News   Oct 31, 2024
 215     0 
News   Oct 31, 2024
 1K     3 
News   Oct 31, 2024
 544     0 

Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

Also a night bus, with little traffic to compete with. Is a bus even fast if no one uses it? ;)
Why do you claim no one uses it? It always seems busy enough to me -pre-covid. What are your observations?

Most seem to be heading to Scarborough, rather than getting on and off on the Danforth. But there's always some at the biggest stops. Broadview, etc.

From that perspective, it was all about LRT in 2007-2008, and then briefly about Bus lanes in addition to LRT in 2009. Obviously, the work on Spadina subway did not stop, but noone considered that as a part of the future plan, as it was well underway.
And yet the election was in late 2010.

Transit was barely an issue. It was that Miller was playing hardball with the unions and the garbage strike.
 
  • Like
Reactions: syn
And yet the election was in late 2010.

Transit was barely an issue. It was that Miller was playing hardball with the unions and the garbage strike.

That's a good observation.

The biggest problem people had with Miller was the garbage strike. That's why Ford's privatization of garbage was so appealing, and probably the only positive thing of significance he did as mayor.

He also had a very pro-car stance, with all his transit ideas framed as ending "the war on the car".
 
And yet the election was in late 2010.

Transit was barely an issue. It was that Miller was playing hardball with the unions and the garbage strike.

It is true that transit was not a major decider in the 2010 elections. Miller chose to refrain from seeking another term due to the garbage strike, and in the absence of the incumbent, Rob Ford won on the small government and "cut the waste" agenda. The fact that Ford moved against the Transit City plan was more due to his personal bias than to political expedience.

However, Rob Ford never had a complete control over the transit file. He had to deal with McGuinty, and since 2012, with the City Council's united opposition. Parts of Transit City: Eglinton and Finch, survived because of that. In that situation, the public perception of the transit plan was of importance.

Therefore, I believe the point still stands. If Transit City was a mix of subways + LRTs + BRTs, then it would go through fewer changes between 2007 and now.
 
That's why Ford's privatization of garbage was so appealing, and probably the only positive thing of significance he did as mayor.
It was positive? The last numbers I saw, when they renewed the pricing for west of Yonge, the cost went up, as no one was willing to do it for the original price. Meanwhile the city continues to do east of Yonge, and efficiencies have grown with the 1-person crews.

We are due for an update, but the only success appears to have been to increase private profits, decrease wages, but delivering very similar costs for taxpayers.

Surely, if the overall pricing is the same, a taxpayer would prefer the employees to have higher wages, and there to be less shareholder profit.
 
The big mistake we made was trying to apply a mode that works well in compact areas (streetcar/LRT) for local trips to cross-suburb transportation.

That wasn't a mistake. That was intentional. They were trying to deploy LRT as a gentrification tool. Improving the commute was almost secondary.
 
At least the SRT lasted longer than the other "experimental" transit project in New York City from 1870 to 1873.

NYC’s First Subway, A One Block Pneumatic Tunnel Below Broadway

See link.

Map-of-Alfred-Ely-Beach-Pneumatic-subway-plan-Broadway-NYC.jpg


Not The Beatles (allegedly).
 
This isn't true - Miller in his first term pushed subway expansion, but couldn't get any traction, other than the Spadina extension. In his second term he got the Spadina extension moving, and started the Downtown Relief Line studies, pushing the province to commit to including it much earlier than originally planned.

Transit City didn't preclude subways ... it was a focus on suburban routes and existing streetcar infrastructure, where subway capacity wasn't necessary. The one exception was the Don Mills line south of Eglinton, where they made it very clear that they were evaluating other technologies, and as the study advanced, it became clear that even the stretch from Eglinton to Danforth was going to have to be something higher than on-surface LRT.

Miller's mistake - if any - was pushing Sheppard subway extension during his first term, rather than switching to LRT earlier.

The subsequent delays by the McGuinty government, and the complete incompetence under Rob Ford are what set transit expansion back.

If Lougheed Highway in Burnaby could support a SkyTrain in 2000 Eglinton could support a subway. Tons of the land is already being redeveloped in the surface section and the local density doesn't matter a ton anyways as tons of ridership is coming via bus.

And yet the LRT plan was published a couple of years after the original TTC Transit City presentation, which discussed all the modes.

