the line to LRT, and even the TTC’s own recommendation to upgrade with Mark II cars only, barely, made sense if the line would never be extended.

We now know that the “SRT” will run north into Malvern and possibly north of Steeles Avenue.  The cost comparison between LRT and Skytrain should spell the end of the RT as we know it.

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Subway Fleet Planning(?)

The TTC’s ongoing inability to correctly provide for its fleet requirements gets embarrassing at times.  A big one comes during consideration of capital budgets when there always seem to be brand new projects that appear out of thin air even though they should have been foreseen.

The questions of subway capacity and fleet size are not small change, something to be fixed up with the underspending in a few minor accounts.  If you get it wrong in one direction, nobody can fit on the trains, and the lead time to fix this condemns riders to horrendous service.  If you get it wrong in the other direction, you have a bloated fleet, an investment in trains and yard space that might have gone to more deserving projects, and a padding factor that works against efficiency in maintenance because there’s always another spare train in the yard. 

The TTC’s surrent subway fleet plans do not include cars for the subway extensions beyond Steeles Avenue, nor for the allegedly closer headways we require to accommodate all of the riding growth the Richmond Hill line will bring.  Cynics might be tempted to say that the whole question of subway capacity has been manipulated to the TTC’s budgetary advantage, but I have always taken the view that much that appears to be Machiavellian can be explained by bad planning.

This post and the much longer paper attached to it will examine TTC fleet planning and the degree to which we are not seeing the full story of options for future subway services. Continue reading →

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Where Will Fido Sleep?

Those who ride the Danforth subway might be forgiven for thinking that we did not fit into the “One Stop” universe as so few of “our” stations had video screens.  Not enough eyeballs, obviously, to make it worth their while.

Just last week, however, things started to change with the disappearance of the electronics from the old “Metron” displays and the installation of new “One Stops”.

Gone is the full working set of Metrons at Donlands Station which faithfully displayed ads for a travellers’ kennel near Pearson Airport for all those years.  Now dogs on the Danforth will have to put up with what passes for news and the occasional, if erratic, notice about service blockages.

At least the time will be correct.

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Yonge Subway Headway Study 1988 (Part 7)

This section includes the remainder of Chapter 4 covering three alternatives to the centre platform option at Bloor Yonge.

  • A double station with new platforms north of the existing Bloor Station
  • A bi-level station
  • Two versions of a diversionary route with a new southbound or northbound track and station

I commend these to the readers who have been proposing various alternative tunnel and platform arrangements here for a clear view of just where the structures actually lie.  Bear in mind that much has been built since these plans were drawn, and assumptions about available rights-of-way or the acquisition and demolition of buildings are probably no longer valid.

Continue reading →

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Yonge Subway Headway Study 1988 (Part 6)

I am inserting a little sidebar into the discussion because my archives yielded up an exhibit not included in the TTC’s report.

This is the demand analysis shown in Chapter 2 which establishes the need for additional capacity on the Yonge line, specfically at Bloor-Yonge Station.

This is the companion chart from the Network 2011 study showing the projected demand on the rapid transit network with the addition of lines on Eglinton West, Sheppard, the DRL and the Spadina/Harbourfront line.

 

 

These two charts appear side by side in the Network 2011 study, but only the first one was included in the Improved Headway Study.

The DRL diverts a good chunk of traffic off of the Yonge line below Bloor, although this is partly backfilled by new riding pouring in at the top of the line. (Other studies had different versions of this line including routes that went further north.)

The projected demand on the Spadina line, 7,500 per hour, was rather high considering it was to be a surface operation crossing many streets. Oddly enough, only the Harbourfront portion was built initially, and we waited until 1997 for the Spadina streetcar.

I don’t intend this to be a definitive example of a demand model (I don’t think “definitive” is a word one can use in that context anyhow), but it points out how the importance of the DRL was recognized over 20 years ago. Indeed, in the Network 2011 plan, it was the second priority for construction with 1st place going to a Sheppard line only as far east as Victoria Park.