SmartTrack (Proposed)

[salsa]

The Finch East bus is going to see a huge amount of relief from this station. Right now anybody going downtown is riding all the way to Yonge. Between Victoria Park and Kennedy you may even get some riders switching to go counter-peak to get to/from Finch East Station.

Not gonna happen until we have a fare system that doesn't disincentive Toronto residents or TTC users from using GO Transit.

 

[gweed123]

Not gonna happen until we have a fare system that doesn't disincentive Toronto residents or TTC users from using GO Transit.

My travel forecasting was assuming that would be in place. If it isn't, SmartTrack has bigger issues than just the travel pattern to this one station.

 

[micheal_can]

What is the difference between GO RER and Smartrack?

Also, adding stations were the subway and GO meet makes sense.

 

[robmausser]

What is the difference between GO RER and Smartrack?

At this point, Smarttrack is just more stations on GO-RER's plan at the behest of the city, and a request for better fare integration with the cities TTC network.

GO-RER is Nintendo 64 and Smarttrack is the Rumble Packs and that Expansion Pack add on thingy.

 

[robmausser]

Munro and Cllr Layton are usually on the same page when it comes to transit. Not on this. (Part of the thread below. Steve's earlier tweets spoke about the service frequency).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1166288790941569024

I think the real issue is WHY are 6 stations over a billion dollars? They really shouldnt be, that seems ridiculous. We need to stop building palaces.

I dont think the stations are a bad idea, just stop overbuilding things.

Also I am pretty sure that GO-RER will do better than 15 minutes, thats the lowest guaranteed frequency, at evenings/weekends.

If I recall, the stations will have trains every 8 minutes in peak frequency.

Thirdly, the Liberty Village stop is not that close to the Ontario Line plans. I think it still warrants being built. Exhibition GO already exists and all my liberty friends complain that its way too far south. King/Bathurst stop is not in Liberty either.

Just remove all the window dressing and chrome plating. Doesnt have to be a the taj mahal

That being said Gerrard or East Harbour should be nixed. They are both on the Ontario line and are redundant. My vote is to nix Gerrard.

 

[kEiThZ]

At this point, Smarttrack is just more stations on GO-RER's plan at the behest of the city, and a request for better fare integration with the cities TTC network.

GO-RER is Nintendo 64 and Smarttrack is the Rumble Packs and that Expansion Pack add on thingy.

Exactly as I predicted years ago. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's the price of getting GO to actually think of the 416.

 

[44 North]

At this point, Smarttrack is just more stations on GO-RER's plan at the behest of the city, and a request for better fare integration with the cities TTC network.

GO-RER is Nintendo 64 and Smarttrack is the Rumble Packs and that Expansion Pack add on thingy.

I remember getting the rumble pack and renting StarFox64 when it came out lol. It was so-so, possibly like SmartTrack will be.

 

[treplow]

I think the real issue is WHY are 6 stations over a billion dollars? They really shouldnt be, that seems ridiculous. We need to stop building palaces.

I dont think the stations are a bad idea, just stop overbuilding things.

Also I am pretty sure that GO-RER will do better than 15 minutes, thats the lowest guaranteed frequency, at evenings/weekends.

If I recall, the stations will have trains every 8 minutes in peak frequency.

Thirdly, the Liberty Village stop is not that close to the Ontario Line plans. I think it still warrants being built. Exhibition GO already exists and all my liberty friends complain that its way too far south. King/Bathurst stop is not in Liberty either.

Just remove all the window dressing and chrome plating. Doesnt have to be a the taj mahal

That being said Gerrard or East Harbour should be nixed. They are both on the Ontario line and are redundant. My vote is to nix Gerrard.

I'd keep Gerrard for the potential connection to the 506 streetcar and the sheer distance between Leslieville and Pape.

 

[crs1026]

GO-RER is Nintendo 64 and Smarttrack is the Rumble Packs and that Expansion Pack add on thingy.

Transit planning in this city would work a lot better if we stuck to Ms Pacman and stopped dreaming about buying new towers with ultra-higher-quality video accelerators that aren’t in production yet.

- Paul

 

[gibsonm]

I think the real issue is WHY are 6 stations over a billion dollars? They really shouldnt be, that seems ridiculous. We need to stop building palaces.

I dont think the stations are a bad idea, just stop overbuilding things.

Also I am pretty sure that GO-RER will do better than 15 minutes, thats the lowest guaranteed frequency, at evenings/weekends.

If I recall, the stations will have trains every 8 minutes in peak frequency.

Thirdly, the Liberty Village stop is not that close to the Ontario Line plans. I think it still warrants being built. Exhibition GO already exists and all my liberty friends complain that its way too far south. King/Bathurst stop is not in Liberty either.

