Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

I think BurlOak is somewhat vindicated. A year ago the idea seemed ridiculous, but after all the latest transit developments, I think not grade separating the Crosstown in Scarborough is proving to be a massive oversight.

That idea never was "ridiculous", as a proposal it was reasonable.

However, it would hit two problems:

1) It is viable only if the Relief line is buit soon after Crosstown, and it reaches Eglinton where it connects to Crosstown.

Otherwise, a lot of riders from Scarborough would stay on Crosstown all the way to Yonge, and overwhelm both the Crosstown and the Yonge line between Eglinton and Bloor.

Since at that time, 2010 - 2012, the future of Relief line was very uncertain, it would be too risky to commit to a network configuration where Crosstown becomes the main transit line for Scarborough.

2) The cost advantage of this scheme only exists if the street-median section of Crosstown is replaced with Elevated. If it is replaced with a Tunneled section, then the cost will be about as high as for SSE.

I personally do not see any problem with Elevated through the Golden Mile etc, but there is a degree of reluctance to build elevated transit in this city.

We will see if whether the Scarborough subway survives the next election cycle. If it gets replaced with a branch of the Crosstown in a cost-saving measure, then surely it would require grade separating between Kennedy and Don Mills, no?

Isn't it a bit too late to change the design of Crosstown? That would result in another delay.
 
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I think 60 second headway would be better. Lets close all street crossing Eglinton from Kennedy to Leslie. Also prevent any seniors from trying to cross the street.

You joke, but the TTC has run at these headways before. The King car today runs at 2 min headways in mixed traffic. Decades abandoned streercar lines ran at headways even shorter than 2 min. 2 min headways on the surface with dedicated ROW and signal priority is manageable.

Reaistcally, Crosstown East might have peak point usage of 6000 to 7000 pphpd at Don Mills. 3 car trains at 3 min 15 second headways can handle this fine. It won't be an issue.
 
...May be it will be better to commit ourself to the proper & frequent Smart Truck project development ?...

John Tory kind of explored that option; and the outcome so far is that the Uxbridge sub (Stouffville GO line) will have 7 SmartTrack trains per hour. That means, extra capacity in the range of 10,000 to 14,000 pphpd, versus 30,000 - 35,000 that a subway line can provide.

SmartTrack is still useful, it will give a better transit option to quite a few people. But it is not a full substitute for the Relief line.
 
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You joke, but the TTC has run at these headways before. The King car today runs at 2 min headways in mixed traffic. Decades abandoned streercar lines ran at headways even shorter than 2 min. 2 min headways on the surface with dedicated ROW and signal priority is very manageable.

Reaistcally, Crosstown East might have peak point usage of 6000 to 7000 pphpd at Don Mills. 3 car trains at 3 min 15 second headways can handle this fine. It won't be an issue.

The combined Crosstown / SLRT line was projected to reach 13,000 pphpd at peak. Sure, that's at Yonge; should be somewhat less at Don Mills, but probably still more than 7,000.

King streetcar moves huge volumes of riders (for a streetcar), but at the cost of being rather slow.

I think that Crosstown can sustain 2 min headways, even in street-median, for a short time / on special occassions. But if it is designed to normally operate at such headways, that's a recipe for unreliable service.
 
John Tory kind of explored that option; and the outcome so far is that the Uxbridge sub (Stouffville GO line) will have 7 SmartTrack trains per hour. That means, extra capacity in the range of 10,000 to 14,000 pphpd, versus 30,000 - 35,000 that a subway line can provide.

SmartTrack is still useful, it will give a better transit option to quite a few people. But it is not a full substitute for the Relief line.
SmartTrack and Relief Line will be attracting transit riders from very different locations.

SmartTrack won't do much to relieve the Yonge Line. It doesn't capture Yonge-bound riders before they reach Yonge.
 
SmartTrack and Relief Line will be attracting transit riders from very different locations.

SmartTrack won't do much to relieve the Yonge Line. It doesn't capture Yonge-bound riders before they reach Yonge.

Well, it certainly can capture some of them; those coming from the east on the York Mills, Sheppard, Finch, Steeles buses.

It just can't capture enough of them to make a big difference for Yonge, and offset the ridership growth caused by the population growth.
 
The combined Crosstown / SLRT line was projected to reach 13,000 pphpd at peak. Sure, that's at Yonge; should be somewhat less at Don Mills, but probably still more than 7,000.

