Sunnyside
Active Member
This is why our current plan is to not do anything. If the opportunity presents itself, we'll take it, but it Isn't worth fighting for. That money can (and will) go elsewhere.
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drum118
Superstar
How do you plan to build around CP Land when there is no land to do it in the first Place?? The only way is to expropriate 100 feet beside CP/CN lines that will be very destructed of the communities along those routes. It will take decades to do it as well being very costly to so.
I idea of using CN Halton Sub and the so call Missing Link is a dream plan and it would cost over $10B to move CP to it if CN allow it to do so in the first. Not on CN radar nor are they interested doing so as it will have an impact on their service as well expansion.. Putting your eggs into one corridor is only asking for trouble
Cost to 4 track the Milton Line was peg at $1,2 billion in 2014.
The province needs to sit down with both CN and CP as what it will take to 4 track their corridor as well allowing electricity 2 of those tracks and not going to be cheap. I would try for a 5 track corridor where possible as this allow extra passing siding as well allow more service for everyone.
rbt
Senior Member
The long-term maintenance costs of a ground-level system are much much cheaper than elevated or underground.
Both options being equal in value and ridership, I'd still prefer the bypass.
T3G
Senior Member
So... which stations exactly are you suggesting should have been kept?
The thought of shaving off more than half of the stations from the project sounds completely nuts to me. Local transit is important. If you have to walk several kilometres just to get to your local station, anyone with the option to not do it will tell you exactly what you can do with a "service" like that.
At best, what could've potentially been viable is to have a quad track local/express set up like NYC. NYC's subway definitely would not be as successful as it is if only the express stations existed.
CapitalSeven
Senior Member
I think electrifying the Milton Corridor is a red herring. By the time the tracks are in place to radically increase service, battery and hydrogen technologies should be mature enough to make it unnecessary, and having some diversity in GO's power sources is probably a good thing.
afransen
Senior Member
afransen
Senior Member
T3G
Senior Member
What do you mean?
afransen
Senior Member
duty free
Active Member
couldn't this just be done on Sheppard instead of Eglinton?
i'm not a huge fan of the crosstown LRT design, but Sheppard does seem like the more logical choice for a crosstown route with sparse stop spacing.
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
Honestly, the province might have had the right idea both times around; if we're looking for a true high speed low stop count corridor that will be inherently highly dependent on surface transit for connections putting it where a surface ROW is available makes a lot of sense. In the 80s that meant Finch Hydro, now it means the 407...
I'd honestly say that the only real major point against the 407 at this stage is that there is still potential for using pieces of the Sheppard subway's infrastructure, but we seem to be going all in on the current plan that locks it in as a core piece of the TTC subway system.
And with that said, I'll observe once again that I'm a long way from convinced that a busway isn't the best option for the 407...
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T3G
Senior Member
I disagree, I think that buses are hugely overrated when it comes to supporting high order transit.
For one thing, since they don't have their own lanes (and good luck selling that to Torontonians, especially on a street where there is already a rail line), so they'll have to mix with traffic and be inconvenienced by every tiny thing that goes on. For another, the frequencies will very likely not be as good as the rail line, and if ever they are, they will be the first thing on the chopping block in bad economic times, if not the route in itself; remember, one of the big advantages of rail over buses is that the infrastructure itself is fixed, so it's much harder to just up and remove a rail line instead of a bus line. And finally, there exists the undeniable fact that buses are just not as comfortable as rail, full stop. Never, on my rides on the worst quality tram lines in eastern Europe, have I ever experienced the bone shattering bumps that I experience everytime I board a bus here.
And frankly, I think the philosophy here is the wrong one. Again as I said, if you want fast high order transit, do a local/express split. It's not fair to spend billions on tunneling a rail line only to tell most of the people who live along it that they can't use it without a forced transfer, because we like to pretend the subway is a GO train. Do you think the Bloor-Danforth subway is a failure because it has stops close enough that you don't need redundant bus service running above? Is the New York subway a failure since there are few places where the next stop is not within walking distance (in Manhattan, anyway?)
I don't understand this fixation on extending the subway out far past where any subway belongs. Who on earth would use it, if they have alternatives? Have you ever sat in the seats on a subway? They are wildly uncomfortable and unfit for the job of long distance commuter travel. Imagine you are at Downsview Park station and you have the option of taking the GO train or subway down; why in heaven would you choose the subway?
This is why the Spadina Subway Extension was a bad plan, and this is the reason why Yonge North is a bad plan, and so is every other proposal to extend the subway beyond our city limits. Instead of trying to make the subway into something which it's not, we could create a buried GO line (we don't have to use BiLevels) to create a faster, quicker, more comfortable trip and leave the subway to do the job that it's actually supposed to do.
whydidimakethis
Active Member
Not everyone is travelling downtown from a given point
T3G
Senior Member
Not exactly a compelling argument in favour of subway extensions. Local demand in the suburbs would be served better and cheaper by LRTs, supported by a feeder bus network.
MrGoose
Active Member
Then make the bus lanes. Make the separated bike lane network and get cars off the streets. This is something that other cities have already solved. We can keep pandering to motorists over and over at the detriment of literally everyone, or we can actually be progressive on climate change and get people out of their cars because it is necessary to solve the greatest environmental issue the world has faced so far.
To some extent, the Bloor Danforth Subway is no longer fit for purpose, because we have extended it so far out. But that is no longer something we can change, the Bloor Danforth Line is solidly within the built up area of Toronto.
If we were building the Bloor Danforth line today, we'd absolutely cut out some of the stations because they impact the amount of people we can move.
Also, if a transit line is fast, people are more willing to travel a longer distance to get to it. So if the Eglinton Crosstown were twice as fast from cutting stations and using high floor trains, we could expect that more people would grudgingly get on the bus or bike to the nearest station.
Lakeshore GO doesn't need stops every 500m because people know that its a fast train to Union. The same logic would apply to a fast Eglinton Crosstown.
Well this argument applies to the Eglinton Crosstown even more than long subway lines. Because the LRT is even less fit for long distance commuter travel. I think that you miss that with the amount of money and opportunity cost the Eglinton Crosstown represents; Money being 20+ billion dollars, opportunity cost being the use of Eglinton as a corridor and construction times; that money should have been better spent on creating the best way to get across Toronto along Eglinton.
20 billion dollars is not well served by ensuring that the Eglinton Crosstown is only incrementally faster than the bus it replaces (IT ONLY GOES 28KM/HR) and still gets stuck in traffic.
We already know that people will only take transit if it is faster than driving. In fact people will only take the fastest means of transport available to them. If that means driving from A to B, they will drive. The fact that the Eglinton Crosstown will take 40 minutes to go from Kennedy to Mount Dennis, when right now I can drive from Kennedy to Mount Dennis in 30 minutes by taking the 401, means that people will continue to drive and Eglinton Crosstown will have failed at its primary goal; getting people across Toronto faster than driving.
We are not getting the kind of transit that would get people out of their cars with the Eglinton Crosstown. In fact, with the kinds of time savings that the LRT is giving us, we could have just put down bus lanes.
If the TTC and metrolinx are going to spend 20 billion dollars on this line, the huge hassle of underpinning Eglinton West and Eglinton-Yonge and disrupt Eglinton for over a decade in a time period where interest rates were at basically 0%, we should have gotten a much higher capacity line, that is much faster and that is not encumbered by traffic. IE a heavy subway line.
Eglinton is not a suburb. It is at the core of the GTA.
Local demand in the suburbs would be better served with separated bike lanes/ totally separate bike routes and encouraging everyone to go out and buy an e-bike.