All aboard for more subways

[ssiguy2]

OK, everyone here knows about some of my thoughts on technology options so I'm not going there.
Let's be clear.................TC is a local service system. It will be neither fast nor mass. In fact it won't be any faster than a bus HOV lane down a street with stops at major intersections.
Miller has always touted TC as "rapid " transit. I dare anyone to give me an example from any place on the planet that has "rapid" transit where the stops are every 2 and a half blocks, they have to stop at red lights, and have to yeild for left turning cars. Just one example will do.
I am definately not a subway or nothing person but that said if the TTC REALLY wants to build an extensive mass rapid transit system it must start using it's rail ROW, Hydro Corridors, and elevation along suburban streets just like every other city on the planet. This is not optional. It must must done where ever possible to not only bring the costs down, build them quickly, and tunnel only where absolutely neccessary.
I still think Toronto also has to get it's priorities right which means ditch Finch, DM, Kingston, Jane, Waterfront streetcars and do mass/rapid down Eglinton, finish Sheppard to STC and then use the "U" route from Malvern to downtown under Queen and then use the Weston rail line up to Humber. It would provide a DRL, serve areas that need point to point travel and a off shoot could be made to Pearson avoiding having to build a new line.
Also these streetcar systems are going to cost a small fortune to run as TC is street level so automation is not possible. As for this TTC workers refusal to allow automated trains someone at City Hall should grab some balls.

 

[Fresh Start]

That is why we should use correct terminology - METRO.

If we bother to dig such a long tunnel, then there is no reason why it should not be a metro from the start.

Well, we call it subway here. And most people on this forum are well aware of the difference between it and LRT. 510 Spadina runs in a road-medan dedicated ROW its whole length and deeps underground a few times itself. The route also has transit signal priority if that really means anything since bunching/stalling is still a pervasive problem. Oh and its "stations" have now been outfitted with time displays and sometimes runs trips with ALRVs which can carry twice the passenger loads than a regular streetcar. For argument sake I could say that operationally it is the same as the Transit City plan.

See, isn't semantics fun?

 

[fanoftoronto]

LRT in a tunnel... just what do you think the term subway means? The 'sub' refers to 'subterrain'. It doesn't matter if it is light rail, heavy rail, or even pedestrians or cars using it.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...noid=kRgbxaimkhTtzEXxdbSaLQ&cbp=12,81.43,,0,5

This is why I am getting anal about people arguing subways over light rail. It is arguing between moide and operation!

A subway with regards to public transportation means a train travelling usually below ground with certain sections above ground but completely seperate from other modes of transportation. The Eglinton LRT is not like this. The above ground sections are not seperate from traffic. If there was a problem, it would affect the service underground as well. Meaning it is not exclusive ROW. Check my post and you will notice I have said the tunnel section is only a subway when the underground section is seperate from the surface sections.

 

[Dan416]

Just because a transit line runs partially underground doesn't make it a subway. I hate when people try to obfuscate the issue by bringing in terms like 'metro' and definitions of 'subway' that don't apply to Toronto. Transit City Eglinton Crosstown LRT is NOT a subway.

I'm very glad a good portion of mayoral candidates support subway construction. I'm disappointed certain candidates who I'd be more likely to support have not announced their plans yet.

Otherwise, this thread is just your typical LRT vs subway thread featuring the same old members spouting the same old opinions at each other but not really listening to each other. GraphicMatt, Justin1000000000000, nfitz, kettal, The Mad Navigator you'll never convince myself, keithz, Fresh Start, gweed123, LAz, and we'll never convince you. You're very devout LRTistas and that's fine. We're just not so focussed on one mode of transportation. We're balanced and build what's appropriate to the corridor. We don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach.

 

[Automation Gallery]

Lot of rubbish regarding LRT vs Subway...i guess It's Hard To Beat A Dead Horse

 

[gweed123]

Lot of rubbish regarding LRT vs Subway...i guess It's Hard To Beat A Dead Horse

With the number of candidates openly supporting subway expansion vs the number of candidates openly supporting Transit City (or LRT in general), I'd say the only dead horse around here is Transit City... The 5 year "look how great this avenue looks with LRT!" backpacking trip through Europe is over, time to get back to building what Toronto has been slowly building for over 50 years: a subway network. Miller et al tried to sell Toronto on LRT, they failed. Why? Because LRT everywhere isn't the right solution for the city.

