Election Results- Moving Forward

[LAz]

Most of the world certainly doesn't. The two biggest English speaking cities in the world are New York and London. Neither uses "metro". Chicago doesn't call them metros. Vancouver doesn't call them Metros. Heck, it's hard to find an English-language city that uses Metro other than Washington D.C. It's not relevant what other languages call a subway ...

I am not even sure that vancouver's system is high capacity.

I don't see why you bother to look at the english world only. Look at the whole world in general. Most call the thing a metro. And that is how I will call it. I chose to do so on purpose.
Chicago calls its system the L train. Nobody calls it that. Vancouver calls its system the skytrain. Few systems call theirs that. They're Metro systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems - indeed, they are metro systems.
Baltimore, LA, Miami... you said washington. You forgot india. And then the rest of the world. tsk tsk tsk

Light rail is the next best course of action we have available since it would be more economical and can be built expeditiously.

I do not think that anyone is saying "lets build subways all at once".
Building subways continually - slowly but continually - is something that is feasible.

Stop the line at the busy hub of Sheppard and Vic Park? It's among the most developmentally neglected intersection of major roads in the City. If not, 'one or two stops' is a huge project.

Neglected you say? That's exactly what a Subway can remedy.

Don't forget, Eglinton LRT will be underground where it counts.

But to save 3 thousand dollars some folk want to make it a tram tunnel rather than a metro tunnel. *barf*

There is a certain logic in leaving things "half finished" because extending the subway to VicPark or Kennedy would...

There is a big difference between the two. If it is too much to go to Kennedy, then going to Victoria Park should be a minimum.

I walk the Don Mills to Consumers Road section of Sheppard every weekday, except for rain and bitter cold I take the bus, so it'd be hugely in my favour if they'd "just" extended the subway a few more kilometers. However, for everyone else that goes farther, 2km of LRT is better than 1km of subway

They want to go underground at consumers or somewhere around. So they want to pay big money for that... if they are going to pay that big money to dig, then they may as well extend the metro rather than tunneling a tram.

Nobody is talking about subways being bad or unwanted, only about being affordable and cost-effective.

I can not and will not buy this - because if cost was the concern then they would build BRT rather than LRT. Simple as that.

The extension to VP will be about 450 million dollars. If they can find 20 billion for trams, then no way in hell can you expect me to believe that they can not find some for that extension.


edit:

You can't replace the car on trips from one suburb to another with a subway.

I do not want a subway between vaughan and richmond hill. There is no big plan for suburban subways. Sheppard is in Toronto.

One environment is built for drivers and the other is almost un-drivable. A subway can't compete like that.

A subway can provide an alternative. Having one that is so small - like the current sheppard branch - is really not taking advantage of the corridor.

In the Stockholm example LRT was build and converted to subway.

Go read a thing or two about stockholm. They build a tram line that was mainly under-ground right when world war two started. Then after the war they turned it into a metro, and went about aggressive metro expansion. They built their lines out into sparsely populated places, and suffered big operational losses. They however integrated transit and growth, so the result was that their transportation system is one today where people drive cars far less than elsewhere.

The stockholm example is not one where one thinks of "oh, they converted one small tram tunnel into a metro". That is not what someone thinks of who looks into that system. What one gets out of looking into that is "they aggressively expanded the system, invested loads of money into it, and built it to places way before demand was there to be begin with". That is the stockholm example.

Sheppard is not in the "Manhattan" zone of Toronto.

And why must we built subways only to the mahattan areas? We have to provide alternatives to the car. We need fast cross-town routes.
It is my dream to see sheppard go from Jane to STC. Only that way can there be a viable alternative to taking the car.

 

[nfitz]

I don't see why you bother to look at the english world only.

Because we are talking English. Obviously we aren't going to look what they are called in foreign languages, or we'd be calling them مترو or 地下鉄

So stop being a องคชาต

 

[GenerationW]

In light of recent news about the Eglinton LRT tunnel not being compatible with subway, it would be disingenuous to refer to it as such.

At first the TTC claimed in its literature that the Eglinton LRT tunnel was easily convertible to subway, but very soon after they removed all references to subways without publicly withdrawing the claim. It might be recent news, but the TTC has known about this for at least a year and a half.

