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Toronto Crosstown LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | Arcadis

Yeah my first thought was, how is the additional car going to fit the platform?

Also, I don't get how capacity increase in Line 1 would necessarily alleviate the crush at Eglinton.
 
In the underground section, sure, you might get every 2 minutes, but not on the surface section.
Gosh, if they ever need that much capacity on the piece of Line 5 in Scarborough, the problems near Yonge - and at the Yonge transfer. And on the Yonge line south of Eglinton would be immense!

I'd think by then, we'd be in the latter half of the century, and the answer would be lines on Lawrence and/or St. Clair.

Gosh, can you imagine a St. Clair line, that goes from Warden Station to St. Clair station? Now that would provide some connections that you can't do in a car!

To alleviate the crush at Eglinton, is the TTC able to add another car to the line 1 trains?
In theory they could add an additional car. Though probably not worth it (would it have to be powered?), and more likely it would only come on future trains.

Albeit it wouldn't be a regular sized 60 foot car, it would be closer to half of the size.
TTC hasn't purchased any cars that small since the 1950s! And those were 56-feet, not 60.

All the current ones are closer to 76-feet.

A 7th car would be about 45-feet - which is closer to 4/5 of those old card - not 1/2. Though presumably you could extend a bit into the tunnel on each side, as the doors are not at the very end of the cars. So I don't know if they need be that much shorter.

More likely though that just go for seven 72-foot cars, or eight 63-feet cars.

Montreal has the same length platforms, and they use it all with nine 56-foot cars - about the same lengths as the original TTC subway cars.
 
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After ATC is installed its possible.

What changes with ATC? Even in the best case scenario it adds to Yonge the equivalent of about 10% of Eglinton's capacity; and I'm not expecting anywhere close to best case (Bloor dwell, King dwell, Finch turn-back time are not resolved by ATC).
 
Gosh, if they ever need that much capacity on the piece of Line 5 in Scarborough, the problems near Yonge - and at the Yonge transfer. And on the Yonge line south of Eglinton would be immense!

I'd think by then, we'd be in the latter half of the century, and the answer would be lines on Lawrence and/or St. Clair.

Gosh, can you imagine a St. Clair line, that goes from Warden Station to St. Clair station? Now that would provide some connections that you can't do in a car!

In theory they could add an additional car. Though probably not worth it (would it have to be powered?), and more likely it would only come on future trains.

TTC hasn't purchased any cars that small since the 1950s! And those were 56-feet, not 60.

All the current ones are closer to 76-feet.

A 7th car would be about 45-feet - which is closer to 4/5 of those old card - not 1/2. Though presumably you could extend a bit into the tunnel on each side, as the doors are not at the very end of the cars. So I don't know if they need be that much shorter.

More likely though that just go for seven 72-foot cars, or eight 63-feet cars.

Montreal has the same length platforms, and they use it all with nine 56-foot cars - about the same lengths as the original TTC subway cars.
I have stated in the past it would be in TTC best interested to go to with 7 equal length cars, as it would cut down the centre to centre of the trucks to the point it would reduce the squealing and wear/tear on the rail on the curve sections.

Going to 8 cars would offer more doors for riders to use, but lost of seats, as well front/back seating.

Getting St Clair across the Don Valley has a number of issues, but can be done at some cost. The people living at the end of the current road would be piss off having a streetcar line coming across the valley, let alone on their street. This should be only a streetcar bridge.
 
Yeah my first thought was, how is the additional car going to fit the platform?

Also, I don't get how capacity increase in Line 1 would necessarily alleviate the crush at Eglinton.

By whisking away more people with every train and preventing overly long line ups waiting to board.
 
By whisking away more people with every train and preventing overly long line ups waiting to board.

And once this extra volume of riders gets to their destination station - say Bloor, Wellesley, Dundas, Queen, King, Union (the expanded one which is still grossly insufficient) - how well will that turn out? Core sections of the subway system reached capacity over three decades ago, and unfortunately higher capacity trains or higher frequencies can't solve every problem. Station throughput is also a biggie. That's one reason why we told Metrolinx to take a hike with their claims that Line 1 can carry 30million every second or some stupid number. It can't, and they've realized this (unless their overlords told them to forget it).

The only real way of solving the issue is by building a parallel line which then veers across the mid/south half of downtown. A deduction made before construction even began on the Yonge subway, re-deduced countless times since, and one that still may very well not be seen through this century.
 
Yes I realize all that. I am grasping for a solution we can implement relatively quickly to address the worst of the crowding seeing as DRL to Eglinton is likely 20+ years away.
 
