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kalis0490
New Member
@ARG1 brings up an interesting point. Although Conestoga to Fairview is generally not as competive with Lrt (the lrt takes 44 mins and the 7 takes 47 minutes so the lrt is slightly faster), The reason why this is not that big of an issue that the vast majority of trips are not from the ends of the system ( most trips are from the university to uptown and uptown to downtown) . The ion takes the same time as the car (high time competitiveness) , so with high enough frequency it has good potential .
The same things may not be true for the EE Lrt, which means end to end it will have low competitive ness
@T3G the reason I say that "Toronto is a bus to subway transfer city" is that numerous routes show this. Ridership on Finch west is only high because a lot of people ride long west/east journeys to the subway. If the time competitiveness of the subway didn't matter, every N/s bus route in Etobicoke would be as crowded as Jane.
Time competitiveness matters as thats the only way the SSE would have a ridership of 105K vs 35K for the RT. It indicates that ridership will be "sucked" from routes such as Markham as a subway bus connection will take less time than a bus - bus connection. The same would be true if EE had higher grade separation. People only see EE as a 40K/day route for a long way to come. I see it as a future 100K route---if it is just more time competitive.
APTA-2048
Senior Member
I commuted on the 36 regularly from end to end for four years. I gotta say, it’s not as many people going to the subway as you think. There appeared to be a lot of trips where the destination was either at a north-south street or connecting bus route. Lots of people going home from school or work, going to appointments, going shopping at places that weren’t downtown.
Rainforest
Senior Member
That's right. Cars capable of operating as LRT are more advanced, and therefore more expensive, than those operating in full separation. LRVs have to be street-safe (no dangerous high-voltage parts anywhere), they need the right/left turn signals etc.
Furthermore, their cross-section is optimized for the street running: narrow bodies to occupy less of the tight street space, and tall catenary to get the electric feed from the above. Now if we want to take that kind of profile and run them in the tunnel - and the TBMs dig round tunnels - we have to make a wider tunnel. That's why the ECLRT tunnel is wider than the Sheppard or TYSSE tunnels, despite ECLRT being built for a lower capacity.
LRT makes sense when all or most of the line is at the surface level. Such as the Finch LRT, that will run entirely on surface except near the Humber terminal and the Finch West terminal. In that case, the saving in the construction cost (vs a tunnel) greatly outweights the higher cost of the vehicles.
Once > 50% of the length is going to be tunneled / elevated anyway, the cost efficiency of LRT becomes dubious.
Rainforest
Senior Member
Speaking of Eglinton LRT, we have to take into account its design and funding history.
The original concept was to get a long crosstown rail line built all at once. At ~ 30 km, it was to be a lot longer than the original Yonge subway (Eglinton to Union), or the original BD subway. In order to make the cost of it somewhat acceptable, it was decided to set for the street median wherever possible, and only tunnel in the central section that has no space for the street median. The total cost was tagged at just 2.2 billion at that time.
The idea was reasonable, but the cost low-balled.
Then as the design progressed, the cost went up dramatically. The whole project only survived because it was a part of the larger Transit City package, and cannibalized other lines that used to be parts of the same package. And even then, Eglinton LRT lost its western section (relegated to a future phase) and got shortened to just Kennedy to Mt Dennis. In that state, it went through the RFP and entered the construction phase.
And finally, Doug Ford needed a subway-like project in the west, to match his OL / SSE / Yonge North projects in other parts of the city. Here comes the fully grade-separated Eglinton West LRT, from Mt Dennis to Renforth.
Thus we will have a 27-km long line (the original 30 km less the Airport segment that isn't committed yet), 18 km of those will be grade separated, and just 9 km in the street median. At that point, it would probably be smarter to have a continuous grade-separated line for the whole length.
That's not the end of the world, the hybrid line will still work. But it will have certain limitations, that are not justified by the limited saving in the total construction cost.
Edit: some benefit can still be found in having LRT on Eglinton, namely the ease of connecting to the north-south LRT lines if the city is interested in those. For example: Jane, Victoria Park, maybe even Leslie if the city wants to increase the density along that corridor. Remains to be seen how much of that comes to live.
