Neutrino
Senior Member
Such an arrogant, flippant comment. No wonder we have the political gridlock that we do.
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Finch West Line 6 LRT
- Thread starter W. K. Lis
- Start date
thebigofan
New Member
Don't you think ridership will increase if there's a subway?
Edit: Since it's not grade separated, it will not be much faster than the bus. We need actual rapid transit to get people moving faster. And make transit better for the people who no choice to use it because they can't afford a car.
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Streety McCarface
Senior Member
The corridor in question currently sees about 35K passengers per day. With an LRT, that's expected to go up to something like 45K passengers per day. With the subway, assuming general initial ridership projections (a doubling of ridership), you'd still only see up to 70K passengers per day along the entire corridor. It's still significantly less on a ridership/km basis than any other line in the system (including the spadina line).
Believe me, I'm the first one to support a subway in most situations, but here on Finch, it doesn't make sense. The corridor, unlike Sheppard, Downtown, and Yonge North, doesn't have the development potential necessary to really warrant a subway in the future. It's bordered by a Hydro corridor and is nowhere near a city centre. Sheppard and Yonge North have the benefit of being near North York Centre.
I'd estimate that the current Finch bus travels at around 10 km/h during rush hours. While Metrolinx claims that the average speed of the LRT will be closer to 30 km/h, it seems more likely to me that it will be between 20 and 25 km/h because of the stop spacing and the way the LRT doors work (they stay open a bit longer than subway doors. While 5-10 seconds might not seem like a lot per stop, it can add up to 2-3 minutes or more (probably up to 5 minutes) if you consider potential missed traffic lights. For a route that should take 20 minutes to complete, those extra 2-5 minutes can seriously affect the average speed of trains). Even though suburban subways can reach average speeds of 40 km/h (Sheppard goes 35-38 on most days), the speeds are still more than doubling.
The LRT is not really there to increase speeds or spur development like the Sheppard subway was. It is there to make travel far more predictable and to increase the capacity of one of the most overcrowded routes in the city. While it's not grade separated, it is traffic segregated, which does wonders to travel speeds, my one concern is with signal priority: something Toronto just can't seem to get right. While I'm not against the Sheppard style of planning (planning for the future), we have far more important subway priorities now than we did in 1998. If Relief Line South, North, Eglinton subway (crosstown in our case), Yonge North and the SSE were already completed, then it could be a worthy investment for the city, but right now the corridor is not at all suited for a subway and likely will not be for the next 50+ years.
crs1026
Superstar
To clarify - Finch LRT will be in its own dedicated lanes, just not grade separated. How fast it moves depends on whether the traffic signalling gives the LRT priority at intersections. With proper prioritisation, it should be faster than the bus. And a lot better rider experience too.
“Actual rapid transit” doesn’t have to be a full subway. If it isn’t affordable, it won’t get built, so it makes sense to save subway construction for those lines that need such a high capacity.
- Paul
rbt
Senior Member
Possibly but I'm far more interested in something you and I can use within our lifetimes.
The trouble with subways is the multi-decade debate we have over the huge cost and unwillingness to raise taxes to pay for them. Based on Toronto's history, a finished Finch subway would be nearly 40 years out if it became a serious proposal today.
Thankfully, we can ride the LRT for 40 years while waiting for someone to provide actual funding for an western corridor subway.
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FW36
Active Member
I think the downtown relief line should stretch into the suburbs
The Sheppard subway should be extended west
bloor-Danforth extended to the Scarbrough town centre and Sherway gardens
these are the only subways that should be in the suburbs
everything else should be an lrt
asher__jo
Active Member
Agreed. Sheppard is a good example of where building a subway where there isn't density doesn't induce demand like many people think. Theoretically it eventually will with density built around stations, but it's far more effective to plan density then build transit to meet that density.
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
The problem with that mentality is that then we are faced with the problem of not having enough infrastructure to serve these new developments. The waterfront is proof of this. There is no rapid transit serving Liberty village/city place, and as a result, the 501, 504, 509, 510, and 511 are insanely overcrowded. We shouldn't be letting this happen throughout the city when we have swaths of land (Sheppard Avenue, North York Centre, Scarborough Centre, Bloor St, Danforth Avenue, Spadina, and soon to be Finch and Eglinton) that are vastly underdeveloped and more importantly have access to rapid transit (or higher order transit in the case of Finch and Eglinton East of Don Mills).
