Debate on the merits of the Scarborough Subway Extension

[syn]

Broadview has 6 bus routes that feed into it and Pape has 3. Chester we can say is probably all foot traffic. Donlands has 2 buses that feed into it.

Bayview and Leslie I would say is decent with 1 bus route each feeding it

This is exactly the point I'm trying to make.

Why do Bayview and Leslie have just one bus route feeding them? Why do Broadview, Chester and Pape have multiple bus routes feeding them despite being so close to each other?

Density.

The subway works in that area because it's exactly the kind of area subways were designed for. It's dense and walkable.

And let's not forget, even with a ridiculous bus terminal being built to divert all buses directly to the SSE station, the ridership is still relatively negligible for a station that's 6km from the next subway stop.

 

[muller877]

A useless chart. Why did the Star lump Spadina and Bay and Yonge into the Danforth on the Bloor Line? They were trying the gerrymander the results into something they liked. For Bloor they should have used Bathurst-Runnymede (inclusive) compared with Sherbourne to Coxwell (inclusive). Excludes the core where everyone knows it's crammed.

And 100% incorrect that there are the same load from Kipling-Runnymede vs Runnymede-Bathurst. I guess no one gets on the subway at Dundas West or Ossington???? This is load factors and they are saying the 0 net additional people get on after Runnymede all the way to Bathurst. Since Toronto Star journalists think anything west of Bathurst is the boonies and have never ridden the subway past here I can get why they didn't use a gut check to validate the results.

 

[syn]

A useless chart. Why did the Star lump Spadina and Bay and Yonge into the Danforth on the Bloor Line? They were trying the gerrymander the results into something they liked. For Bloor they should have used Bathurst-Runnymede (inclusive) compared with Sherbourne to Coxwell (inclusive). Excludes the core where everyone knows it's crammed.

And 100% incorrect that there are the same load from Kipling-Runnymede vs Runnymede-Bathurst. I guess no one gets on the subway at Dundas West or Ossington???? This is load factors and they are saying the 0 net additional people get on after Runnymede all the way to Bathurst. Since Toronto Star journalists think anything west of Bathurst is the boonies and have never ridden the subway past here I can get why they didn't use a gut check to validate the results.

It's not useless at all. Not all of the comparisons make the most sense, but they have 11 of them, and a lot of them are perfectly valid.'

I believe you're misunderstanding this chart. It's not suggesting that no one rides the subway between Runnymede and Bathurst, only that the ridership between Kipling and Runnymede is the same as it is between Runnymede and Bathurst.

The Runnymede-Bathurst total would include Dundas West and Ossington, which are both stations between Runnymede and Bathurst.

If anything these numbers are low-balled. Adding up the 2015 totals gets you to over 200,000 riders from Runnymede to Bathurst - of course they may have been using older data.

This chart is perfectly valid and just goes to show how poor the projected ridership is for this awful idea.

 

[Streety McCarface]

This is exactly the point I'm trying to make.

Why do Bayview and Leslie have just one bus route feeding them? Why do Broadview, Chester and Pape have multiple bus routes feeding them despite being so close to each other?

Density.

The subway works in that area because it's exactly the kind of area subways were designed for. It's dense and walkable.

And let's not forget, even with a ridiculous bus terminal being built to divert all buses directly to the SSE station, the ridership is still relatively negligible for a station that's 6km from the next subway stop.

The density argument, while although partially true, is extremely convoluted and not a good metric to measure future TTC ridership on its own. Here's the proof:

Yes, there is a general trend that with an increase in density, ridership increases. However, your correlation coefficient is 0.095, which is an extremely weak correlation between density and ridership. You cannot argue that density alone is the only factor that influences subway ridership, especially in the suburbs.

(Ignore the circles, they are biased)
Here we see that density around subway stations, especially suburban stations like Kipling, Warden, Kennedy, Downsview, Wilson, York Mills, Lawrence, Yorkdale, Lawrence West, Jane, Islington, Royal York, etc. These are all stations that are considered to be in the suburbs yet have excellent ridership; Warden has a better ridership than most stations on the Bloor Danforth line, yet there is basically no density. All the terminal stations with the exception of Finch and Don Mills have basically no density whatsoever, and they are the highest used stations in the system. Likewise, even in downtown where stations are in dense areas, ridership is basically no existent. Take Spadina, you'd think it'd have one of the best ridership in the system, but it is actually one of the worst performing stations downtown averaging only about 13,000 riders on the Yonge portion per day. Considering that it's a transfer station for both the 510 LRT and the Bloor Danforth subway, it's combined ridership of around 40,000 is really closer to 5-10,000 for people genuinely getting on and off at the station. There are others; Museum has one of the highest downtown densities, yet has the worst downtown ridership; it's almost as bad as Leslie and is worse than Bayview stations.

