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Toronto Eglinton Line 5 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | Arcadis

hw621 said:
what is the cost of flooding prevention + electrification of RH vs. the whole DRL long?
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I don’t even know if flood protecting the RH Line is worth it. The ridership on GO RH is totally pathetic. Just 10,000 people per day in 2016. That’s less ridership than the TTC has on minor bus routes like Midland, Birdhmount and Royal York. I can’t justify spending an much money to help so few people.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I don’t even know if flood protecting the RH Line is worth it. The ridership on GO RH is totally pathetic. Just 10,000 people per day in 2016. That’s less ridership than the TTC has on minor bus routes like Midland, Birdhmount and Royal York. I can’t justify spending an much money to help so few people.
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Uh...sure...transit investments should be based on a rational, data-driven assessment of demand versus cost. But we’re talking about Toronto here.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I don’t even know if flood protecting the RH Line is worth it. The ridership on GO RH is totally pathetic. Just 10,000 people per day in 2016. That’s less ridership than the TTC has on minor bus routes like Midland, Birdhmount and Royal York. I can’t justify spending an much money to help so few people.
Click to expand...
Part of the low ridership might be due to that riders flooding the cheaper, more frequent Yonge Line? If GO fare comes down and there is more frequent services, more riders now using Yonge Line will be willing to switch?
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I don’t even know if flood protecting the RH Line is worth it. The ridership on GO RH is totally pathetic. Just 10,000 people per day in 2016. That’s less ridership than the TTC has on minor bus routes like Midland, Birdhmount and Royal York. I can’t justify spending an much money to help so few people.
Click to expand...

The problem is that you can't just look at existing ridership of transit and say "ok this line isn't worth it".

There could be something wrong with the setup as it stands that is causing low ridership.

So you must look at the system as a whole to understand if ridership is low simply due to demand, or there are other factors that are causing the low ridership, such as fare cost, station location, schedules, train speed, reliability, operating hours. etc.
 
hw621 said:
what is the cost of flooding prevention + electrification of RH vs. the whole DRL long?
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flood prevention is a 1.2 billion job but that includes other works within the don valley area. So lets say 500 million is directly attributed to RH line.

Electrification is a 500 million job.

DRL Long is estimated at 6 to 8 billion dollars.

Subways are expensive.
 
hw621 said:
they can't electrify the line before flooding prevention.
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I think they were referring to the Leaside community, aka running the trains through the Leaside Spur, which then would avoid the flooded line, as it would go onto the Don Branch line.
 
44 North said:
I think it's owned by the City. And we may be overestimating the level of Nimbyism. Sure there would be an uproar just as there is with any project, but it's a fairly wide corridor (30-40m) and it's only really the ROW that's important. In other words any new rail infrastructure could be below grade through the problematic parts. Roughly this would entail a 1.6km trench + cut/cover section between Overland and Bond. Even with no Nimbys such a thing would likely be proposed regardless since it allows a grade-separation at Lawrence. The result may be similar to what was built in Weston with UPX.
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Its owned by Metrolinx and the province.

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2000/agendas/council/cc/cc001003/adm19rpt/cl015.pdf

“It is further recommended that the City endorse the principle of entering into a permanent agreement with GO Transit (if it purchases the spur line) to use the property for parks purposes, including but not limited to a trail system, even if the land is actively used by GO Transit for trains.”)

The city has an agreement with GO (now Metrolinx) to use the spur for parkland. However that does not prevent GO from using it for trains.
 
hw621 said:
Part of the low ridership might be due to that riders flooding the cheaper, more frequent Yonge Line? If GO fare comes down and there is more frequent services, more riders now using Yonge Line will be willing to switch?
Click to expand...

Conversely, when the Yonge Line is extended north, won’t that further deteriorate RH Line ridership?
 
hw621 said:
Part of the low ridership might be due to that riders flooding the cheaper, more frequent Yonge Line? If GO fare comes down and there is more frequent services, more riders now using Yonge Line will be willing to switch?
Click to expand...

The reason is that the Yonge Subway goes to more places that people want to go to - Eglinton, St. Clair, Bloor - than the GO train does.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I don’t even know if flood protecting the RH Line is worth it. The ridership on GO RH is totally pathetic. Just 10,000 people per day in 2016. That’s less ridership than the TTC has on minor bus routes like Midland, Birdhmount and Royal York. I can’t justify spending an much money to help so few people.
Click to expand...

While I do agree that replacing DRL long with RER on the Richmond Hill line is an illogical pipe dream I must say:
Calling 10K people per day on a line with only 5 roundtrip services "pathetic" is extremely inaccurate. 1000 people use each directional train. That's quite a bit of people per train. It also gets about the same ridership as the Kitchener, Barrie, and Stouffville lines in terms of ridership/length (it is the shortest line in the system), and gets significantly more than the Lakeshore west/east, Kitchener, Barrie, and Stouffville lines in terms of ridership per train (average), the only one surpassing it being the Milton Line.

Compare this ridership to almost every other commuter rail service in North America. It does better than most lines in Montreal, and the West Coast Express in Vancouver.
 
Leo_Chan said:
Official time lapse of the new Kennedy Station pedestrian tunnel GOing in. I can't quite make out if it's wide enough for 3 tracks though. And this type of continuous construction should be the norm for all projects, but unfortunately it's not.
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No I don't think it is wide enough for three tracks. Imagine the overtime payment made so this kind of construction.
 
Leo_Chan said:
You don't have to pay for overtime if it's part of the normal pay. :rolleyes:
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You will pay some premium on wages for night and weekend work. But that’s not the biggest reason why this is only done in extreme circumstances.

You don’t want to mobilise that many trades and that much equipment at once for a “normal” project, because all it takes is one unforeseen or glitch to leave you with everyone standing around doing nothing (and getting paid) while it is solved. Just-in-time delivery is wonderful for manufacturing but deadly in construction. Float has its purpose.

Not saying ML projects are executed efficiently, but you won’t see such all-out efforts unless there is a true need for short execution windows.

- Paul
 
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