The original concept was to get a long crosstown rail line built all at once. At ~ 30 km, it was to be a lot longer than the original Yonge subway (Eglinton to Union), or the original BD subway. In order to make the cost of it somewhat acceptable, it was decided to set for the street median wherever possible, and only tunnel in the central section that has no space for the street median. The total cost was tagged at just 2.2 billion at that time.
The idea was reasonable, but the cost low-balled.
Then as the design progressed, the cost went up dramatically. The whole project only survived because it was a part of the larger Transit City package, and cannibalized other lines that used to be parts of the same package. And even then, Eglinton LRT lost its western section (relegated to a future phase) and got shortened to just Kennedy to Mt Dennis. In that state, it went through the RFP and entered the construction phase.
And finally, Doug Ford needed a subway-like project in the west, to match his OL / SSE / Yonge North projects in other parts of the city. Here comes the fully grade-separated Eglinton West LRT, from Mt Dennis to Renforth.
Thus we will have a 27-km long line (the original 30 km less the Airport segment that isn't committed yet), 18 km of those will be grade separated, and just 9 km in the street median. At that point, it would probably be smarter to have a continuous grade-separated line for the whole length.
That's not the end of the world, the hybrid line will still work. But it will have certain limitations, that are not justified by the limited saving in the total construction cost.
Edit: some benefit can still be found in having LRT on Eglinton, namely the ease of connecting to the north-south LRT lines if the city is interested in those. For example: Jane, Victoria Park, maybe even Leslie if the city wants to increase the density along that corridor. Remains to be seen how much of that comes to live.
ARG1
Senior Member
Unfortunately some of these corridors have very similar problems, especially if we look at Jane. The Jane LRT was actually at risk of being cancelled even due to most of the street being so narrow that most of the route would have to be tunneled, and doing so was considered way too costly given the ridership that the corridor would have. As for Victoria Park, I honestly think that an LRT there has a higher chance of using Toronto Streetcar standards in order to make use of the Bingham Loop, so TTC Gauge and what not - which would make it incompatible with Eglinton.
dad pad
New Member
I must take a moment to point out that the Ontario line currently does not exist.
T3G
Senior Member
And why, exactly, is 1 km the gold standard? As I have mentioned on several occasions, having stops too far apart makes them inaccessible to those with mobility challenges. Hell, look at Sheppard East right now, they have to run a parallel branch of the 85 bus above the subway because the stops are so far apart!
Sounds to me like the BD line got it exactly right, hence it doesn't need a parallel bus line overhead eating up resources and taking away buses and drivers that could be used more constructively elsewhere.
You're not contradicting my point here. You're just reiterating how transit - any transit - may not be as useful on long cross town trips in suburbia.
I didn't say there were going to be NO people from the sticks using the service. I said there weren't going to be appreciable amounts, and I stand by that. The bulk of the Barrie line service runs during rush hours, and off-peak the trains run every hour. It will be the source of some ridership, just like some people from the suburbs of Prague come into the city. But the line is not built for the suburban commuter.
Moreover, on what basis did we blow the money on an extremely fancy streetcar? Besides the lack of transit priority, what exactly is the problem? Is the line a failure because we haven't induced enough demand to carry 100,000+ people a day? I don't see this as a problem. A rapid transit line doesn't have to carry the ridership of the 1 or 2 to be a success. At least it will be easier to breathe while using the service.
This is not an argument in favour of the subway. Subways need heavily dense areas to be successful, otherwise you're just wasting insane amounts of money when cheaper transit would do the job just fine and then some (see also: the Scarborough Subway Extension).
Why must it be this way? Why can't we accept that sometimes, the ridership in a given corridor is simply not enough to sustain a subway, and build trams instead?
Except that I brought it up as an example of how measuring the distance across the city doesn't tell the complete story (or indeed any story at all), not about what transit choices they did or didn't make.
Will it? Is 5 km of elevated guideway peanuts?
