Crosstown LRT | ?m | ?s

[Steve X]

My personal comments - why in the world will you run the 34 bus on the surface level when literally the eglinton lrt will stop at so many stops including the additional one of hakim lebovic. This means now Eglinton will have the LRT plus the diamond lane still for these busses. There will be so much continued congestion.

Now where did it say the diamond lanes would ever come back? This route would operate at the best at 15 minutes headway. It would for sure operate in mix traffic like it does today.

I think people complained and to support accessibility would have to transfer to the LRT east of Don Mills. That would be an extra 5-10 minutes that could be saved if the bus ran directly through. I don't think TTC should run this service with regular service periods of 20/7. Instead maybe 6am-7pm only. It may only last a couple of years if ridership remains low.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Coming to a Crosstown station near you:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1448413278821040131

 

[TheTigerMaster]

34 Eglinton - This route was originally planned as a parallel surface route between Mount Dennis and Science Centre (Don Mills) Stations. It has been extended east to Kennedy Station so that there will be a surface bus paralleling the LRT service. This will maintain service at existing bus stops that would have otherwise disappeared.

My personal comments - why in the world will you run the 34 bus on the surface level when literally the eglinton lrt will stop at so many stops including the additional one of hakim lebovic. This means now Eglinton will have the LRT plus the diamond lane still for these busses. There will be so much continued congestion.

I'd assume its so that people on the 34 bus don't have to waste time transferring to the surface LRT. That can add significant time to their journey. Whether or not that's a worthwhile compromise is a matter of opinion (I lean towards no).

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Cool UE vid of the tunnels. Even has a "driver view" at a good speed:

An underground electric skateboard line is actually a pretty good idea.

Skateboards can stop a lot faster than trains can, so we wouldn't have worry about maintaining a safe distance between skateboards. This means that the capacity of an underground electric skateboard line could dozens, if not hundreds of times greater than that of a traditional underground electric subway line.

With travel speeds up to 30 km/h, the skateboards would travel at a similar speed to Line 2.

Quite frankly, I'd be willing to cancel the LRV order today, and move the ECLRT to exclusively skateboard-based operation.

Any word on MX exploring this possibility?

 

[Richard White]

34 Eglinton - This route was originally planned as a parallel surface route between Mount Dennis and Science Centre (Don Mills) Stations. It has been extended east to Kennedy Station so that there will be a surface bus paralleling the LRT service. This will maintain service at existing bus stops that would have otherwise disappeared.

My personal comments - why in the world will you run the 34 bus on the surface level when literally the eglinton lrt will stop at so many stops including the additional one of hakim lebovic. This means now Eglinton will have the LRT plus the diamond lane still for these busses. There will be so much continued congestion.

As someone who lives near Golden Mile, keeping the 34 will be a nightmare.

Eglinton has always been a busy street but now that the road has narrowed to two lanes in each direction with what looks like bike lanes (they have markings for them at Lebovic and Eglinton) it will be a disaster.

There is simply no room for a parade of buses to go alongside the Crosstown. With buses stopping and going all the time it will cause traffic problems not to mention heavy backups.

I can see them curtailing the 34 in short order once they realise how much of a bad idea it is.

This isn't like Sheppard where you have 6 lanes of traffic available not including turning lanes.

 

[chinesehorse]

An underground electric skateboard line is actually a pretty good idea.

Skateboards can stop a lot faster than trains can, so we wouldn't have worry about maintaining a safe distance between skateboards. This means that the capacity of an underground electric skateboard line could dozens, if not hundreds of times greater than that of a traditional underground electric subway line.

With travel speeds up to 30 km/h, the skateboards would travel at a similar speed to Line 2.

Quite frankly, I'd be willing to cancel the LRV order today, and move the ECLRT to exclusively skateboard-based operation.

Any word on MX exploring this possibility?

You have a promising career as a consultant for Metrolinx

 

[Amare]

As someone who lives near Golden Mile, keeping the 34 will be a nightmare.

Eglinton has always been a busy street but now that the road has narrowed to two lanes in each direction with what looks like bike lanes (they have markings for them at Lebovic and Eglinton) it will be a disaster.

There is simply no room for a parade of buses to go alongside the Crosstown. With buses stopping and going all the time it will cause traffic problems not to mention heavy backups.

I can see them curtailing the 34 in short order once they realise how much of a bad idea it is.

This isn't like Sheppard where you have 6 lanes of traffic available not including turning lanes.

