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Sheppard Line 4 Subway Extension (Proposed)

BurlOak said:
The hardest part is Tunnel Height - not platform height. Try to solve that one with night closures.
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Or we could buy trains which fit in the tunnels we have. A low-floor gives an extra ~18 inches of space at the top with the same interior ceiling height; Edmonton's LRT tunnels are 50cm taller than Sheppard's and run high-floor trains with fixed overhead electrical feed in the tunnels. This isn't like the SRT where we would need to buy obnoxiously small cars to fit the existing tunnel.

Also, those early closures on the Yonge line for the last few years have been to re-shape the now deformed tunnel walls so some adjustments can be made.

There are few technical difficulties with doing the conversion with the line open. There are lots and lots of scheduling difficulties but TTC is pretty good at dealing with those.
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
Edit: Never mind. The body height of a LRV is almost exactly the same height as a subway car (~3.6 meters). This leaves no room for a pantograph or trolley pole on top. The subways cars already have hardly any breathing room in the tunnels.
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What? Perhaps for high-floor LRVs in older systems like Calgary and Edmonton, but, just looking at floor height, low-floor LRVs are already 80cm lower (1.1m vs. 0.3m). Granted, the electrical equipment usually found on the bottom of subway cars is displaced to the top of LRVs, but there is definitely not 80cm of it.

The TTC subway cars are about 3.7m high and a Citadis LRV (perhaps one of the most-used low-floor LRVs in the world) has a pantograph height ranging from 3.6m to 6.5m.

So the space savings are not enormous, all things considered, but modern LRT vehicles are definitely not the same height as subway cars.
 
GenerationW said:
They will never convert the Sheppard subway to LRT. Never!
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A little pessimistic here no? Tunnel height and the problems with fitting LRVs in the subway tunnels are really the biggest issues in the way of doing this, cost excepted. I maintain that conversion would be well worth the money so that you could run the SELRT right to Yonge Street, and even extend it westward, turn north up Dufferin to Finch, and then connect to the FWLRT for a seamless northern crosstown line, something which could be a great boon to transit riders in Toronto. Market the conversion as eliminating a transfer and perhaps people will even come to support it in droves, like with the BD extension. A line like this would be more useful than any Sheppard Subway ever could be.

Of course, looking at the prospects for the election on June 12, if a certain right-leaning party wins then this discussion is moot and we may very well see the extension of the stubway.
 
I honestly doubt that Hudak would actually extend Sheppard. If it was remotely possible, then it'd actually be one of the only positives of a PC win.
 
Aylmer said:
What? Perhaps for high-floor LRVs in older systems like Calgary and Edmonton, but, just looking at floor height, low-floor LRVs are already 80cm lower (1.1m vs. 0.3m). Granted, the electrical equipment usually found on the bottom of subway cars is displaced to the top of LRVs, but there is definitely not 80cm of it.

The TTC subway cars are about 3.7m high and a Citadis LRV (perhaps one of the most-used low-floor LRVs in the world) has a pantograph height ranging from 3.6m to 6.5m.

So the space savings are not enormous, all things considered, but modern LRT vehicles are definitely not the same height as subway cars.
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I got my numbers off Wikipedia. Look at the Flexity Freedom and T1 pages. The Flexity is 0.5 meters shorter than a T1, which is probably not enough room for a pantograph.

Of course Wikipedia isn't always reliable. An official source would be nice.
 
For one thing they'll be forced to deal with the issue when the T1s expire, unless they can 3D print replacement parts and keep those T1s in service indefinitely.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
He said he would only build transit when the deficit is under control. But he plans to cut corporate taxes...
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Yeah. I kinda torn on this.

While it's extremely clear that Toronto is being held back economically due to congestion and therefore provincial revenues are lower than they should be (by at least 1%, perhaps more), Japan has also clearly demonstrated over the last 20 years that you can't build your way out of a revenue hole (cutting taxes doesn't seem to work either).

The banks have been taking part in the push to improve transit and haven't freaked out over the corporate tax increase. It seems that they find congestion to be worse for their profits than business tax rates.
 
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MrsNesbitt said:
A little pessimistic here no? Tunnel height and the problems with fitting LRVs in the subway tunnels are really the biggest issues in the way of doing this, cost excepted. I maintain that conversion would be well worth the money so that you could run the SELRT right to Yonge Street, and even extend it westward, turn north up Dufferin to Finch, and then connect to the FWLRT for a seamless northern crosstown line, something which could be a great boon to transit riders in Toronto. Market the conversion as eliminating a transfer and perhaps people will even come to support it in droves, like with the BD extension. A line like this would be more useful than any Sheppard Subway ever could be.

Of course, looking at the prospects for the election on June 12, if a certain right-leaning party wins then this discussion is moot and we may very well see the extension of the stubway.
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Miller and Giambrone, hardly right-leaning, rejected conversion after floating that trial balloon.

But the bigger obstacle is that there are more than enough suburban Councilors (and some MPPs) who still support Sheppard, and want to finish it. While that is likely not possible in the current political climate, those suburban Councilors will, at the very least, use Sheppard as a bargaining chip in future transit expansions. And considering they tend to be pro-subway/anti-LRT, you'd have to give them something really good to agree to a Sheppard subway conversion.

The old "seamless" Finch-Sheppard LRT idea -- not seen in this section for quite awhile.
 
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