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High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto

rbt said:
New Zealand shows the way for that. Put lights on all highway entrances. They're timed on a cycle of about 3 seconds red, 2 seconds green. One vehicle goes through per light.

Red cycle gets longer as congestion increases, slowing down the rate at which new vehicles enter the highway. The result is a typically free flowing highway though you may wait 20 to 30 minutes to enter the highway yourself during peak periods.

Cheap, easy, and fairly effective. It would be a struggle to sell it to the local population.
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How does that arrangement deal with what I presume are very congested on ramps? Is this an easier sell than tolls?
 
rbt said:
New Zealand shows the way for that. Put lights on all highway entrances. They're timed on a cycle of about 3 seconds red, 2 seconds green. One vehicle goes through per light.

Red cycle gets longer as congestion increases, slowing down the rate at which new vehicles enter the highway. The result is a typically free flowing highway though you may wait 20 to 30 minutes to enter the highway yourself during peak periods.

Cheap, easy, and fairly effective. It would be a struggle to sell it to the local population.
Click to expand...

timio said:
LA has these as well. Seemed to be 1, 2, or 3 per green, depending on the location.
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More than LA. I'm in California at the moment. They are pretty much in every city that sees traffic.

And @rbt is right. You get a freer flowing highway, but the traffic backups up the ramps and onto the streets are nuts. Dunno how this could be sold in Toronto. Especially given how crowded streets are in TO.
 
Those lights optimise the flow, which helps throughput, but there is still a finite limit to capacity.

Ontario's problem is that even if optimised, the 401 is full. Shall we build more expressways?

Giving credit where due, it was the MTO who proposed GO Transit as the solution to capacity constraints on Lakeshore roads. Let's hope they value HXR just as much now as they valued commuter rail in the 1960's.

- Paul
 
Traffic lights at on-ramps is known as "traffic calming" and it can work but only up to a point. but is a stop-gap measure.

As far as HSR reducing traffic, that is a fallacy. This is like these stupid politicians and planners trying to sell their transit expansion plans by stating it will result in less traffic congestion............it's a bunch of crap. Of course crap is standard fare for our beloved politicians but it has real negative consequences. When these transit lines fail to reduce traffic congestion, the critics can justifiably turn around and say that this was money poorly spent and the project didn't do what the politicians and planners said it would do. In other words by stating the project will result in less traffic congestion sets the whole system up for failure. When taxpayers realize that the project was a 'failure" they are far less likely to be supportive of increasing funding for both operational costs and expansions and the politicians with their eyes on the next election act accordingly.

The very MOST a HSR/transit project can hope for it a temporary lull in traffic congestion and that's it. At first the traffic may ease as people use the line and the novelty factor is still there but then the less traffic results in "induced demand" so the slight drop in congestion results in more people taking the highways and within a couple years you are back at ground zero.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Traffic lights at on-ramps is known as "traffic calming" and it can work but only up to a point. but is a stop-gap measure.

As far as HSR reducing traffic, that is a fallacy. This is like these stupid politicians and planners trying to sell their transit expansion plans by stating it will result in less traffic congestion............it's a bunch of crap. Of course crap is standard fare for our beloved politicians but it has real negative consequences. When these transit lines fail to reduce traffic congestion, the critics can justifiably turn around and say that this was money poorly spent and the project didn't do what the politicians and planners said it would do. In other words by stating the project will result in less traffic congestion sets the whole system up for failure.

The very MOST a HSR/transit project can hope for it a temporary lull in traffic congestion and that's it. At first the traffic may ease as people use the line and the novelty factor is still there but then the less traffic results in "induced demand" so the slight drop in congestion results in more people taking the highways and within a couple years you are back at ground zero.
Click to expand...

Your statement that the congestion reduction claims are a "fallacy" is categorically false. New transit lines have a person moving capacity far exceeding what the traffic lanes are capable of at any given point in time. They don't fail to reduce congestion, in fact they are often resoundingly successful at reducing congestion but the space freed up gets filled by other cars because there is room for them. But drivers who have no intention of ever giving up their car to take transit will never see or understand the great benefit that transit line provides. The ION LRT line in KW has a scheduled peak capacity of around 3,765 passengers per hour in both directions at around 8 minute frequency. That means about every 4 minutes a 251-person capacity vehicle will travel past a given point. Assuming the average 1.1 persons per car that seems to be the norm for car traffic, at full capacity that would mean that an equivalent 3423 cars would have to pass that same point in both directions for traffic lanes to have the same people-moving capacity as that LRT line. That would require many more traffic lanes to achieve.