You act like work on Spadina stopped when they came up with the LRT plan. It didn't. Nor did work on the LRT when they published the bus plan.

Because the demand is very low north of Lawrence. We also don't know the alignment of the Ontario Line. If it takes over the Richmond Hill GO Line north of Lawrence (which was one of the TTC proposals ... I wouldn't be surprised if Metrolinx were even more keen on this), then that leaves room for an LRT on Don Mills, north of that point - or at least north of Sheppard.

Grade separation isn't the primary controller of speed. It's station distance and traffic. Even the Danforth night bus is faster than the subway - because few get on or off east of Jarvis.

Demand is not *very* low North of Lawrence
 
Demand is not *very* low North of Lawrence
It is for rapid transit. At least south of the 401. After Lawrence, a handful get off the bus at north Donway, almost no one else until York Mills, and then a handful at Duncan Mills. It's much lower than south of Lawrence, and much, much lower than south of Eglinton.

At least that's what I've observed taking the bus in the 1980s and again more recently. What are your observations on that route?
 
  • Like
Reactions: syn
Paywall. Here's what's inside the article.

1611685027670.png


1611685050692.png


1611685076116.png


1611685118810.png


I believe the TTC bus terminal is supposed to go on the site of 140 Grangeway Avenue. Is it possible to integrate the terminal with the development?
 
In any case, 1,200 units would be responsible for just a tiny fraction of the SSE ridership.

Roughly, 1,200 trip pairs per day. Some units have > 1 inhabitants who take the subway, but some units have inhabitants who drive, or take buses only, or don't travel regularly at all. So, we can estimate ~ 1 trip pair per unit on average, or 1,200 trip pairs per day.

Assuming 3/4 of those who take the subway travel during the peak hours, and then dividing by 3 morning peak hours: 1,200 x 0.75 / 3 = 300 per hour per direction.

For the subway with peak ridership around 10k, 300 is 3%, and that's certainly less than the prediction error. Not sure why The Star thinks this is significant (obviously, they have no hidden agenda and no bias ;) ).

The primary goal of SSE is to anchor the feeder routes. Any local development is a bonus but isn't a determining factor.
 
In any case, 1,200 units would be responsible for just a tiny fraction of the SSE ridership.

Roughly, 1,200 trip pairs per day. Some units have > 1 inhabitants who take the subway, but some units have inhabitants who drive, or take buses only, or don't travel regularly at all. So, we can estimate ~ 1 trip pair per unit on average, or 1,200 trip pairs per day.

Assuming 3/4 of those who take the subway travel during the peak hours, and then dividing by 3 morning peak hours: 1,200 x 0.75 / 3 = 300 per hour per direction.

For the subway with peak ridership around 10k, 300 is 3%, and that's certainly less than the prediction error. Not sure why The Star thinks this is significant (obviously, they have no hidden agenda and no bias ;) ).

The primary goal of SSE is to anchor the feeder routes. Any local development is a bonus but isn't a determining factor.
There is frankly an even bigger problem with the article, that being we don't actually know anything. This entire article can be summed up as: "We noticed that the location where TTC wants to build a bus terminal, there are supposed to 3 highrises, so we're automatically going to use this to signal the end TOCs, give Paul Ainslie a ton of page space to spout his rhetoric, all to fulfill our "Ford man bad" agenda.

We don't know what will happen to the development. No cancellation has been announced, no statement has been provided by Scarborough Gateway or Metrolinx on the matter, and there's a good chance that there are a lot of negotiations happening between the two of them. Each day, the star loses more and more credibility, as they start reaching further and further in desperation to make Doug Ford and Metrolinx look as bad as possible.
 

Seven years of buses, thanks all you subway fanatics who had to screw us with this garbage, I continue to be beyond livid at what you have all done to us, and not just with this line, go hang your heads in shame, there is no scenario in which any of you can continue to pretend that you were at all justified to foist this monstrosity on the city.
 
Last edited:

Seven years of buses, thanks all you subway fanatics who had to screw us with this garbage, I continue to be beyond livid at what you have all done to us, and not just with this line, go hang your heads in shame, there is no scenario in which any of you can continue to pretend that you were at all justified to foist this monstrosity on the city.
What a compete joke this has been.... And here's the official TTC report. http://ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Commiss...T_Life_Extension_Project_Options_Analysis.pdf
 

Back
Top