This is completely untrue. Ridership for the Sheppard Line is poor by international subway standards.

Not only is it poor, such a subway line would never have been built while there are still major areas of density unserved/underserved by subway stations. If Toronto was a European or Asian city, I'm quite sure a DRL and a line along King or Queen (or perhaps both) would've been in the pipeline long before Sheppard.

The stops you mention completely ignore context too.

Chester had 7,700 riders a day in 2015, that's true. But what about the stations before and after?

Broadview - 33,460
Chester - 7,700
Pape - 28,710
Donlands - 11,500

TOTAL: 81,370 over 1.9km

According to the same 2015 TTC stats, the Sheppard Line handles just 49,070 riders on a 5.6 km line.

You can cherry pick specific stations on the Bloor Line that don't have high ridership, but you're missing the point entirely. The Sheppard Line has three stations with ridership below 9,000. The entire Bloor Line has the same number (four if you want to include those under 10,000).

The entire Sheppard Line is poorly used.

Continuing to make mistakes such as the Sheppard Line are quite indefensible when there are major needs to address. The SSE is a much, much larger mistake than the Sheppard Line - it's probably the worst proposed expansion in TTC history.

Again, it is true, I did the math. If we assume that 50,000 people use the Sheppard line every weekday (t0 factor in the bare minimum for weekends), and assume there are about 300 weekdays in a year, we get 15 million yearly riders. Per kilometer, that's 2.73 million annually per kilometer. We know that the ridership of the Sheppard line is better than almost every metro system in the US, with the exception of New York and there's not enough information on Montreal. Let's just take London's underground in its entirety, considered to be one of the busiest in the world. 1.340 billion annual riders. Divided by 300, and then by 402 (length of their system), we find an average of 11,111 passengers per kilometer. Compared to Sheppard's 9,100 per kilometer, London's averages about 2000 more passengers per kilometer per day on the high end of the spectrum. On the high end of the spectrum, where we assume ridership on Sheppard during the weekend is the same as a weekday, then London's ridership per km drops to 9, 132 people per day on the low end of the spectrum, basically the same to Sheppard. When you consider the fact that all of London's underground goes through much denser areas than Sheppard (except parts of the Metropolitan Line), the ridership levels are quite incredible. Plenty of other European cities go through this, the exceptions of the ones I checked being Prague and Moscow. How about in Asia? It's a little different considering that the cities were built with mass transit in mind an not the car, like here in North America, however, there are still examples of where daily ridership per kilometer is higher on the sheppard line than entire subway lines. Take Nanjing's Metro, 832 million people use their 347km system annually. Assuming there are 300 weekdays, 7,992 people use the subway per kilometer. Daegu South Korea? 163 million annual passengers on 81 km of track. That comes to 6,708 passengers per kilometer. The numbers don't lie. Kunming China? Hamburg Germany? Barcelona Spain? All these systems have ridership levels with fewer people per kilometer than the Sheppard subway. Also, Bayview's ridership, statistically, is over 9000 ppd, so that was a flat-out lie (8990 people in 2015, 9030, 9330, 9380, 9390, 9030 for the years before 2015). When you look at the Yonge line between St Clair and Bloor yonge, there are two stations with a ridership of less than 6000 each (I put Rosedale's lower because it has a general trend of lower ridership; it has steadily declined from ~8000 in 2011, 7000 in 2011-2013 (years of changing timeframe for station counting), and 6,250 in 2014. Summerhill has been stagnant). Yes, it's not as bad as the section between Bayview and don mills, however, it's right next to downtown. As I said before, they built the station at Bessarion for future development, if they were fcussing on bus connections (which I think has much higher merit), they shouldn't have built it at all.

 

[syn]

The density argument, while although partially true, is extremely convoluted and not a good metric to measure future TTC ridership on its own. Here's the proof:
View attachment 131999
Yes, there is a general trend that with an increase in density, ridership increases. However, your correlation coefficient is 0.095, which is an extremely weak correlation between density and ridership. You cannot argue that density alone is the only factor that influences subway ridership, especially in the suburbs.