Capacity requirements aren't a good reason not to spend money on a subway?

Here is a good reason: "Subways are not meant to be built as extensively as trams are." The suburbs don't have any trams so until they do any building of subways would be building it more extensively than trams are.

So I guess they went against the grain extending the Yonge subway to Finch in 1973, which at the time was a suburban wasteland. How did that work out?

 

[lafard]

^ Yonge street was, and still is, a very high traffic surface route beyond the end of the subway. If there weren't capacity issues in the south end then that's perhaps the only justifiable suburban expansion.

That's the thing about Toronto's subway lines. The successful ones were all overcapacity surface routes - "natural" paths - prior to being upgraded. Yonge was a busy streetcar, and today has a clear trajectory of very high ridership to extend along. There's a reason why Viva Blue is the most successful BRT route. BD was a busy surface route, one which gets a bit diffuse at the ends and has no clear extension trajectory. DRL is not an existing high capacity surface route although stretches it could cover are busy, but an alternative route for a very busy established travel pattern. (University line was also "alternative path"). These routes are also through dense enough areas that they captured ridership from busy parallels as well.

Even Eglinton is an overcapacity surface route - or a mishmash of surface routes. Unlike downtown there aren't parallel routes on Eglinton so all the transit flow is already being funnelled.

On the other hand, Sheppard is not a natural corridor and we see that in a line that doesn't exceed 25% of its design capacity at peak hour, and doesn't even capture anything from nearby corridors. Although busy at times, 4 car trains every 5 minutes is a third of the capacity of the other lines. Similarly, Spadina subway was not ever a major corridor, and barely cracks 10k pph even 32 years after opening. I say this as someone that uses the spadina subway every day: it shouldn't be a subway north of Eglinton West. Wasted infrastructure.

The "stubway" argument does not hold. Sheppard is not a whole lot shorter than the original Yonge Line. If it was a useful line its ridership growth should have paralleled that of the yonge line in the early days. It hasn't. And the point-to-point service (STC to NYC) is not optimal use for subway.

Sheppard (and Finch) are an order of magnitude less important today than Bloor was in the 1950s. They're busy, yes, but not major corridors. Historically speaking we're better off building intermediate capacity transit, let ridership build for 50 years, and then build the subway when it's justifiable.

By the way, going back to Vancouver, its skytrains have a design capcacity of about 15-20k per hour. Vancouver's a rather dispersed city with a small downtown where a large network of medium capacity transit works best. By not wasting money on overbuilt infrastructure, they've built a network that will soon be larger than Toronto's.

 

[kEiThZ]

On Sheppard there is no subway scale capacity problem. The big problem on Sheppard is traffic which makes delivering the required capacity expensive since buses and their drivers take much longer to run the route.

East of Agincourt, that issue can readily be solved by curbside bus lanes. There's tons of room to build them. And I am willing to bet that they can be up and running within a year, right to Meadowvale or even Port Union. The level of service improvement would be significant from such an initiative. And it would be a whole lot cheaper than the SELRT too.

But then again, who cares about real world improvements. TC was never about transit. It was about social engineering and a re-ordering of the outer 416....and permanently killing off any subway expansion inside the 416 (with the exception of the downtown core).

 

[kEiThZ]

This entire argument about Sheppard seems to revolve around the debate about capacity. And everybody seems to have forgotten the original purpose of the line: to connect SCC and NYCC (and Downsview eventually). That's the outcome that would draw ridership. It's a line where the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts. And with only a few kms in place, of course ridership is going to be low (albeit still quite good for a 'stubway').

I would argue that finishing the line from Agincourt to Downsview would at least make the line far more viable because of all day GO service coming that way. Run buses or LRT east of there.

I would also suggest that without a link to STC, the SELRT is a very poor substitute for completion of the subway as originally intended. It certainly won't be able to replace the Rocket service that runs currently; one of the busiest bus routes on Sheppard.

 

[kEiThZ]

At first the TTC claimed in its literature that the Eglinton LRT tunnel was easily convertible to subway, but very soon after they removed all references to subways without publicly withdrawing the claim. It might be recent news, but the TTC has known about this for at least a year and a half.

Anybody who took the claim that the Eglinton LRT was convertible at face value was a fool. After all, once it was in place, did anybody really expect them to put the line out of service to spend months (or even years) rejigging to a different technology.

