Subways

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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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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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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.

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Arithmetic Lessons for Fleet Planners

Today’s Commission meeting included one of the more embarrassing presentations I have seen at the TTC in some time.  It wasn’t meant that way, but that’s how it came off.  The topic was the Subway Service Improvement Plan.

The first problem was that this is really two reports in one.  The first major topic is delays, their causes and what the TTC is doing or can do to reduce them.  This material was presented in a less than thrilling manner, and most Commissioners were visibly not paying attention.

The second topic was the subway car fleet plan.  This has always been something of a black art influenced as much by whatever size order Bombardier needs to have for Thunder Bay this week rather than solid planning.  However, when the TTC’s own numbers don’t add up and there are blatant mistakes in the analysis, that’s when it gets embarrassing.

The report is not available online, and you will have to take my word for the material as I don’t feel like scanning the whole thing in.  A warning for the faint of heart.  This post contains a lot of numbers and a discussion of service levels and fleet requirements.  If this isn’t your cup of tea, skip the rest of this item. Continue reading →

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Scarborough RT Extension Study

The Scarborough RT extension study co-hosted the meetings with the Sheppard East LRT which I discussed in the previous post.  The presentation materials for the SRT study are available online.

A major piece of work for this study will be to update previous schemes based on changes in land use, travel patterns and availability of rights-of-way since the Malvern extension of the Scarborough LRT was proposed decades ago.  (Yes, it was going to be an LRT line originally although the history in the current presentation doesn’t go back that far.)

The presentation claims that ICTS/RT technology was recommended in the Scarborough RT Strategic Plan as being the most effective and lowest cost option.  This is not true.  That plan dealt only with replacement of the existing line between Kennedy and McCowan stations and did not examine the cost or operational tradeoffs involved in extending the RT north to Sheppard or beyond.  Given the high premium for grade-separated operation, the RT quickly become uncompetitive with LRT the further the line goes.

The TTC holds that LRT is unable to handle the demands to be placed on the SRT corridor.  However, the projected demand shown in the presentation is about 2,500/hour north of Sheppard, about 4,000 west of McCowan (ie inbound to STC), and 10,000 at Kennedy Station.  With the completely separate right-of-way on the existing RT, a 10,000/hour operation with LRT is quite feasible.  Two-car LRT trains would provide this on a headway of just under two minutes. Continue reading →

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Sheppard LRT Environmental Assessment Meetings (Updated)

The City and TTC will be holding two EA meetings for the Sheppard LRT line on Tuesday and Thursday, April 15 and 17, 2008.

These will also include discussions of the proposed extension of the Scarborough RT.

The FAQ linked from the EA notice page includes a variety of intriguing items giving an idea of how the project team views what they will implement.  Apropos of discussions in other threads here about stop spacing and vehicle speed, we learn that

there is normally a much greater distance between stops, relative to a typical bus route.

It should be interesting to see how the TTC and City reconcile this statement with the actual layout of streets and stops on the existing bus route, not to mention the Official Plan goals for Avenues with medium density development along transit lines rather than concentrated at major intersections.

Update: The presentation materials from the meeting are now available online.

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The Downtown Relief Line Gets On The Map

In what has to be record time for a transit proposal to get from a blog discussion to publicly debated policy, the Downtown Relief Line (DRL) is now barely a decade away.

Yesterday, Sean Marshall’s post at spacing generated a blizzard of comments, and today, the National Post reports comments by Adam Giambrone and Rob MacIsaac.  Giambrone will start looking at the line in 2018.  That is far too late, and the TTC needs to start looking at it today if it’s going to be open, as he suggests, by 2020.

A few comments raised my eyebrows, however:

As the city core becomes more dense, passengers are choking the Bloor-Yonge and St. George transfer points, as well as the King and Queen streetcars. The Bloor-Danforth line will soon be congested, too, Mr. Giambrone said.

Rob MacIsaac said:

“There’s so much demand that you’re exceeding what a streetcar line can carry. I had a discussion with [former TTC general manager] David Gunn once and he said, ‘Don’t build a subway until you can jump from the top of one streetcar to the next,’ which is probably a circumstance that you’re getting close to on Queen Street.”