View attachment 132001
(Ignore the circles, they are biased)
Here we see that density around subway stations, especially suburban stations like Kipling, Warden, Kennedy, Downsview, Wilson, York Mills, Lawrence, Yorkdale, Lawrence West, Jane, Islington, Royal York, etc. These are all stations that are considered to be in the suburbs yet have excellent ridership; Warden has a better ridership than most stations on the Bloor Danforth line, yet there is basically no density. All the terminal stations with the exception of Finch and Don Mills have basically no density whatsoever, and they are the highest used stations in the system. Likewise, even in downtown where stations are in dense areas, ridership is basically no existent. Take Spadina, you'd think it'd have one of the best ridership in the system, but it is actually one of the worst performing stations downtown averaging only about 13,000 riders on the Yonge portion per day. Considering that it's a transfer station for both the 510 LRT and the Bloor Danforth subway, it's combined ridership of around 40,000 is really closer to 5-10,000 for people genuinely getting on and off at the station. There are others; Museum has one of the highest downtown densities, yet has the worst downtown ridership; it's almost as bad as Leslie and is worse than Bayview stations.

Why are the circles biased??

How far away is Warden from Victoria Park?

How far away is Chester from Pape Station?

Spadina's Yonge-University ridership is not a surprise at all - since the automated walkway was removed, most people just go straight to St. George.

There are very pertinent factors you're completely ignoring.

Again, it is true, I did the math. If we assume that 50,000 people use the Sheppard line every weekday (t0 factor in the bare minimum for weekends), and assume there are about 300 weekdays in a year, we get 15 million yearly riders. Per kilometer, that's 2.73 million annually per kilometer. We know that the ridership of the Sheppard line is better than almost every metro system in the US, with the exception of New York and there's not enough information on Montreal. Let's just take London's underground in its entirety, considered to be one of the busiest in the world. 1.340 billion annual riders. Divided by 300, and then by 402 (length of their system), we find an average of 11,111 passengers per kilometer. Compared to Sheppard's 9,100 per kilometer, London's averages about 2000 more passengers per kilometer per day on the high end of the spectrum. On the high end of the spectrum, where we assume ridership on Sheppard during the weekend is the same as a weekday, then London's ridership per km drops to 9, 132 people per day on the low end of the spectrum, basically the same to Sheppard. When you consider the fact that all of London's underground goes through much denser areas than Sheppard (except parts of the Metropolitan Line), the ridership levels are quite incredible. Plenty of other European cities go through this, the exceptions of the ones I checked being Prague and Moscow. How about in Asia? It's a little different considering that the cities were built with mass transit in mind an not the car, like here in North America, however, there are still examples of where daily ridership per kilometer is higher on the sheppard line than entire subway lines. Take Nanjing's Metro, 832 million people use their 347km system annually. Assuming there are 300 weekdays, 7,992 people use the subway per kilometer. Daegu South Korea? 163 million annual passengers on 81 km of track. That comes to 6,708 passengers per kilometer. The numbers don't lie. Kunming China? Hamburg Germany? Barcelona Spain? All these systems have ridership levels with fewer people per kilometer than the Sheppard subway. Also, Bayview's ridership, statistically, is over 9000 ppd, so that was a flat-out lie (8990 people in 2015, 9030, 9330, 9380, 9390, 9030 for the years before 2015).

According to 2015 stats the Sheppard Line had 49,070 riders per day. It's important to note the TTC defines this number as "the typical number of customer trips made on each subway on an average weekday (in bold text), and the typical number of
customers travelling to and from each station platform on an average weekday.

I have no idea if the London Underground uses the exact same criteria.

Assuming they do, the Underground has 5 million riders a day, over 402 kms - that's 12,437 per km, which is significantly higher than the Sheppard Line 8,921 total. It's about a 40% difference.

This is completely ignoring that it's kind of silly to compare the entire daily ridership for one of the largest subways in the world to a single 5.5 km line. Of course the short line will have an advantage. No one is denying the Underground serves some suburban areas, but that 402 km of track also includes some significant overlap (and shared track between lines) - this makes a direct km comparison pointless.

Did London build suburban infrastructure before it had built subways in it's most dense areas? I'd have little problem with the idea of a Sheppard Line (or extensions to Scarborough) some point in the future - but not when there are very dense areas of the city completely unserved and/or underserved.

When you look at the Yonge line between St Clair and Bloor yonge, there are two stations with a ridership of less than 6000 each (I put Rosedale's lower because it has a general trend of lower ridership; it has steadily declined from ~8000 in 2011, 7000 in 2011-2013 (years of changing timeframe for station counting), and 6,250 in 2014. Summerhill has been stagnant). Yes, it's not as bad as the section between Bayview and don mills, however, it's right next to downtown. As I said before, they built the station at Bessarion for future development, if they were fcussing on bus connections (which I think has much higher merit), they shouldn't have built it at all.