Typical TTC crap. Deceive the public. Offer token public consultations. Push through whatever they want. Any wonder Ford got elected? The TTC isn't the only public agency to do this. And I am betting that the public was tired of being treated with such contempt (among many other grievances).

So I guess they went against the grain extending the Yonge subway to Finch in 1973, which at the time was a suburban wasteland. How did that work out?

Just look at the development the stubway bought. It'll more than pay for itself in the long term.

 

[Paleo]

This entire argument about Sheppard seems to revolve around the debate about capacity. And everybody seems to have forgotten the original purpose of the line: to connect SCC and NYCC (and Downsview eventually). That's the outcome that would draw ridership. It's a line where the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts. And with only a few kms in place, of course ridership is going to be low (albeit still quite good for a 'stubway').

I would argue that finishing the line from Agincourt to Downsview would at least make the line far more viable because of all day GO service coming that way. Run buses or LRT east of there.

I would also suggest that without a link to STC, the SELRT is a very poor substitute for completion of the subway as originally intended. It certainly won't be able to replace the Rocket service that runs currently; one of the busiest bus routes on Sheppard.

Overbuilding capacity costs lots more money. Both to build and to run. Doing so is wasteful and inefficient. Respect for the taxpayer.

Secondly, there is hardly anyone using the express and local services from Downsview now. The peak point of demand would seem to be around the Consumers Road area (not Agincourt or Downsview) and I seriously doubt it's much more than the 5,000 today. It's all wishful thinking.

 

[GraphicMatt]

But then again, who cares about real world improvements. TC was never about transit. It was about social engineering and a re-ordering of the outer 416....

Ignoring the other specifics of this argument (because it is boring as hell at this point) what's your problem with transit as social engineering? If we know there are certain areas that lack economic activity and access to employment and educational services, and we know that transit is a proven catalyst for positive neighbourhood change, shouldn't we use it as a tool to engineer change?

Or put it this way: since we're going to lose money on every rider that uses these lines, isn't it a planner's responsibility to look for other economic/social benefit than just ridership?

 

[LAz]

Because we are talking English. Obviously we aren't going to look what they are called in foreign languages, or we'd be calling them مترو or 地下鉄

So stop being a องคชาต

One again, I point you to wikipedia and what I previously stated, that there are plenty of examples where metro is used in the english language. It is the primary way that the world calls that, and so we should be inline with the world.

If I decided to call it tunnelbana then that would be weird, yeah. But I call it Metro, which is totally reasonable.

So I guess they went against the grain extending the Yonge subway to Finch in 1973, which at the time was a suburban wasteland. How did that work out?

Toronto was like Stockholm for some time. Until the 1980s. The difference was the Stockholm owned a whole lot more land, and so they were able to prevent development out in the fringes - while Toronto had stuff like Mississauga, Aurora, Richmond Hill, etc...

The successful ones were all overcapacity surface routes - "natural" paths - prior to being upgraded.

BD was a busy surface route, one which gets a bit diffuse at the ends and has no clear extension trajectory.

Actually many of these routes were suburban wasteland as the other guy stated. They only became high capacity because development was integrated with transit. That is what made our transit expansion stand out from other systems like say San Francisco.

On the other hand, Sheppard is not a natural corridor and we see that in a line that doesn't exceed 25% of its design capacity at peak hour

Maybe not a natural corridor, but it is a corridor now.
The good solution is to intensify that corridor to make it more viable. At any rate, Sheppard is a success, which is something that you perhaps can't stand.

I say this as someone that uses the spadina subway every day: it shouldn't be a subway north of Eglinton West. Wasted infrastructure.

You would prefer that those people take their car obviously.

I think what a reasonable person would say is that one station gets lower ridership there, while the others get pretty good ridership.

Downsview - 31,600
Wilson - 21,680
Yorkdale - 24,930
Lawrence West - 20,560
Glencairn - 5,560
Eglinton West - 19,850
St. Clair West - 28,680
http://www3.ttc.ca/PDF/Transit_Planning/Subway ridership 2009-2010.pdf

Jee howabout that, the furthest away station on the line has pretty damn good ridership.
I wish I could laugh at the anti-subway group who opposed that 1996 extension. In yo faces is what I have to say to them.
Extend our subways!

