DavidH
Senior Member
The connection between the subway and LRT will be on the same platform, with riders just walking across.
It's utterly impossible to order equipment that is compatible with both. Subways are high floor, LRTs are low floor.
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Transit City: Sheppard East Debate
- Thread starter unimaginative2
- Start date
It's utterly impossible to order equipment that is compatible with both. Subways are high floor, LRTs are low floor.
davidlivesintoronto
"You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain,
Well if the subway trains were replaced entirely all we'd need is to figure out how to accommodate the light rail train to the existing subway stations. Could not the subway station tracks be elevated to the platform? All that would be necessary is a simple ramp of sorts. Nor is the subway trains along the Yonge-Don Mills length actually needed considering rider use. A light rail train would easily do.
nfitz
Superstar
The Metrolinx study that priced converting the subway to LRT indicated it would cost about $0.5-billion. For that much money you could pretty much build the Don Mills LRT from Eglinton to Steeles. While a through-service at Don Mills Road would be nice, I'd prefer the money be spent on something to expand transit.
sixrings
Senior Member
it seems evident though that the Sheppard line will NEVER be upgraded to Subway... Possibly the Eglinton Line but not the sheppard line. With that being understood. we miswell convert the technology sooner then later... plus again a connection to downsview.. Yes this might cost half a billion but the money must be found to fix this mistake.. and not money taken from another project.
leopetr
Active Member
Conversion can be Stage 2. Downsview can be Stage 3. But let's build Stage 1 first.
Perfectionism is worthwhile but not urgent.
sixrings
Senior Member
agreed... after stage 1... but not indeffinatel.. as long as the conversion doesnt happen downview will NEVER happen.
nfitz
Superstar
Would you really want to upgrade the LRT to subway, or would it make more sense to build a second set of tunnels for the short segment of line that will have be in a tunnel, and then only stop the subway at Victoria Park and Kennedy (or Agincourt?) before diverting south to Scarborough Centre.
Perhaps 30 years from now, we'll be doing the opposite, looking to close Bessarion and perhaps Leslie stations, and running the LRT down the middle of Sheppard on top of the subway line.
sixrings
Senior Member
I was saying finish the rest of sheppard east as LRT.. then convert the existing subway to lrt eliminating the transfer... Finally continue the lrt west bound to downsview..
As for 30 years down the road possibly building LRT over existing subways... Not likely to happen.. Hasnt happened in NYC whihc is way more dense.. And theres no plans for lrt over top of any existing subways in toronto.. ALthough I could see how a LRT on younge and on bloor would really help the buisnesses far from the core. Plus it would make our city more pedestrian oriented. I love walking and I love transit So ID be a fan.. But Im the minority..
As for 30 years down the road possibly building LRT over existing subways... Not likely to happen.. Hasnt happened in NYC whihc is way more dense.. And theres no plans for lrt over top of any existing subways in toronto.. ALthough I could see how a LRT on younge and on bloor would really help the buisnesses far from the core. Plus it would make our city more pedestrian oriented. I love walking and I love transit So ID be a fan.. But Im the minority..
nfitz
Superstar
Ah, missed that. I don't see a future conversion making sense ... it would be cheaper just to lay LRT down Sheppard from Yonge to Don Mills (and I don't expect that they'd do that to replace the subway).
Also New York does have bus service along many of the subway routes. Of particular note are discussions about building LRT along 42nd Street, even though there is already the 42nd Street Shuttle subway and the 7 Line running underneath (with the latter currently being extended).
Though they've done something else, with both express and local subways following the same route (with 4 tracks). Think of the LRT as the local service.
Also New York does have bus service along many of the subway routes. Of particular note are discussions about building LRT along 42nd Street, even though there is already the 42nd Street Shuttle subway and the 7 Line running underneath (with the latter currently being extended).
sixrings
Senior Member
i understand local vs express service.. and think it ay be a good idea... just not everywhere. again younge line and bloor line thats about it... we have busses on some of our subway routes as well.. but its not the same.. there infrequent and dont require a major investment...
reaperexpress
Senior Member
*cough* High floor LRT *cough*
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
I'll just do one long post...this week's dose of common sense.
Re: extending the subway just to Victoria Park – people should know that bad traffic on Sheppard, on average, doesn't really extend past Warden. The actual gridlock is really only in zones east of Bayview and west of Victoria Park. Assuming a bus terminal at Victoria Park had good access to eastbound Sheppard (and the left turn from Fairview onto Sheppard is an example of bad access), the time saved along Sheppard with just a two-stop extension would be at least 2-3 minutes, probably 5-6 minutes, and, occasionally, 10+ minutes.