 

[sixrings]

Otherwise, this thread is just your typical LRT vs subway thread featuring the same old members spouting the same old opinions at each other but not really listening to each other. GraphicMatt, Justin1000000000000, nfitz, kettal, The Mad Navigator you'll never convince myself, keithz, Fresh Start, gweed123, LAz, and we'll never convince you. You're very devout LRTistas and that's fine. We're just not so focussed on one mode of transportation. We're balanced and build what's appropriate to the corridor. We don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach.

I just dont understand why the pro subway ppl are arguing about any of TC the lines being subway over lrt other then the SRT conversion. To be sure the danforth line should be extended as a subway. Otherwise the only subway expansion I see needed is the DRL but thats not even a part of TC. Eglinton west of Jane and East of Don Mills is very Suburban. So I cant imagine how a Full subway makes sense accross the entire city. Sure ppl could argue about sheppard but others could as easily argue that sheppard should have been lrt from the beginning.

IS there anything other then the RT and DLR which is crutial to be SUBWAY??????

 

[Asterix]

The problem I have is that it is one thing (and a very easy thing at that) to say "I support and would build subways" and a different thing to actually fund them.

Whether subway costs $200 million/km or $400 million/km, the city does not have the capital funds to build much of anything subway and so needs to find billions of dollars somewhere.

From what I've seen, none of the 'pro-subway' candidates have provided a realistic explanation of where these billions would come from. You aren't going to get anywhere near that amount of money by $5 tolls, selling air-rights or Toronto Hydro, so you need to convince both the money bags at the province and the feds to turn their back on the transit vision they have previously touted* and start nearly from the beginning on your new 'only subways' concept.

*Cutting funding to TC is not the same as turning their back. The province can still say they support TC and all the plans they've broadcast, just at a slower pace.

Whether one agrees with TC plans or not, the reality is there is a significant amount of funding in place. Much of the design and prep work (EAs, planning) has been done and construction could theoretically start very soon on several lines (pending a little cash). This would not be the case for a scrapping of the TC plan and heading back to the drawing board for several years to think about subways with the result that nothing would get built for quite some time.

Personally I think the biggest priority should be the DRL, especially before you start dumping more people on the Yonge line at Eglinton and points north. But given the reality, I would rather see an Eglinton LRT than nothing at all.

 

[Justin10000]

You used the references of the Yonge and Bloor-Danforth streetcars being at capacity, therefore justifying a subway. All I'm saying is that following your logic, a bus that is at capacity is worthy of the same thing. The only difference between the Bloor-Danforth streetcar and the Eglinton bus is that the Bloor-Danforth streetcar ran on rails. They both operated in mixed traffic, they both are (or were) at or near capacity. To differentiate between the two and say that because a streetcar route is full it deserves a subway, but if a bus route is full it deserves an LRT, well I just don't see the logic, or where the differentiation there is.

How can you not see the logic? It's pretty simple. If a bus route is at capacity, you upgrade to an intermediate capacity mode, which is LRT. It's not that difficult. If you have a streetcar that is at capacity, there is justification to build a higher capacity system(subway, Automated metro)
You are missing(ignoring?) the key difference between a bus and a streetcar. A streetcar holds more riders than a bus. The Yonge streetcars must have been carrying well over 9,000pph before the Subway opened.

Because the cost to build it when it is needed will likely be even more expensive than what it is now (even when you factor in inflation). Contrary to what you might believe, the funding is actually there now to get a pretty significant amount of subway expansion done. When it's do or die for these lines, the funding may not be there, or it may be too expensive to build it. The other reason is, the time between when we realize "oh crap, we're running out of capacity" and the time the line opens would be a minimum of 10 years. That's a long time to sit and wait. The DRL was needed 10 years ago, yet in all likelihood it will be another 7-8 years before it's in operation. It's not like you can just snap your fingers and say "ok, now the LRT line is upragded to a subway".

A lot of "what if's" in your argument. I would prefer to stick with actual models that determines what is appropriate for a corridor, rather than just building the most expensive, highest capacity mode "just in case." The funding is not there for subways, unless you are pinning your hopes on the silly proposals by the candidates.

What makes you think the same type of delays won't happen on an LRT line?

You're not getting it. It's not about the technology, it's about the agency and how they build the technology. Clearly the TTC made some mistakes with the original streetcar reconstruction, and the subway, and it seems they have learned from their mistakes, and change procedure. That is the point. You, and others are too fixated on one technology.

