EnviroTO
Senior Member
First of all, you have to define "benefit". If by "benefit" you mean shaving 5 minutes off of what used to be a 40 min bus trip, is that really a big deal? Say you live at Sheppard and Kennedy, would it be a greater benefit to have an electrified Stouffville line running 15 minute frequencies into downtown, or to have to travel by Sheppard East LRT, Sheppard Subway, and Yonge Subway to reach downtown. In that case, the amount of time shaved off that trip would be nearly half.
No, by benefit I mean maintain a reliable schedule, actually fit all the passengers waiting at stops, and cost tax payers less to operate. Agincourt is the only station on the whole of Sheppard that would have been served by Transit City. How are people supposed to get there and how will it benefit them if their destination was Yonge and Finch which is where Transit City or a Sheppard Subway would have taken them?
The other thing that electrified GO with additional stations would do would be to increase the turnover on existing bus routes. Take Eglinton for example. The current Eglinton West bus needs to run the nearly the entire length of Eglinton West before it reaches a rapid transit route to transfer onto to go southbound. This means that there is very little turnover, except at Eglinton West and Eglinton stations. With electrified GO, you would be adding in 2 additional transfer points, and there would be a lot of turnover at each of those points, freeing up space on the buses.
First there is the assumption that people will go onto GO from the TTC bus. There are GO trains at rush hour on every line which is when these routes are packed but the number of transfers at Eglinton GO, Kennedy GO, Agincourt GO, etc are minuscule. The only way to get people to switch has nothing to do with electrification. You would need to integrate fares and provide much greater frequency in service. Electrification doesn't increase service frequency nor provide the capacity necessary to significantly impact the TTC bus network loads, it increases average trip speed and only provides a marginal increase in capacity because the train can return more quickly. To provide a service that could significantly divert bus traffic you need to go beyond electrification to build double tracks everywhere, buy a lot more trains and employ a lot more staff, and significantly increase the capacity of Union Station. That can't be bought for the cost of Transit City.
Same thing goes for routes like Finch West (Barrie line), Eglinton East (Richmond Hill line and Lakeshore East line).
Yes, the same thing does go for those routes. There isn't a significant transfer now when the trains are running and the same lower cost for transfer plus significant increase in frequency and capacity would be required.