What is the best next transit upgrade in the Sheppard East corridor

[pman]

It would be interesting if the survey provided the following data for each option to inform voting:
Capital cost
Incremental riders
Annual operating cost

My concern is that our hyper politicized approach to transit expansion in Toronto normally occurs without any reference to costs and benefits.

 

[Rainforest]

I think in the polling there should be an option of: extend subway to SC, but more affordably (e.g max 4-car train/100m platform, possible use of elevated guideway east of Kennedy, and/or use of Line 3 ROW). With this possible option no one needs to utter the word ICTS, or see the accompanying 'proprietary' descriptor. It'd still be a 100% conventional TTC subway line/extension...just built not as gargantuan, and with lower per km cost.

I doubt I'd vote for it, or any of the options. Not that I think they're bad. I'm partial to SELRT (but think the SC connection needs to be figured out better), and fully believe the conversion to a Crosstown-style LRT line has unstudied merit.

I feel this is close enough to Option # 7, "Convert and extend as a narrow-body subway or ICTS to save the extension costs".

 

[Rainforest]

It would be interesting if the survey provided the following data for each option to inform voting:
Capital cost
Incremental riders
Annual operating cost

My concern is that our hyper politicized approach to transit expansion in Toronto normally occurs without any reference to costs and benefits.

That would be very difficult to do for options that never went through any formal analysis or design process. That applies to the majority of options listed in this poll.

The annual operating costs forecasts are not published even for projects formally approved by TTC, such as Sheppard LRT.

 

[Elite People]

How do I create a poll.

 

[Rainforest]

How do I create a poll.

The way that I found, go to Transportation and Infrastructure, select Create New Thread. Enter the thread name, and the 1st post (can be same as the thread name). Then, fill the Create a Poll fields at the bottom. They are self-explanatory. Then, create the thread and the poll will be on top of it.

I'd love to be able to insert a poll into the existing thread, and don't rule out that such functionality exists, but I couldn't find it.

 

[44 North]

It would be interesting if the survey provided the following data for each option to inform voting:
Capital cost
Incremental riders
Annual operating cost

True, the whole thing is kinda a wash if we don't know the costs or riders of each. Tho I'm fairly certain there's a large number of posters here who can guesstimate each option with fairly accurate results. One curveball may be that modern official estimates seem to be very screwy. Or specifically with SSE (the costs are too high for me to take it seriously).

I feel this is close enough to Option # 7, "Convert and extend as a narrow-body subway or ICTS to save the extension costs".

But "ICTS" is a meaningless term, and refers to a specific company's specific train (Bombardier's Innovia). It means nothing, only causes confusion, and at its root is just a marketing gimmick for said company. The capacities in the brochure don't even make sense - claiming it's a solution that can carry the equivalent of a typical 6-car/150m subway. But if that was the case it'd have similar lengths and station infrastructure as a 150m long subway and thus no longer be "intermediate capacity".

There's an entire world of trains, and these can be run in different lengths/frequencies. Line 4 runs with 4-car on a lowish frequency, so by default it's already fairly 'intermediate'. Listing BBD's Innovia (i.e ICTS) as the only option for capacities between 15-30k pphpd is like saying, I dunno, that the Ford Taurus is the only midsize vehicle in existence. It's confusing and dumb.

 

[pman]

That would be very difficult to do for options that never went through any formal analysis or design process. That applies to the majority of options listed in this poll.

The annual operating costs forecasts are not published even for projects formally approved by TTC, such as Sheppard LRT.

Fair enough, but absent this information the survey response is about as useless and meaningless as a Council transit debate. Too cynical, you say? I give you North York's Councillor Shiner, who helpfully reminded us recently that he doesn't make decisions based on facts. So yes, this poll is like that.

 

[Rainforest]

Fair enough, but absent this information the survey response is about as useless and meaningless as a Council transit debate. Too cynical, you say? I give you North York's Councillor Shiner, who helpfully reminded us recently that he doesn't make decisions based on facts. So yes, this poll is like that.

The goal of this poll is to estimate the readers' preferences, not to actually design any transit line.

Basically, same can be said about all discussions taking place on this forum.

 

[Rainforest]

But "ICTS" is a meaningless term, and refers to a specific company's specific train (Bombardier's Innovia). It means nothing, only causes confusion, and at its root is just a marketing gimmick for said company. The capacities in the brochure don't even make sense - claiming it's a solution that can carry the equivalent of a typical 6-car/150m subway. But if that was the case it'd have similar lengths and station infrastructure as a 150m long subway and thus no longer be "intermediate capacity".

There's an entire world of trains, and these can be run in different lengths/frequencies. Line 4 runs with 4-car on a lowish frequency, so by default it's already fairly 'intermediate'. Listing BBD's Innovia (i.e ICTS) as the only option for capacities between 15-30k pphpd is like saying, I dunno, that the Ford Taurus is the only midsize vehicle in existence. It's confusing and dumb.

I checked if it is possible to remove words "or ICTS" from the poll option. Apparently, the system won't let me do so (I can add extra options, but can't modify those already posted).

