Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[TheTigerMaster]

I've brought this up before too. It may be more beneficial to build the DRL to accommodate LRT trains (90+m) instead of HRT, that way it can be extended north of the Don Valley (or north of Eglinton) at-grade as the Don Mills LRT. On the west side it can become the Jane LRT.

In fact, building it as at-grade LRT north of the Don Valley could likely save at least a billion dollars, enough to push the line further west from downtown in Phase 1 than would otherwise be possible with an HRT subway. If you want a DRL that stretches north of Eglinton, IMO the best way of getting it is through this type of plan.

Good luck getting that to work politically. We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot. Downtown elitists get a $7 Billion subway while the suburbs are stuck with yet another LRT.

And putting that aside, the whole point of having RT/LRT on Don Mills would be to relieve the Yonge Subway. The troubles on Yonge start as far north as Finch and I figure that crowding will become really bad north of Eglinton-Yonge Station. An at grade LRT (I'm assuming in ROW) would do little to relieve the Yonge line. And then there's the issue of operational reliability. I don't think that the TTC wants to risk compromising the integrity of a line as critical as the DRL by making parts of it be in an ROW. And would 90 meter light rail vehicles be enough for this line? They should at the very least be 140 meters. Even then I'm really skeptical of if that would be enough in the long term.

 

[gweed123]

Good luck getting that to work politically. We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot. Downtown elitists get a $7 Billion subway while the suburbs are stuck with yet another LRT.

And putting that aside, the whole point of having RT/LRT on Don Mills would be to relieve the Yonge Subway. The troubles on Yonge start as far north as Finch and I figure that crowding will become really bad north of Eglinton-Yonge Station. An at grade LRT (I'm assuming in ROW) would do little to relieve the Yonge line. And then there's the issue of operational reliability. I don't think that the TTC wants to risk compromising the integrity of a line as critical as the DRL by making parts of it be in an ROW. And would 90 meter light rail vehicles be enough for this line? They should at the very least be 140 meters. Even then I'm really skeptical of if that would be enough in the long term.

Well ask yourself, what would do more to relieve the Yonge line: a subway to Eglinton (with likely just buses running north of it), or an underground LRT to Thorncliffe Park, and then an at-grade LRT to Sheppard or Finch? My guess would be the latter. My guess would be that you could build an LRT from downtown to Sheppard & Don Mills (at-grade from Thorncliffe Park) for about the same cost as building a subway from downtown to Eglinton & Don Mills.

The key would be to build it with stops only where you would place subway stops, so that the speed is very close to what a subway would achieve.

As for capacity, crush load for a single LRT vehicle is 250 people. So for this, assume 200. 90m trains are 3 cars long. That's 600 per train. Assume a train every 2 mins during peak. That's 18,000 pphpd, and not even at crush load. Crush load in that case would be 22,500 pphpd, and that's assuming trains can't run any closer together than every 2 mins.

 

[Hipster Duck]

In the end the disadvantages of having to operate a single line on other technology outweighs the negligible advantages of ICTS. Having the same network tech makes not having a yard directly on the line possible, and makes it so the TTC doesn't have to buy a whole new set of matenience vehicles, including things like track replacers and tunnel washers. ICTS is cheaper but ultimately has lower capacity as well.

I have a soft spot for ICTS because I live in Vancouver and I realize that ICTS is not a bad technology, it's just poorly operated in Toronto. That said, I wouldn't advocate for new ICTS builds in Toronto. However, one thing I would take from Vancouver is the idea of using narrower HRT cars than what we have in Toronto. They may have less capacity but that can be made up with greater frequencies from automation, as well as creative internal space design in the cars themselves (note that Vancouver is not very good at this last point but other cities with narrow cars are).

The costs of construction could be potentially much lower, since narrower cars would only necessitate a single bore for both directions (as is the case with the Evergreen line) and the elevated structures would be quite slender and could be placed on a single pier positioned in the median of Don Mills. Other things we might want to look for are vehicles that can climb steeper grades and vehicles that have a much tighter turning radius than our current subway fleet. Just as we shouldn't just think of LRT as being streetcars, we should get out of the habit of assuming that all HRT solutions should be exactly the same spec as our current subway.

 

[ssiguy2]

I appreciate the option of underground LRT thru the core and then branching out to run at grade further out and it has benefits. It also, however, makes the underground section more expensive to build and the system far more expensive to run. When you even have one little at grade section a line cannot be automated and automation save a crap load of money in operational costs.

Any at grade system cannot run at near the frequency of an automated system so in order to compensate for running every 4 minutes as opposed to every 2 minutes, the stations have to be twice as long to accommodate bigger trains. The Canada Line's stations are too small but the Canada line with it's 50 meter stations will have the same capacity as the 100 meter Eglinton LRT stations but Eglinton will be more expensive to build.

