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.
That's a nice idea, but who exactly is going to push for it? The politicians we have around here don't have the spine to actually shake up the social order like that in a real way. That kind of transformative thinking does not exist in Canadian politics, at least not amongst any politicians, of either political persuasion, that actually stand a chance at being elected.
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.
I think you're completely off base with both of these assertions. Today, it is a 25 minute ride from Kennedy to Yonge, or a 31 minute ride from Kipling to Yonge. That is a pretty good travel time by all accounts; if you want to see services that are not fit for purpose, take a look at any surface transit route.
Having bigger stop spacing is also really bad urban planning. Which stops would you cut, exactly? Chester, perhaps, and perhaps some stations could be cut by building one station midway between the two points (i.e. Donlands-Pape), but you're building a transit line in the core of a city, you want many people to have access to it, and the closer you get to the core, the worse of an idea running buses becomes. Remember, it's not theoretically a problem for young, able-bodied people to walk a kilometre to their next stop (though they may find it extremely inconvenient, and opt not to use it if they have alternatives), or to bike, but for someone with mobility issues, this becomes an insurmountable obstacle.
But again, don't look at Toronto, that doesn't know how to do transit, as an example. Look instead at New York which does. Imagine if the only stops of the New York subway were the express stops, and the rest of the city had to get around using buses, which in New York traffic are extremely bad. Sure, it would help the people who live in the outer boroughs get into Manhattan faster, at the expense of Manhattanites everywhere. Why should some people have to significantly increase the distance they have to traverse to access their local transit stop, just so that people from the outer boroughs can shave a few minutes off their commute? That sounds extremely selfish to me.
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.
And your source for that is where?
If people have to travel several kilometres of distance (remember, not everyone lives right on the road the line runs on) to get to their local transit stop, those with a car will tell you where you can stick your transit line, and those without a car with curse you eternally for your poor planning decisions.
Consider, perhaps, the traveller who lives at Yonge Street and Yonge Boulevard, the midway point (1.06 km) between York Mills and Lawrence (separated by 2.15 km). They have to use the 97 Yonge bus to get to their nearest station, a service which never has a (combined) frequency of greater than 30 minutes, so it is not a serious option. If you are able bodied, you can walk ~15 minutes to get to the next station and all the way back, in the time that you'd have to wait for that joke of a bus to arrive. If you have mobility challenges, or the weather is inclement, you have no alternative options. This is the kind of garbage you are stuck with while subway trains (ostensibly) run every 90 seconds not 6 meters below you. This doesn't strike me as an urban planning success story, it sounds like another flavour of the same unwalkable hostility that our suburbs are well known for.
Or, there is a secret third option: they use the car. They might get stuck in traffic and have to pay for parking, but it sure beats having to put up with the hostile conditions they would have to deal with if they used transit. This is what you want to promote?
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.
Great, and how do people get to the Lakeshore train? In Toronto, they use transit connections; in the suburbs, they drive. If neither of these options existed, yes, you'd need stops every 500 m because people would have no other way of reaching the train quickly.
that money should have been better spent on creating the best way to get across Toronto along Eglinton.
If the Crosstown was a subway, it would still be necessary to have stops close together.
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.
There is no way that this is true.
First of all, it doesn't get stuck in traffic, it has separated lanes. Second of all, there is ***no possible way*** on this earth that the Crosstown does 28 km/h. There is no transit service anywhere in the world with stops as far apart as Eglinton has that runs at speeds like that. It defies logic. It doesn't make sense on the surface section and it makes even less sense on the underground sections.
I would wager that what you are seeing is that 28 is the
average speed of the service. Taken in context, 28 km/hr is not a bad figure at all - it is only marginally slower than line 1 (quoted in the TTC service summary as having an average speed of 29 km/h in the morning rush hour), or line 2 which in the morning rush hour has an average speed of 30.0 (so much for all those excess stops slowing down the service, eh?), and significantly better than either the 32 or 34 (quoted in
November 2009, pre-construction, as having average speeds of 19.8 and 18.1, respectively, on their longest branches), or any streetcar line, including the ones with their own private rights-of-way. Unless the TTC is planning on running the service at horse cart speeds, the Crosstown will make travel across Eglinton significantly quicker than it was pre-construction.
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.
If these are the parameters by which you are judging the success of transit, there are only a few places in the world, such as Manhattan, where transit will ever come out on top. If you measure the by transit vs the by car travel time for any longer, cross-regional (or cross-national) trip, the car will almost always come out on top. Right now, it would take me 54 minutes to drive from Union to Burlington GO, a journey that takes 1 hour 34 minutes by car. Does that mean we should discontinue the GO train and buy everyone cars instead?
Eglinton is not a suburb. It is at the core of the GTA.
Indeed, but the original post alluded to how we could've saved money on building stations and extended the route further out. The implication therefore is that people living in the city along the route should suffer from shittier transit, so that people in the suburbs, who should
not be on the local transit network, can use the line as a GO train.
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.
Good, so we are in agreement, then, that the argument of "not everyone is going downtown" is a weak justification for projects such as Yonge North, yes?
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