Toronto Eglinton Line 5 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | Arcadis

[jmi22]

Its not a great piece by John Michael.

He completely ignores the question of what people want (speed as example); and how you do or don't get there.

His entire thesis amounts to Finch was never going to be a subway and LRT is better than a bus.

Except, in this case, as operated, it is not.

Facts matter.

He's right to pillory the way in which transit was handled by various pols, both municipal and provincial.

He'd be on solid ground if he said its possible to do LRT better. (it is)

But he just gives the Miller era plan, such as it was (lines on a map) a free pass, ignoring that it didn't set any real technical standards to achieve that align with public expectations.

It reads a bit as though one were saying..... we proposed and 1/2 built this terrible public housing with prison-like architecture, terrible layout and unit sizes and poor neighbourhood plan, because we can't give everyone a Bridle Path address; as if there isn't something between those two points.

Finch wasn't going to be a subway (agreed), equally we can't do subways to everywhere. But we have to ask why are we building this transit? To which the answer ought to be, some variation of to better connect people to the places they need and want to go, faster, more frequently ,with greater comfort and ease.

Any number of choices of rolling stock , power , platform heights etc. may help achieve these goals at various price points. We certainly need to be judicious w/the dollars in question. But in saying as much, that means not spending money on projects that don't serve ALL of the above goals.

In complete agreement, presenting this completely artificial binary between street running, high floor trams and fully tunneled, heavy rail subway, was ridiculous 20 years ago, and frankly disqualifying from serious conversations in 2026.

The fiendish attempt by Toronto's long listened to and respected planning "intelligentsia" or "elite" to justify what has been one of the most comical infrastructure failures on the continent via whining opinion pieces is honestly pathetic.

 

[Voltz]

That is not the issue here. The issue is that it is in the centre of the road rather than the south side. If it were on the south side, the only at-grade crossing between Mount Dennis and Don Mills would be one standalone pedestrian crossing at Leslie, since the main intersection is T to the north. So there would be massively more capacity and zero delay all the way to Don Mills (where there's a big bus terminal and lots of transfers) rather than the current design that kneecaps capacity east of Laird, potentially turning trains back one stop before the major hub at Don Mills.

Yes but that issue of having full capacity to Don Mills would have been solved if it was left underground,

 

[crs1026]

Yes but that issue of having full capacity to Don Mills would have been solved if it was left underground,

I would argue the reverse. With so few level crossings, why increase cost by burying the line, especially under a large watercourse? There need not be a speed penalty if there are no intersections to deal with.

Putting the line in the median is arguably unwise here. Designing the line with an assumption that trains would be short-turned short of Don Mills to mitigate intersection delay, if the data established that Don Mills needed the full service, is an egregious design failure.

Screwing up traffic at one intersection (Leslie) to get the surface line to operate as well as a subway all the way to Don Mills is a pretty obvious solution, and a reasonable tradeoff. I doubt that TSP would actually be that impactful.

But subway just for its own sake is wasting money.

- Paul

 

[jmi22]

You can thank the Leaside Residents Association for it not being underground here.

True, but City Council and Metrolinx being so spineless as to bend to the relatively minor protests of an unelected residents body to the effect that it would permanently hinder the operations of multi-billion dollar project is the real crime here IMO.

 

[Voltz]

I would argue the reverse. With so few level crossings, why increase cost by burying the line, especially under a large watercourse? There need not be a speed penalty if there are no intersections to deal with.

Putting the line in the median is arguably unwise here. Designing the line with an assumption that trains would be short-turned short of Don Mills to mitigate intersection delay, if the data established that Don Mills needed the full service, is an egregious design failure.

Screwing up traffic at one intersection (Leslie) to get the surface line to operate as well as a subway all the way to Don Mills is a pretty obvious solution, and a reasonable tradeoff. I doubt that TSP would actually be that impactful.

But subway just for its own sake is wasting money.

- Paul

It was not going to cost more to extend the tunnel, it was to be easier to built the launch portal in the parking lot of the Science Center, and I guess not require an underground storage track at Laird, it was a wash.

True, but City Council and Metrolinx being so spineless as to bend to the relatively minor protests of an unelected residents body to the effect that it would permanently hinder the operations of multi-billion dollar project is the real crime here IMO.

The same group also later complained about construction disruptions at the portal.

There was also the issue of it looked like the Liberals were going to lose the upcoming election, and if they didn't award the contracts for the east of Yonge tunnels before then, Hudak would have cancelled the line east of Yonge. The extra time it would have taken to redo the EA for an underground or side of road alignment would have pushed it back too far.

