BurlOak
Senior Member
You can add an extra train, but the issue at peak goes way beyond capacity of the trains themselves - there is the issue of platform crowding to consider. Yonge-Bloor is already somewhat unsafe (ditto a few others, like King, Queen, Dundas, College under some conditions), and god forbid there should be a delay somewhere on the Yonge line when you have 7 car trains. Plus with platform conditions like that you'd probably get tons more delays at the station themselves, leading to increased station dwell time. Things sounds great on spreadsheets, but it's fantasyland until you actually have a first hand look a the on the ground operational conditions.
AoD
The reason that the platforms are crowded is because people are not getting on trains. The reason the trains do not empty faster is that the platforms are crowded. I think if you increase the train capacity, you can remove crowding from the plaform and decrease dwell time by increase the efficiency of passengers exiting the trains. This efficiency would also be helped by the train stopping at the same location every time (even without platform edge doors) so that waiting passengers would not block the location of the doors so people could exit better.
TJOP:
The time when you need to a 7 car train (i.e. peak) is exactly when you can't easily walk within the train to get anywhere.
AoD
Thats why I think the 8th car should be run so that at some stations the front car is off the platform, and at others it is the last car. This way passengers would only enter the first or last car if it will stop at their origin and destination. Passengers who get off at a counterflow station (i.e. Northbound Queen Park in the morning) would probably be able to walk through the train to get to the proper door. In case of emergencies, all passengers still have the ability to exit the train by walking through.