Metrolinx: Sheppard East LRT (In Design)

[BurlOak]

I think your idea of routing the SELRT southbound on Don Mills road is excellent and should be seriously considered. That said, my concern is it may have the same long term impact as the Sheppard stubway and force riders to change modes of transit multiple times to make a trip to the core.

I worry that the same problem will occur as exists at Kennedy. If the SRT is run through in Eglinton at Kennedy, then the Eglinton line would be too crowded to support an on-street LRT. The two options are grade-separate Eglinton, or force everyone off onto the B-D line.

At Don Mills, if all the riders stay on the LRT and continue down Don Mills - there may be too many riders for an on-street LRT.

 

[aquateam]

I attended a transit planning seminar hosted by Jennifer Keesmat about 18 months ago. She had an internationally renowned consultant present on the topic (apologies but his name escapes me). He spoke about the need to create grids and direct lines across the city with the premise that the fastest way between two points is a direct line and that grids reduce the need for multiple transfers. He commented how it made no sense that many TTC buses stop at a subway station for breaks, and in many cases, force riders to change buses if they plan to continue their route. This logic is the rationale for converting the Sheppard Subway to an LRT.

I think your transit expert was Jarrett Walker. He loves talking about grids, and he was in Toronto for a workshop mid-2013.

Effective transit does not force riders to change modes of transit if they are travelling in the same direction as it increases travel times. It is unfortunate, as noted above, that such a conversion would be costly and not a good transit investment.

The tragedy about the Sheppard subway is that it's too expensive to expand, yet too expensive to abandon/convert. Some councillors would rather not have any LRT since they'd rather hold out hope for a subway. Meanwhile the good people of sheppard east need something better than buses in mixed traffic.

I think your idea of routing the SELRT southbound on Don Mills road is excellent and should be seriously considered. That said, my concern is it may have the same long term impact as the Sheppard stubway and force riders to change modes of transit multiple times to make a trip to the core

Just to be clear, I'm assuming that a DRL goes up to Eglinton and Don Mills. Or I guess a DRL to Pape and a Don Mills LRT to Pape. Either way it would be only one transfer from morningside/sheppard to downtown.

One of the issues is route reliability. The longer a route, the harder it is to have busses maintain a reliable schedule. It's better to split a route in half and have a small subset of users transfer, than have one enormous route with horrible reliability.

With the TTC's new route management techniques, perhaps they'll be able to merge the split routes in to one.

Hopefully an LRT shouldn't have the same issues as mixed-traffic running, with the signal priority and lack of traffic.

I worry that the same problem will occur as exists at Kennedy. If the SRT is run through in Eglinton at Kennedy, then the Eglinton line would be too crowded to support an on-street LRT. The two options are grade-separate Eglinton, or force everyone off onto the B-D line.

At Don Mills, if all the riders stay on the LRT and continue down Don Mills - there may be too many riders for an on-street LRT.

I think there's a misunderstanding, I wasn't talking about the SRT, I was talking about the SELRT. I was saying if you constructed a DRL and a Don Mills LRT, you could get a one-transfer trip to downtown by running the SELRT down the DMLRT.

Jarrett Walker, human transit. The video of the Toronto talk is online if you Google it.

You beat me to it.

 

[muller877]

One of the issues is route reliability. The longer a route, the harder it is to have busses maintain a reliable schedule. It's better to split a route in half and have a small subset of users transfer, than have one enormous route with horrible reliability.

With the TTC's new route management techniques, perhaps they'll be able to merge the split routes in to one.

Meanwhile London has a 25 mile long bus route. TTC has always said traffic is the excuse but it is not. Traffic is generally predictable. Hopefully the excuses have run out and TTC either hires effective management or outsources the management of routes.

 

[Evening]

Meanwhile London has a 25 mile long bus route. TTC has always said traffic is the excuse but it is not. Traffic is generally predictable. Hopefully the excuses have run out and TTC either hires effective management or outsources the management of routes.

here here to that! I live in the suburbs and I have always been surprised how despite TTC being amazing with frequencies is just terrible at maintaining a schedule. I understand it takes more effort to manage more buses, but they really should be doing a better job than the suburban agencies which from my experience keep their schedules roughly except in bad weather

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Meanwhile London has a 25 mile long bus route. TTC has always said traffic is the excuse but it is not. Traffic is generally predictable. Hopefully the excuses have run out and TTC either hires effective management or outsources the management of routes.

This is why the TTC is testing out new route management techniques. Their trials on 29 Dufferin and 512 St. Clair have been a great success, increasing on time performance on the 512 from 60 per cent to 95 per cent. Hopefully we'll see it rolled out across the entire system before long.

 

[Neil]

Personally, I think a good "solution" to the additional transfer comes from completing proposed transit projects. If you have a DRL to Eglinton, and run a Don Mills LRT north from it, you could have the Sheppard LRT interline with the Don Mills LRT (i.e. Sheppard LRT goes south at Don Mills instead of terminating at Don Mills station). Wham, there you have a one-transfer trip from all of Sheppard East to Downtown. And building the Don Mills LRT would actually add new transit capacity instead of putting the money into "downgrading" existing transit.

I've been saying this same thing for awhile. To this end, I think the SELRT should be at surface on the south side of the road from Consumers to Don Mills. By not tunneling under the 404 a lot of cost would be avoided. In a future world I would think a majority of SELRT passengers would be headed for a DRL rather than take the stubway to Yonge to watch full trains pass them by.