Between Victoria Park and Kennedy, what slows the 190 down (and, to a lesser extent, the 85) is not traffic but turnover...people fishing for student i.d., asking for transfers, etc. These are cheaply fixed, but getting the city and the TTC to do this stuff is like asking a cat to fetch something. Extending the subway is a better use of resources than building the LRT, but it can be done in 20, 30, 50 years. There's no rush and no desperate need to extend it now. Everyone truly familiar with the state of transit across Toronto knows that it should not be at the top of the priority list, which only makes the LRT an even greater waste. It is a bit baffling that people are going to the mat for Sheppard subway extensions instead of focusing on subway projects like the DRL, or the Yonge extension, or Danforth to STC, all of which are more important and less doomed.
LAz is, in fact, about 50% correct. Subways do get people out of cars and they do promote walking, not just through the sheer numbers of higher ridership, but by concentrating people flows towards generally wider-spaced stations. What he – and everyone else – is wrong about is the supposed link between urban form, transit mode, and local vitality...there is none.
You're not any less familiar with the travel patterns in a place like Scarborough than Miller & Co. Keithz isn't correct about the 139, either, though he is right that the Sheppard LRT will have no effect on people beyond a few hundred metres of Sheppard. The 139 is actually very lightly used and once you subtract the riders that use it as a local bus on Finch East, and then subtract the riders that are using it to go directly to Fairview Mall or the other bus connections at Fairview, you're left with only a small number of people actually using it to get to the Yonge line via the stubway. It only runs in the rush hour because taking the regular 39 to Yonge off-peak is much faster than taking the 139 to Sheppard to Yonge. During rush hour, the two routes are closer in speed, but going through Finch station is easier, with one less transfer and a better shot at a subway seat.
Finch East is one of those routes that is a net 'importer' of bus transfers (more transfer to the 39 from other routes than from the 39 to other routes) because of its speed and frequency, but none of these N/S bus riders will switch to the Sheppard LRT instead of Finch. There's zero time to be gained since the 39 is fast, since the LRT won't be a time improvement over the 85/190, and since the stubway doesn't run frequently enough (despite some genuine overcrowding in rush hour, it sits for minutes at the terminals). These N/S bus riders would start to switch to an extended Sheppard subway, especially if extended westward to give easier access to York U, Yorkdale, U of T, the hospitals, etc. Riders vote with their feet and travel time will always be the number one issue.
Anyone who's ever used Leslie - or even driven past - knows that the station is underground (and overbuilt, both quite needlessly). Some components are above ground, though, like the street exits and the light wells, because people and light can't pass through soil and concrete.
If people along Sheppard are forced to wait for transit vehicles for as long as people along Queen, they might bond more, too. They'd have a burden to share and something to talk about, at least. Communities along Queen are much older and more homogenous than spots along Sheppard, which does infinitely more for those communities than transit.
Many people still don't know what's going on even when they see construction. Just because you're an avid transit geek who searches for and analyzes obscure government documents doesn't mean everyone else should have to do the same for their opinion to matter. If anything, the public is less biased than transit geeks, concerned mostly with actual travel times and riding conditions, and not concerned with mode ideology or pretty lines on a transit map or a host of technical red herrings. The real public doesn't show up to public meetings in numbers, though, if they've even heard about the meetings in the first place, so 'the public' seems to be composed entirely of people concerned with property values and electromagnetic radiation.
Save Our Sheppard may have details wrong and isn't arguing well, but their point still stands...essentially zero drivers will get out of their cars for an LRT line along Sheppard. The city treats a mode shift that would double or triple "demand" as a base assumption but real people know that this is ludicrous and should not determine what gets done to roads and transit. There's no more demand for the Sheppard LRT than there is for the Sheppard bus now, let alone Sheppard with an 85E branch or with POP, especially since losing the 190 and forcing other bus routes to run outside and alongside the ROW could kill some of the corridor's ridership. It's been 'too late' for the Sheppard LRT for 3 years now, but it's not too late for other projects/corridors, though if transit plans continue to change out of the blue and be based on ideology and social engineering instead of real conditions and real transit needs, it won't matter.
Re: extending the subway just to Victoria Park – people should know that bad traffic on Sheppard, on average, doesn't really extend past Warden. The actual gridlock is really only in zones east of Bayview and west of Victoria Park. Assuming a bus terminal at Victoria Park had good access to eastbound Sheppard (and the left turn from Fairview onto Sheppard is an example of bad access), the time saved along Sheppard with just a two-stop extension would be at least 2-3 minutes, probably 5-6 minutes, and, occasionally, 10+ minutes.
