Higher and faster, elevated transit isn’t always smarter (Commentary)

[M II A II R II K]

Higher and faster, elevated transit isn’t always smarter


Feb 18 2014

By Tess Kalinowski

Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tra...ter_elevated_transit_isnt_always_smarter.html

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So if overhead trains are good enough for Hawaii, Chicago, Vancouver, London and New York, why has transit-starved Toronto so consistently shunned this solution?

- It has been suggested many times. But, with the exception of the Scarborough RT, there’s never been much appetite for overhead tracks.
Most recently, it’s been floated as an alternative to running an LRT on the road on the east end of the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT, from Laird Rd. to Kennedy Station. --- It would eliminate the problem of reduced left turns and car lanes in a busy section of town, said London-based transit expert Michael Schabas in his review of Metrolinx’s Big Move. He contends east Eglinton is never going to have the kind of pedestrian vibrancy of a Queen St. so adding LRT to the road merely adds traffic.

- Toronto chief planner Jennifer Keesmat cites the shadow that a structure like the Gardiner casts on the street below. She also brandishes one of the chief arguments for building Toronto’s LRTs in the first place. --- “From a land use planning perspective, if our objective in integrating higher order transit into our city is to create great places for walking, for commerce, living,… elevated infrastructure doesn’t work so well for any of those objectives,†she said.

- It may be less expensive to build than an underground subway but it’s not necessarily cheap to maintain, said Keesmat. --- “This is the challenge with the Gardiner. It’s much more expensive from an operational and maintenance perspective than a road that’s at grade. The Catch22 with elevating any kind of infrastructure – a really good example of this is the subway in Chicago – not only is it ugly, it creates really dark spaces,†she said. --- It’s not just the shadow but the noise of elevated transit lines that can be problematic, said TTC CEO Andy Byford. If you build above the street you’ve also got to contend with getting people there, that means elevators or escalators.

- Keesmat says she’s more optimistic than Schabas about the potential for at-grade LRT to inspire a more human atmosphere on Eglinton east. --- “There are some areas along Eglinton that will mature very quickly, the easy sights. They’re always the ones that go first. Then there are other sites that are tricky. Land values are going to have to increase significantly before you’re in fact going to see that intensification,†she said. --- That’s often the case, she said, pointing to Bloor St. near the Dundas West Station. It has taken years, but mid-rise development is happening there.

- “The Honolulu transit corridor project is really about connecting the city with the county…. It’s about connecting two urban areas. That’s very different from the context we imagine along Eglinton where we would like to see a significant amount of intensification along the corridor,†said Keesmat. --- Despite the accolades heaped on Vancouver, the integration of Skytrain into the urban fabric has been uneven, said Lawrence Frank, a professor of the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC. --- Some of the station development has been very successful. But the spaces between stations have been more problematic although it’s not clear how much elevated transit depresses those land values, he said.

- On balance though, Frank said that elevated transit should probably be considered more often. --- “It’s just a matter of having very careful urban design standards and I really believe that vegetation – a lot of investment in trees along the sides of the street – is really important. To the degree possible you want to buffer it any way you can,†he said. --- While overhead transit hasn’t historically been embraced here, Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig says it “is one of the solutions we do need to think about for different parts of the system as we move forward.†--- It was rejected east of Don Mills for the Eglinton Crosstown. But there are plans for an elevated section in the West End, near Black Creek Dr.

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[innsertnamehere]

Shhh Burloak won't like this..

 

[ehlow]

This is probably the first time I've read or heard anything about elevated transit in Toronto outside of this forum.

I generally like elevated transit, I like that it adds verticality to the environment. Like at-grade transit, it can add character to the area. The older elevated structures in NYC or Chicago or Philly look more interesting to me than the concrete ones that Vancouver has. I also like that you can see outside from the train and see how far along the journey you are.

Having said that, any new elevated transit would look more like Vancouver than NYC, there would have to be elaborate & expensive stations with elevators & staff due to new regulations, not just a stairway like the older systems.

To me it seems like there would only be room for elevated structures & stations in fairly suburban settings with lots of space or parking lots, similar to the areas where Vancouver's system goes through. For example, I'm skeptical that it could go on a street like Dufferin, or Richmond/Adelaide without taking car lanes away for the concrete pillars.

