Toronto Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown West Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

[smallspy]

I was specifically addressing the points he was making. While yes I do know that trains will short turn at Laird, the question is still can you run trains every 90s in the central section, and the possibility is dubious at best.

A 90 second headway is going to be difficult to achieve on a consistent basis, I'll concede that.

But from my conversations with people who work in that field, it's not completely impossible. It should be sustainable in short bursts over specific parts of the network - just like how it was possible on the YUS prior to the upgrade to ATC/ATO. And is still possible afterwards.

Now, will the organizations operating the line be capable of doing it on a consistent basis? I'll leave that for you to decide. The fixed plant can do it though.

The trains coming in from Sunnybrooke Park have to be precisely on point - coming in exactly 90s after the previous train left the station, with maybe a tolerance of +5 to 10s, if you choose to modulate the speed at which the train travels between Sunnybrooke Park and Laird. That is still something that requires a significant amount of precision in how you run the trains that would require some insane super TSP - something that wouldn't be feasible at 3 minute headways.

That kind of thing is not nearly as hard as you envision it. Modern signal systems such as the one installed in the Crosstown are capable of making that determination on the fly, and can insert a waiting train if they feel the gap will be too large.

Hell, even the Seltrac system used on the SRT can do it. Not that there are any locations for it to do it with.....

Again, according to sound transit, an at grade LRT alignment has a headway limit of every 5 minutes, so okay, let's move the requirement and have even more trains short turn at Laird.

What are their requirements? Their train lengths? What kind of signal system do they have installed at crossing streets?

Just pulling someone's data without context - or knowing what the specs are - isn't particularly helpful.

First, in order to get above that 5 minute minimum, you can only send 1/4 trains beyond laird, so immediately you're creating a situation where you're going to have people just standing on the platforms waiting for the right 1/4 train to arrive which... isn't great.

Sure....but if you're only sending one quarter of the trains through, then that means that you have a situation where the ridership drops off past that location.

Plus, it's not like the trains will be full approaching that station, having dropped off most of their passengers at the previous stations.

Second, you still have to assume that the total amount of disruption that occurs to a train doesn't exceed a time loss of more than 15s - which is almost impossible to assure when you have a train running out in the open that has to deal with idiot pedestrians and drivers.

That's an incorrect assumption to make. The time loss on any single train is irrelevant, provided the system is prepared to fill its time slot with another train.

If the system isn't set up for that, then yes, you have a problem. Not a big problem, and certainly not as much as you are making it, but a problem nonetheless.

You're going to have cars crossing the street during traffic that drove ahead and is now stuck in the middle of the road, pedestrians that decided its a genius move to jaywalk while there is an oncoming train, old ladies that are taking their sweet time crossing to reach the station even after the signal has turned red, pedestrians that decided to walk along the track for some inexplicable reason (believe it or not this isn't that uncommon of a thing), and much more.

Nice straw man.

When you have an open system like this, guaranteeing precision at a specific part of the line is basically impossible. You're going to have trains that are late or early by at least 30s on the regular - and this is enough to completely break any notion of 90s. Something like 2-2.5 minute headways might be possible, in fact I'd wager on seeing at most 2.5 minutes before major upgrades are done in the eastern section, but certainly not 90s.

Again, it's not impossible. It complicates things, sure. But it can be mitigated with careful design.

Dan

 

[fanoftoronto]

Brute strength – Find out how active bridge has been raised for Metrolinx Finch West LRT Project​

Hey @drum118 it looks like you posted this on the wrong LRT thread.

 

[ARG1]

You said that you can save money on the stations by building a 40 or 50m long station and elevate the eastern portion with the savings. I asked for a source on how you can say this with confidence. I asked you direct questions on cost estimates. How much would you save by shortening the station? How much would it cost to elevate the eastern portion? No answer from you.

The Canada Line in Vancouver was built in 4 years for a cost of around 2-4 billion dollars in 2009 (sources conflict) at a length of 19.2km, around half of which is in tunnels. Meanwhile the latest cost estimate for the Crosstown that I could find from late 2019 was listed at 12.58 billion dollars, however there were some extra costs paid since then to Crosslinx to account for some financial losses due to COVID - however I'm going to ignore those for the sake of convenience, and since COVID is such a flash in the pan situation that it isn't particularly relevant. As we all know the Crosstown is about 2/3s tunneled. Now finding specifics about costs of stations is quite difficult, however it was estimated that the Crosstown's underground stations cost 80-100M meanwhile the surface stops cost 3-5M. However, these numbers are seemingly based off when the capital cost was expected to be 5.3B, so we can double those numbers to be safe.

Marco Chitti recently posted an image to twitter that compared all the costs of guideways and tunnels. Unfortunately its in euros and likely assumes European construction costs which are much lower than here, but we can use it as a general guide:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1496177737228337159

.