Road tolls, air rights, PPPs, etc, all are valid ways of generating money. Many of those were proposed by conservative candidates, however some have explicitly said they do not support those funding measures. Disclaimer: I am not a conservative, I'm a left-leaning Liberal. So yes, I naturally have a bit of a distrust for Conservatives as well.

Their numbers have been proven not to add up. I would not call that valid. It makes for a nice sound-bite, but when you actually crunch the numnbers, their plans fall flat.

It will give the money to Metrolinx. Once Metrolinx gets a permanent funding structure, or ways of generating funds on its own, a more stable funding formula can be established.

Any funding would go to implement the 25 year Big Move plan, and not for solley building subways.

Please read my post again. I specifically stated the suburban parts of the system. Yes, the downtown section does not work well, I admit that, hence your experience at the Rideau Centre is not a valid reason to deny that BRT on Jane would work. I envision it to be like the section on Woodroffe between Baseline and Hunt Club, with curbside lanes. That can be done for substantially less than building LRT. And it would be slightly hypocritical to say that BRT would require property aquisition, road widening, etc, when LRT would require the exact same thing. The only difference is where the tran

The downtown section IS curbside bus-only lanes. Do not try to differeniate between the downtown lanes, and the Woodroffe lanes. They are the same. Curbside lanes will not work on Jane, and would probably still require road-widening, and property demolition anyways. I never said anything about LRT not requring road-widening or property demolition. Making stuff up?

 

[SimonP]

I've always supported the position that subways are the best mode, if you can afford them. However, after discussing the Mercer list of best cities in the world in another thread, I'm starting to reconsider that. From my own travelling I'd agree that those cities are some of the most livable in the world. What strikes me is that most of the top cities have a tram based mass transit network. Zurich, Geneva, Dusseldorf, and Bern all have trams and no subway. Vienna, Frankfurt, and Munich have subway lines along with a large streetcar system. I'm wondering if I've been missing something and streetcars really are the ideal form of mass transit. Thinking about this I can think of three ways that streetcars produce a more livable city:

*Built form: Subways lead to node based development. You have 30 storey towers clustered around stations with low-rise everywhere else. Streetcar cities are mostly mid-rise. Streetcars have many more stops and can cover a larger area, and this produces a more even built form. Other than skyscraper heights fans, most people prefer cities that are more mid-rise based.
*Jane Jacobs and street life: One of Jacob's most important ideas, and one that has been confirmed time and again, is that street life is essential to the health of a metropolis. Dead streets lead to crime, decay, and urban collapse. Subways take hundred of thousands of people of the street every day. What is the effect of losing these people who would otherwise be standing at street side stops or watching the city from a streetcar?
*Number of cars: It is a standard axiom that if you increase road capacity, more people will choose to drive, and the roads will be just as crowded as they were before. Removing buses/streetcars from roads like Eglinton or Finch would be a dramatic increase in the capacity of those roads. While the speed of a new subway would influence people towards switching to transit, there would be an opposing draw of more open roads encouraging more people to drive. My guess as to how this works in practice is that those who actually live along the subway line will take it, but that those who live in the urban sprawl further out, and might in the past have taken a bus, will be more likely to drive.

 

[LAz]

*Jane Jacobs and street life: One of Jacob's most important ideas, and one that has been confirmed time and again, is that street life is essential to the health of a metropolis. Dead streets lead to crime, decay, and urban collapse. Subways take hundred of thousands of people of the street every day. What is the effect of losing these people who would otherwise be standing at street side stops or watching the city from a streetcar?

Read into Janes stuff. Nowhere did she support tram development over subway development. I suggest you start here...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4918908210204767118#
The main way that she supported more street life was through the opposition of highways.
If she were alive today she would be disgusted by trams over metros.

However, after discussing the Mercer list of best cities in the world in another thread, I'm starting to reconsider that. From my own travelling I'd agree that those cities are some of the most livable in the world. What strikes me is that most of the top cities have a tram based mass transit network. Zurich, Geneva, Dusseldorf, and Bern all have trams and no subway. Vienna, Frankfurt, and Munich have subway lines along with a large streetcar system. I'm wondering if I've been missing something and streetcars really are the ideal form of mass transit.

Ugh jeeze dude, think about what you look at for a moment or two.
Zurich has like 300,000 people. That really is not enough to justify a metro.Geneva... shit mon, even less, bellow 200,000.
Now I am here wondering why do you compare apples and oranges. Why? How in all honest can you compare a city that is 10 times or more than 10 times smaller? In europe if your city has a million er so people then there bloody well will be a comprehensive plan to have a subway, unless if there is not a subway already. If there is a metro already then they will plan on expanding that metro system.