I don’t know who has the idea that streetcar service on King and Queen are anywhere near capacity, and the only streetcars someone can jump roofs on are in Russell and Roncesvalles Carhouses.  Service on both streets has operated at twice the current capacity, and there’s lots of room for more streetcars if only the TTC had a large enough fleet.

What’s fascinating to me is that, finally, it is acceptable to talk about adding transit capacity into the core of the city.  For years the focus has been on the suburbs going  back to the deal-with-the-devil struck by then Councillor Jack Layton and Mayor Lastman.  Layton supported suburban subway expansion as a means of diverting intensification from downtown.  The DRL fell off the map because it did not fit with the goal of strangling core area development to benefit the suburbs. 

We all know how successful this was.  A good chunk of the office and commercial space in North York Centre is empty, while downtown fills up with condos and resurgent office development.

As for the DRL, the original proposal was simply for a line from Flemingdon/Thorncliffe to downtown.  Subway fitted with existing technology in the area, and nobody was taking LRT seriously as a “light subway”.  We have more options today including a through connection to a line in the Weston Subdivision (as described in the Post article) up to at least Dundas West Station.  It doesn’t take a genius to see how this fits into Transit City and a service to the airport.

Very frequent service can operate on the southerly parts of the Don Mills and Weston lines where they are completely on their own right-of-way, with less frequent trains continuing up Don Mills in the street median, up Jane and out Eglinton West.

When we look at the possibilities of both an Eglinton and a “DRL” built with LRT, but spanning almost the complete range of LRT implementations from street median up to near-subway, we see the real possibilities of this mode for our growing transit network.

(And yes, Hamish, the Waterfront West service can hop onto the same corridor at Queen and Dufferin.)

While we’re at it, as I mentioned in a previous comment, we must keep sight of the role for regional services on existing and future GO lines.  One source of subway overloading is long-haul riders for whom GO service (if any) is too infrequent.  Better GO service with a fare structure integrated with the TTC will give riders a fast, alternative way into downtown, at a much lower cost than expanding subways everywhere.

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What We Got For Five Million

One of my jobs here seems to be the curmudgeon whose view of the latest great thing isn’t quite as gentle and forgiving as other commentators.  This brings me to Museum Station.  You can see lots of photos over at The Torontoist where many (including me) have commented on various aspects of the station.

For me, one big issue is not just that it’s unfinished, but that in doing so, something is lost of the original design.  Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here is what we were supposed to get.

MuseumOriginalDesign

Note the curving ceiling that hides the plumbing and pulls the rows of columns together in a long gallery.  You won’t see that at Museum Station.  I suspect that the TTC didn’t want yet another specialized ceiling finish that would spend half its time disassembled while work went on above, but we’ve lost something important there.

Another issue is the large patches of painted concrete wall at intervals along the station.  Nothing is shown in the image of what might be there, and one wonders whether this was intended for advertising.

Speaking of advertising, there were ads present at the station until last weekend when their negative impact on the overall design was raised by some of us at Transit Camp to people who are in a position to get things changed.  They were.

The other change is that the old Metron, carefully preserved even though it didn’t work, was in the station right up to the weekend.  Odd how we’ve been told the problem is always with getting electrical work done for Onestop installations.  Funny how in a $5-million project they didn’t put in the conduits and wires for the new video screens.  They’re even shown in the drawing above, but that’s something else you won’t find at Museum.

I was kind of hoping the Metrons would stay as the beginning of a TTC museum of horology.  They could have relocated a few of the old analog clocks from Lower Bay to round out things.

Finally, there is an odd, unintended historic reference in the plaque describing each of the columns.  We learn that the red columns modelled on the Forbidden City would have held up yellow ceilings, a colour only the Emperor was allowed to use.  Yellow, of course, was the old colour of Museum Station, and it’s absent now at platform level.  No Emperors here I guess.

For me, Museum has too much the feel of a half-baked project.  Nice columns, but lots left to be done and nobody stepping up to pay for it.  If all this decor cost us five million, we were ripped off.