Now originally I wanted to go in depth into every cost and try to figure out how much an elevated station would cost with left over money, but that's a virtually impossible task since we have to make assumptions about different construction costs, inflation, currency conversion, small details in projects like underpinning, bridges, utility relocations, which would require so many assumptions that the numbers become meaningless. However I will give the following conjectures to chew on. At 14-35M Euro per km for a twin bore, assuming the highest number that's 47.25M/km that it costs to tunnel. At station costs of 200M per station, that means that 1 station costs the same as 4km of tunnels. As such, when you are building a subway at 1 station per km, 4/5ths of the cost is dedicated to just the station. Immediately, any decrease in cost of the station means a lot of savings in the long term. If we assume that a 50m long station costs 5/9th as much as a 90m station (probably doesn't, but its the safest guess I have), that leaves us with 160M/km instead of 250M/km. The Eglinton Line's tunnel segment is 11km long, so over 11km you save $990M on shorter stations, which is enough to pay for 50km worth of guideway, if we look at the 14M euro/km option. Now I also suggested building 6 elevated stations (I am excluding Leslie since that could be built at grade on the south side of Eglinton), and at 5.4km of elevated guideway, we have it cost 105.1M. That leaves us with around $885M left over for the stations. With 6 elevated stations, that leaves us with 147M per station in our budget - which is certainly doable. While I cannot comment on how much cheaper elevated stations are, this calculation gives us with an estimation that allows room for elevated stations that are almost as expensive as 20m deep stations.

If you want to argue some of the assumptions I made, go ahead. However keep in mind that these smaller station calculations completely ignores Kennedy and Science Center. With the exception of how much reduction we can have in the cost of stations, I have made mostly "worst case scenerio" guesses - since we're moving to Light Metro technology, we could for instance run a 3rd rail light metro train like the Canada Line which will permit us to use smaller tunnels which will save money. Realistically though, not only do you have to show that the savings do not permit an elevated section being built, but that its SIGNIFICANTLY MORE EXPENSIVE to go the light metro route. I'd be willing to argue that an elevated eastern section of Eglinton could be 1.5x as valuable as the LRT and would accept a project costing as much.

 

[ARG1]

You stated that there's enough demand for 20,000 pphpd on Eglinton. I asked for a source. You said anecdotally "the congestion on the 401" and provided no actual source or proof. No real answer or source from you.

I said no such thing actually, I just said there is demand to travel from STC to MCC, which there is. Enough demand for consistent rush hour crush load? Probably not. But the hallmark of any good transit system is to be able to get from Point A to Point B in a region as quickly and as efficiently as possible. If we want to move the GTA away from being car centric, the least we have to do is allow people to travel from any 2 city center nodes quickly and conveniently. An LRT on Eglinton can't provide that. Right now the best way to get between those 2 city centers is the 94 GO Bus, which travels along the 401, you know, the same 401 that is constantly congested and never moves - not exactly the most reliable mode. The reason why I personally find the situation on Eglinton so upsetting is because it is like the perfect arterial for high quality RAPID transit. There are so many valuable nodes - the airport, midtown toronto, science center, connections with almost all GO lines (the exceptions being LSW and Milton), UTSC, and we squandered it. If we had enough foresight, we could've even had a branch that directly connected to a refurbished Scarborough RT and had it directly connect to STC.

As for the 20k pphpd, it was a theoretical number that I threw out there that we could potentially hit 30-40 years from now. The point I was trying to make was that there was definitely not enough demand along Eglinton for something like a GO line - which is what you bringing up with your whole "GO is for interregional transit argument", however building for some medium capacity transit at around the 20k pphpd especially if we're planning for the long term is quite reasonable. I don't understand your laser focus attention onto it - it wasn't a major claim of mine.

You're saying a Canada Line style system has higher capacity. I've already proved that Canada Line has an upper limit of 13,360 pphpd as the trains can hold 334 people and max of 1.5 minute headways. This is lower than the LRT by a long shot. If your imaginary number of 20,000pphpd actually shows up then your Canada Line train is packed beyond capacity from day 1. Capacity is higher on the LRT Crosstown at 2 minute headways at 15,000 pphpd. 15,000 >13,360. Not to mention push comes to shove, we can make use of the 90m stations and add a 3rd car to each train effectively increasing pphpd to 22,500, which is far higher than the 13,360 limit on the Canada Line. Also, how would you increase capacity on a Canada Line style system? You've locked yourself into a 13,360 pphpd maximum limit with zero opportunity to expand without shutting down the system. You tried to insult my ability read but no other reply from you.

I said they were similar, not bigger. Also its not 334 people, its 400 people if we're using crush load numbers, and even then that's assuming the 40m long trains - not the 50m that the system was designed with. With the 400 passengers per car you get 16k PPHPD, and if we increase the capacity by 25% to account for 50m (due to things like articulated joints it won't exactly be 25% but already I'm significantly ahead in terms of how much capacity I need to prove), that's 20k PPHPD. 15k PPHPD is however the official number that Translink went with so that's what I'll keep using, and also crush loads aren't exactly comfortable ridership experiences.

