How to deal with subway failures

[EFSF Jaburo]

I like your suggestions but this one is better for situations like today when the segment in question is short. (between St Clair and Summerhill)
They should have turned the SB trains around at St Clair and NB trains at Summerhill.

This way, people can just walk the short distance (5-10min walk) and make the transfer- no shuttle buses needed!

 

[Swarley]

That would be ideal if there were crossovers at St Clair and Summerhill. Unfortunately there aren't... the closest ones south of Summerhill are at Bloor. Not sure if there are any south of St Clair but the reversing trains would have been entering into the damaged section anyway.

 

[adma]

Besides, if you follow the subway carefully, emergency closures are *always* configured according to crossover potential, i.e. a closure at College means Union-to-Bloor shutdown, etc...

 

[Voltz]

Passengers need to make themselves aware of alternative routes in the event of a shutdown, in this case there just so happens to be a parallel subway line, the vast majority of those passengers had no need to crowd the shuttle buses like lemmings.

 

[Jonny5]

Some people did try alternatives and were thwarted. The 141, 142 and 144 all were crush loaded and left people behind at the stops after Yonge Street.

My usual route home is the 141 up Jarvis and Mt. Pleasant. On a normal day the bus averages 15 riders, which is odd in and of itself as going south in the morning there is often over 40. The bus arrived at the Yonge stop with a standing load and had to leave a few behind. There were people waiting at every stop on Jarvis, including a dozen at the Rogers building and none of them could get on.

The other crappy part was that since Yonge was closed, Mt. Pleasant was jammed, so it took 25 minutes just to go from Bloor to St. Clair.

On the plus side the operator waved the extra fare for the trip.

 

[ITcomputer]

awesome!

From the Toronto Sun:

Bob Shea was late for his mother’s funeral today — one of about 60,000 rush-hour commuters delayed by a shutdown of the Yonge subway.

The 61-year-old was among a packed crowd waiting near the Yonge-Bloor Sts. station for shuttle buses.

“It’s never happened before,” said Shea, whose mother’s service was in York Mills. “I guess you just have to put up with it.”

**

here's an idea Bob, spring for a cab, its your mother!!

 

[Swarley]

On a semi-related thread, is there a reason other than cost that there aren't crossovers between every station? I suppose the max speed limit going through a crossover might slow the line down but there must be a way to put in higher speed switches and signalling...

 

[Northern Light]

Swarley you hit the nail right on, 1 time capital cost, on-going maintenance cost are primary, the speed impact is pretty low if the cross-over isn't in use, since its near the station entrance anyway.

There used to be almost twice as many crossovers on the Y-U-S. Well the older part of the line anyway.

But they took them out to cut costs (the tunnel openings are still there, the track isn't or the switch is removed.

But the TTC has been looking at putting them back in.

The locations of the removed crossovers were: north of King Station, south of College Station (Gerrard Crossover), and south of St. Clair Station.

All of which would have had no impact on yesterdays' mess, as the old St. Clair cross over was almost exactly under the tunnel breach.

 

[jwill]

More crossovers downtown won't be all that useful. There are two parallel lines running north from downtown. Its the one part of the system that actually has some network redundancy. Bloor-Danforth could probably use more, and hopefully some of the east-west LRT lines will provide some relief options to B-D.

Basically, the only way to solve this problem is to create a proper rapid transit network, so people can just go around the problem without needed busses.

 

[W. K. Lis]

More crossovers downtown won't be all that useful. There are two parallel lines running north from downtown. Its the one part of the system that actually has some network redundancy. Bloor-Danforth could probably use more, and hopefully some of the east-west LRT lines will provide some relief options to B-D.

Basically, the only way to solve this problem is to create a proper rapid transit network, so people can just go around the problem without needed busses.

There should be a cross-over next to the Dundas West station on the Bloor-Danforth HRT subway. That would allow users to switch to the two downtown streetcars (Dundas and King). The Keele station crossover has no routes available that go downtown. And if the DRL comes to Dundas West, a crossover would allow users with an alternate route.

 

[Tacoma]

...
...From the city:
d)Yonge street ( or Bloor if BD line has failure) should be closed to ALL but TTC bus traffic in both directions between the affected routes.
e)Traffic lights should be prioritized to let buses through by keeping Yonge street green lights green for longer than usual (if not green always until the situation is resolved)

These situations happen very often to the Yonge line, and with over 300,000 people using it on a daily basis, transit needs to be a true priority on Yonge if a shutdown occurs. More often than not people are stranded and TTC is shown to be inept at handling the situation. They always seem to deal with it in the same way.

I'd like to hear some ideas on how the TTC and the city can better deal with situations to minimize the disruption, confusion and chaos that erupts when something like this happens.

With all due respect, closing Yonge Street during major disruptions and keeping Yonge St. lights green are TERRIBLE ideas! Doing so would cause gridlock of thousands of cars throughout most of the city core. So now not only is the subway down, but the entire city core is essentially shut down as well as it will take 10X the amount of time for drivers to get anywhere if they can move at all. There would be riots! No major city in the world would consider this course of action.

Under the circumstances, the TTC did the right thing and shuttle buses are really the only alternative. However, as a mitigating factor, where possible, the TTC should implement crossovers at every station. As this situation happened south of St. Clair (a stone's throw from where I'm working!), the shutdown should have only been between St. Clair and Summerhill stations which would've been only a short walk between stations and maybe shuttle buses not needed.

My commute on the QEW has been screwed up several times in the past couple of years when a car accident has shut down the highway completely - in those cases, it's taken me three hours to get home.

Those types of incidents aren't uncommon, but they don't seem to cause the same sort of fury. People don't rush to message boards demanding MTO's head on a platter. It's more accepted as just something that happens every now and again and we just have to deal.
...

Well... other than the taxes that everyone pays, you don't have to pay extra to use the QEW like you do the TTC. You can bet there would be fury if the QEW became a toll road such as the 407.

Don't forget the annoying on-board speaker announcements. Most of the time I hear the announcement I'd expect the emergency updates, ....

Be happy you can actually hear them! Half of the time the speakers are defective so that you can't hear much of what the announcer says!

 

[EnviroTO]

People going to Sheppard station or Finch should have taken the Spadina line to Downsview and the Sheppard West bus over to Yonge. People going to York Mills should have taken the Spadina line to Wilson and taken the Wilson bus to Yonge. Lawrence West -> Lawrence, Eglinton West -> Eglinton, St.Clair West -> St.Clair, etc. Trying to get all these people onto a shuttle service or bus routes right near the problem area is obviously not going to work because there is no capacity for that. The bus system in this city is a grid system which means to go to most places there are multiple options.

 

[Juan_Lennon416]

How many of those people would have stood up for shuttle buses if this incident happened on a -5 degree and snowing day? I am sure many would have quickly found an alternative

 

[Juan_Lennon416]

Yesterday in the Toronto Star a woman went downtown to fight parking ticket and was heading home to Neilson and Finch. While stuck at Bloor Station, why didn't she think about heading east on the B-D line and go home via the SRT?

 

[kettal]

More crossovers. Cheaping out might have been a good idea at the time, but this is the single busiest transit line in the hemisphere.*

*might not be true