Northern Light
Superstar
Mt. Pleasant to Brentcliffe is a future phase.
East of Brentcliffe is mostly just painted bike lanes; but is being delivered by Crosslinx now.
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Eglinton Connects - Revitalizing Eglinton Avenue after LRT construction
- Thread starter junctionist
- Start date
Mt. Pleasant to Brentcliffe is a future phase.
East of Brentcliffe is mostly just painted bike lanes; but is being delivered by Crosslinx now.
H4F33Z
Active Member
Tunafish13
Active Member
Thanks for the responses, I was kind of hoping they would do more than just painted lines. Not to mention that not even all the lines are painted on properly, and the small section that is dedicated for bike lanes isnt even labeled as such, it just looks like an extended curb, not a bike symbol anywhere
youngblood
Active Member
This is going to be a great project for midtown. There is no reason Eglinton should not be similar to the Bloor/Danforth stretch of road.
fanoftoronto
Active Member
Well, to be fair, the curb lane is parking most times except rush hour anyway.
You are correct that the Allen terminus and other major intersections should open up to 4 lanes. Idk, Eglinton ROW is wider than Bloor, so I don't know why they can't squeeze bike lanes in without sacrificing traffic lanes like you're suggesting.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Eglinton Connects was designed around total reconstruction, whereas Eglinton Today is based on retaining the existing physical infrastructure. That's why Eglinton Connects is more space-efficient.
Here are some factors which produce the less-efficient use of space for retrofits such as Eglinton Today, compared to road reconstructions such as Eglinton Connects:
- With a retrofit, the buffer between cars and bikes would be just that - a strip of planters/barriers in addition to the planters, street furniture and utilities which already exist between bikes and pedestrians. With a road reconstruction you can roll those buffers into one, or make more flexible use of the buffer space (e.g. placing patios or parking between utility poles).
- In a reconstruction, you can design the curb locations from scratch, which enables fine adjustments to increase or reduce roadway width in places. For example you might slightly narrow the sidewalk at a major intersection to provide a turning lane, while widening the sidewalk mid-block since parking lanes are narrower than driving lanes (2.0 - 2.6 m vs 3.3 - 3.5 m).
- In a reconstruction, you can adjust the type of curbs themselves, as well as the height of various road elements. For example, raising up the bicycle lane closer to sidewalk level and installing angled (45 degree) curbs enables the entire width of the bicycle path to be used, whereas on a typical roadway with tall vertical curbs, the useable width of the bike path is less than the physical width, since cyclists need to stay away from the right edge, and possibly also the left edge depending on what type of buffer is used.
- Eglinton Today doesn't plan on reclaiming the public space which has been unofficially claimed by adjacent private properties (see slide below from the presentation):
The portions reconstructed by Metrolinx tend to be at major intersections, which is precisely where motor vehicle capacity is most constrained. Remember that capacity is not the number of lanes, it's the number of lanes multiplied by the proportion of the signal cycle which is green, the flow rate, and a bunch of other minor adjustment factors. At a major intersection, the light(s) for Eglinton will be red the majority of the time, so the capacity per lane will be far lower than at minor intersections where the light will be green the majority of the time. It is therefore ideal for there to be more lanes at major intersections than at minor intersections. In this case, some of the additional lanes could be used as turning lanes - thereby enabling the thru lane(s) to operate at a high flow rate without being disurupted by cars slowing or waiting to turn.
A road's capacity is only as much as its lowest-capacity intersection. So as long as the minor intersections continue to have a higher capacity than the major intersections (which they definitely will given that they'll have so much more green time), and the changes don't reduce the capacity of the already-built major intersections, then narrowing the roadway to 1 lane per direction at minor intersections actually wouldn't have any effect on the road's overall vehicle throughput.
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fanoftoronto
Active Member
Well let's hope that when the time comes to reconstruct the physical infrastructure, they do the build the same requirement as the Eglinton Connects reconstruction.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
That's fine as an interim solution I suppose, but I suspect the real solution is to simply allocate your capital spending correctly and actually just do the reconstruction now. They are planning on resurfacing anyway.
Also - those slides seem to indicate that the City plans on dooming people to millions of vehicle-hours of delays to save a few houses front yards and a few patios that aren't even owned by those respective properties in the first place.
