Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[Chuck]

Why does everyone seem to think that we can just keep building Wellesley sized stations? We can't because modern fire and safety codes do not allow that to happen. Stations are required to safely handle the maximum number of people that could ever come through.

I like pointing to Wellesley as an ideal station not because of its size, but because of its concept. Being situated underneath a building, the station occupies zero footprint at grade. The bus platforms are on the surface, and the only extra infrastructure required is two driveways to the street. The station is shallow, which drastically reduces excavation costs. There is no mezzanine, which again reduces the complexity and cost of the design. Yes, there should be another entrance, but this doesn't need to be anything more than a staircase to the street at either end of the station.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Are you seriously suggesting that a metre of tunnel is close to the cost of a metre of station?

Please hang up and try your call again.

Even if that is true then why where the Canada line stations built so short? I am guessing it was because of money.

If a vehicle is 100 feet long, no one would build a station 300 feet long. Maybe Vancouver's stations have one central entrance rather than one at each end...this would make the station smaller, shorten the mezzanine-type elements, etc., but it's not a model we'd want to follow or we'll end up with more College stations.

The cost difference is between a underground station that is 3 times longer than another (as well as wider) is significant, they have to use more than thrice the amount of concrete ($$$$$$) and steel ($$$$$) and labour ($$$$$) and various other materials, the cost of which has shot up significantly over the past several years. The price of a escalator is relatively nothing.

So building tunnels requires no labour or resources? You seem to think that a station includes nothing other than a platform (which makes your comment about one metre of each even stranger, because the platform itself doesn't add much cost when you already have to excavate the space and lay tracks and signals and electricity and pipes and so on).

One escalator isn't much but the cost of multiple escalators plus elevators, stairs, washrooms, surface structures, turnstiles, token machines, broom closets, garbage cans, etc., is both not tripled by a longer platform and not at all a small component of a station's overall cost. This is obvious. Are they building three ventilation systems? Of course not.

 

[LowerBay]

I was around in the late 60s/early 70s and the Queen subway (what you young whipper-snappers call the "DRL"), was on its way to becoming a reality. Its construction was considered absolutely necessary because the plan, at that time, was to abandon all streetcar service in Toronto ... FULL STOP.

The Queen subway had to be built because the combined ridership on King and Queen in those days could not be accommodated with buses. Queen would be the last car line to go, and the abandonment of that route would coincide with the opening of a new QUEEN subway by around 1980. The cost of the line was about $400M in 1970 dollars.

What happened? ... "Streetcars for Toronto". When they convinced the TTC to hold on to streetcars, the absolute need for a Queen subway vanished.

Don't believe the BS that Steve Munro sprouts about the shift in power in the Metropolitan level of gov't from downtown to the burbs, and how that pushed Spadina first and killed Queen. I was there, I remember, and I know better.

Spadina was always first. The plan for Spadina goes back to 1958. In fact, when the wye at St. George was designed in '58, it was built so that Spadina could feed in seamlessly.

Was keeping streetcars worth losing the Queen subway? You decide.

 

[nfitz]

If Sheppard's contingency was too large they would not have cut corners like the tiles.

Don't you remember what happened after Harris was elected?

 

[Whoaccio]

The numbers I have are a total length of 18.4 km with 9.1 km of it tunnelled. So it's not fair to say it's largely tunnelled, when more of it is not tunnelled than tunnelled. Also to save money, they deferred two of the stations, and controversially used cut-and-cover down most of Cambie, rather than using tunnelling machines; TTC stopped that practice in the late 1960s because of the disruption it caused....There are significant savings because the stations are much shorter than in Toronto; only about 1/3 the length of a Toronto subway station

Of course it's fair, if I said a majority was tunneled that would be inaccurate, but it is largely tunneled. (9.1km/18.4km)*100%=49.4%. Let's not split hairs over this.

Anyways, my point wasn't that the RAV is equivalent to the Toronto subway system. It isn't, I acknowledge that. My point was that I think the RAV line represents far better over all value as rapid transit than 400m/km Toronto equivalents. Fine, it has lower capacity thanks to smaller stations. It doesn't have 1/4 the capacity though. Running on 90s headways, the RAV should have a capacity of about 20k pph. Yonge South of Bloor is currently about 28k pph, with a theoretical limit of 40k pph. Half the capacity for a quarter the cost seems and the same speed seems like a deal to me.

Fine, cut/covering creates greater disruptions than tunnel boring. I still think disrupting traffic temporarily for the sake of long term transit investment is worthwhile considering these tunnels will be there indefinitely. Somehow we managed to live through the original Yonge subway's construction without resorting to cannibalism, so I think we will manage.

 

[nfitz]

EDIT: You're talking about the TTC and escalators here, you can't blame station design on that. On a more serious note, I argue to say that there are very few reasonable or underdone stations in the TTC's network. Most of them are much larger and grander than they need to be.

Sure you can blame them. The standard on many systems is to have 3 parallel escalators, and a set of stairs - for longer escalators at least. That way there is almost always an up and down available, plus one in service.

Simply having a relatively narrow staircase, and a single escalator, means that when the escalator is closed, even for a very short period, then all the traffic is forced up and down a narrow staircase. I'd say many of the BD stations are quite undersized. Pape in parcticular, there is always a lot of people in the quite narrow corridors. Other seem quite reasonable though ... Bathurst for example.

