Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[steveintoronto]

All our speculating now guarantees the actual announcement (when and if it comes) will be nothing like we're expecting

Not necessarily. I'd say we're getting far closer to what's probable than, say, that sloppy TorStar piece yesterday on it, even interviewing 'experts'. I was appalled at some of their comments.

By eliminating what isn't likely to happen, rather than what is, I'd say we can arrive at much more likely solution than what the press is offering right now.

One thing is certain, and this has massive influence over everything: There's no money on the table from the City. The Province has resources they can tap, but they'd rather reduce taxes, and have freely spoken of the "private sector"...albeit the QP crew haven't a clue on how to go about that without scaring it away rather than attracting it, and Ottawa is awash in unspent Infrastructure money with an election coming up. And they've freely admitted that the budget purposely didn't cover impending projects.

Think about it. If you were the Feds right now, and Dougie and dogs have stumbled all over where the bone is buried...and make fools of themselves doing it, the Feds can (and have already in ways) step in and 'save the day'...and multiply that fiscal intervention via the InfraBank. Remember! Their first outside 'technical consultant' was none other than Bruce McQuaig.

There are certainly indications of what can happen, and signposts of what can't.

Edit to add:

[...]
High-speed trains, typically electric, serving primarily longer-distance regional trips with two-way, all-day service. Station locations would generally be the same as those of regional rail, but with faster and more frequent service.
Average Speed: 50 – 80 kilometres per hour
Frequency: as low as five minutes between trains
Capacity: 25,000 – 40,000 passengers per hour
Stations: two to five kilometres apart
[...]

linked above

That's a VIA competence! And in practical terms, local HFR service if electric. Symbiosis...

 

[crs1026]

@crs1026 : There may have been a misunderstanding as to my reference, so here it is again:

My reference to TTC "vanilla" was intended to separate "things that would fit in a standard TTC tunnel" from "things that won't fit". It was in my mind that ML may still have an appetite for other things like double deck EMU's - which might be the thing that doesn't fit, and lots of TTC size tunnel drawings may have already been drawn. I wouldn't quibble about any of the technologies shown - to me they are all pretty much the same even if they utilise different running gear, electronics, or whatever. (At the other end, my "vanilla" does not include Skytrain which I would see as a change in design, even if it fits or could enable a smaller bore. So it's a bit of a Neopolitan brick, I guess.) I will admit lthough whenever I ride NYC, Chicago, or London I do think "Toronto cars are so much wider.....we are better". So I wouldn't undersell the TR's. Those others may be sexy, but TR's have their good points.

If you look at that Feb 2019 briefing, the last page has glossy photos of various subway designs. I don't know why that slide was included, except maybe to assure the less enlightened board members that subways are used all over and the Relief Line technology is not going out on any limb. I'm sufficiently suspicious of Ford to think that if he was shown that slide, or one like it, he would react the same as when a car salesperson hands you the glossy brochure and asks "which one do you like best?"..... in the same condescending way that (car salespeople being a pretty neanderthal sexist bunch) they routinely ask women "which colour do you like" where they talk engines to men.

And his jaw dropped over the variety of nice colours, and he made his choice.....and the rest is history.....

- Paul

 

[steveintoronto]

My reference to TTC "vanilla" was intended to separate "things that would fit in a standard TTC tunnel" from "things that won't fit".

Very close if not the same as my "Orthodox Subway". That clears the air a lot.

It was in my mind that ML may still have an appetite for other things like double deck EMU's - which might be the thing that doesn't fit, and lots of TTC size tunnel drawings may have already been drawn.

Bore diameter was a hot topic in Sydney rail blogs, since the Sydney Metro (almost identical rolling stock to REM) was re-lining the DD used tunnels down by only inches for the adaptation to Metro (single deck) but enough to deny access of the DD stock. It was anathema to Sydney-think.

That being said, the Sydney DD coaches are very similar in gauge to the Paris ones, but might not be acceptable to GTHA riders due to being more claustrophobic. The GTHA hasn't had occasion to run them in tunnel, so the need for compactness was rendered moot.

In the event, the popular consensus now is that DD are best for medium to long distance commutes, and single deck and high platform by far best for minimal dwell time and ease of rapid loading/unloading, with surprisingly little loss of seating capacity to do it. The newer 'unit trains' are allowing that to happen. The point remains: TYSSE tunnel bore diameter allows for many "European single deck mainline coach gauges" to be used, including catenary. Crossrail, for instance, is 6.2 metres.
www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/railway-tunnels/
and that's for up to 145 kph trains. (Class 345)

TYSSE:

The internal diameter of bored tunnels is 5.4 m which is slightly larger than the tunnel diameter for Sheppard Subway Extension. The larger diameter is required to be compliant with NFPA130 (2010).

