Subway line interlining and splitting

[Second_in_pie]

How they interlined Bay station was bad idea from the start. Having two eastbound tracks at the same station was just dumb. They could have just had one platform with one track coming from the south or west sharing the eastbound track and have the westbound track going south or continuing west.

So like have the upper platform have both Westbound on Bloor/Southbound on University, while the lower platform has East on Bloor? That actually sounds much better than having two complete platforms... But in the end, frequencies would probably have to be reduced for turnaround times if that happened.

The only place I can really see this happening is Spadina-Sheppard to York U. :\

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Having the Bloor line, for instance, branch out could be useful (probably would have been easier to split at Islington than the current terminus); with 50% of trains going to Sherway and 50% going to the airport, you could still get good service levels on both branches.

Combining Spadina and Sheppard NW of Downsivew, though, does nothing, really. Having to wait every other train to avoid transferring saves no time, and will take longer if 2/3 of trains go south and 1/3 of trains go along Sheppard...waiting for every third train to avoid waiting for a second train will not save you time unless you're lucky enough to arrive at the station when that lucky 1/3 train is leaving.

 

[kEiThZ]

^ Though if the subway was extended all the way to Downsview, perhaps there'd be enough demand to do something more even than 2:1.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

^ Though if the subway was extended all the way to Downsview, perhaps there'd be enough demand to do something more even than 2:1.

Even if it was 1:1, being forced to wait for another train to avoid needing to transfer later saves no time. And for people continuing south on Spadina, all it does for them is reduce frequency and capacity, nothing more. Will half the Sheppard trains turn back at Downsview? That could cause delays. Frequency will also suffer if any short turns occur at all farther south on Spadina. It won't work and won't save time or improve service in any way, though it would be amusing to see southbound trains leave Finch marked "Don Mills," if they went that far.

 

[LowerBay]

How they interlined Bay station was bad idea from the start. Having two eastbound tracks at the same station was just dumb. They could have just had one platform with one track coming from the south or west sharing the eastbound track and have the westbound track going south or continuing west.

It had to be designed that way because of the grades -- they couldn't go down from Museum and back up to merge before Bay. It had to happen at Yonge. Because Bay is inside the wye, it has two levels. The twisted arrangement people refer to here was also not possible, as the wye was designed to support both integrated and segregated operations.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Maybe the Eastern B/D split at Victoria Park could be useful if it went to Kingston Road and also serviced the old Scarborough and hooked up with one of the GO Stations on the Lakeshore East line.

 

[kettal]

Having the Bloor line, for instance, branch out could be useful (probably would have been easier to split at Islington than the current terminus); with 50% of trains going to Sherway and 50% going to the airport, you could still get good service levels on both branches.

This kind of scenario makes the most logistical sense. Like a tree, with a trunk in the core and lower capacity branches in the periphery.

P.S. If you're doing that, I'd extend that Sherway branch down to Long Branch station, for connectivity sake.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

It had to be designed that way because of the grades -- they couldn't go down from Museum and back up to merge before Bay. It had to happen at Yonge. Because Bay is inside the wye, it has two levels. The twisted arrangement people refer to here was also not possible, as the wye was designed to support both integrated and segregated operations.

I'd like to hear your explination (physical constraints aside i.e. grades) as to why the twisted track alignment could not be done. I've never heard this argument be presented in all the documentation that I've read about the wye.

 

[Whoaccio]

The thing that worries me about interlining is that if a branch route only justifies maybe one train every 10m, then why are we even building a subway there to begin with? Creating branches to "feed" the main branches doesn't necessarily appeal to me for that reason.

There are a few cases where the idea of making short branch lines seems sensible enough though. For instance, with the Finch W LRT, why not run a few km of track north from Bathurst/Finch to Steeles? Or if we ever did get a subway line running somewhere downtown, why not have a spur come off somewhere around Spadina and down into the Island Airport? Or a spur off the eastern end of the line to the Portlands? Some, like the Island one, wouldn't even have to be double tracked.

 

[LowerBay]

I'd like to hear your explination (physical constraints aside i.e. grades) as to why the twisted track alignment could not be done. I've never heard this argument be presented in all the documentation that I've read about the wye.

Because the system was originally designed for integrated operation during rush hours only; at other times upper St. George and lower Bay needed to be configured to operate as alternating stub terminals for Yonge-University.

The University tracks at St. George were specifically placed on the upper level as insurance so that the University line could be extended north or connected into the Spadina line if integration didn't work.

Also, grade separation. The distance between Bay and St. George did not allow sufficient clearance for a twisted arrangement ... plus increased cost and complexity, etc.

So it WAS carefully designed by the same guy who designed the Greenwood wye, which is laid out differently. He could have applied the Greenwood design to the Avenue Road wye, but didn't, because the double platforms also served as holding points for the trains before they merged. However, he didn't extend the concept to Museum, and so trains were usually held in the tunnels before they merged into Museum Stn.

I rode the integrated system and I know all of its internal workings. All of the signals were on rigid timers, controlled by what they called automatic train despatchers. This system didn't work because trains couldn't stick to the strict schedule, so the wye was managed mostly on an impromptu basis by human hands for the first six months ... to keep the trains moving. Even on Day 1, they had to hold trains above and beyond what the ATDs were doing so as to preserve the alternating service pattern.

 

[Voltz]

What about interlining sheppard down the yonge line? This might make the sheppard line a bit less useless.

Be careful, saying that about sheppard can get you a rather long lecture,

But that interlining would not work as the tracks do not allow for it, and I don't see much of a point to such a service.

 

[Chuck]

Rather than interlining, what I'd like to see is the merging of subway alignments into 4 track cross sections to create express service. Let's say that a new subway line was built on Don Mills. Rather than taking it due south to Danforth, let it veer westward until it met Yonge somewhere in midtown, then continue south along Yonge on 2 new tracks, providing express service to the Yonge subway. Still build the DRL, but let it terminate in East York.

This would have 3 benefits:

1) Don Mills gets a subway, and those in the northeast part of the city no longer have to spend an extra 20 minutes on a bus getting over to Yonge.
2) Yonge gets express service to ease overcrowding and speed up the painfully slow ride between Union and St. Clair. This benefits the entire city.
3) A DRL is still built for those from Scarborough.

This may not be the best example, but it shows how the idea works.

 

[LowerBay]

Wow, you guys are really dreaming. Even the 2nd Av. subway in NY isn't going to be 4-track. Nobody builds 4-track anymore because nobody can afford it.

As for interlining, the only place it made sense was at Bloor and Avenue Rd., and now that is impossible. I was told by a senior planner at the TTC that had the Spadina subway not been connected there, the wye would have been reactivated with computerized control to deal with Bloor-Yonge.

 

[M II A II R II K]

The thing that worries me about interlining is that if a branch route only justifies maybe one train every 10m, then why are we even building a subway there to begin with? Creating branches to "feed" the main branches doesn't necessarily appeal to me for that reason.

Unless the stations are far enough apart to make it more like commuter rail and more worth the wait.

 

[junctionist]

Wow, you guys are really dreaming. Even the 2nd Av. subway in NY isn't going to be 4-track. Nobody builds 4-track anymore because nobody can afford it.

But one can dream, because brilliant ideas tend to start off as dreams, derided as impossible. But conditions can change.

If someone said, "let's build huge tunnels under downtown Toronto to pump cold air from pipes under the lake to cool office towers" I'm sure most people would shrug it off as unfeasible, yet here we are building these tunnels with a fair network already in place.