Just remove all the window dressing and chrome plating. Doesnt have to be a the taj mahal

That being said Gerrard or East Harbour should be nixed. They are both on the Ontario line and are redundant. My vote is to nix Gerrard.

I don’t mind nice stations that are built to last. Give some comforts to commuters. However, if ST stations have standard TTC fair and therefore serve the same function as a subway, there is no need for both an ST station and a subway station at Gerard. We already have the transfer opportunity at East Harbour, which will become like a Union Station East. That’s what, $150 million saved?

 

[hw621]

I don’t mind nice stations that are built to last. Give some comforts to commuters. However, if ST stations have standard TTC fair and therefore serve the same function as a subway, there is no need for both an ST station and a subway station at Gerard. We already have the transfer opportunity at East Harbour, which will become like a Union Station East. That’s what, $150 million saved?

Nope, more study to cancellation, then debate in next municipal , provincial and federal elections.

 

[mdrejhon]

Transit planning in this city would work a lot better if we stuck to Ms Pacman and stopped dreaming about buying new towers with ultra-higher-quality video accelerators that aren’t in production yet.

I want my NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super with a sweet true-240Hz 1ms Nano IPS panel in my monitor, with both G-SYNC and FreeSync included. And also the new Oculus Rift, cherry on top, please. And to go.

Ha, I’ll settle for inexpensive stations on a good fast rapid transit system.

 

[lead82]

I think the real issue is WHY are 6 stations over a billion dollars? They really shouldnt be, that seems ridiculous. We need to stop building palaces.

I dont think the stations are a bad idea, just stop overbuilding things.

Also I am pretty sure that GO-RER will do better than 15 minutes, thats the lowest guaranteed frequency, at evenings/weekends.

If I recall, the stations will have trains every 8 minutes in peak frequency.

Thirdly, the Liberty Village stop is not that close to the Ontario Line plans. I think it still warrants being built. Exhibition GO already exists and all my liberty friends complain that its way too far south. King/Bathurst stop is not in Liberty either.

Just remove all the window dressing and chrome plating. Doesnt have to be a the taj mahal

That being said Gerrard or East Harbour should be nixed. They are both on the Ontario line and are redundant. My vote is to nix Gerrard.

You are spot on. I don’t get why these 6 stations cost on average $150M each. They are above ground and require no tunneling or complex engineering. They really don’t need any bus terminals or parking garages. So why does a simple platform over two tracks with some shelter and basic amenities cost that much? This should be a scandalous problem but no one in GTA or Ontario is screaming at why these things cost so much to get so little. $1B should get us an entire line built, not 6 measly stops.

 

[rbt]

You are spot on. I don’t get why these 6 stations cost on average $150M each. They are above ground and require no tunneling or complex engineering. They really don’t need any bus terminals or parking garages. So why does a simple platform over two tracks with some shelter and basic amenities cost that much? This should be a scandalous problem but no one in GTA or Ontario is screaming at why these things cost so much to get so little. $1B should get us an entire line built, not 6 measly stops.

Many do include bus bays and non-trivial bridge engineering. Land expropriation will be involved for nearly all the stations too, which with Toronto land prices won't be a trivial number.

Finch, I'm unsure of. Has it already been grade separated (satellite maps show level crossing but might be out of date). If so, that's a large rail/road grade separation with bus bays underneath the railway line.

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Lawrence looks pretty tame, aside from the fact the active SRT impacts construction a bit.

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The domain name smarttrack.to is being parked on Park.io. Contact the domain owner to make an offer right now...

smarttrack.to

Gerrard constructs elevated platforms and all the vertical components that come with that (elevators/escalators, etc.).

smarttrack.to - a really cool domain parked on Park.io

The domain name smarttrack.to is being parked on Park.io. Contact the domain owner to make an offer right now...

smarttrack.to

East Harbour looks like a sizable project. Widened corridor over the river and DVP and lots of vertical bits (elevators/escalators/...)

smarttrack.to - a really cool domain parked on Park.io

The domain name smarttrack.to is being parked on Park.io. Contact the domain owner to make an offer right now...

smarttrack.to

Liberty is in a trench with an active railway. Widening that trench section is going to be a PITA:

smarttrack.to

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St. Clair looks like the easiest. Couple of pedestrian tunnels:

smarttrack.to - a really cool domain parked on Park.io

The domain name smarttrack.to is being parked on Park.io. Contact the domain owner to make an offer right now...

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[lead82]

Even with all that you said I still don’t see $1B. Keep in mind that East Harbour would have been built without SmarTrack.