Recent content by EnviroTO

I really don't understand why they are future proofing the stations for a 610mm ATR track height. Why not 550mm or 760mm? I don't see that 610mm is any standard other than that happened to be the GO train's floor height when they built the first bi-level in 1976. It will be hard to ever...

The costs are high because we have lost the ability to do things in house in North America. There is a continual push to outsource risk and expertise. If the TTC or Metrolinx don't know how much it would cost to have their own people do it then all estimates seem "reasonable". In addition...

The route that goes diagonal rather than trying to use the auto plant rail bridge alignment was the original alignment. In that design the stop at Oshawa "WTF Durham College" station would not have been part of the GO route instead using a Thickson Corners station. It made sense because it...

If a car goes through a red and gets hit by a transport truck going 50km/h what happens? If we want to put crossing arms, flashing lights, etc in place to reduce the chance of mistakes leading to collisions with the LRT (protections that don't exist for heavy trucks that aren't confined to...

I find the recent article which basically is saying that LRTs are somehow by design meant to underperform and let's blame everything on David Miller and transit city to be complete nonsense. There is no law of physics (Miller's law) that says objects labelled as LRT must travel at 0.5 times...

Why does it need to take 4 months. Step 1: Plan to remove all speed restrictions below 40 km/h except for the Highway 27 and Finch curve. Step 2: Test the line with all Alstom execs on board.

Earlier in the week when I heard the comment about needing to get agreement from the consortium maintaining the vehicles to agree to speed changes I thought to myself "the cat is out of the bag now". I kept thinking to myself "why are they talking about stop light priority when the bus was...

Yes, I would imagine they didn't put all the possible LEDs on the board such that there would be LEDs that are never utilized. However I would expect this is built with a breadboard or something flexible for the placement of LEDs, maybe jumper wires if the controller didn't have access to all...

Yes, it is 5% lighter at the start of the acceleration curve where the traction is a more limiting factor, but as the train accelerates the ability of the EMU's electric propulsion to continually maximize the torque applied means that as the train accelerates it gains greater efficiency over the...

I hope you aren't serious. Just by looking at the spacing on the Finch West stops and the vertical distance between the Union and King station it is pretty clear they have a lot of flexibility on placement. To suggest there wasn't alternatives that would allow Eglinton to be at the same height...

For wayfinding to be as universal as possible it should use symbols that people can guess (globally) to mean something. New York MTA is great in some respects (like their system map) and is great for English speakers, but I wouldn't say it is very helpful to non-English folks. MTA tries to...

I don't actually have anything against at grade LRT. I think that some of the stops were needlessly close together (like why can people walk to an underground station and go down 4 storeys, but walking to an at grade stop is hard?? But I think with the proper implementation (i.e. signal...

So on November 25th they switched closer to MX wayfinding standard (except for their using the LRV space invader icon) by moving away from the round wheelchair icon unique to this line to explaining that an elevator exists here. Then they moved further away from that with some strange border...

For this to be practice they would need to have some checklist they are following to put the train in motion, which means we have gotten to a point where the only way to efficiently perform the checklist is to replace the driver with AI.

Yes, Lakeshore and 30th Street to Queen and Spadina (not putting in Parliament since that is beyond the Line 3 construction diversion) it is 1h 14min on the streetcar now. The fastest transit time is Lakeshore Line and Yonge line then walking from University back to Spadina in 56min with 25min...