The problem is that we allow areas with little access to transit to be zoned for high rise development while areas that have prime transit service are completely ignored and not zoned properly. Sheppard is proof of this. Had the zoning laws changed while the subway was in construction, and I guarantee that the ridership on that stub would rival that of Line 2. We wouldn't be forced to cram as much density as possible into the small areas of the old Canadian tire lands, and those at Bayview Village. Old neighborhoods with some of the worst architecture ever could be repurposed for far better mixed use midrise/highrise development, similar to those we see on Yonge Street throughout North York Centre. Of course, Sheppard might have to be shrunk to accommodate this huge shift in travel patterns, but it would be a huge benefit to the area.
Now as a candidate for Civil Engineering, I understand that all the utilities may not be large enough to accommodate a dramatic shift in culture along Sheppard avenue or even Finch or Eglinton Avenue, but I can say with confidence that if there is a huge shift in how we design all these streets, sewers, water mains, electrical infrastructure, etc will all have to be replaced when streetscape improvements come along, and besides, most of Toronto really needs to rethink their SWM, so infrastructure renewal throughout the city would not be a bad investment.
asher__jo
Active Member
There have been many studies going back decades that foresaw the need for a 'relief line', so I would say zoning for density and building transit to coincide with density to make that rapid transit viable really has to do with planning or a lack of planning by the city/province. The analogy I would use with zoning is it's a tool that a city can do targeted density, so it's not a mystery where a subway would be needed. So by that measure a subway on Sheppard probably wouldn't be needed for 10-20 years.
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
Oh, there's no denying that the city clearly doesn't have their priorities straight. The relief line is to exist to serve an already overpopulated area with little transit service. The city for some reason does not plan for this, and I'd argue that it's part of the reason we're in the transit mess we have now.
crs1026
Superstar
I know you didn't mean it quite this way, and so I may seem to be be nitpicking..... but this wording strikes to the heart of what is wrong with our infrastructure politics, and I can't help sermonising.
Nobody "finds" money for transit. It isn't there in the bushes waiting to be discovered by pure luck or clever scavenger hunters. There is no "someone". Transit funding is raised by taxation, imposed by governments. Let's not use weasel words like "revenue vehicles" or "user fees" or "development charges". When government collects money from citizens and spends it, we have experienced taxation.
Our politicians (other than Gord Perks, who jumps to the challenge faster than ever) consider "taxation" a dirty word. "Tax and Spend" is an epithet that people of a certain stripe throw out as an accusation.
Instead, we have "Spend and Pretend". or "Cut taxes and claim we can still build stuff". Or "just don't do it".
I don't like how taxation is handled by our governments, and I'm as cynical as anyone about government, but....there is no free lunch. I want a fire department, a police department, sewers, clean drinking water piped to my house, garbage and recyclable collection at my driveway, schools, public libraries, and....(the list goes on, but especiallly....)........I WANT TRANSIT. You only get what you pay for. So I better be prepared to pay taxes.
If we can't get past this mentality, we won't see transit on Finch, or anywhere else.
/soapbox retracted.
- Paul
rbt
Senior Member
That's an excellent summary.
I did intend a sales tax or some other reliable funding mechanism dedicated to transportation maintenance and expansion.
That said, a reliable/predictable stream of funding from general revenues which MTO has fairly consistently received would likely work too at a suitable scale. Anything where we can say Project A will take 10 years of funding, B will take 5 years of funding, and C will begin in 15 years. If you want C earlier, scale it down.
M II A II R II K
Senior Member
Perhaps both Line 5 and this Finch line could meet at both ends and become one continuous loop.
Leo_Chan
Senior Member
This is not a new idea, as it is likely they'll meet at the Pearson Transit Hub in Phase 2 or Phase 3. However, having a loop is not a great idea, as having an extremely long line is bad in an operations point of view, so a transfer is almost definitely required. How that transfer is made, crossing a platform, going down stairs, or on the complete opposite side of the terminal has not been determined. On the other hand, a similar situation at Malvern is also possible, but that has less merit and studies make.
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
Length is part of the reason why Line 1 should eventually be split up into the Yonge Subway and the Spadina subway. It would cost billions, but could save the TTC a lot of money operationally (running fewer trains on the spadina side) and serve more areas of downtown. The one problem is that there isn't enough yardspace to store Yonge trains.