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Officially Unofficial Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan Thread

If you think about it, Transit City can easily be altered to fit in subways (and BRT) and still keep the cost at $6 billion.

For example, considering the projected costs of the individual projects, getting rid of the Malvern, Sheppard and Eglinton East LRT lines, plus cancelling the reconstruction and extension of the Scarborough RT, there surely would be enough money (over $2 billion!) for the completion of the Sheppard East and Danforth subways.

The money that would be spent on the Finch, Jane and Don Mills LRT lines (a whopping $2 billion!) could instead be used to build a significant part of the DRL, possibly all of it, which by itself would cover some of the territory of these LRT lines anyways. Finch would be better off with BRT anyways, imo...

Eglinton West LRT could remain as is (though it must be completely grade-separate!) and the Waterfront West LRT is a good plan too.

And there you go, Doady's Revised Transit City, with a cost that is still around $6 billion, but also includes subways and BRT and will actually solve some of the problems of the TTC instead of making them worse.

CDL.TO said:
We need to ask ourselves what is the logical point where subways should end and higher-speed solutions should take over? Paris is hardly a great example, but their subways hardly leave the 87 km2 central city. Toronto by comparison is 630 km2. The subway line that travels furthest from the central city (by my measure), line 8, is 17 stops from Bastille. Square One would be at least 24 stops from Yonge-Bloor. I've looked at the maps of all the major European systems, and not a single one has a line that subjects a passenger to 24 stops to the city centre, and I challenge anyone to find me one.
Click to expand...

Well the Picadilly (sp?) Line from Heathrow Airport in London comes pretty close in terms of the amount of stations, and the actual distance is greater. But yes I agree subways should not go too far out and regional rail should be the main focus for suburbs, though Paris is probably not a good example considering the extreme division between suburbs and inner city there. I'm sure you've heard about the riots...
 
doady said:
And there you go, Doady's Revised Transit City, with a cost that is still around $6 billion, but also includes subways and BRT and will actually solve some of the problems of the TTC instead of making them worse.
Click to expand...
Given you eliminated every Transit City line proposed and also removed the existing Scarborough RT, except for some minor upgrades to the existing Waterfront West that were proposed long before Transit City - and ended up with simply extending the existing Danforth to STC, completing the Sheppard line, the Eglinton East line and a start on DRL (presumably downtown - and come one, how much subway do you think your getting for a measly $2 billion) ... then it seems a bit disingenious to call it a revised Transit City. And I'm not sure how it's going to solve any problems outside of the Sheppard corridor, and perhaps streetcars on King and Queen Street.

This is the problem with blowing $6 billion on a few subway upgrades - you don't get much bang for your buck. You'd need $60 billion to get the bang your looking for.
 
nfitz said:
This is the problem with blowing $6 billion on a few subway upgrades - you don't get much bang for your buck. You'd need $60 billion to get the bang your looking for.
Click to expand...

$60 billion is an *extreme* over-estimation. It'd be at least 4 times cheaper than that to build a DRL from Dundas to Finch while extending Sheppard and Danforth.

For $60 billion we could:
- extend the Yonge line to Bracebridge (stopping at Casino Rama)
- extend the Danforth line to Belleville
- extend the Spadina line to Wiarton
- extend the Bloor line to London (stopping at Guelph and KWC)
- or...extend Bloor to downtown Buffalo!

(and this is using a conservative figure of 3km/$1B...if we lower the per/km cost to $250M, we can build them to Kingston, Tobermory, Sarnia, or almost Erie, PA!)
 
doady said:
Well the Picadilly (sp?) Line from Heathrow Airport in London comes pretty close in terms of the amount of stations, and the actual distance is greater.
Click to expand...

The Piccadilly line is a perfect example. A service that was seen as slow and unappealing enough that it had to be accompanied by an express service. But you can get from Heathrow T4 to Piccadilly Circus in 19 stops, compared to at least 24 from MCC to Yonge-Bloor.
 
RedRocket191 said:
DENTROBATE:
How do you feel about light rail-sized cars that operate on the street, then dive underground at a certain point. Is this what you're talking about when you say "Subway Rapid Transit"?
Click to expand...