But that 'worst of the crowding' will simply be transferred to other points on the system downstream, and likely will become an exacerbated issue since again destination/transfer station throughput is limited. This in turn may (will) backfire on newly-expanded Line 1 capacity. Even just a few more medical issues and what happens? Do trains on Line 1 and 2 simply take a detour around the problem? It's a 2-track system with serious deficits going back decades.

I'd say DRL to Eglinton is two hundred years away. A conclusion easily extrapolated when looking at suburban dominance during Metro, during today's council, and by the Prov (even the recent Libs). But I do think it can be done in less than 20yrs. Maybe even five. Just needs money. Even if Doug stole the TTC from under us, which I doubt, we're still a city of 2.7M and could opt to build it ourselves with a newly-formed TTC2. Just needs money, and more engineering voices heard vs the usual plannerticians.
 
But that 'worst of the crowding' will simply be transferred to other points on the system downstream, and likely will become an exacerbated issue since again destination/transfer station throughput is limited. This in turn may (will) backfire on newly-expanded Line 1 capacity. Even just a few more medical issues and what happens? Do trains on Line 1 and 2 simply take a detour around the problem? It's a 2-track system with serious deficits going back decades.

I'd say DRL to Eglinton is two hundred years away. A conclusion easily extrapolated when looking at suburban dominance during Metro, during today's council, and by the Prov (even the recent Libs). But I do think it can be done in less than 20yrs. Maybe even five. Just needs money. Even if Doug stole the TTC from under us, which I doubt, we're still a city of 2.7M and could opt to build it ourselves with a newly-formed TTC2. Just needs money, and more engineering voices heard vs the usual plannerticians.
TTC and Toronto exist because the Government say so. One only has to look at history when Metro Toronto was form in the 50's to see there was no provision for TTC to exist at that time. New powers had to be given to maintain TTC like it did before Metro was form.

TTC was form by the city in the early 1900's to take over all the streetcar systems by 1921 and build new lines before 1921.

Ford can say tomorrow all of the GTA is one city, doing away with all councils in that area and replace them by one small council based on Federal ridings system, with GO transit running transit.

Toronto paying for the DRL by itself is out of the question without huge increases of taxes that must be below the rate of inflation these days.

The idea of an DRL has been around 120 years so far and what is another 50-100 years for it?? Ford going to push the Yonge Line extension first before the DRL.
 
Ford can say tomorrow all of the GTA is one city, doing away with all councils in that area and replace them by one small council based on Federal ridings system, with GO transit running transit.

*Running* transit by way of MTO, Metrolinx, GO/Bombardier I can understand (tho don't support). What I don't agree with are other posters' claims on these threads that Doug can simply take all TTC assets (stations, yards, tracks, vehicles, etc) at the drop of a hat. I can't think of even the slightest example of anything similar happening in this province or country's history. Operating, yeah I'm sure he'd like to grab it, and have a much greater say in expansion up to santa's workshop in York Region. But stealing several billion worth of real estate, assets, and future financial gain (air rights ownership)... I don't think the Prov can do that. Maybe I'm wrong, hope I am. Feds yeah maybe in a war measures situation, but I don't think Ontario has the power.

Re: TO paying for RL fully. I think it can be done. For starters costs need to be lowered from the usual per km pricetag blindly put on things. Diff trains with smaller profile, more basic stations than we've seen with the palaces of TYSSE, precast tunnel w/ cut-cover etc. Other ways may be fiddling with finances to increase credit rating. A city like TO I believe we're far from hitting our ceiling.
 
Operating, yeah I'm sure he'd like to grab it, and have a much greater say in expansion up to santa's workshop in York Region. But stealing several billion worth of real estate, assets, and future financial gain (air rights ownership)... I don't think the Prov can do that.

Technically, the province already owns them. The equivalent corporate structure would be Company A owning 100% of the shares of Company B, and Company B owning the asset. While Company A cannot depreciate assets of Company B directly, it can direct Company B to manage them in certain ways (including selling them for $1 to Company A).

The reason Ontario municipalities are not allowed to take on debt for Operations is the province is ultimately responsible for paying that back too.


Tradition is the only real restriction as breaking it results in voter rage.

It would take a few lines of legislation to change how ownership of current municipal capital is implemented.

Technically, it only takes a few lines of legislation to change the value of PI too (law takes priority over math; see skill-testing lottery questions and how they purposefully ignore BEDMAS). Of course, changing PI has consequences (engineering ceases to be an industry) and reworking municipal capital ownership will also have consequences.
 
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