Sheppard Line 4 Subway Extension (Proposed)

[dad pad]

Because it's too complex for the average TTC Rider to understand.

I don't think it is, it's only a matter of informing the public.

It's also not needed as much as people seem to think it is.

I don't think it's a question of need as much as it would be an improvement to the network.

I'm not going to argue about this anymore as you clearly seem to be set that it's an amazing idea and it should be done very easily and nobody is going to have any problems or complaints about it.

This is a strawman argument. I think it should also be pretty obvious that thinking something is a cool idea isn't the same as thinking it is likely to be built or even should be built above other priorities

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

The main thing to me on this isn't that it necessarily a huge amount of traffic, particularly on opening day, but that it really salvages a lot of trip patterns that we would be trying to serve with a Sheppard West extension but end up having obnoxious one station transfers without it. And does so at a level of construction complexity on part with what would be built without provision for interlining.

I can understand a need to extend the subway west and possibly east and having a connection but I don't really see interlining working as you would still have an obnoxious one station transfer for someone.

Also a lot of cities that did stuff like that with lines made cuts to them because it would often cause delays in service

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

don't think it is, it's only a matter of informing the public

Not everyone pays attention to stuff like that or understands it completely.

I don't think it's a question of need as much as it would be an improvement to the network.

I don't really see how it would improve it all

This is a strawman argument. I think it should also be pretty obvious that thinking something is a cool idea isn't the same as thinking it is likely to be built or even should be built above other priorities

Run for city council and try to get on the TTC board so that you can present your ideas to them that way if you think it's so great.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

For the sake of the argument I want to say how I'm interperate it. All line 4 trains would continue to Vaughan well only a few line 1 trains would go all the way. The reason for this is because there are a large amount of people who come from Vaughn to work in Scarborough or the other way around and because "not enough people" use line 1 north of Sheppard west it's ok for them to have to transfer but because another group has to have a "one seat ride" to their destination it's inconvenient for them to transfer.


I personally don't really get how a one seat ride works or can work unless you drive yourself.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

For the sake of the argument I want to say how I'm interperate it. All line 4 trains would continue to Vaughan well only a few line 1 trains would go all the way. The reason for this is because there are a large amount of people who come from Vaughn to work in Scarborough or the other way around and because "not enough people" use line 1 north of Sheppard west it's ok for them to have to transfer but because another group has to have a "one seat ride" to their destination it's inconvenient for them to transfer.


I personally don't really get how a one seat ride works or can work unless you drive yourself.

You miss a couple things in that analysis.

We already short turn trains south of Vaughan regularly, scheduled short turns don't really introduce a transfer in any case and merely extend waiting times. I tend to agree that the most likely pattern would be all Sheppard go north with short turns on YUS, but not for some "too few passengers reason"; it's really just a reflection of frequency. Assuming we maintain the five minute frequency standard that amounts to roughly every Sheppard train through routing and half or so of YUS short turning without trying to run an unreasonable number of trains to Vaughan.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

You miss a couple things in that analysis.

We already short turn trains south of Vaughan regularly, scheduled short turns don't really introduce a transfer in any case and merely extend waiting times. I tend to agree that the most likely pattern would be all Sheppard go north with short turns on YUS, but not for some "too few passengers reason"; it's really just a reflection of frequency. Assuming we maintain the five minute frequency standard that amounts to roughly every Sheppard train through routing and half or so of YUS short turning without trying to run an unreasonable number of trains to Vaughan.

I still don't see it being able to work the way people here seem to think it will. I honestly don't think that interlining works well for passengers as there will always be a "forced inconvenient transfer" for someone. Interlining only makes sense for equipment movements.

 

[Tristen]

I still don't see it being able to work the way people here seem to think it will. I honestly don't think that interlining works well for passengers as there will always be a "forced inconvenient transfer" for someone. Interlining only makes sense for equipment movements.

You need to look at Japan

 

[ARG1]

I don't see the problem. We do a limited amount of interlining with our streetcars, and GO, seems to work fine. This is a low ridership section, unlike at Bay or whatever.

Interlining isn't some big, scary transit un-improvement. Plenty of places have interlining.

I wouldn't call GO "interlining", especially when the whole plan with GO Expansion is to give each line their own set of tracks so that they don't interline and service doesn't depend on the status of another line.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

You need to look at Japan

We aren't in Japan and how they run their transit systems are very different then we do here.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

I still don't see it being able to work the way people here seem to think it will. I honestly don't think that interlining works well for passengers as there will always be a "forced inconvenient transfer" for someone. Interlining only makes sense for equipment movements.

The question is for who. The transfers eliminated by this are ones that would be greatly resented and genuinely impact Shepard's viability as a cross-town regional service if we were to, say, attempt to offset the need for further western extensions by using Finch W for airport access.

There aren't really any new transfer created by it, on the other hand, and the negative impact of it is only a rather minor reduction in frequency on a service pattern that already includes short turns.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

The question is for who. The transfers eliminated by this are ones that would be greatly resented and genuinely impact Shepard's viability as a cross-town regional service if we were to, say, attempt to offset the need for further western extensions by using Finch W for airport access.

