junctionist
Senior Member
It doesn't matter. It'll still need extensive reconstruction.
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It doesn't matter. It'll still need extensive reconstruction.
denfromoakvillemilton
Senior Member
Member Bio
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- Apr 30, 2008
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IMO, after they crosstown opens, they should put in huge letters USE THE CROSSTOWN , when they close the Bloor Danforth Down for construction.
Last edited:
Uncle Teddy
Senior Member
People will quickly figure it out.
spider
Senior Member
Bike lanes, wider sidewalks and tree planting.
nfitz
Superstar
That's nothing to do with LRT. If our politicians want to simultaneously rebuild a street which is unnecessary because of the subway tunnel built beneath it, then that's an unrelated issue.
junctionist
Senior Member
It's sound planning to widen the sidewalks along a rapid transit corridor where people will be getting around with a car, not politics. The sidewalks should be widened on Eglinton, but also on the streets which have stations--for at least 500 metres north and south of the stations.
nfitz
Superstar
They should already be that wide on Eglinton ... and on many other streets where they are not. It's a different project, and shouldn't be linked. That's how we get these ridiculous outlandish costs where most of it isn't for transit ... like the $106 million ($15.6 million/km) that the St. Clair streetcar cost, rather than the real price of the TTC project which was $65 million ($9.6 million/km).
andrewpmk
Senior Member
Expect Eglinton to be obscenely crowded whenever Bloor-Danforth is replaced by shuttle buses for whatever reason.
Another reason why building the world's most expensive LRT line is a terrible idea.
salsa
Senior Member
No it won't. How come the Spadina line doesn't become "obscenely crowded" whenever the Yonge line shuts down (which happens often)?
Because a much more expensive subway should have been built instead based on your own massive imaginary ridership projections.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
So now we should be building a line as subway not on its' own merit but because of what supposedly would (without evidence) happen if a parallel line a significant distance away shuts down what, cumulatively 10 days a year?
AoD
AoD
nfitz
Superstar
I'd expect that's true now of the Eglinton bus. The 506 was unusable on when the BD line was closed because of a jumper earlier this week between Woodbine and Broadview. And I heard even 501 had significantly higher volumes too.
Wow, there are just so many things wrong with that comment. The expensive piece is the piece that's in the subway tunnel. The surface piece isn't particularly expensive for LRT. And you don't built excess capacity for such a rare event. They don't close the BD line for construction during rush hour, so there'd be plenty of capacity on the LRT on weekends.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
So you're telling us that you want to build billion dollar subways because the 2 BD may be shut down for an hour or two during an emergency?
And you're the same andrewpmk who was criticizing gov't overspending yesterday?
Okay then...
diminutive
Active Member
You can't completely disentangle the surface and subway portions, though. The subway component has to be designed around accommodating the LRT vehicles, so the stations are much larger than one would expect from such a low ridership subway.
At 5,000 pph/pd, the underground segment could easily get by with single car, 20m trains running every two minutes, with spare capacity through more frequent trains. Instead we have to build them with 90m platforms to accommodate bigger LRVs. That in turn usually means stations have to be deeper to still be totally flat, longer construction and so forth.
Vancouver was initially going to build the Canada Line as an LRT with surface running in Richmond, but found that lifetime operator costs and changes needed on the subway portion to accommodate LRVs ended up costing more than just segregating the whole line.
Frankly, if we just called the ECLRT a "subway," which most of it is cost-wise, it would never get built because its costs are extremely high compared to its ridership. But since we've called it an "LRT" it's totally ok, so there's politics and salesmanship for you.
Things are too late now, and I'm sure what eventually gets built will be an improvement on the current buses, but I highly doubt the current design represents anything like the best value for money.
howl
Active Member
Well, what are the alternatives?
1. Buses aren't fast enough and clog up the roads.
2. BRT (separate lanes) can't go underground so they would have to run on the surface the whole way greatly reducing the capacity of Eglinton between Bayview and Keele.
3. Streetcars are essentially the same as LRT with less capacity.
4. Subways can't run on the surface within a road right-of-way so it would need to be buried all the way to Kennedy, greatly increasing the costs; plus no one is predicting we will ever need that kind of capacity.
LRT is the most cost-effective option that meets all of the functional and capacity requirement. There doesn't appear to be any other logical choices, unless you are one of the spend-spend-spend conservatives who want nothing but subways.
BurlOak
Senior Member
I guess this would be true on when B-D is busy, not just days that it is closed
Good thing it is rarely busy.