Between Victoria Park and Kennedy, what slows the 190 down (and, to a lesser extent, the 85) is not traffic but turnover...people fishing for student i.d., asking for transfers, etc. These are cheaply fixed, but getting the city and the TTC to do this stuff is like asking a cat to fetch something. Extending the subway is a better use of resources than building the LRT, but it can be done in 20, 30, 50 years. There's no rush and no desperate need to extend it now. Everyone truly familiar with the state of transit across Toronto knows that it should not be at the top of the priority list, which only makes the LRT an even greater waste. It is a bit baffling that people are going to the mat for Sheppard subway extensions instead of focusing on subway projects like the DRL, or the Yonge extension, or Danforth to STC, all of which are more important and less doomed.
LAz is, in fact, about 50% correct. Subways do get people out of cars and they do promote walking, not just through the sheer numbers of higher ridership, but by concentrating people flows towards generally wider-spaced stations. What he – and everyone else – is wrong about is the supposed link between urban form, transit mode, and local vitality...there is none.
You're not any less familiar with the travel patterns in a place like Scarborough than Miller & Co. Keithz isn't correct about the 139, either, though he is right that the Sheppard LRT will have no effect on people beyond a few hundred metres of Sheppard. The 139 is actually very lightly used and once you subtract the riders that use it as a local bus on Finch East, and then subtract the riders that are using it to go directly to Fairview Mall or the other bus connections at Fairview, you're left with only a small number of people actually using it to get to the Yonge line via the stubway. It only runs in the rush hour because taking the regular 39 to Yonge off-peak is much faster than taking the 139 to Sheppard to Yonge. During rush hour, the two routes are closer in speed, but going through Finch station is easier, with one less transfer and a better shot at a subway seat.
Finch East is one of those routes that is a net 'importer' of bus transfers (more transfer to the 39 from other routes than from the 39 to other routes) because of its speed and frequency, but none of these N/S bus riders will switch to the Sheppard LRT instead of Finch. There's zero time to be gained since the 39 is fast, since the LRT won't be a time improvement over the 85/190, and since the stubway doesn't run frequently enough (despite some genuine overcrowding in rush hour, it sits for minutes at the terminals). These N/S bus riders would start to switch to an extended Sheppard subway, especially if extended westward to give easier access to York U, Yorkdale, U of T, the hospitals, etc. Riders vote with their feet and travel time will always be the number one issue.
Anyone who's ever used Leslie - or even driven past - knows that the station is underground (and overbuilt, both quite needlessly). Some components are above ground, though, like the street exits and the light wells, because people and light can't pass through soil and concrete.
If people along Sheppard are forced to wait for transit vehicles for as long as people along Queen, they might bond more, too. They'd have a burden to share and something to talk about, at least. Communities along Queen are much older and more homogenous than spots along Sheppard, which does infinitely more for those communities than transit.
Many people still don't know what's going on even when they see construction. Just because you're an avid transit geek who searches for and analyzes obscure government documents doesn't mean everyone else should have to do the same for their opinion to matter. If anything, the public is less biased than transit geeks, concerned mostly with actual travel times and riding conditions, and not concerned with mode ideology or pretty lines on a transit map or a host of technical red herrings. The real public doesn't show up to public meetings in numbers, though, if they've even heard about the meetings in the first place, so 'the public' seems to be composed entirely of people concerned with property values and electromagnetic radiation.
Save Our Sheppard may have details wrong and isn't arguing well, but their point still stands...essentially zero drivers will get out of their cars for an LRT line along Sheppard. The city treats a mode shift that would double or triple "demand" as a base assumption but real people know that this is ludicrous and should not determine what gets done to roads and transit. There's no more demand for the Sheppard LRT than there is for the Sheppard bus now, let alone Sheppard with an 85E branch or with POP, especially since losing the 190 and forcing other bus routes to run outside and alongside the ROW could kill some of the corridor's ridership. It's been 'too late' for the Sheppard LRT for 3 years now, but it's not too late for other projects/corridors, though if transit plans continue to change out of the blue and be based on ideology and social engineering instead of real conditions and real transit needs, it won't matter.
nfitz
Superstar
Anyone who has ever used Leslie would be aware that the subway tracks crosses over the Don River just east of the station. The station is no more underground, than a house built into the side of a hill. It has to be one of the shallowest, if not the shallowest, stations on the system; other than the outdoor ones. What's deceiving is how high the Leslie/Sheppard interssection has been built up from ground surface. Yes, I suppose technically part of the tracks are below natural ground surface, though at the east end of the station, track level is no deeper than your average basement.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
^does that mean that Castle Frank station is also above ground? It passes over the Don to the east, too.
kettal
Banned
Is this true for BRT also? If so, York Region is building one massive white elephant.
Edit: or maybe this is specific to Sheppard, in which case, carry on.
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