Bureaucromancer
Active Member
elevated light metro or lrt for my part…. But I’m also not all that bothered by this section being at grade.
Toronto Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown West Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx
- Thread starter W. K. Lis
- Start date
W. K. Lis
Superstar
But "at grade" would bother Doug Ford. Kipling & Eglinton is his neighbourhood and fiefdom. He would prefer not to see any public transit, even if it costs more, when he drives around in his gas guzzler.
fanoftoronto
Active Member
Some of those parking lots have been present since the 1950s so they do qualify! HahahahaI'll bet some auto-addicted motorists will want to designate those parking lots as "heritage sites".
But yeah, comparing the downtown of a city with suburbia does not make sense. Does the Calgary LRT system only exist in the downtown portion? Does it not go to the suburbs of Calgary as well?
Here's a Google Maps view of Dalhousie station in the Calgary LRT system:
Or Crawfoot LRT station below:
This looks like the same parking lot galore that we have going on in the Golden Mile stretch or Don Mills and Eglinton. Where is the ridership demand in this portion of the Calgary LRT? All I see are parking lots and shopping malls.
Also, due to the Eglinton LRT line, the proposals along the undeveloped stretch Eglinton have gone up in scale and quantity. If nothing was built on Eglinton, then we'd have fewer and smaller scale developments. In about a decade, we will have the density that rivals Calgary downtown in terms of ridership, and we're talking about suburbia of Toronto vs the downtown of Calgary.
fanoftoronto
Active Member
The Eglinton East in the Golden Mile area would've definitely been better for future proofing if it was elevated or better grade separated.
Eglinton West should've been at-grade as there is no demand to support grade separation. The increase cost could've been better spent on the LRT airport link, or a different transit line like Jane LRT.
But at the end of the day, we are getting very good transit on these corridors, which will see a lot of benefit for the immediate neighborhoods as well as Toronto as a whole.
Steve X
Senior Member
Please don’t use the northwest line as an example. Especially further north like Crawfoot Station which is the equivalent of Lawrence West Station. Both built in the middle of the highway where access must be from another level. It’s completely grade separated.
I really don’t think it’s LRT anymore. I mean if you weren’t told and just shown pictures of the platform and people boarding trains from both stations, you’ll say they after pretty similar. Calgary however did cheap out on a proper roof.
fanoftoronto
Active Member
You can't use Calgary LRT as an example of a well designed LRT system while picking and choosing which parts are good.
Regardless, then I'll use a different location in Calgary which is not grade separated and in the middle of a highway. Marlborough Station, which looks amazingly like the Golden Mile area of Eglinton.
- Endless parking lots - Check
- Industrial buildings - Check
- Walmart Supercentre - Check
- Suburban mall - Check
- Canadian Tire - Check
Why is this section good for Calgary to use as an on-road LRT system, and not for Eglinton East at the Science Centre or Golden Mile?
This is not even considering that area near the Science Centre and the Golden Mile has 100s of developments (highrise and midrises - Condos, retail, office space) proposed, replacing the suburban sprawl, to make it into a high density corridor. Similar in density to the downtown Calgary section. Barring a housing market collapse, that entire Eglinton section will look markedly different than it does right now within 10 years.
ARG1
Senior Member
Well let's look at Marlborough Station...
You have:
- Grade Separated Pedestrian Access
- The corridor has absolute priority with boom gates - no having to deal with traffic lights or TSP
- A larger degree of separation from the nearby roadway.
This simply isn't in any way comparable to what we're building on Eglinton:
Here we have:
- Direct interference from Pedestrians
- The train is at the whims of the rules of the road signalization (no absolute priority)
- The ROW itself isn't separated, its basically more akin to median bus lanes - but instead of asphault you just have train tracks - which will result in the trains moving significantly slower on the ROW itself for safety reasons.