York Spadina Subway Extension (TYSSE) - Tunnelling Association of ...

Eglinton Crosstown:

➢ The Eglinton Crosstown tunnel will consist of side- by-side or twin tunnels. ➢ Each tunnel will be 6.75 metres internal diameter.

Tunnel Boring Machine - Eglinton Crosstown

www.thecrosstown.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/avenue_road_to_bayview_avenue.pdf

 

[steveintoronto]

Bumping this post up since this forum has already made the point.

Paris double decker RER-B trains are 4.2m in height, Sydney's are 4.3m in height; a Toronto LRV (Eglinton) is 3.8m in height.

So, the tunnel would need to be a roughly 40cm to 50cm larger than Eglinton in diameter, less than 10% diameter increase, assuming overhead fixed rail is used. That's not a massive difference. Eglinton's entire tunnelling contract was something like $500M and is a much longer bore than what might be needed through downtown.

 

[BurlOak]

I'm no Wynne/McGuinty fan, but neither can I believe that there was a small- or large-L direction to ML to keep their mitts off the RL and go along with all the discussion of it as a TTC-flavour subway. ML has floated so many strategic documents (which seem to have all been filed and ignored anyways, so hardly not grounds for dismissal if they gently broached their own thinking). The RER business case document, and the electrification EA, implicitly if not explicitly differentiate between RER and heavy rail subway. Let alone the Big Move.

If you look back in 2011/12/13, you can see what happened.
Ford and McGuinty agreed to the combined ECLRT/SRT.
June 2012, ML finalized the report find the combined route the best. They must have known about the results, in draft form, well before this date. So what happened?
ML was controlled by the Liberals. They forced the report to remain hidden until released by FOI (Neptis) in November 2013.
For almost 2 years, while Toronto was going through all the transit debates, the Liberals forced this key piece of information to remain hidden while all the delays and cost escalations to occur. They did it purely because they wanted to win a by-election (Mitzi Hunter), and the 2014 election, which they remarkably did win - and not because they wanted good transit. ML reports directly to the Minister of Transportation, so of course they release information as directed by their Head.
Knowing all these facts, it is very believable that they would do the same thing again. Whether the chaos was created this time just to delay the massive construction costs, or because they realized their electoral chances were diminished to such a degree that they focused on their downtown core - I can believe that ML worked on something else, but kept it hidden.

 

[WislaHD]

Bumping this post up since this forum has already made the point.

The tunnel size isn't the worry (except when it is due to the PATH and downtown utilities), it is the cost of construction the station. Larger underground station to accommodate RER-equivalents would increase costs substantially over what we are doing on Eglinton.

 

[crs1026]

Knowing all these facts, it is very believable that they would do the same thing again. Whether the chaos was created this time just to delay the massive construction costs, or because they realized their electoral chances were diminished to such a degree that they focused on their downtown core - I can believe that ML worked on something else, but kept it hidden.

In which case, if true, they should be ordered to put all their files in the public domain, commercial sensitivity be damned, in the name of transparency and public accountability.

That kind of backroom ploy removes any grounds for credibility or respect by the taxpayer.

- Paul

 

[BurlOak]

In which case, if true, they should be ordered to put all their files in the public domain, commercial sensitivity be damned, in the name of transparency and public accountability.

That kind of backroom ploy removes any grounds for credibility or respect by the taxpayer.

- Paul

I noticed that you highlighted only the 2nd part of my comment. I guess this means the 1st time ML hid information, it was ok.
But this time it's bad?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Don't forget., it is the current government that is putting their preferred approach confidential - from the letter dated March 26, 2019:

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2019/cc/bgrd/backgroundfile-131253.pdf

Note this is not Metrolinx demanding secrecy - it is the province demanding it.

AoD

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The tunnel size isn't the worry (except when it is due to the PATH and downtown utilities), it is the cost of construction the station. Larger underground station to accommodate RER-equivalents would increase costs substantially over what we are doing on Eglinton.

Unless of course the intent is to build fewer of those and/or build them where it is easy to do so, but urbanistically useless - and that comes at the price of local relief. I doubt the current government would be particularly concerned about that necessarily.

