Transit City Plan

[TheTigerMaster]

That's kind of a selling feature, honestly. It costs a hell of a lot to operate an underground station.

I don't see it as a selling point. It will be awkward having stations that could potentially hold thousands of people and stops that can only hold a few dozen on the same LRT line.

 

[Paleo]

I do not believe this at all. Transit lines have a habit of rapidly exceeding capacity. Therefore I predict: any LRT line will be overcrowded immediately after opening, and traffic on the 401 will still suck since most people will drive. Don't forget how much of a drop in the bucket the increase in capacity LRT provides is. A LRT line's capacity minus the capacity removed by taking away 2 car lanes is small compared to the car carrying capacity of the 401 plus all the parallel east west arterials like Lawrence, Eglinton, York Mills etc.

How has Spadina and Sheppard looked so far?

 

[nfitz]

Does anybody know what the above ground stations on the crosstown will look like? I'm a little concerned that the underground stops will be full stations while the street level stops will just be like a streetcar stop.

There are several diagrams of surface stops in the EA. Particular in Section 3.3.4 (Typical Surface Stops) starting on page 62.

 

[BurlOak]

Does anybody know what the above ground stations on the crosstown will look like? I'm a little concerned that the underground stops will be full stations while the street level stops will just be like a streetcar stop.

I think that it exactly what it will be. Underground stations with mezzanine level with spacing of about 1000m and open-air (just a small roof) above ground stations with spacing of 500m. They supported the original TC proposal - no changes to that were ever discussed.

 

[GraphicMatt]

Couldn't shouldn't be micromanaging design details like that anyway. Those are decisions for engineers and planners.

In any case, the city cut its transit subsidy this year and is likely to do so again next year. We don't have anywhere near the level of committed operational funding to pay for upkeep of unnecessary underground stations.

 

[MetroMan]

What many people are overlooking is that these LRT lines aren't going to exist in a vacuum. They are all part of a network, each contributing to dispersing passengers. While the LRT will still meet capacity in 2030 (15,000 passengers p/hr demand in 2030, Eglinton carries 19,500), by then we'll have already added new LRT branches or hopefully a Downtown Relief Line cutting N/S across Eglinton. The Eglinton LRT will become more of a feeder line with many people living on Eglinton East or Scarborough choosing it as their main route downtown.

The Eglinton LRT will be an excellent asset for decades to come and its usefulness will only improve as we add more lines and extend the subway.

 

[rfid]

What many people are overlooking is that these LRT lines aren't going to exist in a vacuum. They are all part of a network, each contributing to dispersing passengers. While the LRT will still meet capacity in 2030 (15,000 passengers p/hr demand in 2030, Eglinton carries 19,500), by then we'll have already added new LRT branches or hopefully a Downtown Relief Line cutting N/S across Eglinton. The Eglinton LRT will become more of a feeder line with many people living on Eglinton East or Scarborough choosing it as their main route downtown.

The Eglinton LRT will be an excellent asset for decades to come and its usefulness will only improve as we add more lines and extend the subway.

Plans can and do change. Rarely does one build as planned. It sounds great now, but it's hard to predict future needs. Policy changes with government. Your ideas make sense now and as planned, but it will never be possible to say that it'll be the right choice short of seeing into the future.

There are many interdependencies at play.

 

[Neil]

How has Spadina and Sheppard looked so far?

Check and Mate!

 

[rfid]

Traffic on the 401 will always suck. There is no magical transit system we can build that will make the 401 empty at rush hour. This is not a realistic goal.

In fact, to use a common argument, world class cities often have the worst congestion!

The Eglinton line, whatever it ends up being, is supposed to be the alternative to the 401. It's not a feeder line, it's a crosstown trunk line. It's one of very few roads that completely cross the city continuously (save for the turn at the cancelled expressway near the airport) and within good proximity of development without entering downtown.

At the very least, it should prevent congestion from getting much worse than it is today (e.g. to accommodate new trips and not replace existing trips that would have been made using car on 401). We will never be able to convince those people to switch to transit, because it's just far too expensive to build anything worthwhile (i.e. the subway), I think is the gist of the debate. But at least we can stop or slow it's worsening and hope that the pieces of the puzzle in the plan fit together in the future.

 

[M II A II R II K]

As for this 2030 talk I imagine that the smartphone and tracking people would become much more advanced to not have to depend on such rigid concepts to pay to use separate systems and Berlin walls at borders.

The flexibility would even allow for local trips to be charged differently based on distance no matter what the system, and then the GTA can figure out how to divide it up between the different agencies.

 

[andrewpmk]

Well fortunately the planners involved have done a more in depth analysis than just looking at the 401, the LRT lines will be just fine and The TTC CGM stated that they will have sufficient capacity to beyond 2050. All planning, projections and reports do not agree with your predictions.

David Miller deliberately fudged the projections to make a case for LRT. Under Lastman the EA clearly said the Sheppard subway was needed.

If you want to see a LRT system that should have been subways, go to Los Angeles. Horrible traffic, lousy transit system consisting of a few LRT lines and a tiny subway. It is a joke and everyone drives. If Toronto does nothing or builds a few streetcars then that's how we will end up.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

andrewpmk:

Even assuming for a moment that a) Lastman didn't push things to favour his vision (btw, which EA was THAT?) and b) Miller did fudge the projections - how did you account for the conclusion by pretty much everyone - even by third parties - that there won't be subway level demand?

AoD

 

[Voltz]

David Miller deliberately fudged the projections to make a case for LRT. Under Lastman the EA clearly said the Sheppard subway was needed.

If you want to see a LRT system that should have been subways, go to Los Angeles. Horrible traffic, lousy transit system consisting of a few LRT lines and a tiny subway. It is a joke and everyone drives. If Toronto does nothing or builds a few streetcars then that's how we will end up.

The EA may have said something along the lines of subways being needed, but the all ridership figures from all EA's done on the Sheppard corridor have not shown subway level demand, even when they were trying to justify one.

 

[Electrify]

If you want to see a LRT system that should have been subways, go to Los Angeles. Horrible traffic, lousy transit system consisting of a few LRT lines and a tiny subway. It is a joke and everyone drives. If Toronto does nothing or builds a few streetcars then that's how we will end up.

You're kidding, right? LA's LRT has full signal priority and well spaced stops to achieve high speeds. Putting the tracks underground would do nothing to improve its performance. People drive in LA not because they use LRTs instead subways. People drive in LA because the region is built entirely around using cars for transportation.

 

[Northern Magus]

Metrolinx has such proposal on their books. That would bypass multiple bends that exist on the Bala sub, and allow higher speeds.

Of course, the question is when (and whether) it gets funded, given multiple competing priorities.

It's a real pity it doesn't have a political champion really pulling for it. IMO it could potentially take a lot of cars off of roads, for a relative pittance compared to the Crosstown line.