There aren't really any new transfer created by it, on the other hand, and the negative impact of it is only a rather minor reduction in frequency on a service pattern that already includes short turns.

You obviously have no idea how the subway actually runs in the morning the short turns are done because ridership is low heading north to Sheppard west and Vaughan so they turn trains back so that they can get more trains out on the line both north and south from Willson yard. The trains short turning are ones that started at Finch or Davisville yard. Every night they store four trains at all of the end stations which get turned back before they get to the end of the line to balance out the trains coming out of the yards and too keep the tracks leading out of the yards clear as much as they can. Adding an additional train from another line is just going to get in the way of the regular morning operations of the yard and dispatcing trains in either direction in an effective and efficient manner.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

You obviously have no idea how the subway actually runs in the morning the short turns are done because ridership is low heading north to Sheppard west and Vaughan so they turn trains back so that they can get more trains out on the line both north and south from Willson yard. The trains short turning are ones that started at Finch or Davisville yard. Every night they store four trains at all of the end stations which get turned back before they get to the end of the line to balance out the trains coming out of the yards and too keep the tracks leading out of the yards clear as much as they can. Adding an additional train from another line is just going to get in the way of the regular morning operations of the yard and dispatcing trains in either direction in an effective and efficient manner.

Yes, and?

The branching involved in Sheppard would be north of Wilson. The only interference is going to be with trains departing Wilson northbound, which, as you pointed out, is a relatively low demand direction. Beyond that, I'd suggest that it's almost a given that any Sheppard junction would have a southern chord such that if interlining impacts trains departing Wilson northbound via the south end they can exit Wilson northbound into a tail track on Sheppard.

Honestly, this argument is Toronto exceptionalism at it finest, and what makes dealing with TTC management so frustrating.. "This thing that most of the world does every day is obviously impossible, for technical reasons, because we could only ever replicate the ill conceived attempt we made at something similar six decades ago". Or more aptly "the operational patterns we have today are the only ones conceivable, even if we change the infrastructure, therefore new infrastructure must work around them remaining unchanged for all eternity". Railroad operations are conservative everywhere, but I can't think of any organization more change averse than the TTC. It's one thing to bring up issues with changes, another to argue against them... and another altogether to, as always happens in Toronto, declare potential issues that are routinely solved elsewhere so fundamental that they should not even be discussed.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

The branching involved in Sheppard would be north of Wilson. The only interference is going to be with trains departing Wilson northbound, which, as you pointed out, is a relatively low demand direction.

It's of low demand because they are dispatching trains both north and south from Wilson yard. I honestly don't see how your fantasy interlining is actually going to work, what yard do they come out off, as of now the trains used on line 4 are kept in both the tail tracks and platforms at Don Mills and Sheppard station and they only go to Davisville yard when they need to have maintainince work to be done on them. Davisville yard doesn't hold a lot of trains and most of them are either north to Finch or south to Bloor. The TTC did a video one time that showed how many trains go through Bloor during the morning rush hour some of them are even brought in empty just from Davisville yard because of how busy it is.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

The yard capacity problem is in play interlining or no... Sheppard's existing tail tracks really aren't going to accommodate any but the smallest extensions and the trains need to come from somewhere.

In terms of making this, or even a non-interlined extension work.... I have to assume a Sheppard West extension itself would include at least some tail track capacity. Beyond that, I also assume that any extension is going to include connection to the north end of Wilson yard, which I would hope is designed to allow northbound dispatch onto YUS or eastbound onto Sheppard if the junction is configured for interlining. Don't forget that we are talking about Sheppard length trains, so squeezing additional storage into Wilson is also feasible, and while not cheap ought to be better value than, say, the underground storage we were looking at for Richmond Hill Centre before it was brought above ground.

I'd also suggest that Davisville would likely dispatch all trains northbound in any scenario involving Shepard West, the connection allowing Wilson to dispatch trains southbound on Yonge quite easily so long as a north to east connection exists, be that via a Sheppard / Yonge style junction or a north end tie-in. Beyond that, I'd be quite surprised if any eastern extension on Sheppard didn't have some kind of storage, the flip side of which being that a Sheppard line extended only west will have pretty small numbers of additional trains. If we ignore interlining and extend only to Sheppard West I would be surprised to see a requirement for more than two additional sets....

 

[superelevation]

Because it's too complex for the average TTC Rider to understand. It's also not needed as much as people seem to think it is. I'm not going to argue about this anymore as you clearly seem to be set that it's an amazing idea and it should be done very easily and nobody is going to have any problems or complaints about it.

This train goes to Scarborough, vs. this train goes to Downtown is too complicated for the average TTC rider? How do we manage the streetcar network moving anyone?

I still don't see it being able to work the way people here seem to think it will. I honestly don't think that interlining works well for passengers as there will always be a "forced inconvenient transfer" for someone. Interlining only makes sense for equipment movements.

But the whole point of this is using excess track capacity to make some people's lives easier to reduce transfers? Not to introduce any new ones . . .