 

[robmausser]

Yes but that issue of having full capacity to Don Mills would have been solved if it was left underground,

Sure and a space elevator to the moon would solve the problem of rockets too.

But its unnecessary and a huge expense for no reason.

You don't tunnel underground if there is space at ground level and no grade crossings necessary. Oh wait unless its Toronto. Then you do and waste billions of dollars.

 

[Voltz]

Sure and a space elevator to the moon would solve the problem of rockets too.

But its unnecessary and a huge expense for no reason.

You don't tunnel underground if there is a space at ground level and no grade crossings necessary. Oh wait unless its Toronto. Then you do and waste billions of dollars.

I just explained it was not an expense.

 

[robmausser]

I just explained it was not an expense.

ok but youre wrong. It was an added expense, especially if you kept the Leslie station.

 

[Voltz]

ok but youre wrong. It was an added expense, especially if you kept the Leslie station.

I'm not wrong, they weren't going to keep the Leslie station. The reason why going underground was considered was because it was easier to start the tunnels at Don Mills and did not cost more.

 

[nfitz]

I'm not wrong, they weren't going to keep the Leslie station. The reason why going underground was considered was because it was easier to start the tunnels at Don Mills and did not cost more.

The tunnels were never going to be started at Don Mills. By the time they started that discussion the TBMs were already in the ground, heading east from Keele.

 

[Voltz]

The tunnels were never going to be started at Don Mills. By the time they started that discussion the TBMs were already in the ground, heading east from Keele.

Yes they were, there were separate TBM drives starting from each end, meeting at Yonge. The eastern drives had not yet started.

 

[nfitz]

Yes they were, there were separate TBM drives starting from each end, meeting at Yonge. The eastern drives had not yet started.

Huh ... I must have forgotten that. I'd dig back and look - but I think that tunnelling may predate the Internet.

 

[reaperexpress]

Screwing up traffic at one intersection (Leslie) to get the surface line to operate as well as a subway all the way to Don Mills is a pretty obvious solution, and a reasonable tradeoff. I doubt that TSP would actually be that impactful.

You're right that TSP wouldn't be that impactful, but it also wouldn't come anywhere near guaranteeing a green light for the LRT.

The longest pedestrian crossing (halfway across Eglinton) is 23 metres, so the Flashing Don't Walk needs to be at least 21 seconds.

Once the Walk light starts along Leslie, you are locked in for:
7 s Walk
21 s Flashing Don't Walk
3 s Amber
4 s All-Red.
= 35 seconds

The maximum green extension is only 30 seconds so even if you could perfectly predict when the LRT would wish to enter the intersection (which you definitely can't at the westbound near side stop), and you can skip the left turn phase, and go directly back to green for Eglinton after it turns yellow, and shorten the side street to the minimum duration (stranding pedestrians in the median), it would still be impossible to guarantee a green unless you allow green extensions well over 40 seconds. In that case we are in fact talking about very major impacts on delay for everyone else at the intersection, especially with trains arriving every 105 seconds on average (every 3.5 min in each direction) - and not evenly spaced between the two directions.

It takes 30+ s for a green along Eglinton, you'd need 20+ seconds of green for the left turn onto Leslie and you need 35+s for pedestrians to get halfway across Eglinton. If you want a green light for those LRVs arriving on average every 105 seconds you need to take drastic actions.

If you want it to operate as well as a subway you need to use rail pre-emption (the same system they use for GO Trains like at Danforth & Midland). In that case you need to detect the LRT at least 40 seconds in advance and hold the light green indefinitely while the train loads at the near side stop. Which might be manageable for a train that runs every 30 minutes in each direction, but not so much for a train that runs every 3.


In contrast, if they had moved the ROW to the south side of the street, the only thing crossing the tracks would be a 7-metre long pedestrian crossing, independent from the main intersection. In that case you can just leave the ped crossing in Walk all the time, and detect trains 14 seconds in advance so they have time to end the pedestrian crossing before they arrive. In that case it's totally practical to guarantee a green, since the only other thing the crossing needs to do is accommodate one pedestrian phase across two tracks, which it could do for literally all of the time there isn't a train approaching. Which is plenty of time for a ped phase with a 6-second Flashing Don't Walk.

 

[NodeGreen11]

You're right that TSP wouldn't be that impactful, but it also wouldn't come anywhere near guaranteeing a green light for the LRT.