What you're describing sounds alot like what will happen on Eglinton Avenue. The western portion from Renforth to Jane would be above ground either in the median of the road or utilizing the vast undeveloped sections of the set-aside Richview Expressway lands. Through this area 'stations' would remain as is with stops occuring every 450-500m. So basically Martin Grove-Lord Manor-Kipling-Wincott-Islington-Eden Valley-Royal York-4000-Scarlett-Emmett-Jane.

Because of the steepiing of grade and narrowing of properties out to the streetfront, I anticipate the tunnel occuirng alot earlier than @Keele but rather starting from Guestville Ave. Well to the east of here, the 'subway' reemerges at the base of Leslie St and continues down the median of the roadway from there all the way into Highland Creek (dipping underground again for Kennedy Stn first of course).

So yes in a roundabout way this line would effectively be both a surface and underground LRT, adopting the nomenclature "streetcar" and "subway" wherever necessary. Of course every other Transit City line is also comprised of some dipping underground, making subway interchange seemingly effortless (in the case of Sheppard East at platform level) and in no way a Transfer City as many here like to propagandize :rolleyes:!

Personally I believe there should be some kind of a subway ring circling downtown.
Click to expand...

I've been saying this for years. Maybe if there were a million of thinkers like us, someone in authority would wise up and advocate it by now ;).
 
scarberiankhatru said:
$60 billion is an *extreme* over-estimation. It'd be at least 4 times cheaper than that to build a DRL from Dundas to Finch while extending Sheppard and Danforth.
Click to expand...
Extending Sheppard, Danforth, and a DRL will do little for transit for much of the city. To cover the rest of the city, you'll need a lot of dough. Given that the feds just popped $0.5 billion for the entire country, even the $4 to $5 billion that DRL would need to get started is extreme.
 
nfitz said:
Given you eliminated every Transit City line proposed and also removed the existing Scarborough RT, except for some minor upgrades to the existing Waterfront West that were proposed long before Transit City - and ended up with simply extending the existing Danforth to STC, completing the Sheppard line, the Eglinton East line and a start on DRL (presumably downtown - and come one, how much subway do you think your getting for a measly $2 billion) ... then it seems a bit disingenious to call it a revised Transit City. And I'm not sure how it's going to solve any problems outside of the Sheppard corridor, and perhaps streetcars on King and Queen Street.
Click to expand...

Why is removing the Scarborough RT such a problem if both the Sheppard and Danforth subway is extended? And what about Finch (in BRT form, from Dufferin to Seneca College), Eglinton West, and Waterfront West which remain in my Revised plan? And how is $2 billion worth of DRL a minor upgrade? Do you even know anything about the DRL? Most of it is in above-ground in existing right-of-ways!

This is the problem with blowing $6 billion on a few subway upgrades - you don't get much bang for your buck. You'd need $60 billion to get the bang your looking for.
Click to expand...

"Bang for the buck" doesn't mean building the longest possible rapid transit lines in as many corridors as possible. Because by your definition, a huge network of BRT lines would be by far the greatest "bang for the buck."
 
nfitz said:
Extending Sheppard, Danforth, and a DRL will do little for transit for much of the city. To cover the rest of the city, you'll need a lot of dough. Given that the feds just popped $0.5 billion for the entire country, even the $4 to $5 billion that DRL would need to get started is extreme.
Click to expand...

Extremely useful...$4B would build a great line from Dundas West to Pape.

And it'd be a fraction of what MoveOntario announced. Everyone in the city would benefit...there isn't much "rest of the city" to cover. Running as many transit lines as possible to random corners of the city does absolutely nothing for transit, it just wastes money and feeds fetishes for world class transit maps.
 
nfitz said:
Extending Sheppard, Danforth, and a DRL will do little for transit for much of the city. To cover the rest of the city, you'll need a lot of dough. Given that the feds just popped $0.5 billion for the entire country, even the $4 to $5 billion that DRL would need to get started is extreme.
Click to expand...