Rosedale Station is a 10 minute walk from Yonge Station - it's a lot less if you're walking at an above average pace. The two are only 800m or so apart.

In fact, Summerhill and Yonge stations (over 216,000 riders according to 2015 stats) are just over a km apart. Right after Summerhill you have St. Clair, whose 36,000+ ridership represents about 73% of the entire Sheppard Line's ridership at one stop.

You're pulling up a lot of numbers while ignoring the most important ones. Cherry picking individual stops while ignoring the context of the entire line makes no sense.

 

[Streety McCarface]

Why are the circles biased??

How far away is Warden from Victoria Park?

How far away is Chester from Pape Station?

Spadina's Yonge-University ridership is not a surprise at all - since the automated walkway was removed, most people just go straight to St. George.

There are very pertinent factors you're completely ignoring.




According to 2015 stats the Sheppard Line had 49,070 riders per day. It's important to note the TTC defines this number as "the typical number of customer trips made on each subway on an average weekday (in bold text), and the typical number of
customers travelling to and from each station platform on an average weekday.

I have no idea if the London Underground uses the exact same criteria.

Assuming they do, the Underground has 5 million riders a day, over 402 kms - that's 12,437 per km, which is significantly higher than the Sheppard Line 8,921 total. It's about a 40% difference.

This is completely ignoring that it's kind of silly to compare the entire daily ridership for one of the largest subways in the world to a single 5.5 km line. Of course the short line will have an advantage. No one is denying the Underground serves some suburban areas, but that 402 km of track also includes some significant overlap (and shared track between lines) - this makes a direct km comparison pointless.

Did London build suburban infrastructure before it had built subways in it's most dense areas? I'd have little problem with the idea of a Sheppard Line (or extensions to Scarborough) some point in the future - but not when there are very dense areas of the city completely unserved and/or underserved.



Rosedale Station is a 10 minute walk from Yonge Station - it's a lot less if you're walking at an above average pace. The two are only 800m or so apart.

In fact, Summerhill and Yonge stations (over 216,000 riders according to 2015 stats) are just over a km apart. Right after Summerhill you have St. Clair, whose 36,000+ ridership represents about 73% of the entire Sheppard Line's ridership at one stop.

You're pulling up a lot of numbers while ignoring the most important ones. Cherry picking individual stops while ignoring the context of the entire line makes no sense.

The circles around the station densities in the subway map are biased because they don't accurately represent density. Look at don mills and Broadview Stations. Don mills is huge while broadview is tiny.

Chester to Pape is underground, Warden to Vic Park is above ground. Big difference in case of necessary stations. Also, again, see Rosedale and Summerhill stations, as well as the Spadina Subway.

Spadina subway station ridership minus (Bloor Danforth ridership-Yonge ridership) at Spadina station equals about 15, 000 people per day. Fewer still when you factor in the Spadina LRT. The point is that despite the high density at the station, few to no people actually walk to the station. If we're talking about density, we have to look at how many people use the station by WALKING to the station, not transferring from one mode to another. While I'm at it, St George would only have a ridership of 7,220 if the transfer was not there, and Bloor Yonge would only have 32,950. They are not pertinent factors, because transferring has nothing to do with this.

As I said before, 49,090 on the average WEEKDAY. Does that include weekends? The London Underground tallies entrances and exits per line and systemwide and sums them up to get an annual ridership figure. I am almost completely ignoring weekend ridership for the sake of rounding and working with better numbers. The London underground's annual ridership (weekends and all) is 1 billion 340 million passengers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems). That is equivalent to 4,466,667 riders per day. A huge difference from your 5 million figure. Again, if I factor in weekends, the number drops further to 3,671,233 million passengers per day. These are not biased, and they are not rounded like your values are for the Underground but not for the Sheppard Line. Again, 4,466,667/402km = 11,111 passengers per km, and that includes weekend passengers; the Sheppard line does not (not nearly to the extent as it should be. Let's say that 24,000 passengers use it each weekend day, and 49,000 passengers use it on an average weekday. That comes to 16,260,000 passengers annually. If I'm to divide it by the metrics I gave the London Underground, that leads to 9,855 passengers per km, a lot more than the initial 9,100 passengers per kilometer. Again, considering that the majority of the Underground is in dense urban areas, the ridership is really really high for a suburban subway). Also, that "Significant Overlap" is only the equivalent of about a 10 km section of the Jubilee line. The section of the Hammersmith and city line and Circle line is only counted once because H&C and Circle trains share the same track (Same with the District and Circle lines), the Metropolitan section is counted twice because it has its own tracks and is not shared with the Jubilee line, therefore, it is considered to be its own line). Fun Fact, the Metropolitan line and, the District lines were indeed built to the suburbs before any of the new deep-bore downtown subway lines even started.