When you talk about your geneva and whatnot - compare those to london, thunder bay, halifax, or regina. Those are more appropriate, because of their size. Toronto is a whole different type of thing altogether. Jeeze.

Their numbers have been proven not to add up. I would not call that valid. It makes for a nice sound-bite, but when you actually crunch the numnbers, their plans fall flat.

Why do you ignore the added things that I mentioned? Why?

You, and others are too fixated on one technology.

Trams are slower, they stop at the stops, and simply put, are more impacted by the weather.

A lot of "what if's" in your argument. I would prefer to stick with actual models that determines what is appropriate for a corridor, rather than just building the most expensive, highest capacity mode "just in case." The funding is not there for subways, unless you are pinning your hopes on the silly proposals by the candidates.

Hypocritical in some ways, no? Funding can be made. There was no funding for tramsit city. Then they pulled that together. In reality there is no funding for anything, but funding is allocated somehow.
Eglinton does have the potential to be a high capacity corridor. That is a fact. A subway has been start on sheppard and it is high time that one starts to finish it - simply said, it is a necessary alternative to the car up in the northern part of toronto.
You are the one using the what ifs... what if it does not become a high capacity corridor and such stuff. Take your "what if nots" away. You are the one that is bringing them up.

How can you not see the logic? It's pretty simple. If a bus route is at capacity, you upgrade to an intermediate capacity mode, which is LRT. It's not that difficult. If you have a streetcar that is at capacity, there is justification to build a higher capacity system(subway, Automated metro

How are you not seeing the logic dude?? Sheppard is a great success. How do you not see that logic? Converting a big bus route to a subway route was a great idea. It is not surprising that Sheppard is a such success therefore.
Why bother to invest so many millions into digging a thirteen km tunnel along eglinton if it is not gonna be a metro from the very start? Why waste that money to be upgrading it at a later time?

Whether subway costs $200 million/km or $400 million/km, the city does not have the capital funds to build much of anything subway and so needs to find billions of dollars somewhere.

That is why the federal government and whatnot steps in. The city itself can not fund a single LRT line on its own. The city is not paying for most of the spadina extension, nor should it pay for most of any subway line extension.
If you guys talk about european cities - then talk about their funding as well - almost all of them all the time when doing such a big project get the bulk of it paid for by the national government. DUH.
Hm, now it has come to my attention that one individual is pissed off at me and even wants to or has reported me for something. This one individual is pissed off with examples from other cities. So let me talk about one such example. In Chicago their only new line in decades came only thanks to national government. There is no way that chicago (or most other cities) can afford to build anything on their own. That is because we are are dealing with a system of "neoliberalism" and "free trade". The result has been that the cities get less money while the richest of the rich get more.

Sure ppl could argue about sheppard but others could as easily argue that sheppard should have been lrt from the beginning.

Ridership there has surpassed the capacity of LRT. Throw that fantasy out of the window please.

I hate when people try to obfuscate the issue by bringing in terms like 'metro' and definitions of 'subway'

Most of the world calls it a Metro. Since trams can never be Metro, I like using the word more than Subway. It really separates the two well.

 

[SimonP]

The main way that she supported more street life was through the opposition of highways.
If she were alive today she would be disgusted by trams over metros.

But why? It seems pretty clear that subways to to a degree reduce street life, and this counters her basic premise.

When you talk about your geneva and whatnot - compare those to london, thunder bay, halifax, or regina. Those are more appropriate, because of their size. Toronto is a whole different type of thing altogether. Jeeze.

Why do you ignore the larger cities on the list? Take Frankfurt, a metro area of 5.6 million. It has daily subway ridership of 300,000, about a third Toronto's. Instead it uses trams. Or take Munich with a metro population of 5.2 million. Munich has similar subway ridership to the Toronto system that we think of as so inadequate. The big difference again is a much larger tram system. Vienna, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen are a bit smaller, but follow the same pattern of a high tram to subway ratio.

We tend to compare Toronto to much larger cities like London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, but Toronto isn't a city with a 20 million people metro area. Those much larger cities are all subway based, but in truth Toronto is much closer population wise to tram based cities like Frankfurt or Melbourne.

 

[Asterix]

That is why the federal government and whatnot steps in. The city itself can not fund a single LRT line on its own. The city is not paying for most of the spadina extension, nor should it pay for most of any subway line extension.
If you guys talk about european cities - then talk about their funding as well - almost all of them all the time when doing such a big project get the bulk of it paid for by the national government. DUH.