Just look at the development the stubway bought. It'll more than pay for itself in the long term.

Some people prefer to run away from reality. They think that if they pretend that what happened did not - that then indeed it will not once again.

Overbuilding capacity costs lots more money. Both to build and to run. Doing so is wasteful and inefficient. Respect for the taxpayer.

Along eglinton overbuilding capacity does not cost a lot more money. It costs 1% or 2% more.

Between VP and the subway the sheppard LRT and the Subway would not have drastically different costs - LRT would be a little expensive, but not a whole lot more.

You seem to be scared of more capacity. Had people thought like that, we would never have the system that we have to today, or have been a great example to the world in the 1980s.

If we know there are certain areas that lack economic activity and access to employment and educational services, and we know that transit is a proven catalyst for positive neighbourhood change, shouldn't we use it as a tool to engineer change?

I am not willing to accept that a tram will be a catalyst for neighborhood change. No, not at all.
If anything, having so many tram lines will make that new service something that is not viewed upon as something special for that neighborhood.
If anything, the kind of development that you call for brings displacement to the previous population.

 

[kd86]

LAFARD I coudnt say it better my self.

I dont know why the TTC refuse to use ICTS as a transit option. We dont have the capacity for subways but we dont want slow "lrt/streetcare some will argue their different but to me they use similar infrastructure so who cares"

If we went in the direction of Vancouver we would a much better transit network. I know metrolinx was orginally planning to make eglinton anr RT with a link to the current SRT. I hope rob ford re looks at that option. I could also see ICTS routes on the DRL as well. The only place were it wouldnt make sense is the sheppard extension becaue they're already using HRT technology

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Keithz:

Typical TTC crap. Deceive the public. Offer token public consultations. Push through whatever they want. Any wonder Ford got elected? The TTC isn't the only public agency to do this. And I am betting that the public was tired of being treated with such contempt (among many other grievances).

Well, in that case the public will be having the last laugh, considering the total absence of higher order transit along Eglinton in RF's transit plan. Forget the petty debate over whether it is an underground LRT vs HRT - you'd be getting buses for "awhile". And we have been having that "awhile" for "awhile" now. Perhaps you can show me the studies that would have THAT as a preferable outcome?

Just look at the development the stubway bought. It'll more than pay for itself in the long term

Perhaps - don't count on the current mayor on that score though considering where he stand on "intensification" vis-a-vis neigbhourhood wants.

AoD

 

[GraphicMatt]

LAFARD I coudnt say it better my self.

I dont know why the TTC refuse to use ICTS as a transit option. We dont have the capacity for subways but we dont want slow "lrt/streetcare some will argue their different but to me they use similar infrastructure so who cares"

If we went in the direction of Vancouver we would a much better transit network. I know metrolinx was orginally planning to make eglinton anr RT with a link to the current SRT. I hope rob ford re looks at that option. I could also see ICTS routes on the DRL as well. The only place were it wouldnt make sense is the sheppard extension becaue they're already using HRT technology

There is literally no difference between grade separated LRT and ICTS. None. Zero.

 

[nfitz]

One again, I point you to wikipedia and what I previously stated, that there are plenty of examples where metro is used in the english language. It is the primary way that the world calls that, and so we should be inline with the world.

Wikipedia as a reference? They call it the Encylopedia anyone can edit for a reason.

You keep insisting this ... but very few English-speaking cities call them Metros. Besides, no one in Toronto calls them Metros. Not once have I ever heard anyone speaking English, stop me on the street and ask where the Metro station is. Each and every person has called them a subway. When I've called a station a Metro station, people look at me funny (I lived in Montreal for years ... Anglo Montrealers and Washingtonians are likely the exception).

I guess one advantage of calling them Metros, is that it eliminates the LRT/Subway debate for Eglinton. As if we called the subways, Metros, then I can't imagine anyone would ever be anal enough to start saying the Eglinton LRT wasn't a Metro!!!!

 

[nfitz]

I dont know why the TTC refuse to use ICTS as a transit option.

Isn't the kind of LRT we are looking at for Eglinton and the SRT by definition an ICTS (Intermediate Capacity Transit System)?