Now let's look at the 401. You could effectively remove every car from the 401 between Weston Road and the 400 (which in 2016 had an annual average daily traffic of 416,500 vehicles) with a single GO train line running every 10 minutes using the current L12 GO train configuration (one locomotive, 12 Bombardier Bi-level Passenger cars) which have a rated capacity of 1944 per train giving an hourly capacity of 23,328 persons per hour in both directions.
 
I don't expect HSR to empty the 401. What it will do is carry a bunch of people who otherwise would try to join the existing drivers on the 401. That highway is full.

I agree with you that planners should not try to "empty" roads (just said the same thing in the Eglinton LRT thread, actually). What they need to do is place a value on the marginal cost that each additional future car adds to the road. The cost of attracting those incremental cars to transit (within a city, or between cities) is what should matter. It will likely be less than adjusting the highways to absorb the higher demand.

The economic impact of not having downtown to downtown and downtown to airport transportation with reliable performance equal or better than "uncongested highway speed" is huge. We used to have that before the 401 and 403/QEW routes congealed. We need it restored. Messing with those highways won't accomplish that.

- Paul
 
timio said:
I've thought that a piece of the puzzle would be variable speed limits from Guelph Line through Oshawa. Wouldn't solve the issue in its entirety, but would remove the expectations that drivers are obligated/entitled to go 100km/h + through this stretch regardless of conditions.
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I saw this in The Netherlands and it worked extremely well. Every 500 (300?) metres there was a gantry across all lanes, with a lighted sign above each lane showings its limit, arrows to move over, or if it was closed. Speeds varied by lane (up to 120 on the left!) and time of day. I thought it was brilliant, and salivated a little at the thought of that here.
 
KevinT said:
I saw this in The Netherlands and it worked extremely well. Every 500 (300?) metres there was a gantry across all lanes, with a lighted sign above each lane showings its limit, arrows to move over, or if it was closed. Speeds varied by lane (up to 120 on the left!) and time of day. I thought it was brilliant, and salivated a little at the thought of that here.
Click to expand...

I find the Netherlands to be the world leader in transportation and urban planning. They have such advanced road, public transit, and cycling networks, not just large dense networks, but technologically advanced. I wish sometimes we could just move over right to their highway/road standards...
 
brainfreezed said:
I find the Netherlands to be the world leader in transportation and urban planning. They have such advanced road, public transit, and cycling networks, not just large dense networks, but technologically advanced. I wish sometimes we could just move over right to their highway/road standards...
Click to expand...

Yes they are on a different level over there.
 
brainfreezed said:
I find the Netherlands to be the world leader in transportation and urban planning. They have such advanced road, public transit, and cycling networks, not just large dense networks, but technologically advanced. I wish sometimes we could just move over right to their highway/road standards...
Click to expand...

Who wants to tell that to MTO and Queens Park? ;)
 
jordanmkasla2009 said:
Your statement that the congestion reduction claims are a "fallacy" is categorically false. New transit lines have a person moving capacity far exceeding what the traffic lanes are capable of at any given point in time. They don't fail to reduce congestion, in fact they are often resoundingly successful at reducing congestion but the space freed up gets filled by other cars because there is room for them. But drivers who have no intention of ever giving up their car to take transit will never see or understand the great benefit that transit line provides.
Click to expand...

I don't understand your response. You state what I said as "categorically false" and then proceed to give reasons why it's not false. As I stated, there will be a short-term lull in traffic as people use the new transit service but that is short lived. If traffic flow improves on the current highways due to more people moving over to transit, people quickly turn to the highway as it's all of a sudden becomes less congested and as more people do that the traffic builds up again to where it was..........induced demand. It takes very little time for a highway to "re-congest" after a transit line is built in a fast growing city like Toronto. The GTAH is growing at 150,000/year so it will take no time at all to fill that highway up again.

Traffic in Toronto is bad and it will only get worse. Period. Transit lines may slow down the increase in traffic that would have taken place without the transit expansion but that's the most Toronto can hope for. This goes for the London-Toronto HSR line as well. It gives people a fast alternative to the highways which they don't have now but the traffic on the 401 will only go up and the most they can hope for with HSR is that the traffic increase will be slower than before the HSR line was considered.
 
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