(Chesham is really far out in the suburbs). There is no denying that, my point is that we hate on the Sheppard line without fair reason.

Again, Bloor Yonge station has an actual ridership of 33,000, when you factor in transferring customers. Besides, who the hell would walk from an area in Rosedale or summerhill into Bloor Yonge Station?

St. Clair has other routes serving it, notably an LRT which heavily influences ridership. Sheppard trains don't have that at their lesser used stations. Don Mills station has a ridership of 34,000 people per day. That's pretty similar to st clair despite being in the suburbs. I am cherrypicking, yes, because there are discrepencies all over the system, and Sheppard is still relatively new to the system. Other areas have had upwards of 30-60 years of ridership maturation, which is what subways are built for -- the future. There's no denying that there are a lot of areas of the city that are better suited to subways at this moment. Downtown is imperative, but if you pursue a negative narrative regarding an entire line (especially when its not there), the publicity of the TTC goes down and as a result, ridership decreases.

 

[syn]

The circles aren't biased at all. The sizes of the circle are relative to the other stations on the line - that's why they're colour coded. Don Mills has a giant circle because it hast the highest density on the Sheppard Line.

Broadview is smaller because the surrounding density is much lower relative to the other stations on the Bloor Line.

The numbers are included in the circle in case their is any confusion.

Thank you for sharing the map - it actually provides great perspective. Broadview's density is relatively low compared to other stations on the Bloor Line, but it would be near the top on the Sheppard Line.

As for the Underground, I was willing to assume the Sheppard Line had the same ridership on weekends, which it undoubtedly doesn't - that actually inflates the numbers. Even with those inflated numbers it's still notably lower than the entire Underground system. Your are also ignoring the fact that there's a higher density of coverage contributing to that 402km making direct comparisons kind of meaningless.

Spadina subway station ridership minus (Bloor Danforth ridership-Yonge ridership) at Spadina station equals about 15,000 people per day. Fewer still when you factor in the Spadina LRT. The point is that despite the high density at the station, few to no people actually walk to the station. If we're talking about density, we have to look at how many people use the station by WALKING to the station, not transferring from one mode to another. While I'm at it, St George would only have a ridership of 7,220 if the transfer was not there, and Bloor Yonge would only have 32,950. They are not pertinent factors, because transferring has nothing to do with this.

How are you distinguishing between riders are walking to the station and those who are arriving by bus or other means?

It seems quite obvious why ridership numbers for Spadina as a YUS station are much lower than they are for it as a Bloor Line station - many of the people boarding at the station are not travelling on the YUS. Furthermore, Dupont station, with over 16,000 passengers per day, is just 500m and about a 5 minute walk away - just a block and a half. Between Dupont and Spadina (YUS) you have roughly 30,000 passengers.

Again, you are cherry picking numbers and completely ignoring context.

 

[muller877]

It's not useless at all. Not all of the comparisons make the most sense, but they have 11 of them, and a lot of them are perfectly valid.'

I believe you're misunderstanding this chart. It's not suggesting that no one rides the subway between Runnymede and Bathurst, only that the ridership between Kipling and Runnymede is the same as it is between Runnymede and Bathurst
.....
This chart is perfectly valid and just goes to show how poor the projected ridership is for this awful idea.

OK. I got it. The Star used the number of people using a station and somehow called it a "load factor" for the subway. Load is defined to be the number of butts on a seat (or standing) for transportation. So the Star is using the wrong heading.

So the chart is even more useless to look at the volume in the east. They include Spadina, St George, Bay and Yonge when looking at the Danforth. So when comparing the DRL's usefulness this chart is not reflective of whom can use it.

It is good to compare the ends of the lines. SRT vs Sheppard vs Kipling vs Downsview vs Finch (but only if you exclude the transfers from Sheppard when looking at Finch).

 

[syn]

OK. I got it. The Star used the number of people using a station and somehow called it a "load factor" for the subway. Load is defined to be the number of butts on a seat (or standing) for transportation. So the Star is using the wrong heading.

So the chart is even more useless to look at the volume in the east. They include Spadina, St George, Bay and Yonge when looking at the Danforth. So when comparing the DRL's usefulness this chart is not reflective of whom can use it.

It is good to compare the ends of the lines. SRT vs Sheppard vs Kipling vs Downsview vs Finch (but only if you exclude the transfers from Sheppard when looking at Finch).

I'm not sure what's so useless about this chart.

It's taking select 6km sections of subway and comparing ridership.