It wont be a parade of buses. If anything the frequency will be nothing more than every 20 mins (at best), or along the lines of the 97 Yonge with frequency every 30 mins.

 

[Steve X]

As someone who lives near Golden Mile, keeping the 34 will be a nightmare.

Eglinton has always been a busy street but now that the road has narrowed to two lanes in each direction with what looks like bike lanes (they have markings for them at Lebovic and Eglinton) it will be a disaster.

There is simply no room for a parade of buses to go alongside the Crosstown. With buses stopping and going all the time it will cause traffic problems not to mention heavy backups.

I can see them curtailing the 34 in short order once they realise how much of a bad idea it is.

This isn't like Sheppard where you have 6 lanes of traffic available not including turning lanes.

There should only be one bus scheduled in each direction from VP to Kennedy at any one time. There would only be 8-10 buses on the entire route between Weston and Kennedy.

You call this situation bad? Look at Eg West, Lawrence West, Jane or Dufferin. They all have buses scheduled every 5 minutes or less on 2 lane per direction roads. That’s the standard around much of the city. Scarborough has it nice with 6 lane roads on many east-west corridors.

 

[W. K. Lis]

There should only be one bus scheduled in each direction from VP to Kennedy at any one time. There would only be 8-10 buses on the entire route between Weston and Kennedy.

You call this situation bad? Look at Eg West, Lawrence West, Jane or Dufferin. They all have buses scheduled every 5 minutes or less on 2 lane per direction roads. That’s the standard around much of the city. Scarborough has it nice with 6 lane roads on many east-west corridors.

In New York City, especially in Manhattan, they have both buses and the subway lines over and under the same streets.

 

[Johnny Au]

Here's Part 11 of Cedarvale station photos taken on September 28, 2021

This one is taken at the Northwest Corner:

More photos are found here: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threa...station-m-s-metrolinx-norr.19747/post-1746309

Up next

Part 12: Northwest Corner Part 2

 

[Allandale25]

Thread on the great Signal Priority Debate ™

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1449048385156157449

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1449049046719533057

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1449049918820265984

 

[Voltz]

With how padded and bloated TTC scheduling is, not much hope.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Thread on the great Signal Priority Debate ™

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1449048385156157449

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1449049046719533057

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1449049918820265984

The Toronto Transportation Department (Roads) would be the ones who would have the final say about intrusions into their fiefdom. Don't dare overrule their law of their lands.

From link.

 

[Amare]

So basically it looks like Metrolinx was right all along to refer to this as limited signal priority:

Transit signal priority will be active on the Crosstown, but its use will be conditional on the vehicles running behind schedule. In such cases, it will be used to extend the green light for the transit vehicle and allow the trains to get back on schedule.

If the City of Toronto is delusional enough to refer to this as Full Transit Signal Priority then I dont know what else to tell them. There's a reason why signal/transit priority has the word "priority" in it. It means that transit would have priority signalling over everything else. But in this half baked case, it's only going to be active if a vehicle is running "behind schedule", and all other times signals will operate as normal. If we cant even get Full Transit Priority on Eglinton, there's basically no hope for the Spadina, Queens Quay, St.Clair, and Queensway ROWs.

And if that's not infuriating enough, here's another thing we can take out of this: the TTC is planning to operate the Crosstown line with a schedule based operation instead headway based. So if you enjoy waiting for your train to leave the outer ends of the line, crawl to the terminal ends, and all the other fun things that come with that well here you go.

 

[ARG1]

So basically it looks like Metrolinx was right all along to refer to this as limited signal priority:

Transit signal priority will be active on the Crosstown, but its use will be conditional on the vehicles running behind schedule. In such cases, it will be used to extend the green light for the transit vehicle and allow the trains to get back on schedule.

If the City of Toronto is delusional enough to refer to this as Full Transit Signal Priority then I dont know what else to tell them. There's a reason why signal/transit priority has the word "priority" in it. It means that transit would have priority signalling over everything else. But in this half baked case, it's only going to be active if a vehicle is running "behind schedule", and all other times signals will operate as normal. If we cant even get Full Transit Priority on Eglinton, there's basically no hope for the Spadina, Queens Quay, St.Clair, and Queensway ROWs.

And if that's not infuriating enough, here's another thing we can take out of this: the TTC is planning to operate the Crosstown line with a schedule based operation instead headway based. So if you enjoy waiting for your train to leave the outer ends of the line, crawl to the terminal ends, and all the other fun things that come with that well here you go.

Remind me why this line is called Line 5 again?