Dufferin Street: Eliminating the jog

[CityPlaceN1]

IIRC the Yonge subway line carries the equivalent of 16 lanes of traffic. Build a few more like that and the existing roads should have more than enough capacity for trucks.

Certainly those issues were all part of why some manufacturing, especially the large scale stuff, left the city. I don't think it was so land value driven as you might think, however. Only fairly recently has the trend been to convert buildings into lofts/offices/etc., but if you get away from the downtown area there is still a lot of space that could be utilized much better and is not valued too highly.

Industrial areas downtown moved for reasons of land value and high property taxes. Industrial areas in suburban 416 are also being squeezed this time almost exclusively due to high property taxes. Companies are moving from 401/404 to 404/407 because of high property taxes in 416 even though both have good highway access.

 

[Panzerfaust]

We don't think it's retarded because it will never be built. We think it's retarded because extending an elevated freeway through an established residential neighbourhood champions automobile-forward planning theories that were discredited in the early 1970s. It's also retarded because it's severely overengineered and ridiculously expensive to build: who except some Dubai sheik with ties to Osama Bin Laden's construction business would dream of building a 4 km long cable stayed bridge over dry land?

Oh believe me, I'm not opposing that. I agree that building this plan out would be the dumbest thing ever. I was simply pointing out the absurdity of saying that something is retarded just because it never stands a chance of being built.

 

[Hipster Duck]

A precondition of supporting any idea is that it will happen?

A perfect example of supporting an idea that will never occur, but seems to be quite popular here, is the whole Transit City plan. That plan will never be completed, ever, yet people here think it quite supportable.

Actually, you will find that many people on this forum - and almost all of them genuine transit advocates - are to some degree opposed to the design of Transit City. Our criticisms may differ in form and severity, but nobody on this forum believes that the TC plan, as is, is ideal.

I think my point, which has been lost in some of the rhetoric here, is that when we look at these transportaion issues, we have to remember that there is more than just single occupancy vehicle issues. The movement of goods is just as important, and a strictly LRT/Subway/Bus approach ignores an important component of the GTA's economy.

There definitely should be a lot of consideration into the movement of goods. One of the reasons I support regional rail (the so-called S-bahns) as a form of rapid transit is that they are heavy rail vehicles that travel along upgraded rail corridors. A quadruple track electric rail line that serves all sorts of rail traffic could also be used by freight trains, and many of the larger heavy industry employers in the GTA, such as the Ford Plant in Oakville and the GM plant in Oshawa, could easily be accessed by workers from a regional rail station.

Out in the industrial parks of the burbs, I favour a sort of BRT system where a circulator bus service - sometimes run by the companies themselves - can run free feeder bus service to a BRT station located in the median of a busy highway.

---

Ultimately, transit city is flawed because it's not a transit solution, but a proxy tool to "urbanize" the outer 416. There's this thinking somewhere at City Hall that if only Malvern or Jane and Finch had the same urban form as, say, the Danforth that, miraculously, all their socio-economic problems would be gone.

There isn't a realization that, although an urban commercial avenue is a great thing, you cannot sustain an urban commercial avenue for 30 km of length. Then there's the failure to recognize that the great pre-war commercial strips in this city are sustained by the density and form of the residential areas that adjoin them. The avenues plan fails because they are trying to build Haussmann avenues beside ranch bungalow sprawl. Finally, there's the failure to realize that what's keeping these areas unattractive might be the speed with which reisdents can reach their jobs using public transit. Building a streetcar ROW in the middle of the road will not make the areas more accessible or make commutes less strenuous. On the contrary, it may introduce downtown-like streetcar unreliability to the vast distances covered by suburbia.

 

[RedRocket191]

That's a very interesting criticism of Transit City.

I think that urbanizing the suburbs are a very good idea, and while this won't make all the socio-economic problems vanish, the concept of a transit city will bring those residents a more reliable way of getting to work than they already have - and isn't that the point?

I agree with you that you cannot sustain an urban avenue for 30 kilometres, and the concept of mobility hubs would be a much more efficient way of redeveloping the burbs.

Where I don't agree is that building light rail in a ROW will bring downtown-style gap-filled service. While the downtown lines do have line management problems, i do believe that most of the reliability problems can be solved by removing the vehicles from traffic and giving them advanced signal priority which not only holds lights green, but can see vehicles approaching and modify the entire traffic cycle timing along the entire corridor to keep it on schedule. If operated at subway frequencies with subway style, chimes-close-gone boarding, light rail can work in Toronto.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

Oh believe me, I'm not opposing that. I agree that building this plan out would be the dumbest thing ever. I was simply pointing out the absurdity of saying that something is retarded just because it never stands a chance of being built.

who said it was retarded just because it would never get built?

 

[unimaginative2]

I completely agree with you, Hipster Duck.

Where I don't agree is that building light rail in a ROW will bring downtown-style gap-filled service. While the downtown lines do have line management problems, i do believe that most of the reliability problems can be solved by removing the vehicles from traffic and giving them advanced signal priority which not only holds lights green, but can see vehicles approaching and modify the entire traffic cycle timing along the entire corridor to keep it on schedule. If operated at subway frequencies with subway style, chimes-close-gone boarding, light rail can work in Toronto.