Also - those slides seem to indicate that the City plans on dooming people to millions of vehicle-hours of delays to save a few houses front yards and a few patios that aren't even owned by those respective properties in the first place.
H4F33Z
Active Member
Anyone think it's weird that most sections of the central corridor as part of Eglinton TOday will be one lane in each direction, but the station fronts will have two lanes in each direction. Hopefully they can work out that inconsistency or else you'll have drivers popping in and out.
Actually, they could just make the near-side curb lane a right-turn lane and the far-side curb lane be a buffer/flex zone.
Actually, they could just make the near-side curb lane a right-turn lane and the far-side curb lane be a buffer/flex zone.
allengeorge
Senior Member
The city had at least 6 years to prepare and line up funding for this. Of course, we didn’t - standard Toronto practice - and now that the time is come we’re trying to hack something in.
It does seem to be the unfortunate consequence of a system with very little funding or staffing ‘slack’.
Northern Light
Superstar
True. Not the only issue, but a big one, probably the biggest.
There's also a related issue though..........staff are under enormous pressure every budget cycle.......
a) Not to come in with an increased request greater than inflation
b) To make every Councillor's newest pet project appear, somewhere in the 10 year capital budget
c) To respond to media/public pressure of the year (ie. washrooms/fountains, Vision Zero etc.
d) To respond to the Mayor's signature add-ons (say FIFA).
Imagine if a department has something that resemble's a 10-year coherent plan at the beginning of a given budget cycle.
its just a little light on money, so a few items are dropped/deferred, but its mostly there, in a mostly sensible way.
Then along come requests from Councillors A, B and C - add a library here, a park refurbishment there, resurface this street early....
It might be manageable..........but one must remember there are 25 Councillors, generally making multiple asks.
So a smattering of items either get underfunded, or deferred by 1 year.
Then the Mayor comes along and insists 90M appear of out of thin air, but no tax hike to pay for it.
So everyone goes back into meetings to figure out where they can shave a few million.
Another item or three drop off the budget, some are purposefully lowballed in cost to keep them in the budget and/or partitioned into smaller projects.
(for an example see how Allen Gardens Revitalization morphs into a project for the Palm House, another for the DOLA, another for the playground, Another for the Children's Garden and still another for Washrooms.
this allows small pieces to be hived off to future years, but its also cost-inefficient, driving up the cost of each component due to contractor mobilization/demobilization costs, fixed costs and bidding costs)
Finally you get your 'crisis' spends......at Council this week, we learned that the big Olympic pool in the Beach won't open next week as scheduled because staff just discovered a breach in the pool liner. So there is now emergency spending to get the pool partially open by the end of July, to add programming and hours at 2 other nearby pools and to make permanent repairs next year.
A small part of that can be funded out of annual emergency/contingency funds, but the rest will mean knocking something else down in size/scope or deferring it.
This happens in Parks, in Transportation, in Shelter and TTC etc.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
No it's not weird. See:
I also prefer the extra lanes to be used as right turn lanes, to discourage aggressive overtakes and to enable fully-protected or protected-permissive right turn signal phases. Most of the major intersections already have left turn phases on the cross-street, so adding right turn lanes would enable cars to turn right during that, rather than conflicting with pedestrians and bicycles during the east-west green.
Although the previous scenario theoretically had 2 lanes for thru traffic, the large number of pedestrians and cyclists along Eglinton means that the right lane would have nearly always been occupied by cars waiting to turn right, or stopping buses, providing almost no capacity for through traffic anyway. That minimal capacity loss seems totally worth it for the safety benefit of dedicated right turn phases.
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H4F33Z
Active Member
The city won't even bother with the protected phases as it's usually the exception for city staff, rather than the standard. But maybe one day...
reaperexpress
Senior Member
This is totally false. The city has been rolling out more protected phases than ever, driven by City staff in the Pedestrian, Cycling, and Vision Zero groups.
imerk
Active Member
Pretty unpleased with the plans for surface treatment along the central portion of the line. I thought the whole idea of putting it underground was to retain space for streetscape and pedestrian realm improvements. I'm all for adding in a bike lane, removing street parking, and retaining two lanes per direction where feasible (especially around Allen Road and at major intersections). With what we're getting, we may as well have shoved St. Clair style surface streetcars onto Eglinton.