One of the 3 new Sao Paulo Monorail lines under condtruction will be using the Innovia Monorail cars by Bombardier but the stations/trains will only have 100 meter stations. That may not sound too large for such a massive city but due to the technology and monorail vehicles which are TTC subway width, the system will have a capacity of a staggering 49,000 pphpd as the trains will run every 75 seconds.

 

[Solid Snake]

LRT for the DRL???

How about putting pressure on the Feds to treat Toronto like a world class city. France is financing the new subway line in Paris, so is England for London and the US for New York.

This city's transit mediocre transit network is due to its politicians and citizens inability to make the Feds understand that Toronto is vital to this country, just like New York, Paris and London are for their countries.

The fact that our council are tearing each other apart (like on this forum) over what to build instead of being united and put pressure on the feds to do more for public transit is exactly why they feel entitled to ignore us and not to take us seriously.

No LRT for the DRL...PERIOD.

This city has so much potential and it's being held back and I hate it

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I have a soft spot for ICTS because I live in Vancouver and I realize that ICTS is not a bad technology, it's just poorly operated in Toronto. That said, I wouldn't advocate for new ICTS builds in Toronto. However, one thing I would take from Vancouver is the idea of using narrower HRT cars than what we have in Toronto. They may have less capacity but that can be made up with greater frequencies from automation, as well as creative internal space design in the cars themselves (note that Vancouver is not very good at this last point but other cities with narrow cars are).

Do tend to agree that narrower cars isn't a bad idea, though like you've said they really need to arrange the internal space properly - particularly in order to ensure efficient movement for ingress/egress. I think they have to ditch the 2 x 2 seating for that to really work (the current TR is IMO a good case of extra capacity on paper not being realized due to bad execution of, among other things, seating plans)

The costs of construction could be potentially much lower, since narrower cars would only necessitate a single bore for both directions (as is the case with the Evergreen line) and the elevated structures would be quite slender and could be placed on a single pier positioned in the median of Don Mills. Other things we might want to look for are vehicles that can climb steeper grades and vehicles that have a much tighter turning radius than our current subway fleet. Just as we shouldn't just think of LRT as being streetcars, we should get out of the habit of assuming that all HRT solutions should be exactly the same spec as our current subway.

I don't think single bore is a bad idea per se (and side instead of island platforms isn't a bad idea for stations that will not see a large amount of traffic) - though it's been quoted elsewhere that there are fire-safety compliance issues that complicate its' use. The regulatory environment really need to change in order to facilitate that.

AoD

 

[gweed123]

I appreciate the option of underground LRT thru the core and then branching out to run at grade further out and it has benefits. It also, however, makes the underground section more expensive to build and the system far more expensive to run. When you even have one little at grade section a line cannot be automated and automation save a crap load of money in operational costs.

Any at grade system cannot run at near the frequency of an automated system so in order to compensate for running every 4 minutes as opposed to every 2 minutes, the stations have to be twice as long to accommodate bigger trains. The Canada Line's stations are too small but the Canada line with it's 50 meter stations will have the same capacity as the 100 meter Eglinton LRT stations but Eglinton will be more expensive to build.

One of the 3 new Sao Paulo Monorail lines under condtruction will be using the Innovia Monorail cars by Bombardier but the stations/trains will only have 100 meter stations. That may not sound too large for such a massive city but due to the technology and monorail vehicles which are TTC subway width, the system will have a capacity of a staggering 49,000 pphpd as the trains will run every 75 seconds.

The operations that I had envisioned was that 1/3rd of the trains would stop at Danforth (at a 2 platform, 3 track station where the out-of-service train could pull into the middle track and load passengers there, and then slip back into the flow), 1/3rd would stop at Eglinton, possibly with the same configuration described above, and 1/3rd would continue to Sheppard or Finch. If the demand on the Sheppard/Finch stretch is too high, scrap the Eglinton short-turn.

The line could still use ATO south of Thorncliffe Park, as it would be entirely in a tunnel.

 

[ssiguy2]

Interesting idea and could work well.


I think what Toronto really needs to do before comitting untold billions to a DRL and find out if it's really needed as much as is stated. Now before you either faint or laugh, hear me out.

Although the DRL would serve the local areas between Pape/Union which is a real benefit, the real point of the DRL is to relieve the bottleneck and overcapacity of the Yonge line south of Bloor. Toronto should allow the entire GO system in the City itself to be used with standard TTC fares/transfers so that people in Scar can use the GO trains to get downtown/Union. They could do it as a 6 month experiment and compensate GO for any loss in income which wouldn't be too much. Relatively few Torontonians take GO as it is mostly a 905 service.