You're staying that Canada Line trains will be faster. For reference the Canada Line from Richmond–Brighouse station to Waterfront station takes 26 minutes, 12 stations, and is 14.5 km long. Average speed is 33.5 km/h, a far cry from the 40 km/h average speed you're touting. The LRT in the underground section is stated to go at 32km/h while following all design norms of the Canada Line. Fully grade separated, full ATC, 1km minimum station spacing. The time saving would be 4 minutes by grade separating the Eastern portion and making the average speed 32 km/h there as well. I asked for a source on how a light metro would be 40 km/h when the LRT is achieving only 32km/h and the Canada Line is achieving only 33.5 km/h. No reply from you or a source for the increased speed.

33km/h is still much more than the what, 23-24km/h on the surface section? 33km/h is perfectly fine by me.

I've stated that when they changed the western portion from at-grade to grade separated as you wanted, the ridership numbers went down! I argued that the same could happen with the eastern portion as well. You said you don't trust the city numbers while providing no sources or numbers to back up your claim.

I wasn't as keen on giving my evidence since I've had this same argument so many times that my brain is cramping redoing the same calculations and redoing the same evidence.

So, I'll just copy paste what I wrote over a year ago in the Hurontario thread:

As a closer, I would like to bring attention to two west coast cities, Portland, and Vancouver, both of which have roughly the same population in the metro area. Portland has a massive LRT network that they have built up over the years that is almost 100km long, meanwhile Vancouver's system is only 80km and has far fewer stations. However if you look at ridership numbers, a completely different story is told. Vancouver has a daily ridership of 526,000 meanwhile Portland's much larger network only serves 121,000. The reason for this is extremely simple, the ability to run fast automated trains that aren't impeded by traffic, pedestrians, or traffic lights are a far more compelling method of traversal especially if you're coming in from suburbs which is the market that both of these systems attract. If you live in Vancouver, even if the Skytrain isn't faster than the car, its fast enough that even on an off peak journey, a wealthy car owner might still consider taking the Skytrain instead of the car if they want to save on gas and maybe get some work done on the way to downtown. The same doesn't happen in Portland because nobody wants to use Max unless they need to. This is why Vancouver canned the Surrey LRT plan, a plan that on average would've saved a single minute in travel time compared to the bus route it was replacing, in favour of a Skytrain extension to Langley. This is why Montreal canned their tram systems in favour of having the CDPQ pay for automated Light Metros (which is what I've been advocating for on this forum). Sure they might be pricier, but the ridership is significantly larger, and average travel times are significantly faster. For a slightly larger cost (and when I say slightly, I mean they're not even 2x more expensive than LRT), you get exponentially larger ridership and you end up improving travel times tenfold.

 

[fanoftoronto]

The Canada Line in Vancouver was built in 4 years for a cost of around 2-4 billion dollars in 2009 (sources conflict) at a length of 19.2km, around half of which is in tunnels. Meanwhile the latest cost estimate for the Crosstown that I could find from late 2019 was listed at 12.58 billion dollars, however there were some extra costs paid since then to Crosslinx to account for some financial losses due to COVID - however I'm going to ignore those for the sake of convenience, and since COVID is such a flash in the pan situation that it isn't particularly relevant. As we all know the Crosstown is about 2/3s tunneled. Now finding specifics about costs of stations is quite difficult, however it was estimated that the Crosstown's underground stations cost 80-100M meanwhile the surface stops cost 3-5M. However, these numbers are seemingly based off when the capital cost was expected to be 5.3B, so we can double those numbers to be safe.

Marco Chitti recently posted an image to twitter that compared all the costs of guideways and tunnels. Unfortunately its in euros and likely assumes European construction costs which are much lower than here, but we can use it as a general guide:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1496177737228337159

.

Now originally I wanted to go in depth into every cost and try to figure out how much an elevated station would cost with left over money, but that's a virtually impossible task since we have to make assumptions about different construction costs, inflation, currency conversion, small details in projects like underpinning, bridges, utility relocations, which would require so many assumptions that the numbers become meaningless. However I will give the following conjectures to chew on. At 14-35M Euro per km for a twin bore, assuming the highest number that's 47.25M/km that it costs to tunnel. At station costs of 200M per station, that means that 1 station costs the same as 4km of tunnels. As such, when you are building a subway at 1 station per km, 4/5ths of the cost is dedicated to just the station. Immediately, any decrease in cost of the station means a lot of savings in the long term. If we assume that a 50m long station costs 5/9th as much as a 90m station (probably doesn't, but its the safest guess I have), that leaves us with 160M/km instead of 250M/km. The Eglinton Line's tunnel segment is 11km long, so over 11km you save $990M on shorter stations, which is enough to pay for 50km worth of guideway, if we look at the 14M euro/km option. Now I also suggested building 6 elevated stations (I am excluding Leslie since that could be built at grade on the south side of Eglinton), and at 5.4km of elevated guideway, we have it cost 105.1M. That leaves us with around $885M left over for the stations. With 6 elevated stations, that leaves us with 147M per station in our budget - which is certainly doable. While I cannot comment on how much cheaper elevated stations are, this calculation gives us with an estimation that allows room for elevated stations that are almost as expensive as 20m deep stations.