 

[Rainforest]

Which section? The tunnel already extends almost a kilometre west of Yonge Street. If they started a portal at the west end, it wouldn't daylight until about Senlac. I don't see why you wouldn't simply put the portal just west of Senlac, and not need any more tunnel.

To my knowledge, the tunnel ends either at Bangor (400 m from Yonge) or at Welbeck (800 m); don't remember which.

The tunnel will have to be extended from there to at least the eastern bank of the West Don; that section of Sheppard is not wide enough to add 2 LRT lanes. Then, some structure to cross West Don will have to be added; the existing bridge is 4 lanes wide and has no room for LRT.

Looks like I was wrong about "1.5 km of tunnel", but I can say "1.5 km of tunnel plus bridge combined, where LRT will not have any cost advantage over subway".

Only starting from the west bank of West Don, LRT will be cheaper because it can be on surface. It can stay on surface all the way to Downsview. But I doubt that saving on those 2.5 km will offset the cost of converting the existing subway section. Overall, the LRT option will be truly cheaper only if it continues west of Downsview.

 

[BurlOak]

and I think an LRT would have to have an underground station at (what is currently) Downsview - same as subway. That brings you down to about 2km which would be different than subway.

 

[nfitz]

To my knowledge, the tunnel ends either at Bangor (400 m from Yonge) or at Welbeck (800 m); don't remember which.

It's goes past Welbeck. The emergency exit at the end of the tunnel with "Welbeck" on it is 40 metres west of Welbeck, about half-way between Welbeck and Fennell street.

The tunnel will have to be extended from there to at least the eastern bank of the West Don; that section of Sheppard is not wide enough to add 2 LRT lanes. Then, some structure to cross West Don will have to be added; the existing bridge is 4 lanes wide and has no room for LRT.

We had this discussion already earlier in this thread. Sheppard is only 4 lanes here. The right-of-way is wide enough to do 6 lanes of traffic. It's all 24 metres, some is 26 metres. Bridges would have to be widened, but that's a cheaper than tunnels.

The Sheppard East LRT design has 3.3 m for each lane of traffic (which is higher than what the 3.05 m that is now being recommended by some experts) and 7 m for the LRT ROW. So road and ROW needs 20.2 m, leaving 1.9 m on each side for sidewalk and curbs. You could increase that to 2.4 for sidewalk and curbs if you reduce the lane widths to 3.05. You just need to expropriate some front yards if you need any turning lanes, etc. - though if you look at the property maps, there's extra land already in many places you might want that.

 

[Hopkins123]

The tunnel already extends over 800 metres from Sheppard-Yonge? Sounds like justification for a Senlac station.

 

[nfitz]

The tunnel already extends over 800 metres from Sheppard-Yonge? Sounds like justification for a Senlac station.

If they were to continue the subway, the tunnel goes to the where the station box for Senlac would start. And between Senlac and the West Don, you'd do likely do cut-and-cover leading to a bridge over the West Don. I doubt they'd bother using a TBM between the Bathurst station box and the west Don. So really you are only looking at a single approximately 1.8 km TBM run from west of Bathurst to east of Dufferin ... about $100 million. I'm not sure I'd even bother with a station in there, though might as well leave allowance for one in the future.

 

[Rainforest]

The Sheppard East LRT design has 3.3 m for each lane of traffic (which is higher than what the 3.05 m that is now being recommended by some experts) and 7 m for the LRT ROW. So road and ROW needs 20.2 m, leaving 1.9 m on each side for sidewalk and curbs. You could increase that to 2.4 for sidewalk and curbs if you reduce the lane widths to 3.05. You just need to expropriate some front yards if you need any turning lanes, etc. - though if you look at the property maps, there's extra land already in many places you might want that.

OK. I pass that area from time to time and the corridor does not seem wide enough for 6 lanes. However, my impression may not reflect the actual situation.

 

[nfitz]

OK. I pass that area from time to time and the corridor does not seem wide enough for 6 lanes. However, my impression may not reflect the actual situation.

If you look in the city mapping tool, and turn the airphoto on, you see the property line for the edge of Sheppard isn't the edge of the sidewalk - it's in the front yards.

 

[W. K. Lis]

If you look in the city mapping tool, and turn the airphoto on, you see the property line for the edge of Sheppard isn't the edge of the sidewalk - it's in the front yards.

The property line is in the front yards of many properties. The city can use their property without compensation, as long as they don't encroach onto private property without expropriation.

It is also the dividing line where the city is responsible for problems with the sewer and water lines. If the property owner actually owned all of the front yard, they'll would have to pay for all sewer or water problems.

 

[christiesplits]

From @reporterdonpeat

Councillor Karygiannis letter to constituents on Sheppard subway:

http://burl.co/500266D

The Sheppard Subway line, started over 20 years ago, ends at Don Mills, rather than Scarborough Town Centre, as was originally planned. Over the years, mayoralty and city council candidates have pledged to either build a subway or run an LRT across Sheppard. A new subway has been slated to be built to replace the existing Scarborough LRT from the Kennedy Subway Station to Scarborough Town Centre.

The residents of Scarborough, who live north of the 401, deserve nothing less than the residents south of the 401.

The Sheppard Subway line must stop being a myth and become a reality. To that end, I brought a Motion to Toronto City Council to achieve the Sheppard Subway line.

So now it's not even about Scarborough vs. downtown. It's north Scarborough vs. south Scarborough. Hey, how about Port Union?! South-east Scarborough keeps getting the shaft from those central Scarborough elites!