While I'd really love to agree with you, RedRocket, I just am not seeing the TTC making any kind of serious effort to make light rail work. It already has four different streetcar ROWs, and all of them run with abysmal service frequency. Even Steve Munro now accepts what Spadina riders have known for years: the service is completely unreliable, ROW or no ROW. Just today, I passed a clump of four streetcars moving down the line together. Even at 5 minute scheduled frequencies, that means more than a 20 minute wait, which is totally unacceptable for a downtown route. Spadina's only a couple kilometres long. I've heard all about how Transit City lines will be different, but St. Clair is supposed to be the model, and it seems to be repeating all the mistakes of Spadina. Even by the TTC's own optimistic projections, there'll be no travel time savings over the existing mixed-traffic streetcar. Are these new lines going to be different from St. Clair? If so, why didn't we build St. Clair properly in the first place? Why are there no plans to improve it or other existing ROW routes? If they're just going to provide the same speed of service as the existing buses, with the possibility of slight reliability benefits at rush hour counterbalanced by the elimination of express service and ability to bypass a disabled vehicle, is it really worth $10 billion?

My friend was riding the Spadina streetcar home a few nights ago at 2 am. The scheduled streetcar never showed up. 20 minutes later, when the next scheduled route finally arrived, she asked what happened. The driver responded that the driver of the previous car just decided to go home without telling anyone.

Until the TTC starts making even the slightest effort to properly manage its streetcar routes, I'm really hesitant about putting $10 billion, all our transit eggs for the next 20 years or more, in a mode of transit that the TTC has proven to be incapable of properly operating.

 

[Chuck]

One of the problems with surface transit - ROW or no ROW - is that the transit vehicles are the only vehicles on the road obeying the speed limit. Even in the inner part of Toronto, cars drive at appropriate speeds of about 60-70 km/hr - faster on roads like Avenue and Mt. Pleasant. Buses and streetcars do half that at best, even when they have their own ROW. Add frequent stops to the mix, and you are guaranteed a slow trip.

In the same way that Toronto strives to have a certain percentage of people living within 200m of a transit stop, there should also be a goal of making grade separated transit more accessible to all parts of the city. If you have to ride a bus or streetcar more than about 5 km, the transit system is failing you!

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Ultimately, transit city is flawed because it's not a transit solution, but a proxy tool to "urbanize" the outer 416. There's this thinking somewhere at City Hall that if only Malvern or Jane and Finch had the same urban form as, say, the Danforth that, miraculously, all their socio-economic problems would be gone. The avenues plan fails because they are trying to build Haussmann avenues beside ranch bungalow sprawl.

There isn't much of a relationship between Transfer City and the Avenues plan. Of the four 'new' suburban corridors slated for lines, most of Jane and Finch West and pretty much all of Don Mills and Morningside are undesignated and inappropriate sites for potential Avenue-ization. These streets are mostly lined with backyards, parkland, and office/industrial parks and renovating them into Haussmann avenues would be way beyond the scope of the current official plan. Transfer City uses Avenues lingo purely as an advertising gimmick, both to justify the price tag and to make suburban streetcars seem more palatable to areas that currently see only bus service. I don't think anyone has any intention of actually trying to get the residents of Bonspiel Drive or Nabob Crescent to move so that their neighbourhoods can be razed and replaced by a few low-rise condos and dry cleaners.

Contrast this with no proposed transit improvements on Sheppard West, which is (as far as I can tell) the only place in the city where Avenue-ization is already underway, and none for busy arterials that are both suited and designated for Avenue-ization, like Wilson or Lawrence East.


Avenue-ization might be more destructive than beneficial on a street like Dufferin (the southern part, anyway), but is there any good reason why no one ever proposes streetcars for Dufferin...is it just the width of the road?

 

[Panzerfaust]

who said it was retarded just because it would never get built?

I seem to have completely misread what Jonny meant with that post. I didn't notice that he was responding to the statement at the end of the post he quoted. I misread it as him saying "Anything that doesn't come to pass does so because it is retarded". Forget that I said anything, my bad.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Actually, you will find that many people on this forum - and almost all of them genuine transit advocates - are to some degree opposed to the design of Transit City. Our criticisms may differ in form and severity, but nobody on this forum believes that the TC plan, as is, is ideal.

I'd like to note that I've never suggest Alcock's idea was ideal. What was refreshing about it was that it did attempt to address something beyond the rather blinkered "transit and nothing else" ideas that get far more play than they should.

There definitely should be a lot of consideration into the movement of goods. One of the reasons I support regional rail (the so-called S-bahns) as a form of rapid transit is that they are heavy rail vehicles that travel along upgraded rail corridors. A quadruple track electric rail line that serves all sorts of rail traffic could also be used by freight trains, and many of the larger heavy industry employers in the GTA, such as the Ford Plant in Oakville and the GM plant in Oshawa, could easily be accessed by workers from a regional rail station.