If you want to argue some of the assumptions I made, go ahead. However keep in mind that these smaller station calculations completely ignores Kennedy and Science Center. With the exception of how much reduction we can have in the cost of stations, I have made mostly "worst case scenerio" guesses - since we're moving to Light Metro technology, we could for instance run a 3rd rail light metro train like the Canada Line which will permit us to use smaller tunnels which will save money. Realistically though, not only do you have to show that the savings do not permit an elevated section being built, but that its SIGNIFICANTLY MORE EXPENSIVE to go the light metro route. I'd be willing to argue that an elevated eastern section of Eglinton could be 1.5x as valuable as the LRT and would accept a project costing as much.

Cost of Crosstown construction in Toronto is just obscenely high. Forget the cost of the Canada Line in Vancouver, the TYSSE was built in Toronto for $2.6 billion at a length of 8.6 km making it a per km price of $300 million and completed construction in 2017. The $12.5 billion price tag of Crosstown is makes the per km of $657 million which is simply criminal. Meaning we should've been able to build heavy rail metro for half the price. I do not know why the price is this high for the Crosstown, and I do not support that fact that it did cost this much.

But, for argument sake, I will take your savings of $990 million as the cost saved. The 14 million Euro per km of elevated is simply non-sensical. Cost of building an on-road LRT system is itself $80 to 120 million per km in Toronto. Why go to Europe to get prices, when we can use the Finch West LRT, which is 95% at-grade is slated to cost $1.2 billion giving it a per km cost of $109 million, and removing the station costs we get $95 million per km. Elevating the eastern portion is going to be far higher than this $95 million per km price tag, potentially $200 million per km. Let's assume it costs the same $95 million amount to upgrade the line from at-grade to grade separated. This gives us a 5.4 km elevated guideway portion cost of $513 million. You've already used up more than half of your saved money with only $480 million to build 6 elevated stations and all required extra land acquisition to house these 50m long elevated stations in prime Toronto real estate. $80 million per station wouldn't even account for the land acquisition let alone building the stations and all required station entrances.

Also, the price to build a 50m station would definitely not be 5/9th the price of building a 90m long station. You still have the same ventilation and secondary exit requirements as the 90m station as that is safety of the station related. Also, it's far easier to expand a pit than build a brand new pit. So even your $990 million savings is extremely high. I would argue that the price to build a 50m station would be 75-80% of the price to build the 60m station with a 30m rough-in for future expansion.

Again, I've already given you the source that the eastern portion average speed is 25 km/h. Time taken to traverse the 7.4 km eastern section is 14 minutes at 32km/h for grade separated vs 18 for at-grade at 25 km/h. You're arguing for 4 minutes!!

Across the entire completed line the difference is either 41 minutes or 45 minutes. Newsflash 40 minutes from Black Creek Drive station to Kennedy is still extremely high for what you're asking for! You're asking to extend the Eglinton line all the way to link to MCC, which will take a solid 1.5 to 2 hours. Definitely not a "rapid" link between MCC and STC as you want for this corridor.

 

[ARG1]

But, for argument sake, I will take your savings of $990 million as the cost saved. The 14 million Euro per km of elevated is simply non-sensical. Cost of building an on-road LRT system is itself $80 to 120 million per km in Toronto. Why go to Europe to get prices, when we can use the Finch West LRT, which is 95% at-grade is slated to cost $1.2 billion giving it a per km cost of $109 million, and removing the station costs we get $95 million per km. Elevating the eastern portion is going to be far higher than this $95 million per km price tag, potentially $200 million per km. Let's assume it costs the same $95 million amount to upgrade the line from at-grade to grade separated. This gives us a 5.4 km elevated guideway portion cost of $513 million. You've already used up more than half of your saved money with only $480 million to build 6 elevated stations and all required extra land acquisition to house these 50m long elevated stations in prime Toronto real estate. $80 million per station wouldn't even account for the land acquisition let alone building the stations and all required station entrances.

If you have better numbers feel free to give them to me. Something that I would want to bring up however is the ratio. Whilst maybe the flat numbers given aren't great, its still around 3/5th the price of building an elevated track vs a cut and cover tunnel (I'll be using cut and cover metrics since that's the way most stations are built). I think its safe to assume that its a very similar ratio for stations.

We have already established that its $200M per underground station on the Eglinton Crosstown - possibly even less if the sudden increase in price for the crosstown is due to factors that don't involve your average station. Using that 3/5th ratio, that leaves us with around 120M per station.

