Toronto Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown West Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

I'm more concerned about the employment cluster south of the airport than about the air travelers. For the southern employment cluster, the LRT + GO option is far less appealing:

Indeed, that south bit is useful.

Sure, if selecting Option 1 is the only chance to get this thing built at all, then we should go with Option 1. It is a good option in many ways, just not the optimal IMO.

That said, we don't know when and how this project will get funded, even if the cheapest option was selected. Hence, all possibilities remain open.

Agreed. There are 75 unfunded expansion projects on Metrolinx's TODO list in addition to a massively expanded SOGR load (after TTC subway upload) and ultimately it's up to the elected politicians to decide which gets funding. I think an extension of the Mississauga BRT (configured like Highway 7) with no airport connection at all would slip through on a conservative watch.

LRT, in any form, is going to be strictly up to the city. Based on capital finances, I don't think the city can take on more than about $3B in projects with federal assistance and Smart Track, LRV, and Bus orders need to fit into that.
 
Also remember that Eglinton West is now 100% a responsibility of the City of Toronto (ie: not the responsibility of Metrolinx anymore), since John Tory offered to take it off the province's hands.

Ford cant do anything to stop the line from being constructed fully elevated or at-grade.

You're forgetting about the Pearson Transit Hub, which is federal. I would expect to see some funding from the feds for that terminal and transit approaches.
 
^That's true, however the feds would only pony up a fair little trickle of the overall cost for the hub. The majority would come from a combination of the GTAA, city, and/or province.
 
^The GTAA is a "non-profit organization" which manages and operates Pearson. The Federal Government created the GTAA to create a local airport authority under a 60 year lease agreement back around 1993-1994 I believe.

So in short, the Feds arent involved in the operations at all (ie: it isnt an arms-length agency). Someone would better knowledge of the structure might be able to explain the complexities of the whole GTAA/Federal Government arrangement. However you're correct, the GTAA is the airport authority.
 
You're forgetting about the Pearson Transit Hub, which is federal. I would expect to see some funding from the feds for that terminal and transit approaches.

More than their standard split of 40%? Also, new funds or from the 10-year public transit funding package already presented?
 
Well, until the Relief Line opens. The Kennedy to Downtown trip will be far faster than it is currently!
Currently, I would take B-D (and transfer at Y-B) to get from Kennedy to Downtown.
Are you saying that after Eglinton LRT opens (and before DRL), it will be faster to take the Eglinton LRT from Kennedy to Y-E, and then transfer at Eglinton?
 
Currently, I would take B-D (and transfer at Y-B) to get from Kennedy to Downtown.
Are you saying that after Eglinton LRT opens (and before DRL), it will be faster to take the Eglinton LRT from Kennedy to Y-E, and then transfer at Eglinton?
Some people take GO Stouffville from Kennedy downtown. That is definitely faster.
 
Currently, I would take B-D (and transfer at Y-B) to get from Kennedy to Downtown.
Are you saying that after Eglinton LRT opens (and before DRL), it will be faster to take the Eglinton LRT from Kennedy to Y-E, and then transfer at Eglinton?

...better chance for a seat. Or to get on a downtown bound train.
 
Some people take GO Stouffville from Kennedy downtown. That is definitely faster.
I'll give you that - but I still fail to see how that GO trip will speed up once the on street portion of Eglinton is completed.
...better chance for a seat. Or to get on a downtown bound train.
As I understand it, the Y-E station will be almost as full as Y-B. No sure if your chances of getting on train are that much better.
 
Currently, I would take B-D (and transfer at Y-B) to get from Kennedy to Downtown.
Are you saying that after Eglinton LRT opens (and before DRL), it will be faster to take the Eglinton LRT from Kennedy to Y-E, and then transfer at Eglinton?

The current trip between Kennedy and the Financial District is 37 Minutes

The same trip using the ECLRT and DRL North will be 32 mins

Using Line 2 and DRL South, its a 30 min trip.

However, when the Eglinton East LRT opens, it will be fastest for passengers from east of Kennedy to stay on the LRT and transfer to the DRL North at Don Mills to get Downtown.

The DRL North, because of it's wide stop space and fast travel times, is going to tremendously speed up travel time between Downtown and a huge swath of Eastern Toronto. Similarly, for passengers in the north east part of the city, the DRL North would get them downtown far faster than the proposed Sheppard subway extension
 

I'm actually surprised that no one is talking about the fact that they are quoting a capacity of 5,900 PPHPD. Like...wtf? The crosstown has claims for capacities up to 15K PPHPD (which most people didn't believe anyways), so why is there such a drastic change here, especially for the fully grade separated options? As far as I'm concerned, there aren't going to be any plans to shortturn trains at Mt Dennis, and even then, it wouldn't affect the maximum potential capacity of the line.

I know traffic studies have shown that the line isn't supposed to see usage greater than 4K PPHPD in the original section, but if we consider the fact that this line is supposed to receive 2 extensions of nearly 20km each that will serve a large commuter base, I'm actually wondering if the original crosstown estimates were bloated, and whether we should be worrying about capacity even before the extensions are built. 6K PPHPD is way too small for the Eglinton Crosstown even in the short term (it doesn't account for surges in traffic demands), I can't imagine what it'll be like when we have close to 60K passengers using the line at each end (or appx 15K passengers during peak commute times). Honestly, what were they thinking?

Also, I'd have to go with option 4. 1-1.5B dollars for increasing speeds nearly 30%, connecting to the same number of bus routes, and serving major areas only seems like a no-brainer. More people are inclined to use transit if it's faster. Even if a line serves more areas, the people in those areas will likely prefer driving due to the time wasted stopping at so many stations.
 
I'm actually surprised that no one is talking about the fact that they are quoting a capacity of 5,900 PPHPD. Like...wtf? The crosstown has claims for capacities up to 15K PPHPD (which most people didn't believe anyways), so why is there such a drastic change here, especially for the fully grade separated options? As far as I'm concerned, there aren't going to be any plans to shortturn trains at Mt Dennis, and even then, it wouldn't affect the maximum potential capacity of the line.

Capacity is a function of individual train capacity and service frequency. It looks like they're calculating capacity based on expected opening-day train frequencies (one train every four mins approx).

At 90 second frequencies, which is the extreme upper limit of possible service frequencies, capacity would be 15k pphpd. I speculate that a more realistic max capacity is 12,000 pphpd at 2 min frequencies (any more frequent and service quality will suffer precipitously)
 

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