Sorry if appears a little confusing. I hoped that "Option 7" will mean any kind of rail technology that remains fully grade-separated for the whole length, but reduces the expansion costs by using smaller cars and/or shorter trains. ICTS was used as an example only.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

13 votes for some sort of LRT VS 5 votes for Subway. The subway option has 1 more vote than the do nothing option.

Let's be honest, they should have never approved the BD extension, all the same arguments applied to that and look what happened. You can't build one scarborough subway without the other, especially the purpose being the loop at STC.

 

[Rainforest]

Let's be honest, they should have never approved the BD extension, all the same arguments applied to that and look what happened. You can't build one scarborough subway without the other, especially the purpose being the loop at STC.

I don't think so. The support for BD was/is a lot stronger than the support for Sheppard extension.

 

[44 North]

I hoped that "Option 7" will mean any kind of rail technology that remains fully grade-separated for the whole length, but reduces the expansion costs by using smaller cars and/or shorter trains. ICTS was used as an example only.

Hear you loud and clear on that. IMO one of the better definitions for what you describe is light metro, considering its wording describes that it's 100% subway (metro) but built a bit smaller/simpler (light). Though it's probably a bit technical and foreign-sounding for some. Many don't know what metro means, and the concept of light can be finicky or hard to grasp.

Maybe good to just say plain old subway, but with a footnote that it's to be sized a bit smaller in length or width or cost. Feel this was one of the biggest faults with Line 3's original branding and later upgrade plans. Should've always been listed as a subway. Not RT/ICTS, nor LRT for the upgrade. Confused people and made it seem inferior.

 

[Hopkins123]

"Narrow body subway" option would yield same speed. "High-floor LRT" option would yield a speed that is only slightly worse if the stop spacing is wide.

What exactly is a "narrow body subway" and why would we even want to adopt another orphan technology mode like ICTS after the tepid reception it's gotten by the public?

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best and most correct one. Spending billion$ to retrofit tunnels designed specifically for heavy rail subways to accommodate LRT all in the name of the hope of yielding a few more miles of total trackbed is probably not any more wise a decision to make than just extending the subway how it is now.

 

[Rainforest]

What exactly is a "narrow body subway" and why would we even want to adopt another orphan technology mode like ICTS after the tepid reception it's gotten by the public?

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best and most correct one. Spending billion$ to retrofit tunnels designed specifically for heavy rail subways to accommodate LRT all in the name of the hope of yielding a few more miles of total trackbed is probably not any more wise a decision to make than just extending the subway how it is now.

Extending the subway "as is" almost guarantees that it will never make it past STC in the east, and past Allen Road (Spadina line) in the west. That means, still no true crosstown route in the north, and what's built will remain well under capacity.

I am not in favor of spending a billion $ to retrofit the tunnels to low-floor LRT, either. The whole point is to find a technology that will fit into the existing tunnels much more easily / cheaply (say, no more than $100 million for the retrofit part). That likely means, either high-floor LRT, or a subway with smaller trains.

The main problem with ICTS / Scarborough RT isn't being an orphan technology, but at transfer at the edge of the trunk subway system. If we can built a continuous northern crosstown line, nobody will care that it uses an orphan technology. It needs to be fast though, thus either a fully grade separate line (light subway), or LRT with a wide stops spacing.

Many cities in the world with multiple subway lines use line-specific cars. The subway cars vary in size too, TTC's being wider than cars on many other systems.

Anyway, the goal of this poll is to estimate the preferences and not to convince anyone. Vote for the option(s) you like.

 

[Hopkins123]

But these people don't care about using the limited pool of funds wisely. All they care about is their subways and to hell with everyone else's desperate transit needs. So yes I agree with your post entirely.
I voted for Convert to high-floor LRT as the least wasteful option for this corridor.

What limited pool of funds? Are you seriously falling for that pitch/ploy? Where there's political will to do it, it can be done. We just need politicians of action and not weaklings.

The need for a crosstown grade-separated mass transit line north of the 401 simply will not go away no matter how much we may wish it to be the case. Back in the old days, when one part of the city got subway expansion it was in tandem for expansion in another part (University Line and Keele-Woodbine Bloor-Danforth Line built concurrently; Keele-Islington and Woodbine-Warden; Kipling and Kennedy; Yonge North and the Spadina Line). What is wrong with today's set of politicians and city planners that they can't seem to come up with a way to please the majority of constituents and leave no one out? DRL can and should be built at the same time as the Danforth expansion and the Sheppard expansion.

Like I inferred in my original post, the Sheppard expansion would have happened 15 years ago had David Miller not won the 2003 election. Built back then, we would not be talking about the highly inflated $500 per kilometre figures of today. But that's not an excuse to indefinitely do nothing to resolve the issue. Mixing the tunnel with an at-grade section with stops every 500 metres is kind of foolhardy a "solution" to me. It just seems like we're contorting ourselves into knots to justify at-grade road median LRT in this corridor, when everywhere a subway stop would occur already has an abundance of high rises and transit oriented developments nearby - and ergo is much more suited to grade separated mass transit.