AoD

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Define "metro". Of course you can. You can also drive a twenty year old Chevy. Does that mean you should? How about buses? Would you buy a fleet of buses a generation old in design?

Im done with this.

If the ford govt is hell bent on using "new" technology maybe they should start with a transit system they already control (go transit) and that fleet of 40 yr old diesel powered lococomotive hauled passenger trains..

The TR1 trains are a variation of bombardier's movia metro trains which were introduced in 2001. Relatively recently in terms of mas transit vehicles. And they appear to have handled the ttc's subway network quite well.

 

[nfitz]

The tunnel size isn't the worry (except when it is due to the PATH and downtown utilities), it is the cost of construction the station. Larger underground station to accommodate RER-equivalents would increase costs substantially over what we are doing on Eglinton.

If you use the modern approach of building subways, and simply build 6-km long subway with no intermediate stations, then it becomes the cost of the emergency exits that drive things up.

That and the number of camper vans and fuzzy dice that you need to send to the Premier's office.

(the fuzzy dice are necessary because otherwise the Premier has no clothes!)

 

[steveintoronto]

Did you just take a screenshot instead of quote?

I've yet to find another way to copy both the quote and answer without doing extensive workarounds. There might have been a way to do it with earlier forum software, I just can't remember. So I take a screenshot rather than spend five minutes screwing around. And it is a quote, just captured by screenshot.

If the ford govt is hell bent on using "new" technology maybe they should start with a transit system they already control (go transit) and that fleet of 40 yr old diesel powered lococomotive hauled passenger trains..

I'm a few months from being seventy years old. I don't state this to demean you, but you appear unable to follow the string. Perhaps you're too old for this? What's an "EMU" to you? And I don't mean like an ostrich or a monetary unit. No-one is considering putting an internal combustion or hydrogen cell powered vehicle in tunnel as you alluded to in a post a few days back. In fact one of the huge problems for Hydrail, even if it is proven viable. is use in tunnels. It won't happen, for the same reason you don't use propane vehicles in underground parking garages.

If this is all beyond you to follow, then perhaps "I'm done with this" might be more appropriate than you genuinely mean. A few posts back, you were on about "new fangled devices" or the like. Since the point of the question eludes you, "metro" means many different things, and there is no definitive meaning for it. I need to know what you think it means to answer your question. But if that need is now rendered moot, so be it...

The term "subway" is just as elusive to define in popular jargon, btw.

 

[steveintoronto]

@WislaHD stated:

The tunnel size isn't the worry (except when it is due to the PATH and downtown utilities), it is the cost of construction the station. Larger underground station to accommodate RER-equivalents would increase costs substantially over what we are doing on Eglinton.

? If the demand is there, then so is the need for the longer platforms. And the demand to "relieve" the TTC subway and Union Station is immense.

So why don't we have lots of small airplanes and short runways? Think of all the money we'll save...

As proposed, the TTC's Relief Line is in deep tunnel. If you undersize your station platform, (and indeed the entire station box and station) then you're not only stuck to upgrade it later...you're really stuck!

I've lost the link, but Crossrail engineers had a whole discussion for a few chapters on exactly this point in one of their many engineering papers that have become a model for teaching. Penny wise, Pound fugged. Crossrail's approach is to oversize the box length, and build only as much platform as immediately needed, wall off the rest, and extend it when needed. They are starting with 8 car trains to begin with (and now predicted to be close to capacity on opening day for the central core section, the one still to be opened) with platforms in many cases built to ten car length with three more possible when platforms extended. The rest of the mainline system doesn't have any platforms longer than that, so the need to surpass that is rendered moot.

For the numbers that are touted to be needed to relieve the TTC subway back to about 80% loading at peak, full length 10-12 car trains will be needed on the Relief Line, along with platforms to match unless only partially opening of the length of the train is adopted.(Some carriages still in tunnel won't open doors) There's flexibility possible by building by-pass track(s) between the outer platform two for express to run through while shorter locals stop for 'local' stations. Local trains would be shorter to fit the shorter platforms vs the full length platforms at major stops.

Article here, albeit not the Crossrail one I'll continue looking for. This is for the Overground, but similar points are made:
https://www.railengineer.co.uk/2015/01/28/lengthening-platforms-not-always-as-easy-as-it-sounds/

 

[crs1026]

I noticed that you highlighted only the 2nd part of my comment. I guess this means the 1st time ML hid information, it was ok.
But this time it's bad?

New players since the first time. Yes, it was bad the first time, but those actors got away. Too late to call them out, but the current people ought to be held to account.

- Paul