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It's been clarified that it's more than one station...but this is something Metrolinx should consider; other cities have done it before. The central Crossrail tunnel here in London opened without the key interchange at Bond Street which is opening in late October, four months after the line opened.
If London can do it, Toronto can too. Here's hoping ML/TTC will be open to trying something different.
I think you are absolutely right about wanting to avoid that nightmare. Keep in mind that Metrolinx also has an example in Ottawa of what happens when you rush and cut the corners, so they probably don't want Line 5 to be the next Confederation Line.
It would absolutely be a win. I’m not sure how they’ll spin Line 5 being later though; “Its from before we knew what we were doing!” Or something to that effect.
Bond Street is an interchange station - but the only other key Eglinton station is Eglinton West. The Elizabeth Line also had Paddington, Tottenham Court Road, Farrington, Liverpool Street, Canary Wharf, Stratford, and half of Whitechapel open. The only key interconnectivity that was missing was to the Jubilee line at Bond Street.
Toronto a transfer-oriented city? It's hard to think of a city that isn't, unless they only have one major line! London has almost 40 other lines intersecting the Elizabeth line (many of course cross it more than once), not including the innumerable national rail commuter lines. Crosstown has 3 for Phase 1. Once it's extended to Pearson it will still have 3! (6 if you count BRT and the Pearson Link train, that currently runs twice an hour).
I did not mean the number of connections of a line. I meant that the existing subway network relies extremely heavily on [bus] transfers for ridership, and by optimizing these we often have prioritized linearity of our lines over breaking the grid for more one-seat rides, in ways many cities do not. It's the product of having a heavily gridded street network I suppose, and enables the consolidation of ridership onto the subway network. An easily observable example is when Line 2 didn't dip downtown, it went straight through on Bloor instead, forcing a transfer at b/y. In the far edges of Toronto, it's certainly not uncommon for someone to ride two buses and then get on the subway. The TTC has put significant effort into making sure such transfers are as smooth as possible. My point is that people are mostly going to get on the crosstown as they got on the bus here before; they will ride to Eg west/Yonge and transfer to get downtown, at least during peak. GO acts as an alternative, but TTC users aren't used to or willing to do that yet. We wouldn't open Line 2 without Bloor-Yonge open, would we?
You make a good point that Torontonians are used to a high number of transfers for trips, compared to a city like Sydney where transfers are uncommon for the typical commuter.
That’s a good point. If it’s advertised as a soft launch or partial opening, a la “we’re conducting public testing of the line”, I’d be open to it coming online early. “Come use the crosstown at select stations !” Would probably satiate the public’s appetite for the better service till Yonge opens.
London is a completely different story since there are many key interchanges on the Elizabeth line. In fact, almost every station there is a "key interchange", so opening the line without one, not that big of a deal. The same can't be said about Toronto.
Haha well it's on-topic and respectful, so I don't see why a mod would remove it.
