Transit City Details

[unimaginative2]

For some reason I was under the impression that Transit City was supposed to be rapid transit. Judging by posts here (and by reading the plans for building some of the lines), that won't be the case?

To the TTC, "rapid" has absolutely nothing to do with speed. Transit City is $6 billion worth of streetcars, by the TTC's own admission. It remains to be seen whether it will be $6 billion worth of Spadinas, or $6 billion worth of something that is a remote improvement on the existing bus service.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

There's no speculation on exactly what travel times will be with Transit City, other than claims it will be much faster than buses and truly competitive with cars.

Here's a thought...by building a stretch of light rail line along the Finch-McNicholl hydroelectric corridor between Don Mills and Yonge, streetcars could run along Sheppard East and Finch West via Don Mills and the proposed hydro line. The hydro stretch, in this scenario, should preferably be express, save for a mid-block stop (i.e. Old Cummer GO station) during peak periods.

In other words, a Sheppard subway bypass costing almost $2 billion.

 

[brettrobinson]

Not professing to be a transit expert AT ALL, I will pose this question. In comparison to subway, LRT, etc... why would Vancouver's Skytrain type set-up not work here? Would it not be easier to get transit to all corners of this city if you elevated it where necessary? This way you don’t have to rely on the current street grid for the transit layout nor any lights or cars to slow it down. Surely there are enough rail and hydro corridors in this city that you could zig zag all over this city.

 

[AnarchoSocialist]

Not professing to be a transit expert AT ALL, I will pose this question. In comparison to subway, LRT, etc... why would Vancouver's Skytrain type set-up not work here? Would it not be easier to get transit to all corners of this city if you elevated it where necessary? This way you don’t have to rely on the current street grid for the transit layout nor any lights or cars to slow it down. Surely there are enough rail and hydro corridors in this city that you could zig zag all over this city.

Actually you largely answered your own question in your last sentence. There are more than enough rail and hydro corridors in the city that resorting to an elevated system really is not necessary.

One of the big problems that transit planners face is that for the past 2 decades in Toronto there has been such a minimal amount of investment in transit and a change in commuting and living patterns that solutions are not going to be obvious or immediate. It will take time for planners from all agencies to develop and refine systems that will work for Toronto. The specific version of LRT that is being proposed in the Transit City plan may or may not work (personally, I think it will) but an answer won't really be known until systems are up and running. If it fails, then you will likely see another SRT type situation with a stumpy, incomplete line, maybe two, just working in isolation while the TTC moves on to something else.

 

[unimaginative2]

Not professing to be a transit expert AT ALL, I will pose this question. In comparison to subway, LRT, etc... why would Vancouver's Skytrain type set-up not work here? Would it not be easier to get transit to all corners of this city if you elevated it where necessary? This way you don’t have to rely on the current street grid for the transit layout nor any lights or cars to slow it down. Surely there are enough rail and hydro corridors in this city that you could zig zag all over this city.

Heresy alert! The Skytrain technology is an absolute failure that no other city in the world has adopted (conveniently ignoring Vancouver, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Detroit, New York City...), particularly evil since it was intented to be built instead of beloved streetcars on new suburban routes. None of these routes are about speed. They're about a concept of "local service." The belief is that if a bus route is replaced with a streetcar of more-or-less equivalent capacity and speed, the street will be immediately re-developed to look like Queen Street. Instead of long journeys to subway line hubs which make up the majority of trips in the suburbs, people will now be travelling from Jane and Finch on the streetcar to do their shopping in the fields at Jane and Eglinton. Hydro and rail corridors are absolutely unacceptable for any of this service, as is any kind of express operation. All transit must travel wherever remotely possible down the middle of an arterial road, and must make every local stop. That's the ideology that drives the Transit City plan. That's why it's missing the point for people like me to say things like "If we used the hydro corridor, people would have much quicker service," or "We could have built a subway for less money." Quick service is not an objective, and subways are inherently bad because their stops are (comparatively) infrequent and don't run in the middle of the street. The main goal is to have stops as close as possible to people's front doors. Read Steve Munro, for example. He condemns the Sheppard subway as destructive to the neighbourhood because it has meant reduced service on the Sheppard East bus. Of course, if you asked the people who actually live in the neighbourhood, the ovewhelming majority would say that they're overjoyed to have a subway replace their old bus service, but I guess their preferences are simply wrong.

