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Transit City Plan
- Thread starter 299 bloor call control.
- Start date
Electrify
Senior Member
Wish it would let you sign up without having to select your ward, especially for those who live outside Toronto proper.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
It could be successful but only if the people wanting to bring it back also acknledge the flaws of TC and bring forth a revised and better plan suchas increasin it's speed with fewer stops and over/underpasses where possible. They should also make use of the existing rail/hydro corridors which the original TC didn't.
TC was improved transit but under no stretch of the imagination was it rapid. Torontonians knew this which is one of the primary reasons why they refuteated the plan. Torontonians want to get from A to B as fast and smoothly as possible and that means fewer stops and fewer transfers.
As I have said before, it wasn't the idea of TC that was a bad one but rather it's execution.
TC was improved transit but under no stretch of the imagination was it rapid. Torontonians knew this which is one of the primary reasons why they refuteated the plan. Torontonians want to get from A to B as fast and smoothly as possible and that means fewer stops and fewer transfers.
As I have said before, it wasn't the idea of TC that was a bad one but rather it's execution.
jeffreym
Active Member
Fewer stops means further to walk to get to the vehicle which very well might equal a longer trip. Obviously at the other extreme (Spadina Streetcar) you're spending a lot of time stopped, but there has to be a happy medium. I think the 3 stops/2km (I know that was the case on Finch at least) is that happy medium. Look at some of the stops on the YUS downtown – it's only 230m between Bay and Yonge for example. With all door loading on the large cars/trains stops should be reasonably quick.
As others have mentioned, the real comparison is between existing service and TC. Just the fact that the vehicles are larger, stops will be less frequent and there will be all door loading will make a huge difference.
As others have mentioned, the real comparison is between existing service and TC. Just the fact that the vehicles are larger, stops will be less frequent and there will be all door loading will make a huge difference.
nfitz
Superstar
It will be interesting to see if there is some stop rationalization/elimination when the new streetcars are introduced. With the low-floor vehicles, they will have to be doing curb-cuts at all the stops to make them accessible - somehow I'd think that at a minimum the Sunday-only stops will vanish.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
This thread is about Transit City, not streetcars. And anyways, the Transit City will be level boarding while the streetcars will have adjustable retractable ramps were there are no islands or platforms. The Transit City LRV's will not have any retractable ramps, hence cheaper vehicles.
Electrify
Senior Member
Studies show that people are willing to walk longer distances to faster services. 3 stops/2 stations every 2km is the absolute closest they should be, and even that is pushing it outside a central or very high density area. 4 stops/3 stations and it goes from 'rapid' to 'local,' or at least that is the case in systems where they are designed by planners and not politicians pandering to every resident who wants a stop at their front door without a care to the masses mobility needs (European local stops are about 400m, while North American ones are every 200m).
sixrings
Senior Member
when i grew up in scarborough at huntingwood and midland, when traveling downtown i would walk 5 minutes north to finch and take the finch bus to yonge and the yonge line down. The walk to finch allowed me to take only one transfer downtown plus it sometimes offered express busses. otherwise i had to take the midland bus to the srt to the bloor line to the yonge line to get to union. you would have to catch every transfer perfectly to make the midland bus the faster route. anyways all that to say id gladly walk to get better service speeds.
again just getting back from nyc it always seems people walk farther to get to a subway and the subway stopping seems greater distance wise as well. i stay at my aunts in queens and theres a bus that goes by her building to the subway but she always advocates just walking the 10 minutes rather then waiting for a bus. that seems polar opposite from toronto where people do want a stop at their door.
nfitz
Superstar
Given that our Transit City includes buses, I don't see why it doesn't include streetcars.
k10ery
Senior Member
Thanks nfitz and sixrings but I'm still confused. The article says that Chong's report goes to executive committee, not council, and I would have thought it would be just one of those for-info-no-financial-implications things. But if I'm wrong and they want to push forward they will have to find his $10 million now that TTIL is tapped.
Also as I read the MOU it says the Eglinton EAs are entirely Metrolinx's problem and at Metrolinx's expense.
I could be wrong but I thought the smart strategy was to quietly put off all the real decisions until October 2014 and see where we're at post-election. But that assumes Metrolinx sees things as people here do. It could be there's a faction in there who wants it underground so it's "regional transit" not "local transit".
nfitz
Superstar
Most things before the Executive Committee then get voted on at the next council meeting. Looking at the calendar, I'd guess it would be at the January 24th Executive Committee meeting, and then before the February 6/7 council, unless it's at the EC in Feb for the March 5/6 council.
I believe that City still needs to sign off at council level ...
jeffreym
Active Member
Well sure, but remember that if stops were 600m apart, there would be plenty of people that would still have to walk a lot more than half the distance between stops to actually get to a stop.
If we did 1 stop/km it'd sure be faster, but at the same time 1 stop/2km would be even faster and 1 stop/4km would be faster yet. In fact why don't we go for 1 stop/8km? The fact of the matter is that we need to pick people up and let people off so that they can actually get where they need to go. That gets back to the need for balance between stop distance and vehicle speed.
Rainforest
Senior Member
The stop spacing should depend on the line's length and primary role. If I need to travel only 2 km or 4 km on the line in question, then close stop spacing is best for me; increasing the speed from 20 kph to 30 kph saves me only 2 or 4 minutes, respectively.
But if I have to travel 15 km, then the said speed increase cuts my travel time from 45 min to 30 min; that likely beats any increase in walking time due to the stops being further apart.
If peolpe transfer to this line from other routes, they almost always transfer at major intersections or hubs. For that group of riders, higher speed is preferable while closer stop spacing is not useful at all.
So, for lines with primarily local role, where you expect a lot of short trips and not many transfers, close stop spacing is best (I guess 400 m of less). For trunk lines, where a lot of long-range trips and a lot of transfers from minor routes are expected, stop spacing should be wider.
sixrings
Senior Member
well every one is going to have different ideas of what each lines primary role should be. However because tc was a suburban system it seems obvious to me that it needs fewer stops since there are less destinations and less density.
id suggest rather then using a 400m or 600m or 800m approach of deciding where stations should go, TC should ONLY stop at major intersections (two main streets with traffic lights)
The only "primary" line is Transit City is the ESLRT. Every other line is part of the secondary surface network. They're a series of feeder lines that dump people onto the subways, and eventually the GO system.
As for the stop spacing, I think this would be a good rule of thumb: Every N-S arterial in Scarbourough (given that they are on a different grid size than everywhere else). For the standard 2x2km grid areas, a stop at a major intersection, with 1 mid-block stop located wherever a major bisecting collector is (usually these collectors will be somewhere around mid-block, but they may be slightly towards 1 side or the other). However, in high density areas, a 2nd mid-block stop can be added.