You have to remember as well that the costs I'm bringing up here only refer to the construction costs. When it comes to transit projects, there is more to it than just the cost of the tunnels, stations, whatnot. You also have to account for utility relocation, property acquisition, and most importantly the new vehicles and MSF. The reason why I hesitated at the 2-4 Billion price tag for the Canada Line is because while a 2009 documents states the project cost 2 Billion, it also said that all of the Hyundai Rotem vehicles also cost a combined 2 Billion. Numbers like these hyper inflate the "cost per km" value when we're looking at a project holistically, and as such isn't particularly relevant. When you look at costs like the 300M/km as seen on the TYSSE, that money isn't just accounting for the tunnels and stations, its also a part of all of the other aspects that came with the project - the new GO station, the massive new bus terminals, any utility work that took place, and that's with a project that AFAIK has stations that are much deeper than Eglinton's.

The same principle also applies to the LRT projects here in Toronto. For the Finch West project, a lot of money is going to side projects projects like utility relocations, road widenings, MSF construction, and ordering new vehicles: The 95M/km does not represent how much it takes to build tracks in the median of the roadway in isolation.

Also, the price to build a 50m station would definitely not be 5/9th the price of building a 90m long station. You still have the same ventilation and secondary exit requirements as the 90m station as that is safety of the station related. Also, it's far easier to expand a pit than build a brand new pit. So even your $990 million savings is extremely high. I would argue that the price to build a 50m station would be 75-80% of the price to build the 60m station with a 30m rough-in for future expansion.

Consider how most of these stations are built: Cut and cover with massive 90+m long holes in the ground. Already you're going to be saving money by A) Digging significantly smaller holes, and B) Requiring less land acquisition to allow you to dig those holes in the first place. The question of course is what percent of the station cost goes to standard things like ventilation and power, however I doubt its only 80% for a 40m reduction.

Again, I've already given you the source that the eastern portion average speed is 25 km/h. Time taken to traverse the 7.4 km eastern section is 14 minutes at 32km/h for grade separated vs 18 for at-grade at 25 km/h. You're arguing for 4 minutes!!

4 minutes plus higher reliability plus higher baseline frequency for barely any additional cost? Sounds like a steal.

Across the entire completed line the difference is either 41 minutes or 45 minutes. Newsflash 40 minutes from Black Creek Drive station to Kennedy is still extremely high for what you're asking for! You're asking to extend the Eglinton line all the way to link to MCC, which will take a solid 1.5 to 2 hours. Definitely not a "rapid" link between MCC and STC as you want for this corridor.

This is probably the best argument you have given thus for although there are a few question marks it raises. 45m from Black Creek Drive to Kennedy? That's the same amount of time it takes to get from Kipling to Kennedy. Runnymede to Kennedy is around 38 mins (Runnymede is basically directly south of Mt. Dennis) and as established Line 2 makes a lot more stops over a longer distance, and overall operates much slower than this theoretical fully grade separated Line 5. Something tells me your 40m number isn't right.

Actually I just checked, Line 2 over its entire length runs at an average 34.47km/h. Now part of this is the fact that the eastern section, specifically between Victoria Park and Kennedy has extremely wide station spacing, but overall, no... A fully grade separated Line 5 should be able to operate faster probably.

 

[TRONto]

Hypocrisy noted, although how does the 504 refer to bad line management? Cars crashing into barriers, running into Queens Quay, its no more bad line management than someone jumping onto the tracks, running into the tunnels, or holding the doors open on Line 1...

Am I correct that the 10 minutes between streetcars is assumed to be because of a car crash?

TTC is known to poorly manage all modes of transit. See Steve Munro's latest analysis of the York Mills/Wilson bus route as an example.

I don't consider a car crash or car running into a ROW to be bad line management and I think that's a fair statement. The car crash, etc. are special incidents. The way the statement is written implies they happen all the time. (digging through route analysis, this can be seen to be rare). If the statement was the TTC should run elevated ATC transit vs a poorly managed LRT line, I would very much agree with that.

 

[ARG1]

Am I correct that the 10 minutes between streetcars is assumed to be because of a car crash?

TTC is known to poorly manage all modes of transit. See Steve Munro's latest analysis of the York Mills/Wilson bus route as an example.

I don't consider a car crash or car running into a ROW to be bad line management and I think that's a fair statement. The car crash, etc. are special incidents. The way the statement is written implies they happen all the time. (digging through route analysis, this can be seen to be rare). If the statement was the TTC should run elevated ATC transit vs a poorly managed LRT line, I would very much agree with that.

I see your point - that being said what makes you so sure that none of the issues presented here will resurface on Line 5?

 

[fanoftoronto]

I said no such thing actually, I just said there is demand to travel from STC to MCC, which there is. Enough demand for consistent rush hour crush load? Probably not. But the hallmark of any good transit system is to be able to get from Point A to Point B in a region as quickly and as efficiently as possible. If we want to move the GTA away from being car centric, the least we have to do is allow people to travel from any 2 city center nodes quickly and conveniently. An LRT on Eglinton can't provide that. Right now the best way to get between those 2 city centers is the 94 GO Bus, which travels along the 401, you know, the same 401 that is constantly congested and never moves - not exactly the most reliable mode. The reason why I personally find the situation on Eglinton so upsetting is because it is like the perfect arterial for high quality RAPID transit. There are so many valuable nodes - the airport, midtown toronto, science center, connections with almost all GO lines (the exceptions being LSW and Milton), UTSC, and we squandered it. If we had enough foresight, we could've even had a branch that directly connected to a refurbished Scarborough RT and had it directly connect to STC.

