Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

Would it be possible to devise a 3 track DRL? Every now and then the idea of a 4 track, New York style, express/local gets floated around and I always strikes me as terribly impractical considering the relatively unidirectional Toronto transit situation. Even in NYC the express/local always sounds better than it works, from my experience. For the DRL though, why not have a regular milk run subway running from like Don Mills/Eglinton to Downtown with stop spacing of 500-800m and an extra track which would carry a limited stop (i.e. Eglinton->Pape->Downtown) train in the direction of peak travel.

Instead of building a system (rolling stock, route, station size) around somewhat unrepresentative peak travel demand, it could better handle average daytime usage. The reality being that stations along even 'well used' parts of the subway, like Wellsley, can be rather empty most of the time. That could sort of kill two birds with one relatively affordable solution.

There is definitely something to be said for that. When the DRL was first designed, it had only one stop between Pape and Union at Queen (two "optional" stops were located at Gerrard and Sherbourne). This was so that the line would be so much faster than the Danforth-Yonge alternative that it would attract a lot of riders even if they had a slightly longer walk to their destination downtown. An express service would bring back that high-speed service while serving the neighbourhoods in between, and would provide exactly the kind of peak-period relief that we need most.
 
I love express tracks, and would recommend using New York as a model. Due to the large geographic area the suburbs occupy, we might eventually build 10 or 12 subway lines throughout the suburbs. As the lines approach downtown, the spacing between them naturally decreases. Eventually, two lines meet, at which point they merge into a 4-track cross section with one of the two lines switching to express and the other staying local.
 
I love express tracks, and would recommend using New York as a model. Due to the large geographic area the suburbs occupy, we might eventually build 10 or 12 subway lines throughout the suburbs. As the lines approach downtown, the spacing between them naturally decreases. Eventually, two lines meet, at which point they merge into a 4-track cross section with one of the two lines switching to express and the other staying local.

We are too poor to build 10-12 subway lines. That's why we're getting LRTs.
 
We are too poor to build 10-12 subway lines. That's why we're getting LRTs.

We're getting LRTs because the powers that be have chosen to not build subways. The choice had absolutely nothing to do with cost. Also note that Chuck said "eventually."
 
We're getting LRTs because the powers that be have chosen to not build subways. The choice had absolutely nothing to do with cost. Also note that Chuck said "eventually."

It's all about money. I recall few months ago or late last year, someone was opposed to LRT and preferred subways. Eventually, even he got persuaded into agreeing with LRT. It would cost way more to build a subway than an LRT. It costs a lot more to dig, than it is to add rails on the surface.
 
I love express tracks, and would recommend using New York as a model. Due to the large geographic area the suburbs occupy, we might eventually build 10 or 12 subway lines throughout the suburbs. As the lines approach downtown, the spacing between them naturally decreases. Eventually, two lines meet, at which point they merge into a 4-track cross section with one of the two lines switching to express and the other staying local.
I like the idea of express tracks on the DRL at least, staying local north of Eglinton, than branching off to probably a peak-hour express service stopping at Eglinton, Bloor, Queen and Yonge. This would let the southern portion of the DRL provide a good strong service to Downtown while still being an express route to alleviate Bloor & Yonge. I hope that the DRL (especially on a Don Mills extension) doesn't have the stop spacing that north on Yonge has. Something closer to that of Bloor would be the best, especially since much of Don Mills is actually more dense than Bloor is.

As for 10 or 12 subway lines through the suburbs, I think it's possible, and not just in the outer 416. We just need to get out of our LRT Transit City mindset, and we'll be on our way to having 5 or 6 easily within 10 or 15 years.
 
It's all about money. I recall few months ago or late last year, someone was opposed to LRT and preferred subways. Eventually, even he got persuaded into agreeing with LRT. It would cost way more to build a subway than an LRT. It costs a lot more to dig, than it is to add rails on the surface.

No, it has absolutely nothing to do with money. This is incredibly obvious. If we can't afford to "eventually" build some subway lines (not that we need to build only subway lines), there's no way in hell we can afford to build $10B worth of LRT right now.

And this doesn't even touch upon the actual service we end up with.
 
its sad that Canada being one of the richest countries in the world, has some of the poorest transit planning. My family lives in Spain, and don't get me wrong, but Spain isn't even part of the G8, and they have what how many lines in madrid and Barcelona each? like 12? 13? and these lines don't only go downtown but, there is also a suburban subway system as well (metrosur i think it's called in Madrid, dunno about Barcelona), not to mention that the Madrid area doesn't have as many citizens as the Toronto region, and neither does Barcelona last time i checked.
 
No, it has absolutely nothing to do with money. This is incredibly obvious. If we can't afford to "eventually" build some subway lines (not that we need to build only subway lines), there's no way in hell we can afford to build $10B worth of LRT right now.