The longest pedestrian crossing is 23 metres, so the Flashing Don't Walk needs to be at least 21 seconds.
View attachment 707506

Once the Walk light starts along Leslie, you are locked in for:
7 s Walk
21 s Flashing Don't Walk
3 s Amber
4 s All-Red.
= 35 seconds

The maximum green extension is only 30 seconds so even if you could perfectly predict when the LRT would wish to enter the intersection (which you definitely can't at the westbound near side stop), and you can skip the left turn phase, and go directly back to green for Eglinton after it turns yellow, and shorten the side street to the minimum duration (stranding pedestrians in the median), it would still be impossible to guarantee a green unless you allow green extensions well over 40 seconds. In that case we are in fact talking about very major impacts on delay for everyone else at the intersection, especially with trains arriving every 105 seconds on average (every 3.5 min in each direction) - and not evenly spaced between the two directions.

It takes 30+ s for a green along Eglinton, you'd need 20+ seconds of green for the left turn onto Leslie and you need 35+s for pedestrians to get halfway across Eglinton. If you want a green light for those LRVs arriving on average every 105 seconds you need to take drastic actions.

If you want it to operate as well as a subway you need to use rail pre-emption (the same system they use for GO Trains like at Danforth & Midland). In that case you need to detect the LRT at least 40 seconds in advance and hold the light green indefinitely while the train loads at the near side stop. Which might be manageable for a train that runs every 30 minutes in each direction, but not so much for a train that runs every 3.


In contrast, if they had moved the ROW to the south side of the street, the only thing crossing the tracks would be a 7-metre long pedestrian crossing, independent from the main intersection. In that case you can just leave the ped crossing in Walk all the time, and detect trains 14 seconds in advance so they have time to end the pedestrian crossing before they arrive. In that case it's totally practical to guarantee a green, since the only other thing the crossing needs to do is accommodate one pedestrian phase across two tracks, which it could do for literally all of the time there isn't a train approaching. Which is plenty of time for a ped phase with a 6-second Flashing Don't Walk.

With a near-side stop for WB LRT, is the system capable of predicting the WB LRT arrival to the stop in advance, so that the traffic signal optimizes for left-turn movements during the WB LRT dwell time? (≈35s for either SBL or EBL).

In the worst-case scenario, maybe it's better to force cars to do U-turns at the intersection just after the portal (except buses and trucks longer than 10m).

 

[reaperexpress]

With a near-side stop for WB LRT, is the system capable of predicting the WB LRT arrival to the stop in advance, so that the traffic signal optimizes for left-turn movements during the WB LRT dwell time? (≈35s for either SBL or EBL).

Toronto's TSP system? Not really, it can't think that far ahead. It doesn't have complex decision making, it basically just tries to get a green ASAP for the direction requesting priority within the constraints that are programmed (e.g. maximum green extension, maximum truncation, whether phases can be inserted/rotated, etc).

If you detect the LRV extremely far in advance you could kind of manually program an operation that tries to shorten the Eglinton phase in situations where there'd probably be enough time to fit another phase between the current green and the LRV's ETA, but that would require a crazy amount of manual non-standard programming that would be a nightmare to maintain due to the complexity. Someone showing up at the intersection to diagnose a malfunction would need to spend all day figuring out all the unusual programming.

Waterloo's TSP system could probably do it, because it natively predicts LRV arrivals much further in advance and gradually adjusts signal timings to align with the estimated vehicle arrival, without the need for tons of custom programming.

It's also worth noting that "Can it serve X phase while it's loading" is not really the right question. It really depends on when in the cycle the LRV arrives. In my answer above I took a generous interpretation of the question: "Can it serve some other phase (TBD which one) while the LRV is loading".

In the worst-case scenario, maybe it's better to force cars to do U-turns at the intersection just after the portal.

The most effective improvement to TSP would actually be to delete the west side crosswalk, since it's the longest crosswalk and it conflicts with the busy eastbound left turn. The east side crossing can get a Walk light at the same time as the eastbound left turn phase. On the east side, the longest individual crossing is only 15 metres, and the crossing across the tracks is only 7. It's actually a very similar setup to the crosswalks across tram lines in the Netherlands (for which I've also programmed TSP systems). In that case, you actually don't need to hold the green anywhere near as long, since it only takes 10 seconds to clear pedestrians off the tracks. Unless you think the LRV is going to depart in the next ~17 seconds, you can just let the light change to red and turn it back to green later when the LRT is about to depart.