At 32 km/h which is the expected speed on the Crosstown, you're looking at a total travel time of 52 minutes. Say they extended the same line to MCC, it adds another 10.2 km to the total length and at 32 km/h, you're looking at a total travel time of 1 hour 15 minutes between MCC and STC, hardly "RAPID". What you want is a GO train service that has 3 stops and bypasses downtown entirely to link MCC and STC in 40 minutes or less.

As for the 20k pphpd, it was a theoretical number that I threw out there that we could potentially hit 30-40 years from now. The point I was trying to make was that there was definitely not enough demand along Eglinton for something like a GO line - which is what you bringing up with your whole "GO is for interregional transit argument", however building for some medium capacity transit at around the 20k pphpd especially if we're planning for the long term is quite reasonable. I don't understand your laser focus attention onto it - it wasn't a major claim of mine.

This is you below, right? From a couple days ago.

Eglinton is a massive arterial, and end to end transit could be extremely valuable. Valuable enough for a go line? Probably not. Viable enough for 20k pphpd? Quite possibly. We should honestly forget that municipal borders exist when thinking about how to plan for a regional transit network.

You didn't state that the 20,000 pphpd is to potentially hit 20-30 years from now. You said 20,000 pphpd is "quite possible" for Eglinton. Again, it would take 1 hour 15 minutes to get from MCC to Kennedy at 32 km/h. Not exactly "RAPID".

I said they were similar, not bigger. Also its not 334 people, its 400 people if we're using crush load numbers, and even then that's assuming the 40m long trains - not the 50m that the system was designed with. With the 400 passengers per car you get 16k PPHPD, and if we increase the capacity by 25% to account for 50m (due to things like articulated joints it won't exactly be 25% but already I'm significantly ahead in terms of how much capacity I need to prove), that's 20k PPHPD. 15k PPHPD is however the official number that Translink went with so that's what I'll keep using, and also crush loads aren't exactly comfortable ridership experiences.

Which is why I used 334 and not 400. Crush load is not what we should be planning with. The 15,000 pphpd is the official limit of the Canada Line if running 50m long trains at 1.5 minute headways. If we are going to see 20,000 pphpd in 20-30 years, shouldn't we be planning for 25 or 30k pphpd right now?

Guess what, the Crosstown is currently being built with 6,000 pphpd, with design decisions allowing the pphpd to go up to 22.5k pphpd or higher to 30k pphpd if we implement a proper TPS within the next 3 decades. If we lock ourselves into a 50m station right now, how do we expand?

33km/h is still much more than the what, 23-24km/h on the surface section? 33km/h is perfectly fine by me.

I've already provided a source that the surface section average speed will be 25 km/h. Increasing that to 32 km/h (equal to the rest) gives a total saving of 4 minutes on the at-grade section.

4 minutes.

I wasn't as keen on giving my evidence since I've had this same argument so many times that my brain is cramping redoing the same calculations and redoing the same evidence.

So, I'll just copy paste what I wrote over a year ago in the Hurontario thread:

Again, I will reiterate. Anecdotal evidence is useless. For a Portland example, there is a Brussels example that has a daily ridership of 500,000 with a total length of 140 km, or our own streetcar network with a ridership of 530,000 at 83 km length. Is the Toronto Streetcar system as good as the Vancouver SkyTrain? Everything needs context before we can compare them.

I've also already given an example with the Union Pearson link that gave rapid access between 2 major areas (Union and the airport) that grossly over estimated demand and had to drop pricing to be remotely viable.

 

[TRONto]

Isn't the 12 billion the 30 year cost which isn't the appropriate # to do a cost/km?

I was searching costs and the below is outdated but makes a claim for 500 million /km for a new skytrain build. I haven't looked into it so I don't know about accuracy.

Vaughn Palmer: SkyTrain construction soars to $500M per Km, but why is 'confidential?'

The NDP commissioned the detailed budget for the project, vetted the numbers, and know what each component is expected to cost. They just aren’t telling the taxpayi…

vancouversun.com

 

[TRONto]

I see your point - that being said what makes you so sure that none of the issues presented here will resurface on Line 5?

They will.

What I'm saying is that these incidents won't be frequent enough to be a major concern. My concern (and expectation) is poor line management- there will 10 minute gaps on Line 5 because of poor line management, not frequent car crashes.

 

[DirectionNorth]

You stated that you can save money on the stations by building a 40 or 50m long station and elevate the eastern portion with the savings. I asked for a source on how you can say this with confidence. I asked you direct questions on cost estimates. How much would you save by shortening the station? How much would it cost to elevate the eastern portion? No answer from you.

