jks
Continuous Lurker
This thread is starting to get on my nerves because whenever I read the title, I say to myself "Well, DUH!!"
Now don't start throwing common sense and logic in here - we can't be having that!I disagree on the cost savings ... On the 6.8km Yonge extension, the cost of the tunnels is only $600 million.
So I don't see how there are billions to be saved here...
Now don't start throwing common sense and logic in here - we can't be having that!
Unlikely - you've stretched things in the past enough well beyond believability - and failed to recognise that there is a finite amount of money available - and sure you could blow it all on 3 or 4 mega projects - or spend it on more projects.Yeah, or everyone would start agreeing with me.
Yesterday PM I drove St. Clair Ave. from Mt Pleasant to Dufferin.
I found myself slightly back of a Street Car waiting at Yonge, the light changed and the traffic proceeded west. The vehicular traffic was slow, never exceeding 40KMH. I stopped for the light at Avenue Road and noticed the Street Car was still a couple of hundred meters from the intersection. By the time I stopped at Spadina the street car was out of sight behind me somewhere, it reappeared on the eastern horizon as I passed the ramp into the Bathurst station.
Isn't this thing supposed to be fast? They swiped 33% of the road and delivered the same pokey service, what's the point of this LRT thing anyway?
Please tell the TTC that we are a big town now, time to put away their trolleys and build some more subways like real serious cities
I already mentioned something similar could be done east of Leaside (edit - because, of course, why would design choices that consciously streamline a project be done on only part of a line?), and the line could be not tunnelled beneath Eglinton Flats, too. Throw in some elevated parts and cut'n'cover segments (keeping the line as close to street level as possible at all times) and we're looking at more like 15+km, and if the line went from Markington to Pearson it'd be more like 20km.
Even if we did build an LRT, we should basically separate the grade separated components from the rest at rush hour if not the whole day. After that, you could call it whatever you want. It would be a de facto subway, and that is all that matters. My point is that if we agree that the central section should be de facto subway with no real cost savings between LRT and HRT, the only question becomes simply do the extremities need LRT? I doubt it.
Unlikely - you've stretched things in the past enough well beyond believability - and failed to recognise that there is a finite amount of money available - and sure you could blow it all on 3 or 4 mega projects - or spend it on more projects.
Though I'm not sure building a trench along Eglinton East is anyone's interest - it will forever limit the future use of the land. Surely parts of Yonge north of Bloor would be better today if they had tunelled rather than that space-wasting trench.
Any other combination (subway in the centre / buses at extremities, or subway / LRT, or LRT / buses) would necessitate transfers at the junction points.
The goal of LRT is not to beat a car. Cars do not stop for passengers, public transit does. Even a subway (its average speed in Toronto is 32 kph) is not guaranteed to beat cars unless the car traffic is jammed.
The goal is to improve public transit by operating it in a right-of way, compared to the mixed-traffic buses. The buses run at 15 - 20 kph on average, but on congested roads in bad weather, that could be 10 kph or worse. A few times during heavy snow, I managed to beat the Eglinton bus from Bathurst to Yonge on foot .
If an LRT is not meant to be faster than vehicular traffic is it supposed to be slower? Is the sacrifice of 2 lanes of vehicular traffic necessary to achieve this goal, can't it be done by lollygagging operators as on the 501? In my limited experience it is quite obvious that the Streetcars are holding up vehicular traffic not the other way around as the TTC constantly complains.
It is going to be pretty embarrassing when the St. Clair fiasco is finished at God knows what cost and guess what, the same number of Streetcars will take the same time to carry the same number of riders the same distance as previously. OOPS!
There is no chance for street-level public transit to beat cars on speed, because public transit has to stop for passengers. Even subways are not guaranteed to beat cars, they might run faster between the stations but then they have to stop and service the station.
Mind you, that's only an issue if great numbers of people are actually travelling the entire or most of the length of Eglinton. Since such "where are people actually going and what transit improvements will help them?" studies were not part of Transfer City, we just don't know...it's quite difficult to gauge the "busyness" of various types of trips along an arterial bus corridor like Eglinton whether through ridership totals or anecdotes or even daily experience since you have so many people transferring on/off at Eglinton West and Yonge, since you have so many overlapping routes, etc.
At the very least, a subway in the necessarily underground part (something like Jane or Weston-Don Mills would make more sense as terminus points in the event the tunnels exit at random places like Brentcliffe) would give the line the freedom to be extended in the future...building LRT extensions would preempt a subway extension for generations, beyond what it is feasible to plan for.
As you point out, any route comparison that involves transit stops isn't going to work too well. But if you can't get between stops faster with grade-separated RT, then it's not very R.