Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

Think of it more like BART in San Francisco. They're basically automated subway trains operating at frequencies of up to every two minutes that would take over the Lakeshore line as well as run a new northern line that would leave Lakeshore in Oakville and connect Mississauga Centre, the airport, North York Centre, Scarborough Centre before rejoining the Lakeshore in Pickering.
 
Thanks. That sounds pretty cool. I was imagining a kind of TC+GO routes, which was pretty painful. BART or RER sounds much better, and that second route sounds very, very awesome and also needed.
 
Yup. Remember the whole semantics debate in the Transit City thread. The term "LRT" is basically meaningless, you always need more information about what any actual system is. In many ways, it's basically a marketing term.

Singapore LRT

teck-whye-1.jpg


Tianjin, China LRT

20060702.jpg
 
unimaginative2 said:
GO-ALRT was the single biggest missed opportunity in Toronto's transit history. I can't even begin to imagine what the GTA would be like if it had been built. A quarter century later, we at least have a chance to make it right, even though the horse may have already bolted from the barn in terms of built form. It's really not that hard to make an S-Bahn system on all of the rail corridors in Toronto, and it would be such a huge win. In most German cities, the S-Bahn is the backbone of the transit system while the subway serves as a supplement. In some ways, the same can be said of Paris.
Click to expand...

I wonder why it is that most cities on this continent who have better regional rail systems, have such poor ridership compared to Toronto.
 
Uh, what cities on the continent have better regional rail systems. New York? Weren't you arguing in another thread how 416 ridership has no bearing on the 905?
 
Philadelphia has a regional rail service that blows us out of the water.

Weren't you arguing in another thread how 416 ridership has no bearing on the 905?
Click to expand...
I said it's disingenuous to correlate TTC ridership with population growth external to it's operating area. But what does that have to do with anything?
 
CodeMonkey said:
Maybe GO should get back into the LRT game? Build a true crosstown and regional LRT rail network instead of the TTC
Click to expand...

I agree with you in principle, but does it really matter what colour the trains are?
 
kettal said:
Philadelphia has a regional rail service that blows us out of the water.
Click to expand...

It does and it doesn't. The frequencies still aren't good enough for real rapid transit, so it's still something of a commuter service, and it doesn't serve many of the major destinations in the area, which is much less downtown-centric than Toronto. I'm guessing you're not looking for serious analysis, though.


I said it's disingenuous to correlate TTC ridership with population growth external to it's operating area. But what does that have to do with anything?
Click to expand...

You pointed out that our ridership is higher than in some other cities with regional rail. While our 905 suburbs are a little better than many American suburbs, the bulk of our ridership is in the 416. Regional rail (and GO ALRT) would serve the 905.

Codemonkey, in keeping with our previous discussion, you're going to have be more specific about what you mean by LRT. If you're talking about running streetcars in the middle of the street with stops every 500 metres from Hamilton to Oshawa, then no, that wouldn't be a very good idea. If you're talking about a high-frequency rapid transit service like GO ALRT, it would be a very good idea. While generally I'd say that it would make more sense to use an expanded existing rail network for regional rail, the idea of a completely separate track network for regional rail could be beneficial in terms of reliability and frequency in the Toronto context.
 
unimaginative2 said:
It does and it doesn't. The frequencies still aren't good enough for real rapid transit, so it's still something of a commuter service, and it doesn't serve many of the major destinations in the area, which is much less downtown-centric than Toronto. I'm guessing you're not looking for serious analysis, though.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, I was just wondering aloud, really. Even GO transit overperforms in terms of ridership, despite the horrible service frequencies.
 
GO Transit does perform well considering its level of service. I'd say there are three main reasons: Canadians are culturally more oriented to riding transit, Toronto has a higher concentration of employment downtown (Chicago and New York are higher than us, and they have significantly higher ridership than GO), and we have far fewer highways than any American city of comparable size.
 
York Region's website appears to have temporarily disappeared but this morning the transit committee minutes had updates on the subway extensions.

The two major things were moving forward with expropriations for the Spadina line and that TTC has completed the rail yards needs study.

The study is still being reviewed by staff so who knows what it says; lots of suspense for those of us hoping it says to expand Wilson and complete the Sheppard subway to Downsview...
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top