Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

ARG1 said:
This isn't an issue exclusive with Light Metro and can happen with literally any mode. Heavy rail, we have trains running on TTC gauge like our own subway, as well as the Lagos Metro that is literally buying off our old rolling stock. We have Metros with Rubber Tyres, Metros with tight curves that require absolutely tiny segments (Chicago). There are also a ton of gadgetbahn type metros around the world that try to do their own thing. The term "Light Metro" isn't a specifier of technology, all it is is a specification of service type, which is fully grade separated rail service that usually runs lower capacity rolling stock usually in exchange for supporting higher frequencies. How this is done is mostly up to the manufacturer, and the type of technology you use to run your light metro is just that, a choice of technology. Some cities like Vancouver invested into this new and up and coming ICTS technology, which is definitely strange and bespoke, but there are many systems around the world that use it so to say it will be abandoned anytime soon is baseless fearmongering.

Looking at what's happening in Honolulu, its difficult to call that a unique issue with Light Metros. Instead this just looks like another list in a long list of incompetent decisions done by the design and engineering team. If we are going to look at cities that mess up transit and point out their failures as proof that a certain type of mode or service type can't work, we can be here all day. "LRT is bad and prone to endless problems - just look at what happened in Ottawa!"

Now let's read through what this guy from Vancouver has to say:

Unless you're using a bespoke technology, no not really, and its hard to say LRT is any way more compatible. Even in the realms of LRT you often have major differences between cities ranging anywhere between different railway gauges to odd loading gauges, and in many cases you still have newer LRT systems like in Sydney that use conduit electrification.

Except they do and they have for a long time. Before 2016, the Millenium line was just a looping branch of the Expo Line, so all of these coupled sets ran on most of the length of the Expo Line without any issues, and coupled sets still run on the Expo Line proper.

Extremely unlikely. There are still many cities in the world that use this technology, including the NYC Airtrain, the Beijing Airport Express, a good chunk of the Kuala Lumpur metro system, and several more in Japan. ICTS isn't going to be dropped as a supported technology any time soon.

[Citation Needed]

TransLink is "well aware" of this, which is why they and the NDP just released their 2050 transit plan, with the main plan involving building a ton of new skytrain lines and extensions. View attachment 318831

Also, the Broadway subway won't get a single car off the road? Massive claims with more citations needed.

Even if that was true, the primary goal of the Broadway subway is to relieve the 99-Bline, which is the busiest bus route in both the US and Canada, that, alongside the fact that its the first phase of an extension to the biggest university in the province, and will connect the main skytrain system with the Canada Line outside of Waterfront adding far more redundancy to the Skytain network.

I really have to question this source's background and claims.
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Factually incorrect. Translink (not the NDP) is planning Vancouver's future transit network. They are considering two options... Network A (more skytrain) and Network B (more LRT).
 
Northern Light said:
Agree w/the above............but want to add; suburban growth hasn't been terrible..........

NYCC has put up some decent numbers residentially and the Sheppard corridor has grown quite a bit and continues to do so.

Its certainly the case that Scaborough and Etobicoke under performed...........but they also lacked the public investment to bring them forward.

Six Points is only now being delivered, along with the new civic centre; while SCC has never seen its long-promised park delivered or most of its pedestrian masterplan or its additional higher-order transit beyond the SRT. It doesn't even have an Elementary School!

Sheppard has been a moderate success inspite of being a 'stubway' that failed to reach a major employment centre at Victoria Park; and saw its Willowdale Station cut.

NYCC has also hasn't benefited from a higher order transit connection from the west.

The City has also been very slow to upzone.

****

All of which is to say, the growth could have been spread a bit more evenly; but it has not..........yet.
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One of the reasons I was so keen on the Relief Line North is that it would've allowed a lot of this intensification to be distributed across the east side of the city. With the RLN, it would have been possible for a lot of people in western Scarbrough (lets say roughly west of McCowan) to access the Downtown core within 35 minutes. That is unheard of nowadays. It would have made the city a lot less remote for people in Scarborough.

Hopefully these benefits will still be realized in the near future. A subway on Don Mills would be the single most impactful transit project for Scarborough since at least the SRT opened (and arguably even more impactful than that).
 
