Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study

[innsertnamehere]

I remember seeing some renderings for an office building on the southwest corner of yonge-sheppard around a year ago on here, no idea where they went though.

edit: here it is, 25 floors:

more here:
http://urbantoronto.ca/database/projects/4800-yonge-street

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

datamouse:

The city really needs to start encouraging office growth in the centres outside of the downtown as one way to reduce demand for travel downtown.

That's what the city (or Metro) has been doing for the past 20+ years, to no avail. The ability of the city to shape office siting is somewhat limited. In any case even if that works, what you have suggested is only likely to reduce the growth of travel downtown, and not reduce the demand for such from the current baseline.

re: Leaside bridge

I wonder if the piers are capable of supporting a rebuilt double-deck. One can conceivably be retrofit and enhance the structure...

AoD

 

[Neil]

And of course once you're at Lawrence the next call will be to push it just that little bit further to bring it up to Sheppard...

Yes, via the rail corridor and onto Richmond Hill to where the carhouse would reside.

 

[snowystar]

Storage yard, land expropriation, rolling stock, maintenance facility, control center.

Those are 5 things that are not included in the Evergreen line's published price. Reducing service on parts of the Millenium line to serve this new branch is one reason for this. The total service level in Vancouver will be the same, just spread over a wider area.

The Evergreen Line does include a storage yard and light maintenance centre. Land and rolling stock are also included. Without those, the price would be around 900M to 1B (as mentioned in the RFQ as the approx. value for the primary contract).

Control centre, on the other hand, will use the existing one on the Expo Line.

The 1.4B price tag does include 28 new cars. The plan is to run the line at 3min peak, 5min off-peak headway with shorter trains (as oppose to current 5.4min peak, 6min off-peak with longer trains). Overall, there is a 12.3% increase of service for Expo/Millennium/Evergreen Lines in budget. The section on the current Millennium will see a 10% increase in service during peak and 30% decrease in service off-peak.

The part that is not included in the price tag is the expansion of an existing station on Expo Line to handle transfer passengers (extra platform), on-going project to improve wayfinding on existing stations, bus loop, bus shelters at stations, landscaping, etc. These items sum up to about 100 millions.

Capacity is another area to adjust for. Skytrain at 60 second frequencies is no match for Toronto Rockets at 90 second frequencies. This impacts station design more than anything due to emergency exit requirements.

Neither can run at such headway. The limit for Vancouver's system is 75s, and the TTC subway is 105s after all upgrades I believe. In the end, Toronto subway can carry 65% more passengers per train, and Vancouver's SkyTrain can run 40% more frequent...

 

[rbt]

The Evergreen Line does include a storage yard and light maintenance centre. Land and rolling stock are also included. Without those, the price would be around 900M to 1B (as mentioned in the RFQ as the approx. value for the primary contract).

Fair enough. The tender documents I read indicated something different but this project has changed a number of times.

Neither can run at such headway. The limit for Vancouver's system is 75s, and the TTC subway is 105s after all upgrades I believe. In the end, Toronto subway can carry 65% more passengers per train, and Vancouver's SkyTrain can run 40% more frequent...

Yes, I gave the theoretical limits because it favoured Skytrain technology. Actual headways need to be a bit less so a train that falls behind schedule can catch back up again.

 

[BurlOak]

It's great for Vancouver for suburban lines. It's not appropriate for Toronto for a central line. It would have been wise for Toronto to use ALRT technology for an extension of the Spadina line or for Sheppard; and I say that despite disliking elevated stations.

Are you saying Spadina and Sheppard extensions should have involved a transfer to ALRT lines. For Sheppard, maybe you mean a dozen years ago the whole thing should have been ALRT? Or, possibly you mean that more use of elevated stations should have been used?

 

[BurlOak]

From Wiki, "At 79.6 km, Vancouver's SkyTrain system will become the longest rapid transit system in Canada after the completion (in 2016) of the Evergreen Line, compared to the Toronto subway and RT (76 km after the York University/Vaughan extension in 2014) and Montreal Metro (69.2 km)." In 30 years, they have gone from zero to first.

