mickael
Active Member
Because Metrolinx has been working on GO RER and and decided doing basically the same thing twice was silly.
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SmartTrack (Proposed)
- Thread starter aquateam
- Start date
crs1026
Senior Member
It was unrealistic and not practically operational. One segment proposed building a new heavy rail line through suburban Etobicoke. The other proposed superimposing service on ML owned rail lines that could not support two different levels of service within the infrastructure that ML planned to build for RER. As the planning discussions proceeded, it became clear that it would be either unworkable or extremely expensive to add enough infrastructure to accommodate both GO and ST. It was also unclear whether there would be sufficient ridership, depending on where the SRT replacement was built.
The premise of using GO corridors as a within-416 people mover was quite rational, but nobody in Tory's shop had a clue how it would work.
- Paul
Rainforest
Senior Member
They might have had no idea how to make it work when Tory won the office, but they could hire the right people afterwards, andf still make parts of the plan work. More stations + more trains + some kind of reduced fares for intra-416 trips.
John Tory, despite having pretty good day-to-day management skills, appeared to be too timid to pursue and implement his own vision.
sixrings
Senior Member
SmartTrack was an election marketing plan. He is elected. Being elected was his vision. Therefore he doesn't need to pursue SmartTrack which sane people knew was dumb all along. Actual visions are put on boards not on the back of napkins.
rbt
Senior Member
I guess I'm not sane. 6 minute frequencies (3 minute peak) on the central ~30 to 40 km of our above-ground railway corridors still seems like a relatively affordable (after the 15 minute network is complete) and very useful goal.
The major obstacles are the insistence of express trips (now you need 4/5 tracks instead of 2/3), and Union Station. Union is easy (but not cheap) to fix by pushing a line-pair under King or Harbour.
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robmausser
Senior Member
I guess the 6 planned stations downtown with federal funding are just pixie farts then?
sixrings
Senior Member
If that's what you want to claim as a win while there's no Eglinton west and no fare structure than that's good for you. That's like me saying transit city is a win because finch is being constructed and parts of Eglinton. A fraction of a plan isn't a win even when it wasn't much of a plan to begin with.
NotAToy
New Member
*Sarcasm Alert* How's GO RER doing? I suppose it's near completion.
crs1026
Senior Member
Considering the plan as it started, and what it became, and how fulsomely he pitched it at the beginning, I would say he embarassed himself.
And considering that his original claim was that it would all be finished by 2019, and nothing has even started, I'd say that pixie must be feeling a lot of trapped-gas discomfort.
- Paul
mickael
Active Member
A lot further along than SmartTrack, I'd wager.
Northern Light
Superstar
The latest from Steve Munro, in NOW. Essentially saying, "Smart Track" is dead, and the money allocated to it by the City should be repurposed to fund Eglinton East LRT and the Waterfront LRTs
nowtoronto.com
Why is city council pretending that SmartTrack is still alive? - NOW Magazine
Between the Scarborough subway and SmartTrack, there is some $2.5 billion available in reserve funds that could be used now to pay for service improvements Toronto needs
nowtoronto.com
sixrings
Senior Member
Steve munro is a lefty who hates the inner suburbs though. We can't take his words seriously. Eyes roll.The latest from Steve Munro, in NOW. Essentially saying, "Smart Track" is dead, and the money allocated to it by the City should be repurposed to fund Eglinton East LRT and the Waterfront LRTs
Why is city council pretending that SmartTrack is still alive? - NOW Magazine
Between the Scarborough subway and SmartTrack, there is some $2.5 billion available in reserve funds that could be used now to pay for service improvements Toronto needs
W. K. Lis
Superstar
Opinion only by the alleged honourable member of this thread.
sixrings
Senior Member
It's like the Republican party telling us there is no such thing as global warming. Sure there isn't
facepalming_brooklynite
Active Member
As much as criticism of the specific "Smart Track" plan is justified, I feel this throws out the baby with the bathwater. It should be abundantly clear that Toronto needs an integrated transit system where GO-RER becomes the normal mode for medium-to-long distance trips WITHIN the city, not just for suburban commuters going to Bay Street. I mean, has Steve Munro ever been to Berlin (S-Bahn) or Tokyo (JR)? Or has Gord Perks? They sure don't talk like it.The latest from Steve Munro, in NOW. Essentially saying, "Smart Track" is dead, and the money allocated to it by the City should be repurposed to fund Eglinton East LRT and the Waterfront LRTs
Why is city council pretending that SmartTrack is still alive? - NOW Magazine
Between the Scarborough subway and SmartTrack, there is some $2.5 billion available in reserve funds that could be used now to pay for service improvements Toronto needs
Moreover it seems a bad-faith argument to say that Smart Track stations "compete" with the Ontario Line when we see from near-weekly subway breakdowns how important it is to have redundancy and transfer opportunities in the system.