Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group

W. K. Lis said:
We already have traffic congestion caused by single-occupant automobiles. Traffic congestion (both ways, correction four ways) would be worse caused by zero-occupant automobiles.
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In this particular case, traffic congestion would be a non-issue. Those short four-way trips would occur between people's houses and the local high-order transit stations; those roads are rarely congested.

Plus, we can reasonably expect more car-sharing in the driver-less car world, thus the ratio of person trips to car trips should improve.
 
There are some limits to the capabilities of self-driving cars. They are still less efficient in using road space than large transit vehicles, especially trains and streetcars.

The highest capacity corridors will likely still be served by public transit lines, due to the space restrictions.

However, smart self-driving cars can largely solve the "last mile" problem in the otherwise transit-unfriendly locations.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Now for some laughs, from this link:

Vaughan subway station site missing ‘proper signage’ for parking, driver argues

According to the city of Vaughan, 271 tickets for no-stopping and illegally parking have been issued since the subway opened.
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This is mainly from the absence of a dedicated PPUDO loop at VMC station. Other than the Millway Ave entrance, the only secondary entrance is the SmartCentres Place Terminal at Apple Mill Rd, which is both not open yet and requires a long walk in the underground tunnel.
 
micheal_can said:
First we need to shut down the OMB. Then, if developers don't like the municipal's plan, they won't mess it up.
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It is not like the OMB just allowed developers to do whatever they want.

Often times in these suburban conditions it was the OMB that shut down developers proposing sprawling communities that the municipality (and their developer friends) were rubber-stamping.
 
Megaton327 said:
I know a lot of people on this forum and elsewhere are extremely skeptical of this, but I sincerely believe self-driving cars are the solution to the problem of Toronto's suburbs' transit. Traditional mass transit in the form of larger buses, streetcars, LRT, subway, and heavy rail will, I think, probably remain necessary in major corridors, but for first/last mile trips and local or suburb-to-suburb travel, I really think self-driving cars will fix it. That might not happen until 2035 or 2040, but I don't think anyone can reasonably debate that it is inevitable and by 2050 as the absolute, worst-case latest date.

I love the idea of most people no longer owning cars, but rather there are fleets of self-driving electric cars run by Tesla, Uber, GM, etc. which roam around, pick people up and take them where they need to go, find somewhere to recharge, then go out and do some more work. And once 100% of vehicles are self driving, and the law prohibits manually driven vehicles, then (and this is where most people get skeptical, but I'm not) congestion will disappear since self-driving cars, if they constitute 100% of the vehicles on the road, can drive 1 metre from another car's bumper at 200 km/h safely, and there would be no need for traffic signals except for pedestrian/cyclist crossings (optimally with 100% self driving cars, for peak efficiency cyclists should be relegated to off-road trails or at least curb-separated/raised cycle tracks).

Of course, we do need a solution for the 25 years or so until that's a reality. I think micro-transit is the only solution that has even a chance of being feasible, run as an UberPool-type service, or using small buses like that failed Liberty Village private transit project did. Innisfil's results working with Uber are extremely promising. But I don't think that will shift the modal share that much since, for someone who owns a car, it just doesn't make any sense--it will make their trip slower, less comfortable, and more expensive. That can only be solved with full self driving roaming fleets where it no longer makes any practical sense to own a car.
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Solving first/last mile problem is one thing. I also like AVs for their potential ability to serve people with mobility issues, providing access to those who can't drive or take public transit.

But I really doubt AVs solve congestion. Autonomous or not, these are still automobiles that take up the spatial dimensions of automobiles. That means they are still affected by the upper capacity of our road infrastructure. Sure, they might be moving more effectively but they will still be stopping at intersections (I hope we are still planning on having pedestrian infrastructure in the post-AV world), still will be limited by physical geography and by the capacity of our road system. One might say that we can just expand our road infrastructure, but a) induced demand is still a thing, AVs or no AVs, b) you plan on demolishing neighbourhoods for that? and c) I thought we were trying to get past the world of wide right-of-ways?.

Presently, the Lakeshore GO lines carry more people to work than the Gardiner and QEW does, and this will only increase with GO-RER service. Could you imagine if all those people decided to go by autonomous vehicle to work on the Gardiner? It just wouldn't be possible (infrastructure wise) or desirable.

I see AVs compounding the problems if anything. Like Alvin stated, they will be completing 3-4 trips as opposed to 2. You need to build enough AVs to serve people at peak hour of usage as well which means that for large parts of the day the AV needs to be stored somewhere when one of the supposed benefits of AVs are that it can eliminate parking. I don't know where you will store them downtown (which is where people on AVs are headed) unless we begin creating large verticle parking lot structures but even then such a structure creates problems akin to the Eaton Centre's Shuter Street parking entrance/exit.

Nothing about AVs has changed the physics of automobiles, or that (and this is a normative statement) compact walkable communities are inherently desirable urban environments. The ideal urban settlement is the one where you walk to work, not commute long distances whether its driving by hand or by computer-intelligence. AVs have the potential to induce more urban sprawl when we are finally getting our heads around the idea of compact walkable mixed communities, and that comes with its own set of environmental consequences (that we are also finally wrapping our heads around).
 
av's will do wonders for transportation in sparse communities like suburbs. but the worst possible thing we can do is use them as a reason to build more sparse areas. we should be using them as a reason to narrow auto lanes in cities (due to the lower margin of error) and create more pedestrian space. learn from the mistakes of the past.
 
