M II A II R II K
Senior Member
If those LRTs end up stopping at red lights in between and end up slowing it down for whatever reason then they fucked it up. Especially when it could have been given proper priority.
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Paleo
Active Member
Obviously it's an insurmountable problem so we should flush $8 billion to grade separate everything as the logical next step.
Solid Snake
Active Member
I think there's a general consensus (except the Fords maybe) that elevated should be the best choice east of Laird, underground at Don Mills and Kennedy.
I would prefer they spend the extra $$$ on elevated then hve the TTC run an LRt at grade in the middle of the road. I don't trust the TTC to operate an median ROW LRT at grade. There I said it.
BurlOak
Senior Member
I do not sense a consensus in reading these posts. I think many people think at-grade is preferable to elevated even if there were no cost difference. If is even preferable to underground since you can see the street. Maybe it is just ideology to oppose anything from Ford.
If there were a consensus, or even a thought that elevated was nearly as good as at-grade, someone would have done a better job costing to see what exactly (the estimated) cost difference is. What I find surprising is not that Ford, a novice in the field of transit, does not consider elevated rail, but that no one at the TTC or Metrolinx offered this as an affordable compromise. I have yet to hear Ford say he would not accept an elevated line.
Amy Rose
Active Member
the drivers can time it so that they can get their LRVs through greens
Palma
Senior Member
I agree. I see no problem building short distance subways. People would expect Eglinton LRT would be running like the subway lines which during rushhour is a few minutes and non-rush hour not that much longer. I know thats what I was expecting but I read somewhere on UT that Metrolinx had said it would run 12 min during rushour and 20 min non-rush. This will be a major problem and not acceptable. You build a tunnel portion and it runs like surface transit.
officedweller
Senior Member
Seattle may provide a good comparison - it''s LRT is "metro-like" on generally exclusive RoW (elevated) with only one section at grade - down the middle of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. (discounting the downtown tunnel that is shared with buses).
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
There didn't seem to be any analysis of alternative technologies. Transit City seemed to be "let's build some LRT's, now where can we put them" and then nudging the reports a bit to make it look like at grade LRT's were the only choice. No different really than Ford stubbornly clinging to an all subways transit plan (no one has called him yet on the fact that the Eglinton line would in actual fact be an underground LRT and NOT a HRT subway) and then trying to force it on everyone.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
One of the benefits, {besides higher speed, capacity, higher frequency, and more reliable service} is that that is the section from DM to Kennedy is elevated the whole line is grade separated meaning that the line could be automated. That is a big money saver which is a big deal in a system that is continually short of operational funds.
M II A II R II K
Senior Member
But elevated where though? Above the street or on the side somewhere...
Tulse
Senior Member
I'd be curious as to what the actual savings would be for automation. I would think that the labour costs of a few drivers are a relatively small proportion of the cost of a line, relative to station attendants, cleaners, maintenance, etc. etc. etc.
I think the real benefit of full grade separation is, as you noted, higher speed and capacity (which in turn presumably means higher ridership and thus higher revenue).
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Seattle is an interesting case. I always wondered why the city hadn't built a rail system sooner - it has a very vibrant downtown with a lot of office workers, and has urban walkable neighbourhoods where people would naturally take transit. Then I visited and noticed the topography - massive hills that are too steep for a conventional railway and deep, mountain lakes in the middle of the city. It's pretty much impossible to build an all at-grade system anywhere except in a valley (like MLK Jr Blvd). The city thus has one of the most over-infrastructured LRTs, but not out of their choosing.
Seattle also illustrates the folly of building over-infrastructured LRT. Their light rail system was by far the most expensive LRT system to build, per km, largely because of the tunnel and bridge work they had to do. The new leg of the LRT line to the University of Washington is completely tunneled, having to pass under both Lake Washington and the very insurmountable Capitol hill . It costs $2B to travel just 5 km, and will open in 2016. It highlights the astronomical cost of tunneled LRT very well.
Again, Seattle is doing this because its geography has forced its hand. It also makes a logical connection between a vibrant downtown and a university of 40,000 students - so it's not unlike the York U subway which almost every forumer supports. On Eglinton avenue east, where we have a wide, straight, flat arterial road with no major trip generators along the way, and low redevelopment potential (seriously, even with a subway, nobody wants to live in the Golden Mile - if subways catalyzed development, Danforth and Woodbine would be a desirable, high density neighbourhood), building a tunneled Eglinton LRT seems like a waste.
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officedweller
Senior Member
Automation also allows deployment of trains for limited periods (such as before and after hockey or football games or other big events) without having to call-in drivers for an 8 hour or 4 hour shift or overtime.
Or, ironically, if there's a snowstorm, less people will drive and more will take transit.
Dan416
Senior Member
I think the TTC has really dropped the ball on considering all options. In fact, they go out of their way NOT to consider all options (especially looking at some recent EAs).
The TTC itself is to blame for not building more subways, by insisting any subway anywhere must always have gigantic stations and underground 100% of the time with no eye to cost-cutting by elevating or running at-grade where appropriate. Both Bloor-Danforth and Yonge-University-Spadina have at-grade or elevated sections. Yet as many have pointed out, we have the subway running to Vaughan Centre completely underground. How insane is that? At the very least they could have trenched it and buried it when the need was there.
I see no reason our HRT must be buried all the time, especially on the fringes. HRT CAN and HAS been run that way even here yet the possibility is dismissed out of hand, and that's why we're paying $300 million/km of subway these days.
On the flip side, the idea of running our LRTs in the median is slightly ridiculous when you have a perfectly good ROW right beside the street. Having an LRT stop at traffic lights won't result in significant speed increases over buses, so what is the point?
To be fair, the Eglinton LRT is well-designed from the underground perspective and from the stop spacing perspective, but I feel much more could be done to make the at-grade portions faster.
BurlOak
Senior Member
I think the cost estimate for the Ford Eglinton underground line was $350M/km. The discussions of extending the Sheppard Subway to Vic Park was $500M - the high cost cited for going under the 404 even though they are actually going around the bridge and not directly under it.
At this rate, the cost of the DRL would probably average $500M/km, more through the downtown and less at the ends. I do not think it will ever get built unless we find a way to build cheaper subways. This may require P3, allowing road closures during construction, or other means to make it affordable.