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SmartTrack (Proposed)

I wouldn't be surprised if the plan that Tory releases tomorrow involves BRT on Sheppard instead and using the savings towards Smart track.
 
In London, England, the longest distance between two stations on their Underground is six miles or 9.6 km or so: Chalfont-Chesham
It's entirely outside - much of it through farm fields. I'm not sure how it's comparable!

Nor do I see anywhere between there you'd want to stick a station - there's no major nodes - other than perhaps a small nursery about half-way in between - and a herd of cows.

The 6-kim distance - all underneath major roads - is unprecedented. There's some examples in Toronto of up to about 2.7 km, where it runs as-the-crow files - but the longest distance running under a road without a station is only about 2 km. Not having a station at Eglinton/Danforth was absurd enough (though mitigated by building this LRT). Not having one at Lawrence/McCowan where there is a major hospital is just perverse.
 
It's completely backwards, and I believe it's being presented as a subversive political move to eventually kill the Scarb Subway. Look at Stouffville GO / SmartTrack, and its 2km stop spacing through Scarb. It's a commuter line, yet it's now being given a rapid transit amount of stations. Whereas an actual rapid transit line is being extended as a commuter line with one station. That doesn't make any sense.

I'm not even sure how Stouffville GO got shortlisted for electrification, considering its 2010 business case and ridership as AD2W was less than stellar. There were no plans for electrification here less than two years ago. Now they expect us to improve upon it even more by having it become both electrified RER and a local-service metro system of sorts. It's odd, and doesn't add up.

I checked it too. It's about 6.8 km. Too long of a distance between subway stations to be effective as a subway service.
 
I know, to me it just doesn't make any sense. It defeats the very purpose of express rail. One would think that building more stations along a subway line would make sense as a subway is supposed to have dense stop spacing, while express is supposed to stop at key nodes.
It seems to me that either Tory not thinking very clearly or he is trying to appease everyone. At some point, he has to realize he can't have it both ways
 
Am I missing something? Why not just run an ST spur from the ST Ellesmere station to Scarborough Town Centre rather than build all that duplicate subway track from Danforth to STC?
 
I just checked. It is longer than the distance between Scarborough GO and Danforth GO.

Danforth GO to Unilever will be about equivalent to Kennedy to STC.

edit: or the equivalent of Davisville to King station. Wow.
I didnt think it would be that bad, wow. Just goes to show that Toronto does things completely backwards when it comes to transit planing. Not only do we build underground through empty fields to an undeveloped "Corporate Centre" aka Vaughan, but we also like to build ~6-7km of subway without a single station.

I think the new generation of doing things here is to be the first in the world in constructing ridiculous things.

The best thing is just to scrap the subway as a whole and build out "Smarttrack" and the LRT network. This subway is just becoming more of a joke with each passing day.
 
Am I missing something? Why not just run an ST spur from the ST Ellesmere station to Scarborough Town Centre rather than build all that duplicate subway track from Danforth to STC?

Because the curve between Midland and Ellesmere stations on the SRT is too tight. I read a report some time ago detailing that the newer Mark II cars wouldn't fit. They would have to rebuild the curve and as a result they would have to close both stations
 
Am I missing something? Why not just run an ST spur from the ST Ellesmere station to Scarborough Town Centre rather than build all that duplicate subway track from Danforth to STC?
one wonders ...

Why don't they elevate it?
Would that save much money? Elevating lets you build cheaper stations - but there aren't any. With tunnelling about $40 million per kilometre, I'm not sure it's worth the trouble of elevating, andthe politics that would involve on a residential street.

Because the curve between Midland and Ellesmere stations on the SRT is too tight. I read a report some time ago detailing that the newer Mark II cars wouldn't fit. They would have to rebuild the curve and as a result they would have to close both stations
The TTC 2006 report to rebuild the curve for the newer cars called for closing neither the Midland nor Ellesmere station; in fact it lengthened them. Given that rebuilding the curve, and extending the platforms at all the stations was less than $200 million, it's not that big of a barrier. Though presumably for heavy rail, they'd have to come off somewhere south of Ellesmere, and build an elevated long curve ... but still the principal holds - and perhaps it would be cheaper than subway.
 
I looked on Google Earth and I can see why they can't elevate along the route but if this isn't going to have any station so TOD is not an issue then why don't they use the existing SRT route or the SRT route to the Hydro corridor and use that? Would save monstrous amounts of money and be a hell of a lot faster and less disruptive to build?

If TOD or even bus connections is no longer an issue I don't see why they just don't use existing corridors.
 
I looked on Google Earth and I can see why they can't elevate along the route but if this isn't going to have any station so TOD is not an issue then why don't they use the existing SRT route or the SRT route to the Hydro corridor and use that? Would save monstrous amounts of money and be a hell of a lot faster and less disruptive to build?

If TOD or even bus connections is no longer an issue I don't see why they just don't use existing corridors.
Because SmartTrack.
 
What would you choose between SmartTrack and the entire TTC backlog?

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