And this doesn't even touch upon the actual service we end up with.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/01/19/to-spain-via-scarborough.aspx

Councillor Norm Kelly (Ward 40, Scarborough-Agincourt) has long been a believer in subways, and he fought long and hard to convince the TTC to spend the money to finish the Sheppard subway line to its intended conclusion, at Scarborough Town Centre. However, he lost that fight, and to show he’s no sore loser, he has now, as a board member of Metrolinx, thrown his weight behind its plan for Transit City, a network of dedicated streetcar lines criss-crossing Toronto. The first one, on Sheppard, will traverse his ward.
But Mr. Kelly still has a little thing for subways. Metrolinx just flew him to Spain for 10 days, which he spent checking out the Madrid rapid transit network. He was very impressed, he said, at the intricate weavings of subways, trains and light rail that connect at “mobility hubs†in the Spanish capital. “They have a lot of money,†he said. The formal tours lasted from 8 a.m. to about 4 p.m., but Mr. Kelly did some extra-curricular travel too: “I was on the subway at midnight and I was packed in like a sardine,†he said. “I wondered, ‘Where are all these people going?â€

Other countries have money to build subways and tons of lines. We don't.

http://www.urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=8230

Toronto wants subways

Posted: January 13, 2009, 12:28 PM by Peter Kuitenbrouwer

George Grossman asks: "Has anyone mentioned a westward expansion of the Sheppard subway? In my opinion THE most glaring omission in the system is the lack of subway connection along Sheppard between Downsview and Yonge. (i.e. between the Yonge line and the Spadina line) We're talking about 5km of subway, probably less (?)

Howard Levine writes, "As one of four people who had requested a hearing under the Environmental Assessment Act for the St. Clair Streetcar Project, I was deeply disappointed when the Minister instead appointed us to sit on a "Liaison Committee". Together with TTC and City Transportation staff, we have met for several years now for endless hours in an mostly futile attempt to ameliorate the on-going and seemingly never ending project. If this project is to be a template for the Light Rail components of Transit City, Toronto is in for a transit fiasco beyond contemplation."

Don Rodbard, who lives near King and Spadina, writes, "There is some really slick construction going on around the world, mostly bridges, that uses slender concrete columns to support off-site fabricated road/rail spans that are tensioned after installation forming a durable integrated structure that in many cases aren’t as terribly ugly as say the Gardiner or some of the older steel elevated trains. Why can’t we run elevated transit down the middle of some of our wider streets and not give up the limited vehicle flexibility that we all have learned to live with?
Dick Chapman, meanwhile, notes, "With a player like Jack Layton on the scene in Ottawa, the city should enlist the former T.O. councillor in renewed efforts to wring massive new funding from the feds to underpin Toronto's subway expansion. Of course any success Layton achieves in this regard will be politically self-serving, but who cares? If he succeeds, everybody wins. If we stop to fret the political losses and gains, nothing ever gets done. Now is not the time for partisanship, in case anybody hasn't noticed. We seem to be on the brink of a global economic abyss and a lot of us already have vertigo. Subway building in our largest cities would be a wise expenditure of the mysterious stimulus packages which so far seem aimed at propping up the major banks with benefits that suspiciously seem likely to trickle down only as far as the banks' shareholders. Unlike added subway capacity. Does anybody here need reminding how wide is the gap between transit funding from Canada's senior governments and that provided in Europe and the U.S.A.? I think not.

D. Vallance writes that we probably can't afford more rapid transit, noting that the Chinese have a car that will sell for under $7,000; to make transit fast enough to compete with that is out of our reach, he says.

Meanwhile, Andy Manahan of the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario notes that subways would cost us a lot less if we built them consistently instead of piecemeal. A report “Building a Stronger City: Subway expansion in Toronto,†which his previous employer (Local 183) commissioned in 2003, noted that continuous construction is half the price of piecemeal subway-building.

He notes, "when the Sheppard subway project was completed there were negative impacts from both labour and machinery perspectives:

(1) Skilled project engineers and labour left this region to find work of a similar nature in other jurisdictions.

(2) Toronto sold both Tunnel Boring Machines at fire sale prices. If there had been a steady stream of transit projects, then these TBMs could have been kept in operation for their full life span (and the capital costs more appropriately amortized).

A continuous and steady expansion transportation program for the GTAH will result in a much more effective deployment of capital and labour. I have encouraged Metrolinx to incorporate these concepts into the Business Case Analysis as a continuous expansion program will bolster economies of scale and reduce costs.’’
 
That's what I keep saying. We should have a continuous plan for subway construction. That article is absolutely right.
 
Yes, we do. We're spending $10B just on LRT lines...we've never spent that much on subways and we never will if we continue to choose not to.

They're spending money on LRT lines cuz they're cheaper. They can build 3 LRT lines for the cost of same length for a subway line. It's either build less lines and spend it on the subway or build more lines and spend it on LRT. They chose quantity over quality. If the government had an unlimited budget and all the money in the world. I'm sure they would love to do a shopping spree and build all the LRT lines as subway lines. Costs makes a difference.

As I quoted "Does anybody here need reminding how wide is the gap between transit funding from Canada's senior governments and that provided in Europe and the U.S.A.? I think not... D. Vallance writes that we probably can't afford more rapid transit".

Other countries have bigger transit funding than Canada. There's a wide gap between our funding and Euorope and US spending.
 
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They're spending money on LRT lines cuz they're cheaper. They can build 3 LRT lines for the cost of same length for a subway line. It's either build less lines and spend it on the subway or build more lines and spend it on LRT. They chose quantity over quality. If the government had an unlimited budget and all the money in the world. I'm sure they would love to do a shopping spree and build all the LRT lines as subway lines. Costs makes a difference.
You're talking like LRT provides the same service as Subway. The truth is that LRT provides a considerably worse service than subway, both by speed and capacity. Sure subway takes more capital cost than LRT, but the results are definitely much, much better.
 
You're talking like LRT provides the same service as Subway. The truth is that LRT provides a considerably worse service than subway, both by speed and capacity. Sure subway takes more capital cost than LRT, but the results are definitely much, much better.

Hence I said "They chose quantity over quality". They prefer to build more lines than less lines but more expensive ones. If we had tons of money. I'm sure we could have both quantity AND quality. However since they have a budget, it seems like quantity is the priority. Money talks.
 

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