Rainforest said:
That's much more interesting .. except that free GO trains would be completely swarmed by commuters boarding inside the 416 boundaries for a fast trip to Union.
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Devil's advocate: wouldn't that be a good thing? Don't we want people taking transit, both instead of driving, and instead of overcrowded rush-hour subways?

Rainforest said:
Another thought on the topic: with the arrival of self-driving cars, leaving a car at the parking lot will become optional if your transit station is not far from your home. Instead, the car will just drive itself back home, and stay there until it is needed again.
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In suburban-style areas, it seems to me that UberPool-type service will make it more and more feasible to decouple GO train ridership from single-occupant parking-lot pylons. Add the stick -- drop GO train fares, raise GO train parkng prices -- for maximum effect imho.

Megaton327 said:
I think micro-transit is the only solution that has even a chance of being feasible, run as an UberPool-type service, or using small buses like that failed Liberty Village private transit project did. Innisfil's results working with Uber are extremely promising. But I don't think that will shift the modal share that much since, for someone who owns a car, it just doesn't make any sense--it will make their trip slower, less comfortable, and more expensive. That can only be solved with full self driving roaming fleets where it no longer makes any practical sense to own a car.
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The missing element is price. Then it's just a price-to-time optimization issue. If getting to the GO station took five minutes extra, and saved $5 daily, how many would do it? Lots. Maybe suburban transit authorities should be wholeheartedly embracing UberPool or an equivalent, and putting extra minibuses on the road to ensure competitive ride times for it -- if it means competing more effectively for modal share.
 
Disparishun said:
Devil's advocate: wouldn't that be a good thing? Don't we want people taking transit, both instead of driving, and instead of overcrowded rush-hour subways?
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The problem is that GO transit was designed specifically for inter-regional transit, not intercity transit. The purpose of go is to shuttle commuters from the 905 to downtown Toronto. The purpose of the subways is to shuttle high volumes of people within the 416 around the 416. This is mainly during peak hours. Maybe make travel within the 416 extremely cheap off-peak until frequencies are heavily increased and express tracks are created. Otherwise, it makes no sense to cater it to the 416 because so many people from the 905 would stop using transit, and their commutes are worth about 5* as much as city commuters (Greater distance = more money & fewer cars over a longer distance).

If I'm going to suggest something, why is GO still buying MP40s and MP52s? Why not dual locomotives with the coming of electrification? Even on the Richmond Hill and Milton Lines will still require sections of electric locomotive usage.
 
Streety McCarface said:
If I'm going to suggest something, why is GO still buying MP40s and MP52s? Why not dual locomotives with the coming of electrification? Even on the Richmond Hill and Milton Lines will still require sections of electric locomotive usage.
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The MP40s should be pretty saleable in the second hand market. As for dual power locomotives, why buy now when you can make an offer for AMT's when the Caisse's grab of the Mont Royal tunnel takes effect? Or wait and see if someone else pays Siemens to do the R&D on an ACS64-Charger hybrid?
 
Perhaps I am of the wrong generation, and have admittedly been fairly wrong on the advancement of technology in the past, but I just can't envision ubiquitous fully autonomous vehicles roaming random routes, in our climate, in even the mid-distance future. I have read, but cannot cite, reports from experts in the field - not proponents - that they are decades away. It would seem financial folly to design current transit infrastructure with them in mind. Some thoughts on some of the ideas raised:
-if AVs were privately owned, then it seems that the doubling of trips between home and transit hubs would seem to ring true.
-if they were 'on call', then who would own them? Tesla, Uber, GM, etc. don't own fleets. It would seem that something more akin to a taxi service would be more comparable. Under this scenario, there would be a need for large corrals to accommodate on and off peak needs. Would they be owned by commercial entities, with competition, or some public monopoly.
-I don't see the connection between AVs and ride sharing.
-the issue of liability would be significant. Liability would not shift significantly to the vehicle, it would have to shift completely. As passengers, we would have no role in the conduct of the vehicle. We don't need insurance coverage to ride a bus or a train. That cost would have to rolled into whatever the cost would be using the service.
-the concept of banning, by law, manually-driven vehicles, would be an interesting moot court debate of constitutional law for a law school. Many things in life are regulated but comparatively few are prohibited, and they have an established public health and safety rationale (at least according to the courts). The argument might be advanced that it within the power of the province to regulate traffic but I'm not convinced it would be successful. And I'm unsure if the concept would be to prohibit manually-driven vehicles regionally, provincially or nationally. Under my understanding of the Constitution, I'm not sure how the state could prohibit something solely on the basis of social efficiency or convenience. If those were the criteria, the same state could tell us where to live and perhaps where to work. I recall that was tried someplace else with less than stellar success. And, of course, such a concept could not even be considered until all manually-driven vehicles are naturally out of service, unless it is proposed that the state get into seizure.

All good mental exercise.
 
We are in the hype cycle for AV technology. Give it a few years and the buzz will fade. The future of AV roaming the streets without drivers is a myth. It wont happen in our life-times. Remember when they said hovercrafts would be a thing? AV has it's place and the technology will greatly advance over the next few decades and for targeted fleets like trucks and buses it maybe significant savings in labour arbitrage for companies and public monopolies. However, I doubt people will stop owning their own cars or governments be allowed to ban manual driving cars.
 
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