Eglinton East LRT | Metrolinx

[CapitalSeven]

Forced transfer at Kennedy?

This is what you get when there is a constant stream of one-offs, not to say one-upsmanships, instead of developing a masterplan for areas like Kennedy station to ensure that the different lines could work together. It seems they may have even looked at re-using the elevated SRT terminal for one of the elevated options. That's kind of funny. Of course if they had not decided to extend the subway under Eglinton, the LRT line could have been continuous.

The attachment has a fairly clear plan showing the surface platform south of the GO building and about the same length as that building, which is roughly the length of the Alstom vehicles bought for Finch, 160 feet.

 

[ARG1]

Found this interesting part of the Eglinton East LRT IBC:

Jesus Christ

 

[innsertnamehere]

lol shows how misguided LRT construction is, at least for the variant Toronto likes to build.

The money for this project would go much further building dedicated bus infrastructure throughout Scarborough.

Spend the money on road widenings with dedicated curbside bus lanes and heated bus shelters which will be a fraction of the cost, provide far better service throughout the entirety of Scarborough, and be a far more effective service generator - particularly if the Sheppard and Scarborough subway extensions are built.

Hell a lot of spots probably wouldn't even need real road widenings and could just have curbside lane conversions with strategic lane additions at key intersections, particularly for north-south streets which are generally far over capacity.

 

[Northern Light]

lol shows how misguided LRT construction is, at least for the variant Toronto likes to build.

This is key. After my 8km walk on the weekend, I boarded the Spadina LRT NB to Line 2.

The wait time for the vehicle was brief; but the amount of time in-transit was barely ahead of walking speed.
We stopped at every single traffic light without fail, and then every single stop on the far side of the exact same light.

Completely and utterly ridiculous.

We need proper transit priority; fewer traffic lights, no delays for left-turning cars, and fewer stops.
Proper LRT is a fine idea, but if we're not going to build it properly, we should just stop.

The money for this project would go much further building dedicated bus infrastructure throughout Scarborough.

LOL, that would imply that we would build that properly. I'm not sure we should accept that as a given.

Spend the money on road widenings

Absolutely not. Dedicated bus lanes sure, but take existing traffic lanes and repurpose them.

Hell a lot of spots probably wouldn't even need real road widenings and could just have curbside lane conversions with strategic lane additions at key intersections, particularly for north-south streets which are generally far over capacity.

Ummm, here's the problem, those surplus lanes on Bellamy, and Brimley etc etc. are due to become Cycle Tracks; there would not be room for both cycle tracks and dedicated bus lanes w/o removing the boulevards and trees.
I tend to think repurposing would mostly be on the six-lane roads.

 

[robmausser]

Found this interesting part of the Eglinton East LRT IBC:
View attachment 404176

Jesus Christ

Travel times are not the be all end all of transit. You know what has great travel times? a 2 seater Lambo.

Ridership usage, long term operating costs, breakdowns, operating reliability, integration within the surrounding community etc, are all important metrics as well.

 

[ARG1]

This is key. After my 8km walk on the weekend, I boarded the Spadina LRT NB to Line 2.

The wait time for the vehicle was brief; but the amount of time in-transit was barely ahead of walking speed.
We stopped at every single traffic light without fail, and then every single stop on the far side of the exact same light.

Completely and utterly ridiculous.

We need proper transit priority; fewer traffic lights, no delays for left-turning cars, and fewer stops.
Proper LRT is a fine idea, but if we're not going to build it properly, we should just stop.

The thing is though that we're not comparing LRT to walking, we're comparing a future LRT to the existing RapidTO bus lanes, which afaik doesn't have any fancy stuff like TSP either. So sure, we can improve LRT with TSP, but it stands to reason that the same improvements to RapidTO would perform the same way, and as such we're back to Square One.

Travel times are not the be all end all of transit. You know what has great travel times? a 2 seater Lambo.

Ridership usage, long term operating costs, breakdowns, operating reliability, integration within the surrounding community etc, are all important metrics as well.

Sure, but travel times is by far the most important metric, everything outside that is just bonus considerations. This is Rapid Transit, the whole point is to get people from Point A to Point B as quickly and as efficiently as possible. With the opening of the SSE, I think its fair to assume that a lot of the traffic that would've used the EELRT when they studied it back in the Transit City days would rather just take the Lawrence or DSBRT to SSE and ride that instead. As such its fair to reason that EELRT no longer needs the capacity of an LRT, and if you don't need the capacity, you don't need the LRT.

As for the rest of the metrics like integration within the surrounding community, those are nice to haves, but you shouldn't design a transit project around that. You're basically making the argument that "we should spend 4B dollars on an LRT that is slower than BAU because it makes the street look nicer." Like... really?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

We absolutely should not be putting at grade streetcars in the same category of fully grade separated metros. Even with TSP, lane separate streetcar lines only show moderate speed improvements over their mixed traffic counterparts.

That’s because we designed the streetcar system to have the extract same stop spacing as the bus network. If the subway had stops every 150 metres, it would be very slow too.