You have an end of the line comparison with Kipling - Runnymede. Compare that ridership to what's projected for SSE - Kennedy.

 

[Streety McCarface]

The circles aren't biased at all. The sizes of the circle are relative to the other stations on the line - that's why they're colour coded. Don Mills has a giant circle because it hast the highest density on the Sheppard Line.

Broadview is smaller because the surrounding density is much lower relative to the other stations on the Bloor Line.

The numbers are included in the circle in case their is any confusion.

Thank you for sharing the map - it actually provides great perspective. Broadview's density is relatively low compared to other stations on the Bloor Line, but it would be near the top on the Sheppard Line.

As for the Underground, I was willing to assume the Sheppard Line had the same ridership on weekends, which it undoubtedly doesn't - that actually inflates the numbers. Even with those inflated numbers it's still notably lower than the entire Underground system. Your are also ignoring the fact that there's a higher density of coverage contributing to that 402km making direct comparisons kind of meaningless.



How are you distinguishing between riders are walking to the station and those who are arriving by bus or other means?

It seems quite obvious why ridership numbers for Spadina as a YUS station are much lower than they are for it as a Bloor Line station - many of the people boarding at the station are not travelling on the YUS. Furthermore, Dupont station, with over 16,000 passengers per day, is just 500m and about a 5 minute walk away - just a block and a half. Between Dupont and Spadina (YUS) you have roughly 30,000 passengers.

Again, you are cherry picking numbers and completely ignoring context.

That perspective makes sense

Again, with the initial value, I did not include weekend ridership of the sheppard line when calculating ridership per kilometre (9,100 passengers per kilometre per day). If any city’s daily ridership was inflated, it was london’s Because their ridership was based on total station entries, weekends and all.

Of course it’s going to be lower; it’s a stub versus an entire system. The point is that the ridership per km is fairly high considering that a city almost 4 times the size of Toronto, serves many vibrant areas of a city, serves an urban core, has about 100* as many others heavy rail means of getting into the city (vs our 7 semi frequent go lines), has basically no freeways, and charges people like 30$ a day just to go downtown. There are huge incentives for people to use the subway in London, yet the ridership per kilometre of track is nearing the Sheppard line. Doesn’t take that go to show that our disdain of our existing infrastructure is a little unfair? People argue against the sheppard line, I get that; there are better areas to build. However, put this in perspective: they were on the brink of building nothing (filling in the tunnels on eglinton), but they used a billion dollars to expand the system. It’s not nothing, it’s something. In the right place? Not really. The right length? Absolutely not. However, it’s much better than building nothing. Think if those funds went to building a new freeway or more parking, or another city, because that was what was about to happen. We have the infrastructure now, it’s not fully utilized, find a way to integrate surrounding areas to make it more attractive for users. This means changing zoning bylaws.

The distinction is an estimation: the difference in counts between Line 1 and Line 2 at each transfer station. This is what gives you the really small numbers. Don’t get me wrong, the stations are extremely important, but they serve little to no purpose in the surrounding environment. With regards to the spadina LRT, we know the ridership of that is about 40,000-45,000 ppd (it’s grouped with the 509 in ridership counts), I assumed 1/4-1/2 of the passengers transferred from the 509 to the subway. This brought the total down.

And again, I know I’m cherry picking stations, but as I’ve said before, ridership is still materializing on the sheppard line; it’s the only line that saw ridership grow in 2015. Its Also worth noting that all these stations have similar things in common: little to no surface connections. This makes or breaks a station’s ridership in the suburbs. Let it be known, bayview and Leslie have buses, if the lines had more local buses at those three stations like they do on line 2 (when I made bus counts for a thesis, it became evident that there’s a huge difference between the number of buses that serve sheppard area suburbs like Bayview Village when compared to line 2), ridership will likely increase. Leslie even has a fare paid area bus loop. It doesn’t get better than that for building up future surface transit ridership. I think it’s worth studying putting in some more localized transit lines in the area to bring people to stations.

 

[Leo_Chan]

That perspective makes sense

Again, with the initial value, I did not include weekend ridership of the sheppard line when calculating ridership per kilometre (9,100 passengers per kilometre per day). If any city’s daily ridership was inflated, it was london’s Because their ridership was based on total station entries, weekends and all.

