All aboard for more subways

[gweed123]

Yes because Miller and Giambrone (God and Demi-God as you imply) invented Light Rail Transit to punish all commuting citizens.

Closed minded ftw gweed?

Hey, I didn't start that, Justin was the one who brought up the whole "latching on" thing, I just rebutted it in an attempt to show him how hypocritical is arguments are.

And they may not have invented it, but they're the ones who have been trying to sell 'LRT everywhere in Toronto' to the City for the past 5 years. And based on the number of people that have called in to McGuinty to "Save Transit City", their sell hasn't really worked. The vast majority of the people that I have talked to do not like Transit City, they want subways. Even those who do want Transit City, want it because "it's better than nothing". Call them uneducated or unenlightened as to the wonders of LRT, but people want subways. I am educated, I know the benefits of LRT, yet I still want subways. Why? Because it's a better long-term investment.

 

[nfitz]

The low-end cutoff may be 10,000 pph, but what's the upper cut-off for LRT? 25,000 pph-is (depending on various factors, in-median is around 20,000 pph)? Hence, unless the projected capacity is above 25,000 pph, the argument would be made today that LRT is the more efficient solution. And that's my point, a lot of these TC lines COULD work as subways, and they COULD work as LRTs. However, history has taught us that 40yrs down the road, we're glad we built that extra capacity, or the potential for that extra capacity.

What do you mean ... any subway we constructed 40 years ago was forecast to require more than 20,000 - well, except perhaps University without the interlining ...

 

[kettal]

Subways last 60 years, whereas streetcars last 25 years before a major overhaul is due.

sounds like an expert; I wonder where these numbers came from?

 

[nfitz]

sounds like an expert; I wonder where these numbers came from?

... wish he was around when the Yonge subway was designed from Eglinton to Finch. It started it's major overhaul of the tunnel after only 35 years.

 

[GraphicMatt]

All of this ridiculous "Let's build more expensive transit with money we don't have!" crap seems at least partially motivated by a widespread belief that the TTC is incapable of running effective surface transit.

Giambrone and Miller's biggest failure was not taking any steps to improve reliability on our existing surface rail routes before going full bore with the Transit City proposal. Making both Spadina and St Clair Proof of Payment and leaning hard on the Transportation department to give signal priority would have made a world of difference.

But whatever. I still believe we'd be better off if we improved existing surface rail, built LRT in the suburbs and focused new subway construction downtown where it is needed (The DRL). But you sure do get more votes (Which Sellors needs) if you promise people subways everywhere.

 

[The Mad Navigator]

Again, why is that a bad thing? You've got a subway line running under the roadway, how is that anti-transit? Why is anything that would benefit drivers AS WELL as transit users anti-transit? Heck, if you wanted to you could put in bike lanes, seeing as how the road would likely need to be resurfaced anyway. In fact, I'd be 100% in support of that.

Ahhhh I get it. So you're pro car and pro subway. So it's ok to leave as many lanes of automobile traffic as possible as long as it's not impeded by transit, but the second we take 2 lanes away in either direction, OH NO! Stop everything! There's a crisis on our hands! Forgive me if I'm trying to suggest that we make more livable communities! Let me guess, you want to keep the suburban dream alive too? Alright!

Good god man, I'm glad you're not a Transit planner.

 

[Justin10000]

Again, I fail to see why having the transit for that corridor someplace OTHER than directly on the road is anti-transit. How in the world can putting a higher capacity line UNDERNEATH a roadway be anti-transit? And what's so wrong about making a roadway more efficient for vehicle flow? Is increasing a roadway's theoretical capacity by taking buses (or streetcars) off of it, moving those passengers underground, AND adding passenger capacity to that transit corridor anti-transit? Again, your arguments are completely fallacious.

Obviously you are ignoring his "I do not want to give any road space to transit comments". How is restricting a road to single occupant vehciles "more efficient?" It's a waste of road space, especially when you can better utilize the space by giving 2 lanes to transit. Isn't that increasing a roadway's theoretical capacity too? At a much cheaper cost, and quicker to implement? That is efficient use of road space, and costs much less than building a subway whose capacity would most likely not be fully utlized. So please, before calling someone's argument fallacious, you should check yours. Who cares if you are maximizing passenger capacity, if that capacity will never be fully utlized. increase the theoretical capacity on the surface first by building ROWs, and eventually build a subway if needed. Sound pretty logical to me(and nearly every respected transit planner).
One more thing, you see the state the Yonge Line, and Bloor-Danforth subways are in. Tell me why building a subway "for the future" makes sense, especially when it will be lightly used? Hell, the Sheppard Line has been closed to make repairs a few times!

PS: My points are not only for subways. Heck, you can build the line in a trench a few metres away from the road, elevate it above the road, what-have-you. I just refuse to accept your point that the only way to not be seen as anti-transit and pro-car is to put the transit down the middle of the street to create a nice European avenue.

Quote Chris Sellors: "Subways do not rob us of road capacity" He is PRO-CAR. If he even had some knowledge of transit, he would not be re-hashing the same "Let's build a km every year until we get the network we need" sound bites again. Worked well for Jane Pitfield, eh? And this guy is supposed to be Michael Walker's protege. If he remotely cared about the reast of the city, he would look at Transit City, and think "hmmm", those lines are serving neighbourhood with poor transit. It's not subways, but it a good stop-gap until subways are needed. No. He is just copying Sarah Thomson, who copied Jane Pitfield. And for the record, I am not going to lose sleep over the fact you cannot accept my opinion. I do not have a problem with anyone advocating subways over LRT. Your choice, but when the reason for building subways is to "save road space for cars", that in my book is anti-transit. Get transit out of the way of cars. Sorry cannot accept that thinking.