I'd actually prefer that we make the St Clair, Spadina, and Harbourfront serious rapid transit (stop consolidation and real TSP), and indicate them as LRT lines on the map, along with Finch West and Eglinton. If you're boarding from a road lane, its a streetcar. Its extremely unlikely the City is going to rip up 6km of the freshly built line to elevate/tunnel it.

I completely agree with you. But I fear that “real TSP” would be tremendously difficult to implement downtown, with all the intersection transit lines

 

[TheTigerMaster]

lol shows how misguided LRT construction is, at least for the variant Toronto likes to build.

The money for this project would go much further building dedicated bus infrastructure throughout Scarborough.

Spend the money on road widenings with dedicated curbside bus lanes and heated bus shelters which will be a fraction of the cost, provide far better service throughout the entirety of Scarborough, and be a far more effective service generator - particularly if the Sheppard and Scarborough subway extensions are built.

Hell a lot of spots probably wouldn't even need real road widenings and could just have curbside lane conversions with strategic lane additions at key intersections, particularly for north-south streets which are generally far over capacity.

Is the capacity of BRT high enough for this corridor? I recall that they were anticipating 5,000 pax at peak hour. And this bus route was always very overcrowded during rush hour when I lived in the area.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Found this interesting part of the Eglinton East LRT IBC:
View attachment 404176

Jesus Christ

How would a LRT line, with wider stop spacing, all door boarding, TSP be slower than a bus with none of those features?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

lol shows how misguided LRT construction is, at least for the variant Toronto likes to build.

The money for this project would go much further building dedicated bus infrastructure throughout Scarborough.

Spend the money on road widenings with dedicated curbside bus lanes and heated bus shelters which will be a fraction of the cost, provide far better service throughout the entirety of Scarborough, and be a far more effective service generator - particularly if the Sheppard and Scarborough subway extensions are built.

Hell a lot of spots probably wouldn't even need real road widenings and could just have curbside lane conversions with strategic lane additions at key intersections, particularly for north-south streets which are generally far over capacity.

I do agree that BRT is needed across Scarborough. I don’t agree that BRT is the right choice for Eglinton East. An elevated metro or LRT has been my preference for the area, given it’s population density, length and fairly high ridership potential.

 

[innsertnamehere]

How would a LRT line, with wider stop spacing, all door boarding, TSP be slower than a bus with none of those features?

Mostly more complex signal lengths.

Even with TSP, the need to have dedicated left turn signals at intersections significantly lengthens average signal cycles.

A regular old curbside bus in a dedicated lane, *especially* with TSP, is far faster as signal cycles are shorter and far more simple.

Simpler is often better for many solutions.

While I agree that 5,000 PPHD is quite high for a bus route, the reality is that a full bus network of BRT lanes through Scarborough would disperse demand significantly. Right now the EELRT would "suck" demand out of east Scarborough onto it, while dedicated bus lanes on, say, Ellesmere, Lawrence, Morningside, Kingston Rd, and Eglinton would disperse ridership more. More would choose east-west routes to access the subway vs. riding the LRT south to Kennedy.

Most of the EELRT's ridership potential is from UTSC - and many of those customers would be better served by a BRT on Ellesmere to connect to the subway (which happens to already be in the planning process anyway as the Durham BRT)

I could see a Sheppard Subway extension to Malvern along the CP rail corridor dispersing alot of demand from the EELRT as well.

 

[ARG1]

How would a LRT line, with wider stop spacing, all door boarding, TSP be slower than a bus with none of those features?

Acceleration Limiters + Inefficient Door Placement + The Inability to Skip Stops + Smaller frequency can have a significant impact.

As for TSP and Wider stop spacing, the former isn't confirmed and we don't know whether or not that was considered, and assuming it wasn't there's nothing stopping them from adding that for the busses. As for the latter, it doesn't really matter when you consider the fact that express busses (from what I know) have the same, if not wider stop spacing than the LRT.

 

[Haydenpoon]

986 Scarborough Express skips all local stops from Kennedy to Guildwood GO with the exception of the Markham Rd/Eglinton Ave stop and runs every 5-6 mins in the morning peak.

 

[Voltz]

Reducing the cost by $2 Billion will make this project much more likely to get built. It was not worth it to tunnel under Lawrence and Morningside, a surface platform at Kennedy can be just as close as where the underground platform was to be, prior to the SSE changes. As well, the surface ridership along Eglinton is higher east of Kennedy, and most riders heading westbound transfer to the Subway, no need for through service.

As well, this line has decently wide planned stop spacing, for those who think we will be getting another Spadina Streetcar.

 

[Steve X]

Reducing the cost by $2 Billion will make this project much more likely to get built. It was not worth it to tunnel under Lawrence and Morningside, a surface platform at Kennedy can be just as close as where the underground platform was to be, prior to the SSE changes. As well, the surface ridership along Eglinton is higher east of Kennedy, and most riders heading westbound transfer to the Subway, no need for through service.

As well, this line has decently wide planned stop spacing, for those who think we will be getting another Spadina Streetcar.

Without a tunnel, that section would be another repeat of the crosstown at VP/Pharmacy. It'll be a really slow section. I think they should elevate it.