Of course it’s going to be lower; it’s a stub versus an entire system. The point is that the ridership per km is fairly high considering that a city almost 4 times the size of Toronto, serves many vibrant areas of a city, serves an urban core, has about 100* as many others heavy rail means of getting into the city (vs our 7 semi frequent go lines), has basically no freeways, and charges people like 30$ a day just to go downtown. There are huge incentives for people to use the subway in London, yet the ridership per kilometre of track is nearing the Sheppard line. Doesn’t take that go to show that our disdain of our existing infrastructure is a little unfair? People argue against the sheppard line, I get that; there are better areas to build. However, put this in perspective: they were on the brink of building nothing (filling in the tunnels on eglinton), but they used a billion dollars to expand the system. It’s not nothing, it’s something. In the right place? Not really. The right length? Absolutely not. However, it’s much better than building nothing. Think if those funds went to building a new freeway or more parking, or another city, because that was what was about to happen. We have the infrastructure now, it’s not fully utilized, find a way to integrate surrounding areas to make it more attractive for users. This means changing zoning bylaws.

The distinction is an estimation: the difference in counts between Line 1 and Line 2 at each transfer station. This is what gives you the really small numbers. Don’t get me wrong, the stations are extremely important, but they serve little to no purpose in the surrounding environment. With regards to the spadina LRT, we know the ridership of that is about 40,000-45,000 ppd (it’s grouped with the 509 in ridership counts), I assumed 1/4-1/2 of the passengers transferred from the 509 to the subway. This brought the total down.

And again, I know I’m cherry picking stations, but as I’ve said before, ridership is still materializing on the sheppard line; it’s the only line that saw ridership grow in 2015. Its Also worth noting that all these stations have similar things in common: little to no surface connections. This makes or breaks a station’s ridership in the suburbs. Let it be known, bayview and Leslie have buses, if the lines had more local buses at those three stations like they do on line 2 (when I made bus counts for a thesis, it became evident that there’s a huge difference between the number of buses that serve sheppard area suburbs like Bayview Village when compared to line 2), ridership will likely increase. Leslie even has a fare paid area bus loop. It doesn’t get better than that for building up future surface transit ridership. I think it’s worth studying putting in some more localized transit lines in the area to bring people to stations.

What would you say is more valuable to the TTC, the fare paid bus terminals or the one fare for the whole system? I would say the bus terminals are more important since they make transfers much easier and integrated.

 

[Streety McCarface]

OK. I got it. The Star used the number of people using a station and somehow called it a "load factor" for the subway. Load is defined to be the number of butts on a seat (or standing) for transportation. So the Star is using the wrong heading.

So the chart is even more useless to look at the volume in the east. They include Spadina, St George, Bay and Yonge when looking at the Danforth. So when comparing the DRL's usefulness this chart is not reflective of whom can use it.

It is good to compare the ends of the lines. SRT vs Sheppard vs Kipling vs Downsview vs Finch (but only if you exclude the transfers from Sheppard when looking at Finch).

With regards to the end of the lines, it’s worth noting that they are comparing a brand new subway line to established lines. I don’t have data on subway ridership prior to 2008, I wish I did, but if you want a fair comprison, you have to compare the numbers of the SSE in 30 years from its completion to those numbers. However, even with densification at the SCC, it won’t increase much because there are no intermediate stops, meaning no room for future feeder bus lines. As I’ve proved before, density has little effect (job density does, however) on subway ridership, especially out of the downtown core. Also, the Kennedy to Vic Park section is a lie; with the loss of the SRT, the ridership count at Kennedy will be 40,000 less, so the actual numbers will be around 80,000.

 

[syn]

That perspective makes sense

Again, with the initial value, I did not include weekend ridership of the sheppard line when calculating ridership per kilometre (9,100 passengers per kilometre per day). If any city’s daily ridership was inflated, it was london’s Because their ridership was based on total station entries, weekends and all.

Of course it’s going to be lower; it’s a stub versus an entire system. The point is that the ridership per km is fairly high considering that a city almost 4 times the size of Toronto, serves many vibrant areas of a city, serves an urban core, has about 100* as many others heavy rail means of getting into the city (vs our 7 semi frequent go lines), has basically no freeways, and charges people like 30$ a day just to go downtown. There are huge incentives for people to use the subway in London, yet the ridership per kilometre of track is nearing the Sheppard line. Doesn’t take that go to show that our disdain of our existing infrastructure is a little unfair? People argue against the sheppard line, I get that; there are better areas to build. However, put this in perspective: they were on the brink of building nothing (filling in the tunnels on eglinton), but they used a billion dollars to expand the system. It’s not nothing, it’s something. In the right place? Not really. The right length? Absolutely not. However, it’s much better than building nothing. Think if those funds went to building a new freeway or more parking, or another city, because that was what was about to happen. We have the infrastructure now, it’s not fully utilized, find a way to integrate surrounding areas to make it more attractive for users. This means changing zoning bylaws.