It was 7,500 at Birchmount and 10,000 at Don Mills. (and your right about the 13,000). Imagine if (as suggested above), a branch from UTSC was added to this line. that would likely hit 14,000 at Don Mills and 17,000 at Yonge.

http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regiona...itscases/Benefits_Case-Eglinton_Crosstown.pdf
(See Figure 3.9)
 
It was 7,500 at Birchmount and 10,000 at Don Mills. (and your right about the 13,000). Imagine if (as suggested above), a branch from UTSC was added to this line. that would likely hit 14,000 at Don Mills and 17,000 at Yonge.

http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regiona...itscases/Benefits_Case-Eglinton_Crosstown.pdf
(See Figure 3.9)
Future growth and intensification along the entirety of Eglinton too...

Not to mention what this would have implied for the Yonge line. Figure 3.9 gives a pretty good indication of how that would have looked for Yonge-Eglinton station.
 
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We know from TTCs DTRES that the relief line to Eglinton provides virtually zero additional Yonge relief. The part of the the relief line that provides meaningful Yonge relief is the section between Eglinton and Sheppaed.
That doesn't seem to chime with the latest ridership surveys done by the U of T which I wrote up a few weeks back - they assumed a relief line just to Pape and even then the preferred route takes 3,600 off the Yonge line S of Bloor in peak hours (c. 10%). I probably should have put in those figures - they are on p. 6 of the report (see screenshot below for more details). No idea how much more relief to Eglinton or to Sheppard would bring. I will ask Dr Miller next time we do a RL story though...

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That doesn't seem to chime with the latest ridership surveys done by the U of T which I wrote up a few weeks back - they assumed a relief line just to Pape and even then the preferred route takes 3,600 off the Yonge line S of Bloor in peak hours (c. 10%). I probably should have put in those figures - they are on p. 6 of the report (see screenshot below for more details). No idea how much more relief to Eglinton or to Sheppard would bring. I will ask Dr Miller next time we do a RL story though...

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That initial reduction of 3,500 will be eaten up within a decade of 2031. Whatever the initial reduction of DRL short may be will ultimately be negligible in the long term (as currently stated in 2016), or by 2031, short term. A similar dilemma exists with Eglinton.
 
That doesn't seem to chime with the latest ridership surveys done by the U of T which I wrote up a few weeks back - they assumed a relief line just to Pape and even then the preferred route takes 3,600 off the Yonge line S of Bloor in peak hours (c. 10%). I probably should have put in those figures - they are on p. 6 of the report (see screenshot below for more details). No idea how much more relief to Eglinton or to Sheppard would bring. I will ask Dr Miller next time we do a RL story though...

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The dirty little secret of Toronto transit is that the relief line short is completely ineffective at relieving Yonge line crowding. Anybody expecting to be able to fit into Yonge line trains when the Releif Line Short opens will be disappointed. It's primary benefit is relieving Bloor-Yonge crowding. 3,600 pphpd in Yonge line ridership reduction will be negated in 5 years or less with our expected population and ridership growths. Also note that 3,600 pphpd reduction is not enough to ever get Yonge operating below capacity. The Relief Line is only effective when it's north of Eglinton; everything else is a stopgap. We need to move forward with this now.

We also need to move forward with initial design for the western relief line sometime in the next 5 years if we're to avoid having University Line go over capacity around 2035.
 
Relief Line short is not without considerable benefit. It will do a lot to relieve Bloor-Yonge. Real capacity of the whole Yonge line will increase on a day-to-day basis when trains do not have to dwell at Bloor-Yonge as long waiting for passengers get off/on.

It is just that for the specific purpose of relieving the entire Yonge subway line (a pressing need in Toronto transit) the Relief Line Short option is inadequate. It needs to go north of Eglinton to do so.
 
To put this all in perspective, automatic train control is twice as effective as the relief line short at reducing Yonge crowding

Not bloody likely. ATC in theory and ATC in practice are, I'm afraid, going to have 2 very different results for the Yonge line without a fix for Bloor and Finch stations; maybe King/Queen too.
 
3,600 pphpd in Yonge line ridership reduction will be negated in 5 years or less with our expected population and ridership growths

Well it's true that if you believe the report mentioned before, you can manage to keep Yonge line to capacity at peak times without the relief line... but only if you have the SmartTrack running every 5 minutes and no YSE.

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