Let's use the image that @ARG1 provided, to save me some time (because @DirectionNorth is lazy).

Tunnels cost $500 million and the surface segment another $1 billion (https://www.torontoenvironment.org/campaigns/transit/LRTfaq), which means that the 14 underground stations will cost around $350 million each. Let's take off 1/5 of the cost (If we build 60 meter platforms), which takes off $1 billion from total cost. Now, let's use Evergreen Line costs for elevated. That's about $125 million per km, which, adding 25*9 million to the now-$4.5 billion cost, gets $4.7 billion. Even being extremely generous and going with $200 million/km for elevated still gets you to $5.6 billion - higher (by 30%) capacity for almost nothing, and increased reliability? Seems like a win. Besides, automation from grade separation means lower operating costs forever.

You stated that there's enough demand for 20,000 pphpd on Eglinton. I asked for a source. You said anecdotally "the congestion on the 401" and provided no actual source or proof. No real answer or source from you.

There is not 20,000 PPHD demand on Eglinton, not now, not 2031. There probably will come a day in the next 50 (maybe) to 100 (almost certain) years where 15,000 PPHD is not adequate.

You stated a Canada Line style system has higher capacity. I've already proved that Canada Line has an upper limit of 13,360 pphpd as the trains can hold 334 people and max of 1.5 minute headways. This is lower than the LRT by a long shot. If your imaginary number of 20,000pphpd actually shows up then your Canada Line train is packed beyond capacity from day 1. Capacity is higher on the LRT Crosstown at 2 minute headways at 15,000 pphpd. 15,000 >13,360. Not to mention push comes to shove, we can make use of the 90m stations and add a 3rd car to each train effectively increasing pphpd to 22,500, which is far higher than the 13,360 limit on the Canada Line. Also, how would you increase capacity on a Canada Line style system? You've locked yourself into a 13,360 pphpd maximum limit with zero opportunity to expand without shutting down the system. You tried to insult my ability read but no other reply from you.

Instead of 40 meter platforms, let's go to 60 meter platforms, which would still be cheaper than the 90 meters on ECLRT and would increase capacity to almost 20,000 PPHD.

You stated that Canada Line trains will be faster. For reference the Canada Line from Richmond–Brighouse station to Waterfront station takes 26 minutes, 12 stations, and is 14.5 km long. Average speed is 33.5 km/h, a far cry from the 40 km/h average speed you're touting. The LRT in the underground section is stated to go at 32km/h while following all design norms of the Canada Line. Fully grade separated, full ATC, 1km minimum station spacing. The time saving would be 4 minutes by grade separating the Eastern portion and making the average speed 32 km/h there as well. I asked for a source on how a light metro would be 40 km/h when the LRT is achieving only 32km/h and the Canada Line is achieving only 33.5 km/h. No reply from you or a source for the increased speed.

The difference is that the increased speed (and reliability) would be on the eastern portion.

I've stated that when they changed the western portion from at-grade to grade separated as you wanted, the ridership numbers went down! I argued that the same could happen with the eastern portion as well. You said you don't trust the city numbers while providing no sources or numbers to back up your claim.

EWLRT being tunneled is stupidity, that's for sure. We never got an elevated ridership projection so we can't say for that.

2031 is what the city documentation goes up until.

Though the capacity limits for the Crosstown is 15,000 pphpd, so even with a modest 500 yearly increase from 6,000, we're good for 18 years before we need to do anything to cope with the added demand.

Oh my, 30 years! That's such forward planning! Remind me of the time between the Prince Edward Viaduct's construction and the usage of its lower level for trains was? A half century?

A 90 second headway is going to be difficult to achieve on a consistent basis, I'll concede that.

But from my conversations with people who work in that field, it's not completely impossible. It should be sustainable in short bursts over specific parts of the network - just like how it was possible on the YUS prior to the upgrade to ATC/ATO. And is still possible afterwards.

It's definitely possible. It wouldn't be feasible, because of the disruption to N-S traffic through Eglinton.

Sure....but if you're only sending one quarter of the trains through, then that means that you have a situation where the ridership drops off past that location.

Will ridership drop off so dramatically east of Science Center? Remember, the turnback argument is based on the possibility of TSP and capacity of the eastern segment rather than ridership concerns.

...
Again, it's not impossible. It complicates things, sure. But it can be mitigated with careful design.

Dan

Turning back is possible, but I don't see it as ideal.

Isn't the 12 billion the 30 year cost which isn't the appropriate # to do a cost/km?

I was searching costs and the below is outdated but makes a claim for 500 million /km for a new skytrain build. I haven't looked into it so I don't know about accuracy.

Vaughn Palmer: SkyTrain construction soars to $500M per Km, but why is 'confidential?'

The NDP commissioned the detailed budget for the project, vetted the numbers, and know what each component is expected to cost. They just aren’t telling the taxpayi…

vancouversun.com

That's an extension which is almost entirely underground and 80 meter platforms, as well as facing post 2010s inflation (you can't compare 2010 costs for ECLRT to 2020 costs for SkyTrain).