Yes but that doesn't come close to being a valid comparison. London has a different layout, and much higher overall densities - these densities (and the coverage in those areas make suburban connections far more viable. Remove some of overlap, reduce the track amount and the 'ridership per km of track' number skyrockets.

The distinction is an estimation: the difference in counts between Line 1 and Line 2 at each transfer station. This is what gives you the really small numbers. Don’t get me wrong, the stations are extremely important, but they serve little to no purpose in the surrounding environment. With regards to the spadina LRT, we know the ridership of that is about 40,000-45,000 ppd (it’s grouped with the 509 in ridership counts), I assumed 1/4-1/2 of the passengers transferred from the 509 to the subway. This brought the total down.

And again, I know I’m cherry picking stations, but as I’ve said before, ridership is still materializing on the sheppard line; it’s the only line that saw ridership grow in 2015. Its Also worth noting that all these stations have similar things in common: little to no surface connections. This makes or breaks a station’s ridership in the suburbs. Let it be known, bayview and Leslie have buses, if the lines had more local buses at those three stations like they do on line 2 (when I made bus counts for a thesis, it became evident that there’s a huge difference between the number of buses that serve sheppard area suburbs like Bayview Village when compared to line 2), ridership will likely increase. Leslie even has a fare paid area bus loop. It doesn’t get better than that for building up future surface transit ridership. I think it’s worth studying putting in some more localized transit lines in the area to bring people to stations.

I appreciate the analysis, but your take on Spadina still makes no sense to me. Total ridership is large, and that's not just a function of the the transfer. The fact that there is another station in close walking distance on the YUS (Dupont) along with stations nearby at Bathurst and St. George (Bathurst Station and St. George Station are just 1km apart) are going to impact it's numbers. To say it serves little-no purpose is not accurate.

Everything you've mentioned about the Sheppard Line outlines exactly why it was mistake. It didn't just open last year; it's been around for nearly two decades now, and ridership and density hasn't really improved that much despite no real competition from other rapid transit. Bessarion is still the least used station by a fairly wide margin. For all the talk about Sheppard's ridership, the Spadina Streetcar handles nearly 44,000 riders a day. Considering density issues, growth projections and trafficeven Spadina would've made more sense for a subway extension.

The Sheppard Line would've been very well served by an RT, and in reality it's going to be many decades before a subway is justified.

Which brings us back to the point - wasting billions on the SSE in a corridor that clearly doesn't have the ridership to justify it is a colossal mistake when there are far better options for Scarborough, and areas of the city that desperately need subway infrastructure.

 

[Streety McCarface]

Yes but that doesn't come close to being a valid comparison. London has a different layout, and much higher overall densities - these densities (and the coverage in those areas make suburban connections far more viable. Remove some of overlap, reduce the track amount and the 'ridership per km of track' number skyrockets.



I appreciate the analysis, but your take on Spadina still makes no sense to me. Total ridership is large, and that's not just a function of the the transfer. The fact that there is another station in close walking distance on the YUS (Dupont) along with stations nearby at Bathurst and St. George (Bathurst Station and St. George Station are just 1km apart) are going to impact it's numbers. To say it serves little-no purpose is not accurate.

Everything you've mentioned about the Sheppard Line outlines exactly why it was mistake. It didn't just open last year; it's been around for nearly two decades now, and ridership and density hasn't really improved that much despite no real competition from other rapid transit. Bessarion is still the least used station by a fairly wide margin. For all the talk about Sheppard's ridership, the Spadina Streetcar handles nearly 44,000 riders a day. Considering density issues, growth projections and trafficeven Spadina would've made more sense for a subway extension.

The Sheppard Line would've been very well served by an RT, and in reality it's going to be many decades before a subway is justified.

Which brings us back to the point - wasting billions on the SSE in a corridor that clearly doesn't have the ridership to justify it is a colossal mistake when there are far better options for Scarborough, and areas of the city that desperately need subway infrastructure.

Again, the argument is that we have something and should be doing something with it. Weirdly, the lines that should be LRT and subway were reversed (Eglinton and Sheppard), but we have a sheppard subway, now let's fix the corridor in which it is used.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Again, the argument is that we have something and should be doing something with it. Weirdly, the lines that should be LRT and subway were reversed (Eglinton and Sheppard), but we have a sheppard subway, now let's fix the corridor in which it is used.

Are you saying that the even if (however unlikely) the Sheppard East Subway Extension will have less riders than the Scarborough Subway Extension, it should be built because the Sheppard Subway was already built?

Really makes you think
Idk if it’s a good or bad thing.