Is that a necessity at this point in time? This isn't the Yonge line here, the Crosstown is not expected to reach capacity any time soon and this feels like a benefit that it wouldn't be able to make use of for decades to come.
The benefits become somewhat dubious if the bulk of the line is tunneled, sure, but as a rule of thumb this is not true. If you have an LRT running on the surface, it means that you have a corridor that is future proofed against future ridership requirements, and you are able to run smaller and cheaper vehicles while the ridership justifies such vehicles, and then you are able to upgrade the service at a cheaper cost to subway standards IF the ridership reaches the need for a subway one day. It's like choosing to run a 40 foot bus vs. a 60 foot bus, but on a larger scale.
Well, I personally think the idea of avoiding a corridor because stops are too frequent is absolutely ludicrous, but you do you.
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ShonTron
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The only bright side is that there are no unsignalized track junctions on the surface section of the LRT. I really hate how slow the streetcars crawl at every intersection downtown. There will be no need to carry iron rods on Line 5.
DirectionNorth
Active Member
500 meters walk maximum to a station. We need to properly maintain sidewalks and pedestrian accesses. Beyond that, if you can't walk 500 meters, maybe you should be using Wheel-Trans.
A grade separated line could be automated. Which saves money towards that bus service that can be a truly local service, rather than a crosstown-local service. The possibility for higher frequency means that we can shorten the platforms, which saves money (especially in the underground portion). I don't think an automated line at similar capacities would have costed more in construction costs, and it would have costed less in operation.
Which is why we need some faster modes for lines that actually go crosstown. Ultimately, we paid $5.5 billion dollars for this line, so it should deliver a service that is better than its predecessor.
GO RER will change that. Also, serving more trips (a 1 km stop spacing can't, and shouldn't, be a detriment to ridership - especially if it's got good bus connections) should be the priority.
It's not only the ridership, but also the quality of the service for that ridership. Besides, a higher capacity means that you will be able to breathe.
Sure. But we've spent $5 billion on this line, and we will spend another frivolous $5 billion on EWLRT, so we should be getting fast and reliable service for that.
Paraphrase: "why don't we act Toronto and be short-sighted and not leave capacity for future trips?"
Yes, compared to what we're spending. Context matters.
That's the point. Our transit history is littered with no-foresight decisions. The Crosstown may not reach capacity in 10, or 20, or 30 years, but I plan to live longer than that (guess my age!). I don't want to see overcrowded Crosstown trains in my lifetime.
How is this a "rule of thumb"? The bulk of this line (roughly 60%) *is* tunneled, and a grade separated crosstown route would be actually future proofed, because you can increase train lengths on an automated system too (especially with PSDs).
"You should take slow transit because that's my opinion on how transit should be built."
Nobody ever thought that the 510 and 512 stop spacings were too close, or that this made the line worse, or took a different line because of that. Oh wait ...
T3G
Senior Member
Wheel-Trans requires you book your trip a minimum of 4 hours in advance. This might work if you know you're going to need to be somewhere at a certain time, but completely eliminates the possibility of any spontaneous trips. And anyway, if Wheel-Trans were our go to solution for everything, then why are we bothering with low floor vehicles? They have less capacity than high floors and offer an inferior ride quality. If we thought Wheel-Trans to be a sufficient replacement, then we could be riding around in next gen CLRVs instead of being thrown around every time a Flexity rounds a curve, but that's not the direction we have chosen to go in.
Do you have any actual statistics to suggest that the Crosstown is going to be worse than its precedessor, a bus line with no bus only lanes? Provided some absurd SOP to slow the trains way down like on the TTC streetcar network isn't introduced, the fact of having its own lanes alone is going to make the trip faster than that of a bus, as evidenced all over Europe.
Will it? The planned GO expansion is going introduce a measly five stations within the city of Toronto. Despite our marketing of it as a "RER", it is really going to be in no way comparable to the Paris RER, or the Berlin S-Bahn, or JR commuter rail. With the amount of new stations introduced it's more like it's more like a semi-frequent regional train like the RB/RE lines in Germany.