ARG1
Senior Member
And? You're still building a line where the primary goal is to try and get people from one end to the other as quickly as possible. The goal of say the 504 streetcar is to act as a downtown feeder service. Sure it extends all the way to Dundas West in the west, and Broadview in the east, but nobody is expected to ride end to end - let alone half of the length of the route.
The Eglinton Line with all of its planned extensions (ignoring the section north of UTSC) is going to be 40km long. The primary purpose of the line isn't a local feeder service its (as its in the name) supposed to a major east-west crosstown route that allows you to travel end to end QUICKLY (there is no GO train line that parallels the route, and Line 2 is a very significant diversion) - servicing many key areas of interest, developments, transit hubs, and the like. The fact that so much of it is underground in a tunnel should clue you into that fact. The way its meant to fit into Toronto's overall transit network is basically like a Line 2 North, however they decided to put the eastern segment at grade as a way to cheap out and save money, and because Miller had a fetish for grand urban boulevards that looked cool. Its an absolute disaster of transit planning - and virtually everyone outside of Toronto, especially in Europe and Asia realizes this. Everytime I show someone Toronto's transit who is from Europe or Asia, and explain to them what Line 5 is going to be (I don't try to poison the well in any way, I try to be as neutral and factual as possible), you can see their disgusted face when they see how its built (especially Sunnybrooke Park Station). Its a Frankenstein's monster of a line.
fanoftoronto
Active Member
So, you're looking at the Marlborough station and saying, yes, this is the type of public realm I want around my transit system? Boom gates, highway width roadway, no bike lanes, parking lots everywhere, 2-3 lanes of through traffic + 2-3 lanes of turning lanes, roadway prioritized over the pedestrians. Your picture of the Eglinton line looks so much nicer and walkable and friendly than the street view of Marlborough station.
Would TPS make the Eglinton line a lot better in this area? Yes, for sure. But it's still miles ahead of what we currently have on Eglinton. Buses have an average speed of 10-15 km/h in mixed use traffic, and the LRT is expected to have 20-25 km/h in this section, making it almost twice as fast as the buses. For reference, right now driving between Kennedy to Don Mills is 16 minutes, making the average speed of a car 22 km/h.
You don't need boom gates and grade separated station entrances to implement TPS.
On top of this we are getting the following:
- Accessible, walkable LRT stops
- Comfortable, smooth ride on the LRT when compared to buses
- Stops spaced 500m apart from one another to improve speed between stops
- Bike lanes along Eglinton to improve the overall modes of transport possible in that segment
- Development of the area from suburbia to medium-high density neighborhood
fanoftoronto
Active Member
@ARG1 that's like saying people travel the Bloor-Danforth subway from Kipling to Kennedy or vice-versa on a regular basis. No, most of the crowd empties at Yonge-Bloor or St George stations in the morning peak or inverse in the evening peak. Similarly, the majority of travel in the future Line 5 is going to be travelling from Scarborough / Etobicoke to Eglinton / Eglinton West subway stations to get downtown in the morning peak, and outward to the suburbs in the evening peak. Just because they named the LRT line "Crosstown" doesn't make people magically want to travel end-to-end for no reason.
Also, the estimated average speed of the Eglinton LRT is 28 km/h. The BD subway travels at an average of 32 km/h. End to end travel on the Crosstown (Kennedy to Renforth) will be less than 1 hour, very similar to the BD subway (Kennedy to Kipling).
W. K. Lis
Superstar
The dwell times at Bloor-Yonge Station on both Line 1 and Line 2 is around 55 seconds. Sometimes, I've seen the trains wait at the platforms, in case someone wakes up and notices where they are.
TRONto
Active Member
As part of this discussion, reference the Scarborough travel patterns
Of note:
48% of all Scarborough originating transit trips are within Scarborough
The Eglinton East bus is the third busiest (busier Lawrence and Finch will not have LRT).