 

[theman23]

Why don't they just run the LRT alongside the road in a separated grade area or something instead of in the middle? I've seen other LRTs that do this and they seem to achieve high speeds. Would this be more expensive?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Not professing to be a transit expert AT ALL, I will pose this question. In comparison to subway, LRT, etc... why would Vancouver's Skytrain type set-up not work here? Would it not be easier to get transit to all corners of this city if you elevated it where necessary? This way you don’t have to rely on the current street grid for the transit layout nor any lights or cars to slow it down. Surely there are enough rail and hydro corridors in this city that you could zig zag all over this city.

There's not much inherently wrong with the technology and I think it could work just fine in places...RT-related complaints are mainly due to the horribly inconvenient transfer and the lack of proper vehicles. Since we're insisting on keeping the RT in Scarborough, why not expand it? Even including occasional weather delays, travel times are proven to be fast - who wouldn't love doing a concession in barely 2 minutes?

 

[Pep'rJack]

None of these routes are about speed. They're about a concept of "local service." The belief is that if a bus route is replaced with a streetcar of more-or-less equivalent capacity and speed, the street will be immediately re-developed to look like Queen Street. ... All transit must travel wherever remotely possible down the middle of an arterial road, and must make every local stop. That's the ideology that drives the Transit City plan. ... Read Steve Munro, for example. He condemns the Sheppard subway as destructive to the neighbourhood because it has meant reduced service on the Sheppard East bus. Of course, if you asked the people who actually live in the neighbourhood, the ovewhelming majority would say that they're overjoyed to have a subway replace their old bus service, but I guess their preferences are simply wrong.

*Why* is this the dominant thinking amongst the power that be? How did intolerably pokey local streetcar service come to be the driving mantra of the entire system? Where did these inane ideas come from, and why do they rule the day?

Really, what the fuck is going on here? What collective idiocy/madness has apparently removed SPEED from the equation? This is truly bizarre to me, nearly incomprehensible. How did this happen?

 

[rbt]

Really, what the fuck is going on here? What collective idiocy/madness has apparently removed SPEED from the equation? This is truly bizarre to me, nearly incomprehensible. How did this happen?

Said by a person who obviously doesn't use these routes. These are NOT meant for 905 people to get into downtown quickly. They are meant for the people who live or work along the route itself. They have destinations to stop at. Stopping requires, well, stopping.

Go Transit is for long distance commutes. TTC surface is for short distance trips. TTC underground is for medium length trips.

If you want to get from point A to point B, take the TTC. If you want to get from point A to point Z, take Go Transit.

Honestly, how does public transit make money on a route? Very high churn. You don't get high churn unless you stop regularly with lots of people getting on and off.

It's a slow local route because financially that is what the TTC requires. Ever wonder why express service charges higher fares?

 

[ShonTron]

I also think these Transit City routes will be faster than Spadina for several reasons.

The first is that Spadina and say Don Mills are like apples and oranges. Spadina is an urban street with lots of activity. Don Mills has fewer stops per kilometre, farther apart traffic lights, less concentrated loads. If Eglinton-Crosstown is to be underground, we're not going to get the same stop spacing, that's for sure.

Secondly, these will be bigger LRVs with what will have to be POP. Loading times will be sped up.

I would hope that these will be semi-express services with stop spacing at least 2-3 times the average suburban route. The TTC has to clarify how close the stops will be, and we may first learn this in the EA stage.

And the Transportation Department will have to turn on the signal priority.

So far, though, I find the bit of St. Clair that's finished to be not too bad for traffic lights and a bit faster than before.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Honestly, how does public transit make money on a route? Very high churn. You don't get high churn unless you stop regularly with lots of people getting on and off.

It's a slow local route because financially that is what the TTC requires. Ever wonder why express service charges higher fares?

Public transit is a service, not a business.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

"Faster than Spadina" may still be so slow that suburban ridership declines even with the multi-billion dollar investment. In the past I measured a bunch of suburban bus routes and found they often stop around every 300m on average. If you're going to have them stop only every 900m, you better add some real speed to the equation, not just "improvements" upon Spadina. People will be riding these lines for a heck of a lot longer than they ride Spadina (most ride it less than 3km).

Said by a person who obviously doesn't use these routes. TTC surface is for short distance trips.

Err...no.

Perhaps pep'rjack is being sarcastic, but I agree with him completely. I use suburban bus routes as much as anyone else here, and tens/hundreds of thousands of people are forced to ride surface transit for very long distances because there's simply nothing else available. The 416 is ridiculously underserved by fast, heavy rail (GO, subways, whatever) and the bus routes, the real pride of the TTC, pick up the slack. Shockingly, not all local surface routes in Toronto are as mindnumbingly slow as downtown streetcar routes.