Out in the industrial parks of the burbs, I favour a sort of BRT system where a circulator bus service - sometimes run by the companies themselves - can run free feeder bus service to a BRT station located in the median of a busy highway.

I'd be interested to hear more of those ideas.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I'd be interested to hear more of those ideas.

I posted a thread in the 'General Discussion' section highlighting the success of Bogota's BRT system, the TransMilenio. Here's a short clip about it.

Bogota is a developing world city with a much lower rate of car ownership and a higher density than Toronto, but there are interesting parallels between the two cities that would make implementing something like the Bogota system somewhat feasible in Toronto. The layout of the outer-416 is ideally suited for bus rapid transit. There is already a very high transit usage for suburban areas and conveniently placed hydro corridors that could serve as ROWs. Feeder buses could serve the neighbourhoods directly, avoiding the need to run a service down the length of an arterial road. What these areas really are crying out for is fast, reliable transit service.

Buses have several distinct advantages over rail in medium-capacity, long-distance situations. They won't get stuck behind disabled vehicles, the ROWs are cheaper to build, the vehicles themselves are cheaper and off-the-shelf (witness how you don't have to go through a giant bidding/tendering war that takes years) and you don't have to spend millions on advanced signals and switches - a simple stop sign or traffic light will do. They're also really fast, especially if they are put in a right of way that is distinctly separated from an existing road, and boarding is sped up if they have their own stations. One thing that was so off-putting about Transit City was Steve Munro's insistence that the ROWs be built in the middle of existing streets. Why build one up Finch when there's a perfectly free and clear hydro corridor 500 m north? Similarly, there is a great hydro corridor running up and down the spine of Etobicoke just east of Martin Grove road that conveniently bypasses Kipling subway station.

Another way to make money off a busway is to sell time to trucks between 1 and 5 AM when the buses don't run. We could actually have a "truck highway" in place across parts of the city at no extra cost, which you could obviously not achieve with an LRT system.

 

[RedRocket191]

Why build one up Finch when there's a perfectly free and clear hydro corridor 500 m north? Similarly, there is a great hydro corridor running up and down the spine of Etobicoke just east of Martin Grove road that conveniently bypasses Kipling subway station.

Because no one lives in the hydro corridor, no one works in the hydro corridor, and no one wants to go to the hydro corridor. The point of transit city is to improve capacity and reliability of the transit routes they will replace.

If we want to build a transit line in the hydro corridor and use it as an express bypass then that's one thing - but it should not be a substitution for improving local service on Finch.

 

[Hipster Duck]

^That would be the point of the feeder bus service. The main BRT service along the hydro corridor only stops every 2 km, or so, and then you hop on a feeder bus parked across the other side of the platform and it takes you within the community.

You either get speed or you get local accessibility; TC opts for local accessibility, which means that it is an expensive rail-based substitution for the existing bus service.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Avenue-ization might be more destructive than beneficial on a street like Dufferin (the southern part, anyway), but is there any good reason why no one ever proposes streetcars for Dufferin...is it just the width of the road?

The hill on Dufferin at Davenport can be troublesome for buses, so I expect streetcars would have a terrible time of it in the winter. Nearby, and at a slightly less steep grade, Lansdowne was converted to trolley buses from streetcars for just that reason.

 

[MetroMan]

This may be a novel idea but a solution to the width could be to build a single streetcar lane ROW up Dufferin and then down another street such as Lansdowne.

This concept would consist of a double lane two way line from Exhibition Place to Queen St.
From Queen, the Northbound Streetcar would go underground up to Dufferin Subway @ Bloor then resurface as a single lane ROW which would go up to St.Clair, around to Lansdowne. The southbound single lane ROW would follow down Lansdowne then just after Dundas would merge into the existing rail corridor to Queen st. and finally down Dufferin to the terminal at Exhibition Place.

This would solve several impasses to a Dufferin ROW. The narrowest part of Dufferin is precisely from Queen to Bloor. Dufferin widens quite a bit after that.
The Exhibition Place to Queen st section is generally not that congested so both way streetcars can run in mixed traffic for that short stretch.
Queen to Bloor would prove quite popular as a connector from the 501 Queen car to Bloor subway and the single lane ROW up to St.Clair as a connector to the St.Clair ROW.
Dufferin and Lansdowne are so close together that there wouldn't be any large impediment to serving as a single North-South ROW and having a single lane on each would minimize any effect on removing that lane of traffic on each.

Because we'd have only one lane streetcar ROW, that one lane could be the one that runs next to the sidewalk which would facilitate the changes on to the rail corridor and ease boarding/unboarding of passengers.

The land necessary for this is already available:
- The Dufferin Jog elimination project has put a large area in the city's hands. This area would stage the entrance of the northbound streetcar underground and the off ramp for the southbound car from the rail corridor onto Dufferin.
- The on ramp of the Lansdowne southbound streetcar in to the rail corridor would be facilitated by the large No Frills parking lot and available lands around the rail corridor.