At last tally (2018, as per the CPTDB wiki), the Eglinton West bus currently has a similar ridership to the 510 Spadina line (38.5k), the Eglinton East bus a mere 23k. I don't see on what basis you say I will not be able to breathe on the Crosstown, especially if we don't expect ridership to double immediately.
Again with the assertion that the service will not be fast and reliable. Have you ever actually ridden one of these Euro style tram lines without transit priority? I have, it's annoying to have to wait at traffic lights but it's not the end of the world and it's much faster than making the same trip by bus, especially during rush hour.
I think calling this kind of thing acting 'Toronto' is a misrepresentation. 20 years after its opening, the Sheppard line barely cracks 50k daily ridership and we're building a subway extension to replace line 3, which also has similar ridership to the 510 Spadina streetcar. "Acting Toronto" would be more like overbuilding our transit and not getting maximum value out of it for generations so that the population doesn't have to feel like second class citizens for riding a "fancy streetcar" instead of a subway.
And before you reply to this accusing me of a strawman, if you actually look at the discussions around the Scarborough subway, at comments made by both councillors and regular citizens, not wanting to feel like second class citizens while downtown gets their subways is exactly the reason we are building the SSE in the first place. LRT would've been more than adequate for the job.
Strawman. I never said anything about the 512 being a model for how transit should be built; I brought up the stop spacing on the BD line. Someone else brought up the 512. I quite agree that the 510 and 512 are maddening in how slow they are, but the lines exist, and avoiding them because they stop a bit more frequently than you or I would like is outlandish.
And, curiously, the BD line enjoys a daily ridership of almost 530,000. Maybe the station spacing isn't as big of a problem as I've been lead to believe.
ARG1
Senior Member
If you want a local service, that's what parallel bus services are for. There is absolutely nothing wrong with putting bus routes on top of subway routes. In fact in Seoul, they have full fledged BRTs running on top of subway lines.
The Spadina Streetcar was worse than its predecessor, St. Clair today runs slower than when it was in Mixed traffic, and the Finch West LRT is barely going to be faster than the bus service outside of Rush Hours. Remember, LRTs aren't fast modes, all that separating them from traffic really does is allow them to avoid Rush Hour traffic, which while it's an important travel time, doesn't represent the only time people will travel.
Then you have no idea what's going on. GO Expansion isn't just 5 new stations, it's the electrification and service expansion of 5 GO lines. Recently Metrolinx has announced (clearly due to a push from DB) that all lines will operate ON AVERAGE every 5 MINUTES during rush hours, with it likely decreasing to every 7.5 minutes off peak. This is a far cry from what you said which is "The bulk of the Barrie line service runs during rush hours, and off-peak the trains run every hour."
And we in Toronto, as well as Canada broadly routinely underestimate how much ridership new infrastructure gives us. It's basically like clockwerk, we introduce a new service, and all of a sudden we can't handle the service levels.
Or for an extra 0.5 to 1B, we could've fully grade separated the line and built a metro with more capacity, and without risk of being tboned by some crazy driver.
Ye of course, because the Sheppard Subway is a tiny stub that doesn't go anywhere. You have to put every single line into context. When you consider how tiny the Sheppard Subway is, it's actually amazing it gets the ridership that it does. It has more riders per km than most lines in say Washington DC.
We can agree that the SSE overbuilt, but for various reasons the Scarborough LRT is frankly even more ridiculous. What should've been done is Eglinton gets built as a Canada Line style Light Metro, and the SRT is replaced by regular Metro rolling stock and acts as an extension of the Eglinton Line. That would've been great.
Who exactly was claiming that BD was somehow a failure? I was calling it unfortunate that it had such tight stop spacing and that it should be larger, that's not the same thing as saying that the short stop spacing is a massive failure that dooms the usability of the line?