Unlike streetcar routes downtown or the subway lines, very few bus riders are only riding a few stops...most bus stops have nothing but houses or parks or industrial land nearby, hardly the kind of land uses that generate high turnover - every TTC surface route loses money. If you honestly think bus riders aren't transferring all over the place to get off their arterial corridor that's full of nothing but houses or aren't shuttling straight to the subway in huge rush hour mobs and don't prioritize speed or travel times, it's just so far from reality that I don't even know how to respond to that.

 

[Pep'rJack]

Perhaps pep'rjack is being sarcastic

Nope, not in the least, unfortunately. Pep'rJack is just totally frustrated and pissed with the obvious stupidity of not making speed top priority when expanding and 'improving' the system.

tens/hundreds of thousands of people are forced to ride surface transit for very long distances because there's simply nothing else available. The 416 is ridiculously underserved by fast, heavy rail (GO, subways, whatever)

Right. Who disputes this? Some grand streetcar plan will do nearly zilch to address this core problem. Supporting this demi-arsed idea is just a rationalization of a cheap-o scheme which will do little but pass the real problem on to yet another generation.

If you honestly think bus riders aren't transferring all over the place to get off their arterial corridor that's full of nothing but houses or aren't shuttling straight to the subway in huge rush hour mobs and don't prioritize speed or travel times, it's just so far from reality that I don't even know how to respond to that.

Right again, and this is the source of Pep'rJack's ire: those planning this system, and those endorsing it, seem to be living in a completely different city than the one I do - a unique fairy-land in which streetcars can handle medium/long-distance trips, and no one ever cares about how long it takes to get anywhere. It's simply ridiculous - hence, "what the fuck is going on here?", and "how did this happen?".

 

[CDL.TO]

I rode the first section of the new St. Clair PROW for the first time yesterday and was dissapointed by how frequent the stops are. 6 stops in 1km by my count.

 

[unimaginative2]

TTC speeds up Transit City plan

There's only so much we can build ...all at once in Toronto. Adam Giambrone , TTC chair Streamlined process could see construction of some light rail lines begin as early as 2009

Jul 12, 2007 04:30 AM
Tess Kalinowski
Transportation Reporter

The first phase of Toronto's proposed $6 billion Transit City streetcar network could be on the tracks as early as 2011, although the following year is more likely.

A newly streamlined environmental assessment process and compressed public consultations would allow the Toronto Transit Commission to put shovels in the dirt on two of the seven proposed light rail lines in 2009, according to an implementation plan approved by commissioners yesterday.

Construction would take place first on either the Etobicoke-Finch West line or the Sheppard East line, where preliminary studies have been finished already. Work on the 30.5-kilometre Eglinton-Crosstown line, to run from Kennedy Station to Pearson airport, would begin about the same time.

"Eglinton is going to take a number of years. We're going to build an underground section about the same length as the Sheppard subway, which is five kilometres," said TTC chair Adam Giambrone. It will be designed so it could accommodate a subway line later.

Planners have to be cognizant of the fact that in 2011, work will be proceeding on extending the Spadina subway line, the Scarborough rapid transit line, possibly a second subway extension on the Yonge line – "if you listen to the provincial announcement" – plus two or three light rail lines, Giambrone said. "There's only so much we can build and so many roads we can rip up all at once in Toronto."

The commission has told TTC staff to start designing the lines even though the two-thirds funding committed by the province last month won't be assured unless the Ontario Liberals are re-elected in October. When the province announced its funding for Transit City, the government said it was assuming Ottawa would kick in the other third, but the federal government has yet to confirm that.

"We need to begin to design these lines so we don't lose a year or a year and a half later on because a new government or the same government will come back to power and by the time it's up and operating it's the end of the year," he said.

He added that the TTC has to build two car houses to accommodate the lines, at $200 million each. The $400 million funding hasn't been approved, although it might be possible to find the money in the Transit City plan if savings are found elsewhere, Giambrone said.

The Transit City implementation plan was approved one day after the TTC asked the budget committee for an extra $6.7 million for 54 new drivers to alleviate overcrowding.

The TTC is buying 204 accessible, low-floor streetcars to replace its aging fleet, but the Transit City plan would require an additional 260 cars at about $5 million each.

Community consultations will have to take place at the same time as the design work, but that doesn't mean those consultations aren't genuine, said TTC commissioner Glenn De Baeremaeker.

"Whether you like them or not, we're building. There's a massive outcry from the public that we need public transit," he said. "We're building. Get on board and tell us what you need."