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Transit City Details

unimaginative2 said:
Work on the 30.5-kilometre Eglinton-Crosstown line, to run from Kennedy Station to Pearson airport, would begin about the same time.

"Eglinton is going to take a number of years. We're going to build an underground section about the same length as the Sheppard subway, which is five kilometres," said TTC chair Adam Giambrone. It will be designed so it could accommodate a subway line later.
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I wonder what section they'll start on first for the Eglinton cross-town line. Personally, a link between the two subways would benefit me PERSONALLY the most, but I don't know if that would be there major concern.

I assume they'll have to build a yard somewhere, seeing as this line will have no connections to the rest of the network. That'll probably be a big limiting factor on where they'll start their construction.
 
There are a couple of good locations for a car barn on Eglinton. The Leaside industrial area would be one, the deindustrializing Golden Mile (near the TTC bus garage even) another. On the west, perhaps the Kodak plant? The TTC is also building a garage near here as well. A Mount Dennis-area barn would be able to feed St. Clair, Jane as well as Eglinton quite easily.

I'm pleased that Eglinton-Crosstown will bea amongst the first. It's probably the best of the lot. Finch West is another of the better routes.

I bet the first part underway will be the side the barn site is.

But an underground section only as long as Sheppard (5km)? That's just over half what should be on Eglinton, from Keele to Laird.
 
Agreed on the Eglinton - and people at the Transitcity website seem to agree, where it has a 80% poll results to the question of which line people would like to use.

As for the length of the tunnel, it's strange. I didn't notice that in the article. The report does say Laird to Keele, though.
 
Bayview to the Allen/Eglinton west is 5km...I bet that's where the tunnel will go.

I wonder if routes like 54, 51, 100, etc., will continue running to Eglinton station or if they'll just dump riders off wherever they hit Eglinton Ave. One lane of traffic will be barrels of fun if the buses stay.
 
We don't need to worry about where streetcars go at Yonge & Finch because the real solution is not to connect Finch to Sheppard with streetcars, but with a subway extension. Km for km, subways are more expensive, but once you start proposing enough billion dollar LRT lines, subways simply cease to be prohibitively more expensive, particularly on a corridor that has a partially finished subway line.
 
^That's true, especially considering the kind of higher density development that hopefully will develop in the long term along these new LRT corridors. That's when the km-for-km cost of subway construction actually makes sense. I personally support the Spadina extension, for example, but only if the proposed development in the Jane-7 area justifies the extension itself.

I'm still wondering, though, if the TTC has even considered a temporary conversion of the Sheppard subway line to LRT. Might sound like a novel/wacky idea, but I'm mentioning this since I'm assuming there would be a minimum timeline of a decade between completing the Sheppard LRT and any consideration of an upgrade of the new line to heavy rail.

Maybe rapid development along the corridor between Don Mills and Yonge in the short term is supposed to justify keeping the subway a subway?? I dunno. Somebody please do enlighten me.
 
Novel or wacky? No...a temporary conversion of the Sheppard subway to streetcars could probably be the worst - and most expensive - decision this city has ever made.
 
The conversion idea has been proposed, and I don't think it's a good idea. Not only would it be quite expensive, probably negating much of the cost saving of LRT vs subway extension to the east, but it would also necessitate taking the rapid transit out of service for at least two years at the glacial pace with which TTC construction moves. It's important to note that light rail or "Pre-metro" lines are almost never upgraded to subway. It just doesn't happen, since you'd have to take the line out of service for months at the very least, and that just isn't practical. You're not going to spend $800 million on a streetcar, either, only to replace it with a subway ten years later.
 
unimaginative2 said:
The conversion idea has been proposed, and I don't think it's a good idea. Not only would it be quite expensive, probably negating much of the cost saving of LRT vs subway extension to the east, but it would also necessitate taking the rapid transit out of service for at least two years at the glacial pace with which TTC construction moves. It's important to note that light rail or "Pre-metro" lines are almost never upgraded to subway. It just doesn't happen, since you'd have to take the line out of service for months at the very least, and that just isn't practical. You're not going to spend $800 million on a streetcar, either, only to replace it with a subway ten years later.
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That's why Sheppard should be built the rest of the way as subway and not LRT. Same goes for Eglinton.
 
unimaginative2 said:
The conversion idea has been proposed, and I don't think it's a good idea. Not only would it be quite expensive, probably negating much of the cost saving of LRT vs subway extension to the east, but it would also necessitate taking the rapid transit out of service for at least two years at the glacial pace with which TTC construction moves.
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I disagree. The changes to allow LRT in the tunnel would occur primarily at the ends of the tunnel to bring the LRT up to the surface thus not affecting subway operations during construction. The overhead wire is installed well above the height of the subway and thus would also not impact operations. The retrofit could occur during night hours and the route could be run as normal during the daytime hours. On the platform the only work is lowering the platform which could occur in pieces with temporary platforms installed on top. Brussels has been converting their pre-metro to subway in segments and the important thing to realize is that in many cases pre-metro works better than subway anyways since you can run different routes in the tunnel based on demand so that in the tunnel the service is very frequent but beyond the portal there can be multiple routes travelling to where service is in the most demand transfer free. The goal is convenient service and that doesn't always equate to subways. Route 139 which reduces the amount of travel by bus by dumping passengers at Don Mills hasn't received much of the traffic of those on Finch east of Don Mills because despite the Sheppard subway it is more convenient to take the bus all the way to Yonge... for a whole group of people in northern Scarborough the Sheppard subway hasn't improved their trips. LRT through the Sheppard subway could bring about positive results for those people more than a subway could. For example one route could start at SCC and enter the tunnel east of Don Mills, one could start at Sheppard and Meadowvale and enter the tunnel at Don Mills, and one could start at Malvern and take Finch to Victoria Park and swing down to Sheppard and enter the tunnel at Don Mills with all routes travelling to Yonge. This kind of system ensures frequency and good use of the tunnel and eliminates transfers. People are more likely to take a route that reduces transfers.
 
EnviroTO said:
The goal is convenient service and that doesn't always equate to subways. Route 139 which reduces the amount of travel by bus by dumping passengers at Don Mills hasn't received much of the traffic of those on Finch east of Don Mills because despite the Sheppard subway it is more convenient to take the bus all the way to Yonge... for a whole group of people in northern Scarborough the Sheppard subway hasn't improved their trips. LRT through the Sheppard subway could bring about positive results for those people more than a subway could.
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Than a longer subway? Not a chance. The flaw with the Sheppard line is not that it wasn't LRT, it's that it's not finished. Finch riders aren't going to flock to the Sheppard subway when the Finch East bus is arguably the most functional big route in the entire TTC network - it is always quick and has great frequency, 24/7. Converting Sheppard to a streetcar line would be a massive waste of money and effort...I can tell you right now people will stay on the Finch bus.
 
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