 

[fanoftoronto]

If you have better numbers feel free to give them to me. Something that I would want to bring up however is the ratio. Whilst maybe the flat numbers given aren't great, its still around 3/5th the price of building an elevated track vs a cut and cover tunnel (I'll be using cut and cover metrics since that's the way most stations are built). I think its safe to assume that its a very similar ratio for stations.

We have already established that its $200M per underground station on the Eglinton Crosstown - possibly even less if the sudden increase in price for the crosstown is due to factors that don't involve your average station. Using that 3/5th ratio, that leaves us with around 120M per station.

You have to remember as well that the costs I'm bringing up here only refer to the construction costs. When it comes to transit projects, there is more to it than just the cost of the tunnels, stations, whatnot. You also have to account for utility relocation, property acquisition, and most importantly the new vehicles and MSF. The reason why I hesitated at the 2-4 Billion price tag for the Canada Line is because while a 2009 documents states the project cost 2 Billion, it also said that all of the Hyundai Rotem vehicles also cost a combined 2 Billion. Numbers like these hyper inflate the "cost per km" value when we're looking at a project holistically, and as such isn't particularly relevant. When you look at costs like the 300M/km as seen on the TYSSE, that money isn't just accounting for the tunnels and stations, its also a part of all of the other aspects that came with the project - the new GO station, the massive new bus terminals, any utility work that took place, and that's with a project that AFAIK has stations that are much deeper than Eglinton's.

The same principle also applies to the LRT projects here in Toronto. For the Finch West project, a lot of money is going to side projects projects like utility relocations, road widenings, MSF construction, and ordering new vehicles: The 95M/km does not represent how much it takes to build tracks in the median of the roadway in isolation.

Consider how most of these stations are built: Cut and cover with massive 90+m long holes in the ground. Already you're going to be saving money by A) Digging significantly smaller holes, and B) Requiring less land acquisition to allow you to dig those holes in the first place. The question of course is what percent of the station cost goes to standard things like ventilation and power, however I doubt its only 80% for a 40m reduction.

I'm going to stop getting into cost estimations, as now we've gone so deep that our assumptions have assumptions now. These back of the napkin calculations are useless without looking at the actual budget and costs related to this project.

Your argument is that the Crosstown is not a perfect system. We have an at-grade area that will slow down the travel across the city.

My argument is that even if you built a Canada Line style light metro, you're still not getting a perfect system.

Sure, the Crosstown will be 4 minutes slower than the Light Metro in the surface section. But the Light Metro can't be expanded without shutting the system down to reconstruct.
Sure, the Crosstown will have occasional issues with traffic on the line. But the Light Metro will also have occasional signaling issues, or "passenger at track level".

There are pros and cons to both sides. There is no clear winner in this argument.

This is probably the best argument you have given thus for although there are a few question marks it raises. 45m from Black Creek Drive to Kennedy? That's the same amount of time it takes to get from Kipling to Kennedy. Runnymede to Kennedy is around 38 mins (Runnymede is basically directly south of Mt. Dennis) and as established Line 2 makes a lot more stops over a longer distance, and overall operates much slower than this theoretical fully grade separated Line 5. Something tells me your 40m number isn't right.

Actually I just checked, Line 2 over its entire length runs at an average 34.47km/h. Now part of this is the fact that the eastern section, specifically between Victoria Park and Kennedy has extremely wide station spacing, but overall, no... A fully grade separated Line 5 should be able to operate faster probably.

32km/h is what is being provided as speed in the underground sections in the official documentation, and that's what I'm using. Please provide a empirical evidence that it will be higher and I'll be happy to change it.

I made an error in my calculations. It'll take 36 minutes to traverse the Crosstown in fully grade separated mode. It'll take 40 minutes to traverse the Crosstown as it is currently being built with the at-grade section.

Still, from Kennedy to MCC is 39 kms. Using the same average of 32 km/h you're looking at a travel time of 1 hour and 13 minutes.

Guess what, at 5 pm peak traffic, the travel time from STC to MCC is 55 minutes so your GO Bus is arguably much faster than the Eglinton Crosstown. It's not a fair comparison as the bus doesn't offer the same comfort. But you're trying to get the Eglinton to do a role that is not suited for it.

 

[drum118]

Hey @drum118 it looks like you posted this on the wrong LRT thread.

my mind been in space today

 

[smallspy]

It's definitely possible. It wouldn't be feasible, because of the disruption to N-S traffic through Eglinton.

Sure. But that's not what is being discussed.

Will ridership drop off so dramatically east of Science Center? Remember, the turnback argument is based on the possibility of TSP and capacity of the eastern segment rather than ridership concerns.

Ridership drops off well before Science Centre, which is why the turnbacks happen east of Laird.

Turning back is possible, but I don't see it as ideal.

You may not see it as ideal, but the TTC and the organizations who've been in charge of planning the project from the start of it in 2007 seem to think otherwise.

Dan