TheTigerMaster said:
We could use another Downtown tunnel to avoid the Union crowding issues, but that would dramatically increase the price.
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Of course. Expect a minimum of $2B for the downtown component. Good transit isn't free even when the corridor is partially available (see REM as an example of not-free transit mostly using pre-existing corridors).

TheTigerMaster said:
Further, MX has previously studied, and rejected this idea. The circuitous (slow) routing of the Richmond Hill line wouldn't make it all that effective at relieving the Yonge Line.
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They studied a minimal investment version. At no time did they take the OL + Yonge North budget of ~$15B and look at ways of investing that into the Richmond Hill line to make it equally useful.

They did not consider a 5km tunnel under Leslie to eliminate much of the bend for example, which is quite affordable with a $15B budget.

TheTigerMaster said:
I'm generally not a huge fan of this idea because it addresses travel patterns already served by Yonge and the OL. Any lines beyond the OL should go east into Scarborough.
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The situation statement made was that both Yonge and OL would be overloaded in the near future; a new express line for that combined travel pattern is likely to be a useful solution to that scenario. A line into Scarborough would not act as a Yonge relief line.

It's not the next line Toronto should build. Given the confluence of LRV and Bus features, I wouldn't be surprised if tunnelled electric automated multi-unit bus trains (which split into 8 separate buses at street level to go to separate destinations) is the only solution built after 2035 due to low cost, high capacity, and high flexibility.
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
Beyond Toronto's population growth, there is also the issue of latent demand, which is very hard to predict. Essentially, the problem is to determine how many non-transit users would use transit if there was the capacity to accommodate them. Back in the early days of Relief Line North planning, I know of smart people with a lot of experience in the field suspected that the real-world demand on Line 1 and RLN would be substantially higher than what was projected, due to unaccounted latent demand. Both Line 1 and the RLN were projected to have about 20k pphpd demand in 2031.

I just mentioned in the streetcar thread too that I don't believe the 60 additional streetcars will be able to meet future demand, with so much growth in the core of the city.

In general, I feel like our plans are chasing a future that is not materializing. As you mentioned, we have way more growth in the core of the city than expected, and the growth in suburban centres has been lacklustre.

In any case, this thing isn't an exact "science". If you design infrastructure to meet projected demand, and nothing more, you're gonna have a bad time.
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Really, transit ridership should be growing faster than population growth if road network capacity is mostly saturated.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
One of the reasons I was so keen on the Relief Line North is that it would've allowed a lot of this intensification to be distributed across the east side of the city. With the RLN, it would have been possible for a lot of people in western Scarbrough (lets say roughly west of McCowan) to access the Downtown core within 35 minutes. That is unheard of nowadays. It would have made the city a lot less remote for people in Scarborough.

Hopefully these benefits will still be realized in the near future. A subway on Don Mills would be the single most impactful transit project for Scarborough since at least the SRT opened (and arguably even more impactful than that).
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Thing is those trips would better be served by GO RER. What we should be aiming for is full fare integration with the TTC when Stouffville is electrified, and the speed at which Scarboroughites East Warden could reach downtown would be way higher than any form of RLN.
 
daniel_kryz said:
Factually incorrect. Translink (not the NDP) is planning Vancouver's future transit network. They are considering two options... Network A (more skytrain) and Network B (more LRT).
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I added the NDP part only to give the source drum is quoting the benefit of the doubt (since I wasn't sure if the NDP helped with that plan in any way), and because given the history of the BC provincial governments, they almost always push for Skytrain > LRT (see the Evergreen Extension and Langley Extension). If the NDP have absolutely nothing to do with this then it brings drum's source into even more of a question because if they are genuinely concerned about an aging transit system and spend several billion dollars to refurbish your existing lines, the last thing I'd expect is for them to release a map with a ton of new skytrain extensions and surface transit routes they they want to build by 2050.
 
ARG1 said:
Thing is those trips would better be served by GO RER. What we should be aiming for is full fare integration with the TTC when Stouffville is electrified, and the speed at which Scarboroughites East Warden could reach downtown would be way higher than any form of RLN.
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As an engineer these kinds of non-technical bureaucratic issues are what drive me up the wall. When from a technical perspective, using one transit method would be more effective, but because of x governmental reason (the separation of TTC and GO in this example) means that instead of just full fare integration with GO RER, a billion dollar subway extension is built instead at 10 times the cost that doesnt even serve the needs as well as simply letting people ride the GO train for a TTC fare would solve.
 
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