I think that as soon as anybody proposes elevated, the locals will complain very loudly that it should be underground, due to noise and blocking sunlight (whether that's justified or not). My impression is that it's not necessarily that much cheaper than tunnelling either, which will make the pressure to go underground even greater.

It would certainly be cool, at least to me, to have LRVs running on an elevated track through Richmond or Adelaide downtown

 

[M II A II R II K]

In the suburban arterials they don't have to go directly above the street, and they can be trenched in certain areas. Doesn't seem to be much of an issue in the High Park, Old Mill and Castle Frank sections of the BD subway.

 

[ehlow]

In the suburban arterials they don't have to go directly above the street, and they can be trenched in certain areas. Doesn't seem to be much of an issue in the High Park, Old Mill and Castle Frank sections of the BD subway.

Could Bloor or Yonge south of Eglinton be built today instead of the 50's and 60's though?

Bloor runs very close to houses:
http://goo.gl/maps/iAxdv

Construction on both lines had to demolish lots of houses, this is Yonge:

It seems like these days it's always tunnelled by TBM. Even up in Vaughn.

 

[innsertnamehere]

because its cheaper. Expropriation costs are simply too high for cut and cover. land was cheaper in 1948, you could buy up entire neighborhoods on the cheap. Even then, I feel they would have TBMed the thing if the technology for that had even existed.

 

[Johnny Au]

If elevated lines should be built, they should be slender and fit the aesthetics of the neighbourhoods they pass through.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Could Bloor or Yonge south of Eglinton be built today instead of the 50's and 60's though?

Suburban Eglinton doesn't have much there to start off with.

 

[BurlOak]

Shhh Burloak won't like this..

Yeah, I especially don't like the part that:

It [elevate] was rejected east of Don Mills for the Eglinton Crosstown

The truth is that it was never rejected -at least not by the politicians or the public. The public was actually screaming to have the LRT grade-separated but the "experts" did not want to listen.

because its cheaper. Expropriation costs are simply too high for cut and cover. land was cheaper in 1948, you could buy up entire neighborhoods on the cheap. Even then, I feel they would have TBMed the thing if the technology for that had even existed.

Yes, cut-and-cover is cheaper. I am glad our fore-fathers decided to build as much transit as possible for limited money, instead of building very little fancy transit for lots of money. They knew the arguments of "land use planning", "integrating higher order transit into our city" and "urban fabric" would all disappear in short order as the City expanded.

 

[Forgotten]

I am glad our fore-fathers decided to build as much transit as possible for limited money, instead of building very little fancy transit for lots of money. They knew the arguments of "land use planning", "integrating higher order transit into our city" and "urban fabric" would all disappear in short order as the City expanded.

They should have never let North York or Scarborough into Toronto.

 

[diminutive]

This article is terrible.

But Toronto planners and politicians fear elevated transit lines risk creating a public realm with all the atmosphere of the Gardiner Expressway’s dank underbelly.

Comparing an 8 lane highway, plus offramps, with a transit viaduct is total apples to oranges. That should just be obvious to anybody who's ever been near any elevated transit line built since reinforced concrete became a thing.

“From a land use planning perspective, if our objective in integrating higher order transit into our city is to create great places for walking, for commerce, living,… elevated infrastructure doesn’t work so well for any of those objectives,” she said.

The point of transit is to help people move around the City, not to shore up whatever planning fashion is in style at the moment. For decades we had transit trying to shore up the various metro "downtowns" with no real reason, next will be the "Avenues." I'm not even opposed to the avenues plan, but let's not have the development tail wagging the transit dog.

More over, there's scant evidence that elevated transit really impacts development one way or another. At worst, development may be more concentrated at somewhat more widely spaced station. Ironically, the area in between the Gardiner and the railway viaduct has seen some of the most intensive development in the City!

It may be less expensive to build than an underground subway but it’s not necessarily cheap to maintain, said Keesmat.