How do you get a figure like $4 to $5 billion? Calculating based on the Network 2011 projected cost for Sheppard (to Victoria Park, not Don Mills) which was $500 million, we can figure that costs have inflated roughly 100% to 150%. The DRL cost projection at that time, from Pape to Front and Spadina, was $565 million. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the cost today would be somewhere between $1.2 to $2 billion. Clearly, nfitz, there's no point in arguing this with you because you have obvious blinders on when it comes to subways, but I hope that other people realize just how affordable the DRL can be, especially considering that almost half its length is in vacant, government-owned land on the surface. A western segment from Spadina to Dundas West could be even less expensive, with almost the entire distance on the surface.
 
scarberiankhatru said:
$60 billion is an *extreme* over-estimation. It'd be at least 4 times cheaper than that to build a DRL from Dundas to Finch while extending Sheppard and Danforth.

For $60 billion we could:
- extend the Yonge line to Bracebridge (stopping at Casino Rama)
- extend the Danforth line to Belleville
- extend the Spadina line to Wiarton
- extend the Bloor line to London (stopping at Guelph and KWC)
- or...extend Bloor to downtown Buffalo!

(and this is using a conservative figure of 3km/$1B...if we lower the per/km cost to $250M, we can build them to Kingston, Tobermory, Sarnia, or almost Erie, PA!)
Click to expand...

that sounds like one shitty ride, DT Toronto to DT Buffalo via subway.....
 
scarberiankhatru said:
Extremely useful...$4B would build a great line from Dundas West to Pape.

And it'd be a fraction of what MoveOntario announced. Everyone in the city would benefit...there isn't much "rest of the city" to cover. Running as many transit lines as possible to random corners of the city does absolutely nothing for transit, it just wastes money and feeds fetishes for world class transit maps.
Click to expand...

Apart from one line barely fringing Rouge Park, I don't see any Tranist City lines heading for random/ undevelopable areas, and a DRL that short and out-of-the-way would actually increase dependency on buses over it. If 'Toronto' really wanted a world class transit map they'd begin in the downtown core, not suburban sprawl, not post-industrial wastelands, not townhouse/condo hell, not even hydro/rail corridors where the number of parked cars outnumber humans.

The day when the 500 series streetcars become redundant and obselete is the day when Toronto has a suitable subway infrastructure. All these suburban areas 'stealing' priorty from the core hub is the enviable fallacy that politicians (that have riden on a bus a day of their lives) has bestowed on the GTA as a whole. If VIVA's an indication, BRT is the wave of the suburban future-even along Finch.
 
doady said:
If you think about it, Transit City can easily be altered to fit in subways (and BRT) and still keep the cost at $6 billion.

For example, considering the projected costs of the individual projects, getting rid of the Malvern, Sheppard and Eglinton East LRT lines, plus cancelling the reconstruction and extension of the Scarborough RT, there surely would be enough money (over $2 billion!) for the completion of the Sheppard East and Danforth subways.

The money that would be spent on the Finch, Jane and Don Mills LRT lines (a whopping $2 billion!) could instead be used to build a significant part of the DRL, possibly all of it, which by itself would cover some of the territory of these LRT lines anyways. Finch would be better off with BRT anyways, imo...

Eglinton West LRT could remain as is (though it must be completely grade-separate!) and the Waterfront West LRT is a good plan too.

And there you go, Doady's Revised Transit City, with a cost that is still around $6 billion, but also includes subways and BRT and will actually solve some of the problems of the TTC instead of making them worse.



Well the Picadilly (sp?) Line from Heathrow Airport in London comes pretty close in terms of the amount of stations, and the actual distance is greater. But yes I agree subways should not go too far out and regional rail should be the main focus for suburbs, though Paris is probably not a good example considering the extreme division between suburbs and inner city there. I'm sure you've heard about the riots...
Click to expand...

I like Doady's Transity City 2.0

or at least the concept of reevaluating whether we're using subway, LRT, or BRT for specific routes.
 
DENTROBATE54 said:
Apart from one line barely fringing Rouge Park, I don't see any Tranist City lines heading for random/ undevelopable areas
Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about Transfer City, I was responding to nfitz's claim that we need to "cover the rest of the city," as if one accessed transit the same way a house is connected to a power grid or water main.
 
Perhaps we should built high-tension power lines along ever street, but make sure that they're built in such a way that they cost as much as regular high-tension lines, but only have the throughput of the existing power lines.
 
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