steveintoronto
Superstar
At present, no, the interconnections were pulled up a few years back at Newark Penn, but the River Line does. So you 'got me' on that one. How about the rest? Be my guest...just be sure to provide reference.
Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx
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smallspy
Senior Member
The River Line is not PATH, and doesn't even come remotely close to a similar capacity. The usual "apples and oranges" argument that applies to most of your comments is applicable here, too.
And a "few years ago"? Try the 1960s. Before the FRA even existed.
Dan
robmausser
Senior Member
Tory does this all the time. I want to take him seriously but then he goes and sounds like Torontos official dad.
robmausser
Senior Member
torontologist
Active Member
What document is this from? Sorry if it’s already been posted.
steveintoronto
Superstar
As @Forgotten posted (can you supply a link for that, I've had to take a screenshot in lieu of access)
If the City wants to to build a limited and ineffective "Relief Line" to fulfill their own parochial needs, then they'd best be prepared to pay for it themselves. In face of the massive need to By-Pass the Subway altogether to effect relief over the entire system, then RER and regional concerns must be met.
Yeahhh...that might have to be revisited. I use the term "Pape Entitlement" for a number of reasons, not least their wanting it in their backyards, but not in their backyards.
They can pay for it.
OK, you wanna play picky (and I fully admit in a moment of distraction, I missed on one reference) then you've misplaced your reference on that. The River Line operates with an FRA waiver.
Hey, go right ahead, and claim you misappropriated your reference there. That makes us 'even' by the way you wish to play. I challenge you to 'mark' my other references. Please...
The US is far ahead of Canada on this, albeit the O-Train was a welcome exception as per light-rail on mainline federally regulated track. ION is the only other case that I'm aware of in Canada.
The San Diego Trolley is a modern precedent for the US, and it now runs in deep tunnel, on elevated guideway, and on street and mainline rail:
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/circulars/ec058/08_01_ames.pdf
Pic here and of the River Line:
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/f...dance/safety/66206/shared-use-waivers-fra.pdf
Where there's a will, there's a way...The US is a long way behind Europe on these matters. And Canada is behind the US.
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steveintoronto
Superstar
That's actually Ford. The Twitter string on it is hilarious.
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salsa
Senior Member
As @Forgotten reminds us, this was already screwed up anyway in an effort to avoid conflict with SmartTrack.
crs1026
Superstar
Well, this may be true, but - if it is ML still has some 'splaining to do. The idea that as a supposedly nonpartisan coordinative and strategic planning authority for the region, they would secretly draw up plans and proposals in silence, waiting for favourable politics to give them the opportunity to blindside the city with this new plan, is a very serious accusation in terms of their professionalism and integrity. ML may be disfunctional, but it's not that sneaky.
I'm no Wynne/McGuinty fan, but neither can I believe that there was a small- or large-L direction to ML to keep their mitts off the RL and go along with all the discussion of it as a TTC-flavour subway. ML has floated so many strategic documents (which seem to have all been filed and ignored anyways, so hardly not grounds for dismissal if they gently broached their own thinking). The RER business case document, and the electrification EA, implicitly if not explicitly differentiate between RER and heavy rail subway. Let alone the Big Move.
There have been dozens of debates where any number of decisionmakers have been asked to put on record whether they saw the RL as a priority. Did ML even once hint that something other than vanilla TTC subway might be an option to consider? Did anyone ever send a short memo to Andy Byford or Jennifer Keesmatt? Or write a submittal to the EA, knowing that the project might just discard it?
It's ridiculous to suggest that AB and JK in their short time in Toronto drank the TTC Kool-Aid to the degree that they overrode their own world-wide experience and aspirations. The RL plan was something they both helped build, and fully endorsed.
One also wonders why nobody nudged Mr Tory to suggest that his Smarttrack idea would be great if he just focussed on the Don Valley routing instead of in Scarborough. I wonder if the reward from Ford for his nonassertiveness will be to have the "new" RL idea somehow linked to the ST vision.
It's possible that some of the newer ML execs, who have been recruited from afar, may have arrived in Toronto and thought, you know, they'd do a lot better if they did something more like (city x). And that may have informed the current rethink. But it leaves the region being asked to consider an option that sounds like it was put together from browsing the trade press, formulated even quicker than @steveintoronto can dig up other cities' precedents. How is this good planning?
I can't offer a single argument why a non-TTC-vanilla system wouldn't work, and maybe Ford's entry into transit planning has netted us an entire line where the previous city/provincial thinking had trouble coming up with the money for a stub effort. But something that seems too good to be true appears out of thin air, and contrary to all process, we should be asking pointed questions.
- Paul
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Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
I'm just curious @steveintoronto , were you a fan of the Michael Schabas report about the Eglinton Crosstown at Neptis Foundation? If you are, then it is clear that we just have very different interpretations of what inner-city mass mobility is supposed to accomplish. This isn't some "Toronto-way" of doing things either. There is a reason why in Paris and Berlin you have both metro systems and RER systems.
I am of the opinion that the goals of regional connectivity aren't supposed to replace or circumvent the goals of inner-city mass transit access. Others like Michael Schabas at Neptis believed that everything in-between the two termini stations weren't important nodes, and only served to delay travel from one end of the line to the other.
I'm extra weary of "SmartTrack 2.0" as the replacement for the Relief Line if it fails to achieve the goals of the Relief Line. It can be done correct and well, I can imagine it with a scheme that involves downtown tunnels, replacing the Richmond Hill GO line, and a re-alignment of the RHGO corridor through Pape and onto Don Mills. We've discussed such schemes before in other threads. But, and this is a HUGE but, pursuing such a scheme would require spending more money, and we know very well that this government is unwilling to do that and is happy to cut corners especially if it means saving money and reducing construction time.
