Toronto Crosstown LRT | ?m | ?s

[T3G]

Yeah, riders along Eglinton have dealt with the grief for over a decade, a few extra months isn't going to hurt them. There is especially not any compelling reason to put the eastern portion of the line into service in advance, since it's more lightly travelled than the central portion of the line anyway.

Frankly I think the decision to wait for Eglinton station to be finished is the right one. Opening a new line without its key transfer station would be like putting a brand new subway train into service without seats or lights, because, hey, as long as it runs. It would be a public relations nightmare and Metrolinx is fully correct in wanting to avoid it.

 

[cplchanb]

Yeah, riders along Eglinton have dealt with the grief for over a decade, a few extra months isn't going to hurt them. There is especially not any compelling reason to put the eastern portion of the line into service in advance, since it's more lightly travelled than the central portion of the line anyway.

Frankly I think the decision to wait for Eglinton station to be finished is the right one. Opening a new line without its key transfer station would be like putting a brand new subway train into service without seats or lights, because, hey, as long as it runs. It would be a public relations nightmare and Metrolinx is fully correct in wanting to avoid it.

I have a feeling that there may be a confederation line type of technical debacle shortly after opening. A phased launch with lesser traffic can allow for these potential bugs to be mitigated. Imagine a full shutdown on eglinton 2 wks after opening due to the door issues or something similar. at that point people would be questioning why they didnt soft launch when they had it available to them to do so.

 

[ARG1]

I have a feeling that there may be a confederation line type of technical debacle shortly after opening. A phased launch with lesser traffic can allow for these potential bugs to be mitigated. Imagine a full shutdown on eglinton 2 wks after opening due to the door issues or something similar. at that point people would be questioning why they didnt soft launch when they had it available to them to do so.

Your setup is correct, there could be bugs that need to be ironed out. However I fail to see how a "soft launch" is a fix. A soft launch is a launch, and people will get angry over the bugs, soft launch or not. The actual solution if anything is to delay the launch as long as possible to do as much testing as possible, if that's something you're really concerned over.

 

[Rainforest]

I have a feeling that there may be a confederation line type of technical debacle shortly after opening. A phased launch with lesser traffic can allow for these potential bugs to be mitigated. Imagine a full shutdown on eglinton 2 wks after opening due to the door issues or something similar. at that point people would be questioning why they didnt soft launch when they had it available to them to do so.

I tend to agree with this. Real operation may uncover defects that didn't get detected in testing.

It might be problematic to run the whole line, pass the Yonge & Eglinton station without stopping, and keep working on the latter.

But they could operate just the segment between Allen Road and Mt Dennis. It is connected to the yard. They could run with a low frequency, a train every 6 min or so. The #32 buses above would run all the way to Yonge as they do today, no need to transfer to LRT at Mt Dennis and then again to bus at Eglinton West. The LRT ridership would be fairly light in that scenario, but some of the teething problems could be discovered and fixed before the grand launch of the whole ECLRT.

 

[T3G]

I have a feeling that there may be a confederation line type of technical debacle shortly after opening. A phased launch with lesser traffic can allow for these potential bugs to be mitigated. Imagine a full shutdown on eglinton 2 wks after opening due to the door issues or something similar. at that point people would be questioning why they didnt soft launch when they had it available to them to do so.

What kind of problem is going to come up during a soft launch that the months and months of testing hasn't/won't uncover/ed? The example of door problems specifically is significantly unlikely as the rolling stock has been here for more than 3 years which is more than enough time to have tested it and made sure everything runs properly.

 

[Steve X]

What kind of problem is going to come up during a soft launch that the months and months of testing hasn't/won't uncover/ed? The example of door problems specifically is significantly unlikely as the rolling stock has been here for more than 3 years which is more than enough time to have tested it and made sure everything runs properly.

Especially if it's similar to the current streetcars and the ones in used in Kitchener-Waterloo for a few years now. Unlike the Citadis Spirit, this is not a completely new product and these shouldn't have those operating issues. The ATO communication is likely the only major problem that can occur. Most of the issues should have been sorted out with the Flexity streetcars by now and not reintroduced in the Freedoms.

 

[cplchanb]

What kind of problem is going to come up during a soft launch that the months and months of testing hasn't/won't uncover/ed? The example of door problems specifically is significantly unlikely as the rolling stock has been here for more than 3 years which is more than enough time to have tested it and made sure everything runs properly.

You are naive to believe that even with an existing street car it will be problem free. This is a brand new system and people will complain for whatever reason. Each of those complaints need to be addressed and depending on what it is it can be a serious or minor item. My argument is since you have the chance they can at least find ways to address these issues in real world conditions s before the fanfare and tigger tape parade. Since metrolink is so obsessed with having their Centerpiece station open along with everything else would it not also be embarrassing if there was a problem there's a problem after the launch that they could have addressed earlier. In this day and age all it takes is one bad Twitter post and everything goes down hill from there

 

[T3G]

There is nothing naive about expecting a vehicle which has been here for three years to be working by now, especially when you consider that they've literally not had a chance to do anything BUT test for 3+ years, meaning they can take any kind of radical action against the problem and not worry about affecting service.

Furthermore, your approach doesn't set out a clear timeframe for when things will be ok and the uninformed opinions of the unwashed masses will cease to be a concern. What if they do a dry launch and everything works fine, and then they do a grand opening and something doesn't work?

 

[smallspy]

I have a feeling that there may be a confederation line type of technical debacle shortly after opening. A phased launch with lesser traffic can allow for these potential bugs to be mitigated. Imagine a full shutdown on eglinton 2 wks after opening due to the door issues or something similar. at that point people would be questioning why they didnt soft launch when they had it available to them to do so.

The TTC doesn't do launches like OC Transpo does. How many major faults and snags do you remember during the opening of the TYSSE or Sheppard Line?

Hint: it was zero.

Dan

 

[cplchanb]

The TTC doesn't do launches like OC Transpo does. How many major faults and snags do you remember during the opening of the TYSSE or Sheppard Line?

Hint: it was zero.

Dan

just because it hasnt happened doesnt guarantee it wont happen. and besides, this is essentially free revenue that they are passing up with the benefit of
less traffic to shock the system. not to mention this is their first true LRT system and from the smaller street operations they can optimise their operations based on
real world traffic. Considering the negative response to their unwillingness to implement TSP, they could've had a cheap litmus test to see if their decision was a good or bad one.

 

[T3G]

First true LRT system? That's fairly hyperbolic, it's a streetcar that runs faster and they've been running those for over 100 years (though, in fairness, the TTC has failed to optimize the system and seems to have discarded any lessons they learned from the past). The only real new thing is the signalling system.

 

[cplchanb]

First true LRT system? That's fairly hyperbolic, it's a streetcar that runs faster and they've been running those for over 100 years (though, in fairness, the TTC has failed to optimize the system and seems to have discarded any lessons they learned from the past). The only real new thing is the signalling system.

That's the thing. It's supposed to be an LRT system and yes, by how they plan to run it, the first few months of operations would expose any flaws in their proposed operating model. Having a smaller operation do an initial run would be far more favorable than doing the full rollout just to find that the entire system is flawed

 

[dad pad]

I believe there is a famous Donald Rumsfeld quote about these sorts of situations

 

[Aplus23]

How/where are they still pouring concrete?? Maybe the outside pavilion or outside in genera. I would hope it's only the finishing touches on the inside but that doesn't seem like the case

 

[nfitz]

You are naive to believe that even with an existing street car it will be problem free. This is a brand new system and people will complain for whatever reason

The almost exact same vehicle has been in service for years now in Waterloo.