Transit Fantasy Maps

[Napoleon]

Streetcar routes down Dundas, Dovercourt & Ossington? That's a little bit overkill. Even Ossington is probably a little light on the ridership for a streetcar route.

 

[wolfewood]

I like the fact that the streetcar routes are not too long, ending at Eglinton to the north. That is the issue with Melbourne, a city that did keep its historic streetcar network and never stopped expanding it. Their streetcar routes reach well into their suburbs and are waaay too long and inefficient for those kind of commutes.

Funnily enough that was sort of unintentional lol A lot of routes are a mix of older routes or filling in gaps between currently existing routes. Some are also far longer than they appear, such as the Bathurst route (continuing north of Bloor to at least Eglinton) or Kingston Road (assuming a rebuilt Birchmount loop or even a connection to a Malvern LRT). I also imagine I'd reorganize how I planned this if it wasn't just coming up with as many streetcar routes as possible based on historic routes and my idea of current patterns.

Also the lack of RT (of any kind) between Eglinton and Sheppard, as well as the post-war suburban form, seems to imply that streetcars that far north would be a waste. I could imagine maybe Bathurst and Dufferin routes reaching the Yorkdale area but, as you said, they'd be too long really.

Streetcar down Mt Pleasant Jarvis eh? Parts of the route are very highway-like: fast, winding and hilly. Still hoping for a bus route there (that doesn't cost extra and runs all day).

Heh I noticed that this morning when I went on Google streetview and saw just how highway-like Mt. Pleasant is there. That said, it could make a nice express portion for those coming from Mt. Pleasant/Eglinton toward Jarvis.

Streetcar routes down Dundas, Dovercourt & Ossington? That's a little bit overkill. Even Ossington is probably a little light on the ridership for a streetcar route.

Oh definitely, some of these routes are about illustrating the old routes or how they might be routed today. I also kind of imagine these as a mix of pre-LRT (say along Queen or Spadina, the routes with highest ridership) and higher order bus service (on lower ridership routes like Ossington, as you said). My idea in having such a dense network in the old city is mostly fetishizing streetcar service over buses downtown. That said, I feel you could increase ridership on tracked transit routes, just by virtue of the smoother ride and the prestige we tend to attach to rail-based transit over buses.

 

[salsa]

Streetcar routes down Dundas, Dovercourt & Ossington? That's a little bit overkill. Even Ossington is probably a little light on the ridership for a streetcar route.

I'm not a frequent user of the Ossington bus, however it is part of the TTC's frequent bus network and connects to the growing Liberty Village area, so I would imagine that ridership must be pretty good (or at least south of Bloor).

 

[M II A II R II K]

Would the TTC create new mixed traffic streetcar routes anymore.

 

[Johnny Au]

Don't forget that Dufferin between Dupont and Eglinton has many steep slopes that may affect any potential LRT routing there.

 

[Napoleon]

I'm not a frequent user of the Ossington bus, however it is part of the TTC's frequent bus network and connects to the growing Liberty Village area, so I would imagine that ridership must be pretty good (or at least south of Bloor).

Lucky you not to be a regular user of the Ossington bus

It does service Liberty Village sub-optimally as the route is a bit convoluted to get around the rail line.
http://www.ttc.ca/Routes/63/RouteDescription.jsp?tabName=map

This route seems to suffer rather severe bunching, such that it's often more effective to walk from the station to Dundas. My worry about switching to a streetcar would be that it would get stuck behind left turning traffic at every single intersection.

 

[M II A II R II K]

It would be better if the Ossington bus went into a tunnel south of Queen to get to Liberty Village directly.

 

[threnody]

I'm curious to see what our future transit map would look like fully incorporating the Spadina extension and the Tory expansion plan:

• Crosstown Line 5 from Pearson to UTSC
• Finch West Line 6 from Finch West Station to Humber
• Smart Track from Mount Dennis to Kennedy
• One-stop Line 2 extension to STC

No doubt line 5 will look super long, especially with all the stops on the surface sections.

 

[robmausser]

I'm curious to see what our future transit map would look like fully incorporating the Spadina extension and the Tory expansion plan:

• Crosstown Line 5 from Pearson to UTSC
• Finch West Line 6 from Finch West Station to Humber
• Smart Track from Mount Dennis to Kennedy
• One-stop Line 2 extension to STC

No doubt line 5 will look super long, especially with all the stops on the surface sections.

often times when transit maps get really big, they have 2 maps on trains etc: a simple "overview map" showing the entire system, but without station names etc, and then a more "zoomed in" map showing just the line you are on with station names and little perpendicular lines intersecting showing the transfer points onto adjacent lines.