We have seen what half-assing a line to save costs gets us. It gets us the Spadina Line in the middle of the Allen Expressway instead of where it should have gone, under Bathurst.
I am of the opinion that the goals of regional connectivity aren't supposed to replace or circumvent the goals of inner-city mass transit access. Others like Michael Schabas at Neptis believed that everything in-between the two termini stations weren't important nodes, and only served to delay travel from one end of the line to the other.
I'm extra weary of "SmartTrack 2.0" as the replacement for the Relief Line if it fails to achieve the goals of the Relief Line. It can be done correct and well, I can imagine it with a scheme that involves downtown tunnels, replacing the Richmond Hill GO line, and a re-alignment of the RHGO corridor through Pape and onto Don Mills. We've discussed such schemes before in other threads. But, and this is a HUGE but, pursuing such a scheme would require spending more money, and we know very well that this government is unwilling to do that and is happy to cut corners especially if it means saving money and reducing construction time.
We have seen what half-assing a line to save costs gets us. It gets us the Spadina Line in the middle of the Allen Expressway instead of where it should have gone, under Bathurst.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
I am curious as to how much of what's in the plans resembles the SSRA proposal(s).
AoD
AoD
nfitz
Superstar
Gosh, only 50 metres ... one one hand that's stunning - a bit longer than an Ottawa LRT or Finch West LRT car.
On the other hand ... less than 6,000 peak hourly ridership.
If every 200 seconds (now) is 6,100, then a 25% increase to the train length would give you about 15,000 capacity at every 90 seconds.
The question will be can then maintain every 90 seconds (or ever have 15,000 riders)?
ssiguy2
Senior Member
Even the hydrogen trains are not revolutionary. They get their power source from onboard as opposed delivered thru wires but the trains themselves are standard EMUs. The Alstom trains are simply another version of it's current Lint series which are the backbone of their EMU and DMU regional trains.
nfitz
Superstar
50 years might be stretching it, but I remember living in Toronto 30 years ago, with the Yonge line overcrowded and much slower at peak, with promises of the DRL and Sheppard Line in the newspaper to help things (I don't recall the Eglinton West line off-hand back then ... but perhaps it's because I was seldom if ever that ways ...)
That being said, I believe Montreal started installing their ATC system in 1971, which was 48 years ago. So maybe we ARE 50 years behind! Certainly commuting in the 1980s was shockingly eye-opening in Toronto, with trains frequently stopping between each station at peak ... which just doesn't happen most of the time in Montreal where I'd commuted regularly previously.
steveintoronto
Superstar
It's in their mandate, and ironically, they do appear to have learned a lesson. You'll note that Verster, who has been 'head salesman' in the past, is conspicuously absent.
I've scoured their Relief Line reports scrupulously. I can find no reference to "existing subway rolling stock" in even the earlier ones. You're better than I am for scouring their reports, please offer reference. They do allude to the interconnections of Line 2, and the earlier ramps to the LE line RoW in earlier ones to access the Greenwood Yards, and later, the pricey and functionally questionable connections at Pape.
That is possible. And that's what other jurisdictions do to keep the corporate angst vital. If this is the case (and their Electrification Report was very worldly in providing other examples of how things are done) then kudos to them.
Of course they'll work. So do DC-3s. Still a great plane, uprated with turbines et al, but you wouldn't want to build a new system to use them. And Metrolinx, who are 'in charge' of this file...or more precisely, a private investment consortium certainly wouldn't use old tech and TTC gauge. They'd use tried and trued modern methods.
OK, at this point, before labouring discussion on it: Define what you mean by "metro"...as it appears to mean something very different from how the world uses it.
Yeah, history is a massive one. Paris actually had "RER" a century ago, ditto Berlin. World wars weren't kind to either. Neither was the private enterprise background of both that meant 'nationalizing' them. Paris' present RER is a way to revitalize and further connect what was done historically, and vestiges of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_de_fer_de_Petite_Ceinture are being re-used for RER. IIRC, over half the original route. Some of it is used to just move stock between stations as the new RER tunnels have made much more direct passenger connections between otherwise non-connected mainline stations. Most capital cities of the time were forbidden to build smoke belching railways into their cores. It's no mistake that in almost all cases, the terminals were on the periphery of the core. London's Metropolitan was initially built for exactly that reason, and to a lesser extent, the District Line. It was only later that they ventured radially out of the City to serve the newly developing suburbs, and the Metropolitan even bought land in the Twenties for their own housing estates as to support that. Toronto's equiv was the Belt Line, which lasted only a decade or so. It was never electrified and fell to much more competitive trams.
Perhaps we have a difference of opinion as to what the term "Relief" means? It doesn't mean offering the Pape Entitlement a station every few blocks within a quick walking distance, but Not In My Back Yard! Let them do what most of us have to do: Take a streetcar or bus to the closest station. And if they don't like that, then THEY pay for it. And on that point, define "Regional".
Exactly. Just not the way you intend that to apply.
Look, the City is skint, so's the Province (or at least that's their platform) so funding for this is going to be a good part, if not all Private. Getting back to Paris and Berlin, who built their historical systems? Ditto all the major world cities, London, NYC, etc when there was a business case for doing it. That case wouldn't be there today, thus the 'nationalization' of those systems at various points through history.
Toronto never went through the stage of 'public takeover' with subways, or local commuter rail. It happened federally, thus VIA, or provincially, like GO or ATM. And what's VIA having to do to build HFR? Look to the Private Sector. It's not a case of whether I like this or not, it's a case of reality. You want to build the "Downtown" Relief Line (notice the "Downtown" has been dropped by all, why do you think that is?). Then provide the funding. It's that simple. In the vacuum left by that absence, it's going to take a large chunk of private infusion. And if they want to build like you want it, great...
They're not...
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