I don't think anybody has suggested elevated transit would be cheaper to maintain than a surface option... If the overall ratio of surface/at grade ROW is very small, the savings from driverless trains could potentially outweigh other savings. The Canada Line consortium in Vancouver was originally considering a mixed system like what is being proposed on Eglinton, but found that the lifetime operating costs of more expensive LRVs and operators, plus bigger tunnels and underground stations, were greater than simply elevating the whole thing and using driverless trains.

At this point, it seems like the ECLRT is more or less set in stone and, net-net, really isn't such a terrible implementation. It's frustrating though to have the discussion around transit modes so hopelessly limited to at-grade vs. bored tunnels. What's worse, the same bogus reasons against elevated options keep getting trotted out again and again with repeated comparisons to Chicago's L or the Gardiner. Like, what is that? Why not compare LRT's with PCC cars?

The issue in Toronto is that transit planning is extremely sensitive to "local voices" to the point where planners seem to feel like construction and operational externalities have to be minimized at all costs, even if those externalities are clearly orders of magnitudes smaller than the mitigation costs. This applies to nearly everything and is why we end up with subways to big box lots in Vaughan being built way under ground.

 

[ehlow]

The most accurate comparison would be the SRT right, not Chicago's L or the Gardiner.

Any elevated LRT would look similar to the SRT I would think. (or Skytrain)

 

[Hipster Duck]

This article seems to suggest that Vancouver's system is exclusively elevated, when that's hardly the case. Only about 1/3 of the new Evergreen line is elevated, with tunneled and at-grade sections forming the majority of the alignment. Even the original Expo line has many at-grade, trenched or tunneled sections. My impression is that most planners and civil engineers who design transit projects with minimal political interference pick the type of grade separation that makes the most economic and managerial sense in the local context.

The idea that transit has to be "all elevated" or "all tunneled" or "all at grade" is symptomatic of the dumbing down of transit planning in Toronto, and Keesemat - who has consistently disappointed me from day one with her banal, power point understanding of how cities and systems work - is a planner for a dumb era of transit planning.

 

[junctionist]

Vancouver's elevated Skytrain infrastructure is inoffensive, even attractive in some places, though I prefer tunnels in any densely built up urban area. The elevated structures for the Skytrain are compact compared to those hulking steel structures in NYC that cover the entire street and leave it in shadows.

I think trenches are still feasible in the suburbs for subway lines. Expropriating a corridor of suburban houses and strip plazas will probably still be cheaper than tunnelling. If you had to knock down 50 disposal ranch houses in Scarborough in the space of one kilometre, that would only set you back $25 million at $500,000 a home. The cost of one kilometre of subway tunnel is now about $300 million based on the Spadina line built through a suburban area. Factoring in construction costs, stations and trains, you might be able to build subway lines at half the cost of tunnelling this way and cover twice the distance. The stations would be built to the same architectural standards as the Spadina line because station design is a valuable civic amenity that makes taking transit a better experience.

With all said, bringing walkable avenues to the suburbs is a laudable goal that some are dismissing for no reason. You can build a walkable avenue around any rapid transit mentioned in this thread, be it in the middle of the street, in a tunnel or in a parallel trench. It may take generations, but we can make it happen. In Toronto, we've always valued our walkable streets like Queen Street as the most important streets and even public spaces we have. It's logical to build up suburban streets to function like our urban main streets as walkable destinations and the hearts of communities. That's at the core of our city building tradition in Toronto.

 

[diminutive]

The idea that transit has to be "all elevated" or "all tunneled" or "all at grade" is symptomatic of the dumbing down of transit planning in Toronto, and Keesemat - who has consistently disappointed me from day one with her banal, power point understanding of how cities and systems work - is a planner for a dumb era of transit planning.

Keesmaat seems very much a product of the TED, Richard Florida age. Superficially, the things she says makes sense and sound profound. The brave new world of midrise avenues served by LRTs! The trade off though is TED level depth and understanding.

On the one hand, her shtick works by recombining concepts into newer, "innovative" compound concepts which have the appearance of profundity.

Because everything is so "innovative," the entire academic, technical, economic and social contexts of the issues get totally ignored and any criticism is minor. How on earth could a reporter publish a statement by a senior civil servant, who should be an expert, comparing something like a transit viaduct to the *freaking Gardiner*?!?!