While the experiment is underway they could track both the GO ridership levels and the how it effects ridership east of Broadview. If the impact is significant and it results in less traffic travelling further west from broadview to Yonge and easy the capacity issues at the Yonge/Bloor station and traffic south of Yonge then it is money VERY well spent.

If it results in, for example, a 20% reduction in traffic on BD then it would be an overwhelming success not only for the current situation but in the long term as the reduction in traffic on BD would increase. If there is a 20% reduction in traffic on BD with current service imagine what the impact would be if the system in the City was electrified and frequency increased to every 15 or 10 minutes all day. People from the burbs would gladly wait an extra 5 or 10 minutes for a GO train if they knew they would get downtown in half the time and in a far more comfortable and enjoyable way.

If the experiment costs $50 million {which I very much doubt} it would be money extremely well spent and would offer the people using the GO system for that 6 months far superior transit service to boot.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Although the DRL would serve the local areas between Pape/Union which is a real benefit, the real point of the DRL is to relieve the bottleneck and overcapacity of the Yonge line south of Bloor.

This is exactly why I am saying that focusing on the relief aspects is a misnomer - the entire network in the inner core is saturated and the real point of the DRL isn't just to serve as a bypass for the Yonge line - but instead to provide tangible improvements of transit service in the core area (which has multiple, high intensity areas that are currently underserved) as well as providing relief to the Yonge line. Running GO trains wouldn't have done an iota to that.

AoD

 

[M II A II R II K]

We could have a Tube train, might even handle curves better.

 

[Forgotten]

Is it, is it really?

Stintz has come out and said that a subway isn't a subway unless it's underground. There is talk of Metrolinx helping fund it except there is only one problem with that..............no one but the province is actually funding Metrolinx. The province is completely broke and has given Toronto gobs of money and it still can't even figure out what to do with it.

Now a DRL? This is fantasy land. The city & province do not nor will ever have enough money to build a DRL at Toronto prices. This DRL under the King St area is going to cost a fortune because of the route and the massive depth it would have to be built to due to PATH. Telling someone to go to hell and taking the DRL are going to be synonamous. The ONLY and I do mean ONLY option Toronto has is to run the GO system in the city as the same fare as the TTC, electrify the lines, and run them so frequently that anything coming from the east relieves traffic on the Yonge line.

The DRL may make for interesting conversation and pretty maps but will NEVER get built for one very simple reason.......money.

Your posts in this thread summed up:
We here in Vancouver know how to do things right. I'm smart enough to see the solution and it would only cost $2 billion but you people in Toronto are leeches and too dumb to figure this out. Rinse and repeat.

A smaller capacity downtown line would probably require another relief line within a couple of decades. That would mean that the city would be covered in rapid transit more quickly than with one new high-capacity line every 50 years. It'll make for a better network in the long run.

If you stuff as many people on to Yonge as possible by putting in all the trains that can fit and building up to Richmond Hill and Scarborough Centre, they'll have no choice but to build another RT line to fix the problem on Yonge Street!

 

[M II A II R II K]

There's also that cheaper option of boring only one tunnel and putting two smaller trains in the same tunnel.

 

[Translude15]

This is exactly why I am saying that focusing on the relief aspects is a misnomer - the entire network in the inner core is saturated and the real point of the DRL isn't just to serve as a bypass for the Yonge line - but instead to provide tangible improvements of transit service in the core area (which has multiple, high intensity areas that are currently underserved) as well as providing relief to the Yonge line. Running GO trains wouldn't have done an iota to that.

AoD

Alvin: Regarding the core area, should the "DRL" merely supplement the existing core transit network (streetcars), or should it replace one of the saturated services i.e. the 504 King streetcar? As you said earlier, the potential for increased ridership exists on certain routes with the implementation of service improvements such as the DRL.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Translude:

I would imagine the streetcar system will have to be altered in some way at a minimum - the form of the change will be highly dependent on the alignment and it can see lines broken up, eliminated, lowered in freq., etc. My main concern within this thread so far is the view that the DRL should not be oriented towards long-distance trips at the expense of enabling short trips within the core in the analysis process, and less proscribing what is the best route.

AoD

 

[innsertnamehere]

see my earlier post about eliminating the King st. portion of the 504. Queen would remain, but ridership would likely drop significantly. I would expect the DRL would take most commuting traffic away from it. King would likely drop to around 1/4 of it's current ridership (if not more) and queen around 1/2. (both relative guesses) people have argued that both should be maintained regardless, but I just don't see the ridership levels to justify the 504 remaining. I prefer a more frequent stop version of the DRL (which remains a faster trip downtown than taking the Yonge line) that allows for King's streetcar operations to be cancelled. As for Roncasvalles, the station stopping on that portion of the DRL will be too far apart, so ridership would likely remain fairly similar to current levels and I would advocate for retention of current services.

I would also advocate the maintenance of streetcar tracks on King to assist with operations.