10, 20 or more years ago, Ontario and Toronto would have been ashamed of this. Now, we seem to be satisfied with our have-not status and continue to support the governments that brought us there. The same way, we continue to support the philosophy that all subways (rapid transit) must be gold plated and cost $400M to $500M /km. This is cost prohibitive and nothing (or very little) gets done because funding is difficult to obtain. Many say that there is a funding problem, but I agree that it is a design problem. Force the design to be more economical and it will be done.

 

[diminutive]

Though, wrt to a skytrain transfer at the terminals of the YUS line, it could actually work ok in peak hours. If we assume Yonge will operate at 90s headways a skytrain at 75-90s, and we assume very efficient interchanges, the actual transfer shouldn't add more than two minutes to travel times. Given the price differentials between suburban skytrain and conventional it could well be argued that we'd be better just forcing the transfer.

 

[diminutive]

Capacity is another area to adjust for. Skytrain at 60 second frequencies is no match for Toronto Rockets at 90 second frequencies. This impacts station design more than anything due to emergency exit requirements.

Beyond snowystar's corrections, this is the more interesting nub of the issue. Toronto's subway is higher capacity, especially if 90s headways and the 7th car materialize. That's obvious.

There is a compromise, less capacity for less cost. Likewise, options like the rail corridor impose their own compromises.

What if, hypothetically, the TTC could build a skytrain-like system for 300m/km (3x the Canada Line's costs...)? Obviously it's a lower capacity system, but if we're saving 150m/km there's still a huge savings. Which is superior, a full blown Pape-Dundas West subway or an inferior (skytrain, rail corridor) Eglinton-Pape-Dundas west line? There's a huge opportunity cost to the city in terms of opting for 500m/km subways (if) cheaper alternatives exist.

It's frustrating to sidestep this entire debate. The most capable option isn't automatically the most practical option.

 

[snowystar]

From Wiki, "At 79.6 km, Vancouver's SkyTrain system will become the longest rapid transit system in Canada after the completion (in 2016) of the Evergreen Line, compared to the Toronto subway and RT (76 km after the York University/Vaughan extension in 2014) and Montreal Metro (69.2 km)." In 30 years, they have gone from zero to first.

The wiki forgot to take into account that in 2015, the SRT will be closed for LRT conversion. So Toronto would loose another 6km by the time Evergreen Line is completed.

 

[ssiguy2]

^ I was thinking the excact same thing. Unbelievable how a city with such a small Metro is actually spending money to shrink it.

As far as the Evergreen Line goes it includes all stations, maintenance, bus bays, and rolling stock of a 11km line for $1.4 billion and Vancouver ussually has the final price tag come in under budget. Also the Evergreen Line will run the standard 36 meter MK111 trains and the stations are 72 meters but all of the Expo, Millenium, and Evergreen lines stations where built to be very easily extended to 100 meters or the length of 5 subway cars..........................high capacity by any stretch. The Expo line stations are going to all be extended to 100 meters within 7 years to accomodate 3 MK111 trains. To put that into perspective that is the same as having 11 MK1 SRT trains running at 80 second intervals if needed. That would be enough capacity for a DRL for a hundred years.

Ultra low-wage Calgary is completing it's new 8km West LRT which is costing $1 billion and it includes at grade, tunnel, elevated.....the extension is almost completely grade separated.

When I stated using the Airport Link {notice how I didn't say high speed} rail corridor by simply electrifying the line and making it part of the standard TTC subway system the entire western section of a DRL is already built. This includes, very importantly, the Union Station stop. All that have to do is continue that line along the rail corridor to roughly Pape and then tunnel 1 km to get to Pape/Bloor station and voila..a DRL at a bargain basement price. The city can gradually add more stations with the first priorities being Eglinton, Queen West & Queen East and as they need them adding Dundas East, Corktown, St.Lawrence, Waterfront, CityPlace, Liberty, Little Italy, The Junction, St. Clair, and Etobiko North. They could interline the system as well by having half the trains goto Pearson and the other half heading north off the rail corridor to Woodbine & Humber. This is what the Canada Line does.