I don't see the extra couple minutes of elevated transit worth it when the concern is the downtown trip. If you are getting on at Warden or Victoria Park, how much time would you save by elevated or buried transit?
Calculating at 20km/h for LRT and 30/km/h for Bloor Danforth subway for 7km (about Kennedy to Laird) there is a difference of just over a minute for the at grade stretch. If you take into account with elevated transit you have extra time to get to/from the train, the difference is a wash.
TRONto
Active Member
That's me waking up! Lots of times at Finch too
ARG1
Senior Member
I'm saying that the two types are uncomparable. What Marlborough Station represents is what LRT looks like when you prioritize getting around quickly. I'm sorry but Public Realm should NEVER be an absolute priority. Function over form any day of the week. Also I'm not arguing we should replicate Marlborough Station, I'm not even saying we should have the C-Train. My point of comparison of the C-Train is that that is LRT done right. My argument for Eglinton is that it shouldn't be LRT AT ALL - but a light metro.
Okay? And we could've had something even better for cheaper
You need it if you want EFFECTIVE TSP, and you want trains to run at efficient speeds.
Nobody is arguing that the status quo should've been maintained.
500m is WAY TOO LITTLE. They should be every km or so.
However the option to travel that distance should always be there. When we design a regional network, we shouldn't design it for "the biggest use case", we should design it with as many use cases in mind. We should design it to allow people to commute, but also to allow people to travel from one end to another as quickly as possible.
There will also likely be many people using it commute from Scarborough to say Pearson Airport. Maybe they need to visit someone who lives in Mississauga. The use cases you're arguing for makes it seem like you want to build transit for commuters. That's great and all, but that means that people still need cars to effectively do anything other than commuting.
And the reason for this is because Line 2 has extremely tight stop spacing - too tight. On average, there's a station every 600m on Line 2 which significantly increases end to end travel time. Eglinton on the other hand has a subway section with reasonable station spacing - around every km, and an extremely packed surface section. If the underground section of Line 5 had the same stop spacing as Line 2, the average speed would've been like 25km/h or even lower. This statistic doesn't reflect Line 5 well, as much as it poorly reflects on Line 2's design.
Don't forget though that Scarborough is MASSIVE, and trips within Scarborough are extremely large in their own right - with many trips and commutes exceeding 10km.
If you build the line as a fully grade separate light metro with smaller trains, you already get massive time saving on accounts that the train will arrive much more frequently. Being generous, let's say a train would arrive every 3 mins, that's a theoretical time save of 4 mins right off the bat.
If you're getting on at Warden, well we can do that math. Let's be generous and say we have somewhat functioning TSP and you spend an average of 10s per traffic light. We'll remove Hakimi-Lebovic and Aga Khan Stations because those stations are too close to other stations (and honestly have no reason to exist), and we'll remove 5s per station since High Floor trains typically result. We'll consider the average station dwell time at around 45s for the light metro, and 50s for LRT.
Excluding Warden I counted 9 surface crossings.
that's 10*9s + 8*5s + 2*45s, or 90s+40s+90s which gives us 220s of travel time improvement or 3m 40s, and this is generous. In reality, we won't have TSP that is this good, and a fully elevated Light Metro will have trains that operate at much higher speeds than the LRT, and of course this doesn't factor in how much time you will likely save not waiting for a train. Sure the station is on street level and quicker to access, but A) since you have to cross Eglinton, you are at the mercy of the current pedestrian crossing signal, which means you might have to wait up to a minute before you can cross the street (this is an aspect people seem to conveniently forget), and even if we assume that you can always cross Eglinton freely, climbing up to an elevated station only takes a minute max, so the time savings of easier access to stations isn't even that much to begin with. Not enough to compensate for everything else.
junctionist
Senior Member
It takes 0.35 hours to travel 7 km at 20 km/h. It takes 0.23 hours to travel 7 km at 30 km/h. The difference of 0.12 hours works out to 7.2 minutes and not "just over a minute".