 

[Justin10000]

All of this ridiculous "Let's build more expensive transit with money we don't have!" crap seems at least partially motivated by a widespread belief that the TTC is incapable of running effective surface transit.

Giambrone and Miller's biggest failure was not taking any steps to improve reliability on our existing surface rail routes before going full bore with the Transit City proposal. Making both Spadina and St Clair Proof of Payment and leaning hard on the Transportation department to give signal priority would have made a world of difference.

But whatever. I still believe we'd be better off if we improved existing surface rail, built LRT in the suburbs and focused new subway construction downtown where it is needed (The DRL). But you sure do get more votes (Which Sellors needs) if you promise people subways everywhere.

+1

 

[gweed123]

What do you mean ... any subway we constructed 40 years ago was forecast to require more than 20,000 - well, except perhaps University without the interlining ...

I can't speak to the specific projections, but I believe that both the Yonge and B-D subways were operating below 20,000 on launch. Forecasting is a very in-exact science as well. Reroute a few routes here, change a few things around, and you can drastically alter the results, either for or against a subway.

All I'm saying is that, what if the planners in the 60s had gone with LRT instead of HRT on B-D, given that the ridership projections were still within the range of LRT? I don't think you'd find a single person here who would say "I really don't like all the excess capacity on B-D, it's not needed, they should have done LRT instead". Eglinton will need the extra capacity, as will the SRT revamp. Maybe it won't be needed tomorrow, but 25 years from now, our children will thank us for not sticking them with another SRT-esque transit fiasco.

 

[The Mad Navigator]

All I'm saying is that, what if the planners in the 60s had gone with LRT instead of HRT on B-D, given that the ridership projections were still within the range of LRT? I don't think you'd find a single person here who would say "I really don't like all the excess capacity on B-D, it's not needed, they should have done LRT instead". Eglinton will need the extra capacity, as will the SRT revamp. Maybe it won't be needed tomorrow, but 25 years from now, our children will thank us for not sticking them with another SRT-esque transit fiasco.

The economics of the 60s were very much different than the economics of today.

 

[gweed123]

Ahhhh I get it. So you're pro car and pro subway. So it's ok to leave as many lanes of automobile traffic as possible as long as it's not impeded by transit, but the second we take 2 lanes away in either direction, OH NO! Stop everything! There's a crisis on our hands! Forgive me if I'm trying to suggest that we make more livable communities! Let me guess, you want to keep the suburban dream alive too? Alright!

Good god man, I'm glad you're not a Transit planner.

I'm not pro-car. I'm anti-suburban, I think the suburbs were the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of mankind. I'm not opposed to LRT because it will impede vehicle traffic, I'm opposed to LRT because vehicle traffic will impede the effectiveness of the LRT. LRT is good in some cases, along secondary corridors and as a high-capacity link to a primary transit line, but primary corridors (Eglinton, Sheppard, Yonge) should be grade-separated transit, so that the capacity of the system is determined purely by the number of vehicles you can physically run on the line, NOT by the number of vehicles that you can operate without affecting traffic patterns on cross-streets.

Think about it. The average green time on a suburban arterial is what, 30 seconds (disregarding advanced arrows, etc). The entire cycle is 90 seconds. Therefore, the minimum headway you can run trains without having them stop at red lights is 90 seconds. Therefore, the capacity of the line is being determined by the roadway, and by the intersecting roads, not by the line itself. Therefore (and this reverts back to my original statement), it's the cars that are getting in the way of transit.

EDIT: I should also clarify that when I say LRT, I mean Transit City-style, in-median LRT.

 

[Justin10000]

The Yonge line reached 20,000 pph very qucikly. The TTC originally planned to run 4 car trains, and 2 car trains in the evenings. 6 and 8 cars quickly become the norm on the Yonge Subway.

 

[nfitz]

All I'm saying is that, what if the planners in the 60s had gone with LRT instead of HRT on B-D, given that the ridership projections were still within the range of LRT?

Why do you say ridership projections were still within the range of LRT? Bloor ridership was almost 9,000 passengers per direction per hour in the 1950s. Forecasting is a bit of an art - but it wouldn't be that difficult to see that it would require subway, when you started adding in parallel routes such as Harbord, Carlton, etc.

 

[leopetr]

The city fathers were wrong. They should have built LRT lines on every avenue instead of building the subway network. How much more European would our city have been if they had done that?

In 1942, the "city fathers" wanted to build an LRT subway under Queen street that would fan out into surface streetcar lines outside the core.

http://transit.toronto.on.ca/subway/5101.shtml

 

[leopetr]

but primary corridors (Eglinton, Sheppard, Yonge)

What makes Sheppard a primary corridor? How is it any more of a primary corridor than Lawrence or York Mills or Finch? Would you support LRT on Lawrence?

Therefore, the minimum headway you can run trains without having them stop at red lights is 90 seconds. Therefore, the capacity of the line is being determined by the roadway, and by the intersecting roads, not by the line itself.

The current subway headway is 120 seconds. Why do you need under 90 seconds on the LRT lines? If you need more capacity, you can run longer LRT trains.

I should also clarify that when I say LRT, I mean Transit City-style, in-median LRT.

How about Eglinton-style, underground LRT? Or S(L)RT-style elevated LRT?