Also, people are talking about a bridge over the Don Valley like it's the Caspian Sea. The Canada Line included tunneling under False Creek and 2 bridges over to YVR and Richmond including the mighty Fraser which makes the Don Valley look like mud puddle. This is what happens when you give a bunch of people a mandate of just finding out where they should put a DRL and not include a budget. They come out with these outrageous figures as if money is no object and with prices like that it is so easy for the City, TTC, Metrolinx, Queen's Park, and Ottawa to balk and the plan goes no where.

This report was not a plan forward but just public relations. The City can now just say they don't have the money and can turn around and say it's all Queen's Parks fault which makes for great re-election debates but gets the weary transit users of Toronto no where. There is no way in hell that Toronto couldn't build a Pape to Dundas West DRL for well under $2 billion.

 

[ssiguy2]

I forgot to mention that included in $1.4 billion is a 1 km tunnel..........about the same distance as the eastern rail corridor to Pape/Bloor station stretch.

 

[rbt]

Are you saying Spadina and Sheppard extensions should have involved a transfer to ALRT lines. For Sheppard, maybe you mean a dozen years ago the whole thing should have been ALRT? Or, possibly you mean that more use of elevated stations should have been used?

Yes, for Sheppard I mean the original plan instead of what actually got built and is extremely underused.


For Spadina line, the extension from Wilson through to Vaughan should have been intermediate capacity and largely elevated. Right now the extension of our subway lines is a bus route; ALRT is much higher capacity than a bus route.

 

[rbt]

What if, hypothetically, the TTC could build a skytrain-like system for 300m/km (3x the Canada Line's costs...)? Obviously it's a lower capacity system, but if we're saving 150m/km there's still a huge savings. Which is superior, a full blown Pape-Dundas West subway or an inferior (skytrain, rail corridor) Eglinton-Pape-Dundas west line? There's a huge opportunity cost to the city in terms of opting for 500m/km subways (if) cheaper alternatives exist.

For the DRL, I'm pretty confident that within 20 years of construction both the Yonge line and DRL will be in the 45,000 pphpd range at peak periods.

If anything, I would argue the DRL should possibly be 8 car trains.


That said, I'm almost always in favour of more lines over fewer where the resulting capacity is equal. So yes, 2 cheap ALRT lines is better than 1 expensive Toronto Rocket line.

Not in favour at all of a single vendor supplier though; so I'm not going to accept LIM based systems. You don't need LIM for ALRT though.

 

[MisterF]

Well, he specifically described a tunnel to Pape for a new transfer. I don't think this is regional rail so much as something like a London Overground or KCR. The only real difference I could see is alignment; King/Queen vs. rail corridor. And that's a worthwhile debate, whose answer partially depends on what we expect the DRL to do (relief vs. local transit).

It's an interesting idea, and using existing tracks with a short tunnel to Pape would be a lot cheaper. But it doesn't address the downtown shoulder areas, the King and Queen streetcars, or overcrowding at Union. Toronto needs both - subway like frequencies on the existing rail lines and a new east-west line through the heart of downtown.

Yea, this is one of the best parts about the DRL! It could potentially serve a bunch of non-commercial destinations, making it's demand profile less 'peaky' and greatly improving it's commercial viability. Nonetheless, peak demand projections are still comfortably within the range for canadaline/skytrain/val/mediumcapacity system, while an option like the rail corridor really wouldn't impact capacity at all. If capacity is appropriate for peak hours, it'll obviously be appropriate for off-peak hours as well.

I think we're arguing semantics here. A new tunnel along King or Queen is going to cost a lot of money, regardless of what kind of trains run through it. Full metro trains can be big like the ones we're used to, or smaller than the Skytrain cars like the Madrid metro. But if we build it for smaller trains we might have to build more lines in the future.

Edit: I don't know about the DRL being less "peaky" than Bloor. Its AM peak hour point ridership is expected to be 17,500 vs Bloor's 16,000.