This is what you're fundamentally misunderstanding. NOBODY is claiming that Line 5 will be a "failure", a billion dollar boondoggle that nobody will use. What we are saying is that a lot of design decisions are mind numbingly idiotic for no good reason. In fact, you have yet to prove your point, why is it a good thing that Eglinton is an LRT? What are the benefits of the mode? It only saves a small amount of money in exchange for worse vehicles that aren't suitable for the usage of a subway, that are more expensive to maintain, that decrease the reliability of the entire line due to being in direct contact with pedestrians and motor vehicles.
P.S, I'll add on to this:
Automation and higher frequencies does 2 things, 1 it means that you don't need a driver or employee present on board. This massively reduced how much money you're spending operating the trains. 2, this allows us to run smaller trains. A 150m train running every 3 minutes, has the same capacity as a 75m train running every 90s. If we look at Eglinton for instance, if built that as a metro, instead of building the full 90m long platforms, you could've built it with 50-60m long platforms, which would significantly saved on the construction costs. As you might well know, by far the most expensive part of any subway is the stations, having more stations absolutely baloons the cost of the subway project, and being able to halve or at the very least significantly cut how much station you need to build goes a long way in reducing the overall cost of the project, cost that can go to something else such as, elevating the eastern portion. Now I'm not going to have an argument on whether or not additional funds would be needed to do it this way, but I will argue that a 60m Eglinton Line Metro would not cost more than .5 to 1B dollar extra, which is only a 10-20% increase over the base price. This is why I said that "5km of elevation won't add much to the cost" and frankly it would very likely be worth it considering the far more pleasant trains and all the saving in operations that we would see.
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T3G
Senior Member
I have already argued that I don't personally care whether Eglinton is LRT, horse drawn carriage, or magnetically suspended monorails from Mars. What I have been railing against is the arguments that the lack of transit priority, while undoubtedly a uniquely Torontonian embarrassment, is sufficient cause to waste more money on grade separation, that you don't need subways everywhere to have a transit system worth anything, and that half a kilometre between stops is entirely reasonable and we should not seek to make our transit faster by screwing over those with mobility challenges.
ViveleCanada
Active Member
Stop spacing every half a km for a major rapid transit lines is going overboard (imo). If Eglinton was being built to serve mostly local trips, like the Finch West LRT, than a stop every 500m is totally reasonable. However, the Crosstown would be acting as a major arterial transit corridor (like the YUS line and BD line), so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to handicap the line for local trips. We shouldn't apply one mode of transport for every single corridor since each one has a different context.
DirectionNorth
Active Member
The point being that you can't make every accommodation for people with mobility issues. Ultimately, a parallel local service is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, since there will be such service west of Science Centre anyways.
You're literally arguing that a $5.5 billion (without operations cost, which raises that to $13 billion) crosstown line will be faster than a no-priority bus. Which is going to happen, but that's an unambitious target for all that money.
While also changing travel patterns throughout the region, and increasing frequencies on the Barrie, Stouffville, LSW, Kitchener, and LSE lines.
Our subways get their ridership from bus transfers, not surrounding density. People currently travelling to the Bloor line on a N-S bus, will instead use the ECLRT. I'd be surprised if ridership didn't jump 1.5x within a couple of years. Not to mention the future Ontario Line connection and developments going in on the line.
And the 510 is hardly a prime example of transit service.
Again, "faster than the bus" is a really low bar for such a project.
And I have ridden those trams, called: the 510 and 512.
Both were/are short projects that replace segments of existing trips, and don't provide any new connections, while the ECLRT will be a new line that runs across most of the city (especially after EWLRT),
You're right, SSE is hardly a model of good transit planning in Toronto. Eglinton West, SSE, and Yonge North are also mind-numbingly idiotic over-overpriced projects that are about politics rather than good transit.
On a slight tangent, I'd feel different about the eastern portion if EWLRT was at-grade or elevated. But since we're spending another $5 billion on that, the choice to make this section at-grade will have effects on future reliability.
I avoid them because they're slower than alternatives - I might as well walk, since the speed of the 510 is not that much faster.
It can have high ridership while also not being the ideal transit solution (in my opinion, at least).
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