Toronto Crosstown LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | Arcadis

[Rainforest]

Wait, who said the current platforms don't fit 3-car trains? All platforms (surface and underground) are around 95 metres long and there will be a 1/3 unused. It's not even walled off unlike Line 4. Hope people don't stand in the wrong place.

If so, even better I wasn't sure.

I highly doubt people will prefer to transfer to Line 5 over Line 2 unless buses terminated at Eglinton. Unless line 5 has significant travel time savings. They won't likely get a seat in rush hour if they transfer from Line 5 to the bus. So downtown to Scarborough trips will default on Line 2.

That's from the document posted by Northern Light. The map shows higher demand north of Eglinton than south of it. I guess, a fair number of people would switch from the northern buses to Line 5 in order to reach some place midtown.

As traffic worsens from intensification, you'll have to pay people to take the local bus to get stuck in traffic.

Not necessarily. If you only need to travel 1-2 km (from where you live to subway), and your walk to a bus stop is much shorter than a walk to LRT stop, then the total travel time might be about same.

Once they extend Sheppard deep into Scarborough, I don't think Eglinton will suffer that much. I think forecasting is too optimistic as subway ridership is nowhere near pre-covid.

Possibly. All earlier forecasts had much lower demand for ECLRT, no more than 7,000 pphpd. Maybe, the latest forecast takes into account a newer plan for much greater density in Golden Mine, that didn't exist when the earlier predictions were made. We will see.

 

[smallspy]

From another thread ..



The problem is greater than I thought. However, can think of a few ways to meet the demand, short of stopping the LRT service for several years in order to build a new tunnel.

Why would you need to stop it? There's no reason why the line could not continue to run with only a couple of minor stoppages to handle the cutting in of temporary reroutes to handle localized construction.

Of course, this is also a whole lot of putting the cart before the horse. It will be many, many years before ridership on that section gets high enough to warrant tunnelling.

1. The report mentions that "the current plan for 2-car trainsets on 5-min headways may not be sufficient", and "it may be necessary to plan for 3-min headways and/or 3-car trainsets".

This has always been the plan, well before this came about.

Which means, 3-car trainsets might be sufficient to handle the demand, without changing the headways.

Yes. See above.

All underground ECLRT stations are built to be easily convertible for 3-car trains. For the surface section, there may be some challenges, particularly fitting the platforms for 3-car trains. But if there is a pressing need, then it should be doable, for a small cost and relatively quickly.

All stations and platforms have been built to operate 3-car trains from day one should the need arise. No additional work - save for perhaps training - would be necessary.

2. The 4 major N-S bus routes through the area are shown to be near or above capacity north of Eglinton, but below 85% south of Eglinton. Looks like an opportunity to run more buses during the peak, between Eglinton and the closest Line 2 station, to divert some of the demand there.

There are many ways to do this, and yes short-turning select vehicles is one way.

3. The Eglinton bus. Could run a short-turn peak-period branch #34 between the Science Centre and Kennedy, stopping more frequently than the LRT, and thus diverting some of the riders. Obviously, the bus capacity is a fraction of LRT's. But if the LRT on its own is only 10% above capacity, not 50% above, then the bus can help bring the demand just below the limit.

This is already happening to a degree, but the reality is that a bus would have to run at an incredibly high frequency to reach even a fraction of the LRT's capacity. Counting on a paralleling bus service is not really feasible.

Dan