That's my point. The province, through Metrolinx, has at least on the surface bought into the TC plan. While it doesn't reflect too well for them to be cutting back, they at least can still say they are committed to the program.

What the subway proponents are suggesting is for the province (and the feds) be willing to lose face and say 'this idea we trumpeted before when we made great funding announcements is just ill-conceived and we are instead going to go back to the drawing boards and spend several more years planning before putting any shovels in the ground.'

Regardless of whether you genuinely believe that may be the better course of action for transit, reality is that is not likely to occur since we are talking politicians and bureaucrats.

The reality is the money for transit from the province and the feds right now in Toronto is geared towards the TC plan. Throwing that out the window will not build subways or anything else, as much as I might want to see the DRL.

 

[GraphicMatt]

Jane Jacobs was a big supporter of Toronto's streetcar system - the Jane Jacobs award in 2005 went to Steve Munro for his part in saving Toronto's streetcars.

 

[Justin10000]

Read into Janes stuff. Nowhere did she support tram development over subway development. I suggest you start here...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4918908210204767118#
The main way that she supported more street life was through the opposition of highways.
If she were alive today she would be disgusted by trams over metros.

If Jacobs was alive, she would have fully supported Trams. It gels well with her ideas about streetlife. I doubt she would even have a technological bias.

Ugh jeeze dude, think about what you look at for a moment or two.
Zurich has like 300,000 people. That really is not enough to justify a metro.Geneva... shit mon, even less, bellow 200,000.
Now I am here wondering why do you compare apples and oranges. Why? How in all honest can you compare a city that is 10 times or more than 10 times smaller? In europe if your city has a million er so people then there bloody well will be a comprehensive plan to have a subway, unless if there is not a subway already. If there is a metro already then they will plan on expanding that metro system.

When you talk about your geneva and whatnot - compare those to london, thunder bay, halifax, or regina. Those are more appropriate, because of their size. Toronto is a whole different type of thing altogether. Jeeze.

You're just making comparison based on population! Geneva is in no way comparable to London, or halifax. You cannot just use poplation as a comparison. In many regards, Zurich, and Toronto are similar: built up urban centres, surrounded by a large fairly spread out urbanized region. For the record, Zurich was actually planning to build a metro system, and actually built some tunnels before stopping, and focusing on the tram system instead. Some of the tram lines even run through the completed metro tunnels. It's wise to not make assumptions about a city. Also Zurich has an extensive S-Bahn system. Pretty decent for a city of only 300,000(actually the population of the ubanized area is around 2 Million). I have been to Zurich, and used the tram system.It works. It works extremely well. One would not be able to deny the positive impact of the system on the cityscape.

Trams are slower, they stop at the stops, and simply put, are more impacted by the weather.

Like I said, fixated on one technology. Which, in your case leads to a general ignorance of transit in general.

How are you not seeing the logic dude?? Sheppard is a great success. How do you not see that logic? Converting a big bus route to a subway route was a great idea. It is not surprising that Sheppard is a such success therefore.
Why bother to invest so many millions into digging a thirteen km tunnel along eglinton if it is not gonna be a metro from the very start? Why waste that money to be upgrading it at a later time?

That's your opinion. My opinion(and conincidently most credible transit planners), is that Sheppard is not a success, but rather an expensive mistake. I am not going to deny 50,000 riders isn't a lot, but that translates to around 5,000pph? Far below the minimunm threshold of a subway. If the subway was such a success, it should be attracting more riders, even in it's truncated state. The intermediate stations are barely used, especially Leslie, considering the hospital nearby. If the Sheppard was built as LRT from the beginning, I doubt we would be even having this conversation.
Because Toronto is getting a line right across Toronto for that many millions. Good bang for the buck.

Hm, now it has come to my attention that one individual is pissed off at me and even wants to or has reported me for something. This one individual is pissed off with examples from other cities. So let me talk about one such example. In Chicago their only new line in decades came only thanks to national government. There is no way that chicago (or most other cities) can afford to build anything on their own. That is because we are are dealing with a system of "neoliberalism" and "free trade". The result has been that the cities get less money while the richest of the rich get more.

Considering some of the of crap you post, I am surprised you have not been reported sooner.

Ridership there has surpassed the capacity of LRT. Throw that fantasy out of the window please.

The current ridership on SHeppard is well within range of LRT. You're not fooling anyone.