Recent content by Rainforest

They did not want to remove stops, because they wanted to avoid the need to run parallel bus service. Kind of makes sense, if they were able to operate at the advertized 22-23 kph average speed with all those stops. In the present situation, the actual speed being in the 12-14 kph range, every...

20 min to get from the terminal (at Keele) to Jane? With only 2 stops in between? That's insane. The good old St Clair streetcar covers the same 2 km, from Yonge to Bathurst, faster than in 20 min. While crossing Yonge St at grade, serving countless local stops, and making a detour via the St...

LRTs work reasonably well in a number of other cities, thus it was worth building some in Toronto. However, any future LRT expansion will only happen if the first two lines can be fixed. In particular, if Finch West gets fixed. If Finch West remains slow, then we can forget about almost any...

Would be fun to ride, but not easy to build. Plus, the existing St Clair west section cannot run any faster, because of the built form / amount of traffic lights. Even if some stops are removed, the traffic lights will stay. As a short, standalone feeder for the two branches of Yonge line, St...

That's not how it works. Outside downtown, every major transit line gets the bulk of its riders from the feeder routes. Living right next to a subway station is great, but walk-in riders are the minority of all passengers. The same will apply to Sheppard and Eglinton. Therefore, an extended...

Yes. Apart from obviously annoying the riders, unnecessarily slow movement results in higher operating costs. That part of the situation is not immediately visible, but the basic math says that. Let's say you have a 10 km long transit line, you want service frequency = every 5 min, and each...

Line 5 is an odd duck, an LRT for 80% of subway cost, a decent overall speed, but only 40% of the subway capacity. That kind of design should never be repeated. Surface LRTs are cheaper than subways. Yes, about 1/3 per-km cost. Good or bad ROI is a separate issue; I guess depends on the chosen...

If the left-turn phase happens before the through phase, then how can the buses not wait for the left-turning cars coming from the opposite direction?

Nothing wrong with that. If the LRT operation between Laird and Don Mills can be improved for a minor cost, and with no tunneling, that's probably a good option. My original post was mostly against the suggesting to split the service at Don Mills (which IMHO is a bad idea in any case).

That will never happen. Noone is going to fund that kind of rebuild. You would have to rebuild the Laird to Don Mills section as a tunnel. And then, rebuild the Don Mills Stn itself, add 2 more tracks so it can serve as a terminus for both the western and the eastern line. What would you gain...

If we compare lines that start construction at the same time, a tunneled subway will always cost more than a streetcar line that runs mostly on surface. And, any underground line that connects Port Lands to downtown would cost a lot per km, because it would have to be placed quite deep to get...

That's true - but only if ideology is not at play. Especially with the current Finch LRT situation in the background, and especially if the speed of Finch LRT does not improve meaningfully .. it might be easier for the province to allocate money for a more expensive subway than for a less...

Buses will not handle the expected demand. Even if there exists an option to accommodate the required volume of buses at the Port Lands / Commissioners end, those buses would swarm the street space at the downtown end of the route. On the other hand, tabling a short, dedicated subway line as a...

I am not sure I like the idea of the entirely new 401 rail line, separate from the Sheppard subway. I see two issues. First, obviously, the duplication of capacity. Sheppard subway is far from being at capacity, then why spend money to create a separate rail corridor right next to it...

In the case of Sheppard corridor vs the 401 corridor, my preference would be a mixed approach. Not immediately swinging to the 401 at both ends of the existing subway, but rather, going under the street in the middle, and using the 401 corridor at the edges to reach further without spending too...