I am sure Toronto will adopt this methodology...once our transit system gets big enough.

 

[44 North]

I hadn't seen this posted yet, but it looks somewhat interesting. Appears it's based off the existing official TTC subway map, and I don't think we've seen RER or SmrtTrack included on that in the past. Not sure if there's a complete version showing the whole system, I only saw this. Crosstown's colours seem off though. Too yellow...looks like Y-U/S.

 

[BurlOak]

It's still surprising to see a transit line (Eglinton) with stations farther apart in the dense areas and very close at the less dense areas.

 

[WislaHD]

It's still surprising to see a transit line (Eglinton) with stations farther apart in the dense areas and very close at the less dense areas.

Someone on reddit posted a question in similar vain to your post, so I will copy+paste what I wrote:

You are underestimating how big Scarborough is. Even with that many stops, the stop spacing is going to be well over 400-500 meters. (e.g. I thought the Mason Rd stop was useless, but it is actually 455 meters from Eglinton GO to the west and 530 meters from Markham Rd to the east)

For reference, that is stop spacing not too dissimilar to the Bloor-Danforth line (which are typically ~400-500 meters). The problematic St. Clair and Spadina streetcars have stops every 100 meters.

Also, consider if we remove too many stops we might be required to run an infrequent bus route along the same corridor, just to intercept local stops. That being said, I think a few stops could and should be cut.

 

[Hopkins123]

Someone on reddit posted a question in similar vain to your post, so I will copy+paste what I wrote:

You are underestimating how big Scarborough is. Even with that many stops, the stop spacing is going to be well over 400-500 meters. (e.g. I thought the Mason Rd stop was useless, but it is actually 455 meters from Eglinton GO to the west and 530 meters from Markham Rd to the east)

For reference, that is stop spacing not too dissimilar to the Bloor-Danforth line (which are typically ~400-500 meters). The problematic St. Clair and Spadina streetcars have stops every 100 meters.

Also, consider if we remove too many stops we might be required to run an infrequent bus route along the same corridor, just to intercept local stops. That being said, I think a few stops could and should be cut.

Half of the Scarborough stops are unnecessary. Lebovic's too close too Warden. Ionview too close to Birchmount. Midland too close to Kennedy Stn. McCowan too close to Bellamy/Eglinton GO. Mason too close to Markham Rd. Both Kingston/Eglinton and Guildwood Pkwy are too close to Scarb. Golf Club. Stops at both Lawrence and Morningside is overkill, one stop straddling both would suffice. Beath would see maybe 50 users per day off-peak. Building larger stations with secondary exits would eliminate the need for having to stop every 500 metres. Scarborough isn't south-of-Bloor dense. Consider the added runtime serving all those miscellaneous stops would cause.

 

[Hopkins123]

I'm curious to see what our future transit map would look like fully incorporating the Spadina extension and the Tory expansion plan:

• Crosstown Line 5 from Pearson to UTSC
• Finch West Line 6 from Finch West Station to Humber
• Smart Track from Mount Dennis to Kennedy
• One-stop Line 2 extension to STC

No doubt line 5 will look super long, especially with all the stops on the surface sections.

Gee, you think? Someday we could have a Line 5 looking like this:

 

[BurlOak]

Half of the Scarborough stops are unnecessary. Lebovic's too close too Warden. Ionview too close to Birchmount. Midland too close to Kennedy Stn. McCowan too close to Bellamy/Eglinton GO. Mason too close to Markham Rd. Both Kingston/Eglinton and Guildwood Pkwy are too close to Scarb. Golf Club. Stops at both Lawrence and Morningside is overkill, one stop straddling both would suffice. Beath would see maybe 50 users per day off-peak. Building larger stations with secondary exits would eliminate the need for having to stop every 500 metres. Scarborough isn't south-of-Bloor dense. Consider the added runtime serving all those miscellaneous stops would cause.

Planners think this is the perfect compromise between local and rapid transit. I think the public thinks it is the worst compromise.
For local travel, still have a farther walk to a stop vs. a bus, headway worse than bus, speed too slow to make up for extra walking/waiting time.
For distant travel - too many stop and too slow to be an alternative to car.