If, when you say "more infrastructure," you mean larger mezzanines and bigger gateway newstands, I'll have to argue against you on that. If you mean perhaps bigger staircases (or better build escalators) to move more people or elevators to make the station handicap-accesible, then I agree. However, those big, unnecessary mezzanines seem to cost a fair bit more than a bigger staircase would

I'm not thinking newstands! Bigger mezzanines in some places (Pape!) Wider staircases. When the mezzanine is just a simple corridor across the tracks, it could be a bit wider. More exits (Dundas!). And I'm amazed that they are putting in single elevators; surely it would make more sense to put 2 in together; so that if one is out of service, you can still get your wheelchair out of the station! How much more would the second one cost ... 25%? 50%?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Don't you remember what happened after Harris was elected?

Don't you remember that Sheppard didn't come in "under budget" because of a large contingency?

 

[Second_in_pie]

Sure you can blame them. The standard on many systems is to have 3 parallel escalators, and a set of stairs - for longer escalators at least. That way there is almost always an up and down available, plus one in service.

Simply having a relatively narrow staircase, and a single escalator, means that when the escalator is closed, even for a very short period, then all the traffic is forced up and down a narrow staircase. I'd say many of the BD stations are quite undersized. Pape in parcticular, there is always a lot of people in the quite narrow corridors. Other seem quite reasonable though ... Bathurst for example.

It was supposed to be a joke, but that's actually a good point. However, the fact that the escalators need to be repaired every week isn't the fault of station design at all.

 

[nfitz]

It was supposed to be a joke, but that's actually a good point. However, the fact that the escalators need to be repaired every week isn't the fault of station design at all.

It get's into lack of long-term maintenance; either way, it's got to be down.

 

[nfitz]

Don't you remember that Sheppard didn't come in "under budget" because of a large contingency?

I thought Sheppard was under budget.

 

[Whoaccio]

Even if that is true then why where the Canada line stations built so short? I am guessing it was because of money.

Why do you say that as a bad thing? It makes no sense to build a subway line to handle 40k pph if that ridership won't be reached for another century, if ever. It would make more sense, as Second in Pie notes, to build a larger network with a focus on dropping the cost per unit of capacity as opposed to focusing on maximizing raw capacity.

The cost difference is between a underground station that is 3 times longer than another (as well as wider) is significant, they have to use more than thrice the amount of concrete ($$$$$$) and steel ($$$$$) and labour ($$$$$) and various other materials, the cost of which has shot up significantly over the past several years. The price of a escalator is relatively nothing.

Which is why it often makes sense to build smaller stations in line with average demand.

Off the top of my head, I have never been significantly delayed by station congestion. I use the subway daily for commuting (Eglinton West- St. George or Eglinton-King). Compared to experiences I've had elsewhere, most stations are ghost towns anytime outside a few peak hours. King or Dundas can become a bit cramped at rushhour, but never to the point where I miss more than one train, and often more a result of poor station layout as opposed to absolute size. The odd time I am delayed by subway congestion pales in comparison to the countless times I am delayed by unreliable and over congested surface transit. Its not even a competition.

 

[Voltz]

Why do you say that as a bad thing? It makes no sense to build a subway line to handle 40k pph if that ridership won't be reached for another century, if ever. It would make more sense, as Second in Pie notes, to build a larger network with a focus on dropping the cost per unit of capacity as opposed to focusing on maximizing raw capacity.


Which is why it often makes sense to build smaller stations in line with average demand.

I don't necessarily think it is a bad thing, if that is all the capacity they need then that is fine, my point was that if building an underground station three times longer really did not cost much more then vancouver could have easily added an extra car length or two just to be safe, or to be in line with the other Skytrain stations (that are now being extended by the way), yet they did not.

On the Spadina and Yonge extensions, they can't just built the stations as small as the expected demand allows because the codes won't allow for it.

 

[bleeepbluuup]

It was supposed to be a joke, but that's actually a good point. However, the fact that the escalators need to be repaired every week isn't the fault of station design at all.

I don't understand why they even bother anymore. If they can't manage to keep them in good working order, they should just rip them out and put in stairs.

 

[Paleo]

Anyways, my point wasn't that the RAV is equivalent to the Toronto subway system. It isn't, I acknowledge that. My point was that I think the RAV line represents far better over all value as rapid transit than 400m/km Toronto equivalents. Fine, it has lower capacity thanks to smaller stations. It doesn't have 1/4 the capacity though. Running on 90s headways, the RAV should have a capacity of about 20k pph. Yonge South of Bloor is currently about 28k pph, with a theoretical limit of 40k pph. Half the capacity for a quarter the cost seems and the same speed seems like a deal to me.

20k pph wouldn't be a practical maximum capacity if that's at crush load and such a thin headway. The real capacity is likely much much lower.

Current capacity on Yonge is 25k pph at 2 1/2 minute frequencies using 1,000 per train as the loading standard. (The old standard was 1,250 per train). I don't believe the TTC for a second when they say ATC will solve all of Yonge's capacity crunch problems because more problems pop up as you get closer to the edge.

Real questions though, does the Vancouver line have things like walkways built along the entire length of the tunnel? Did they have to worry about underpinnings in built up areas? Are their soil conditions similar to Toronto? What about earthquake resistance?

Fine, cut/covering creates greater disruptions than tunnel boring. I still think disrupting traffic temporarily for the sake of long term transit investment is worthwhile considering these tunnels will be there indefinitely. Somehow we managed to live through the original Yonge subway's construction without resorting to cannibalism, so I think we will manage.

If I'm not mistaken they had to knock down a lot of buildings too. I don't think politicians would be too eager to do that today.

The primary problem I think is indeed the stations, as stated by others. Sheppard-Yonge station rebuild cost as much as the entire 6.5km of tunnels underneath Sheppard Avenue. Some of the proposed stations along the suburban extensions are real head scratchers.

 

[GenerationW]

Was keeping streetcars worth losing the Queen subway? You decide.

That would make an interesting poll question.