Transit City Plan

[bleu]

I don't disagree with you about Scarborough. But your point was that they don't have stops that close in Paris or Manhattan, and not even you agree with yourself!

I was more talking about our streetcar stop spacing.
An example of excessive stops I often use is the 505 stops at Yonge st, Victoria st, Bond St and then church st. When the distance from Yonge to Church is 350 meters, averaging at 115 meters per stop.

For the 501, between Parliament and River st, also 4 stops for 650 meters, averaging at 165 meters per stop.

 

[nfitz]

Paris' only post-WW2 subway line is over 1km spacing as well, and its RER is usually well over 1km.

The RER is a different kettle of fish - more like our GO train, but with very frequent service.

And Line 14? For the most part, Line 14 is an express line, that parallels pieces of other lines, where there are a lot of stations. Though there are spots they could have dropped another station and didn't.

Should there be a line in a dense urban area where the stations are 400 metres or less? Yes!

Should we be building the new LRT in Scarborough with an average 400 metre spacing? No.

 

[Electrify]

My accesibility argument is silly? Really? I am in the majority, actually.

http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/71229-colle-pushes-for-lrt-station-at-oakwood/

Josh Colle pushes for a Oakwood stop after petition from local resident demand a stop.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...fight_to_put_leslie_stop_back_on_the_map.html

Resident fight to put Ferrand stop back.

My accessibility argument is quite valid, it's your argument that 500m isn't far that is silly. Like it or, not 500m is a pretty fair distance for many riders. It's why you hear stories of resident petitioning to put stops back in, and planners saying we should be building transit for livable communities, and not primarily for the quickest vehicle speed. You guys always ignore the total travel time from door to door, and just shrug it off by saying "x-distance isn't far, people are just lazy". when someone brings it up. Like it not or, it far by many people, and to focus solely on terminal to terminal riders is just wrong.

You need a good compromise between accessibility, and speed. Transit should be fast, but not at the expense of accesibilty, so the spacing for each corridor may be different. It's crazy to say we should make the station on every single transit route 1km apart, and that's it. I'm not a planner, but even I know that's just lazy planning.

I forgot to mention, the TC lines are going to have less stops than the current bus routes, which is a speed improvement in itself.

Oakwood makes sense, arguably. It is about 600m to both Dufferin and Allen, and Oakwood Village is a fairly urban avenue with lots of mixed use activity along it. On the other hand, the area around Ferrand is not only suburbia to the core (single family detached homes, midrise office towers isolated by vast parking lots and green space), but is only about 230m away from Don Mills.

The residents who petition to keep their extra local stop, do they actually use transit or do they like what it does for their property values? And if they do use transit, do they understand the benefits of having the bus or train being able to run through without stopping?

This is the reason I chose this project. My early conclusions are showing that people would much rather walk a couple of minutes longer in favour of faster service. In fact, while conducting the surveys, I saw a number of people head towards Warden I presume to catch a 190 express and/or enjoy the increased frequency of two lines, rather than wait for the local 85 at Bay Mills. For the record, this is an assumption, though I believe a reasonable one. Though I did see one person walking along Sheppard consistently looking back to see if a bus was coming, and when he got to Bay Mills, he he looked back and continued walking towards Warden. Unfortunately, for whatever reason I did not stop him to see if he would like to do a survey.

Since I haven't gotten enough surveys completed, I am going to go out one more time and ask people waiting to catch a bus eastbound. It will be interesting to see if the results change or stay the same, as it is about 600m to Birchmount, and those answering the survey may not consider backtracking to Warden which is only about 200m away.

 

[Electrify]

Hang on, am I reading this right? You're surprised that King, Dundas, and Wellesley stations exist? Each of those stations is a transfer point for a busy surface route, and not having them would make the downtown transit network completely dysfunctional. The extremely high usage of King and Dundas stations suggests that building them was indeed the right decision.

Okay, I'll admit I didn't express this properly. For Queen, it would be half way between King and Queen (ie: Richmond), therefore those at the north end of the train could catch a Queen car, and those at the south could catch a King car. Likewise, the College stop would be closer to Gerrard, so that one could catch a Dundas or College from one station. Same goes for Bloor station and Wellesley.

What do you mean? There are subway lines in Manhattan with stops every 400 metres.

And Paris?? I was surprised riding the Metro in Paris how close together the stops were ... and checking Google maps, 400 metres or less is every common between stops. Let's pick a line. line 3. 11.7 km with 25 stations. So the average spacing is 488 metres. And that's average, like many lines, it's tighter in the centre, and spreads out a bit at the edges.

In Manhattan, a lot of the lines which stop more frequently also have express branches which bypass the smaller stations. As for the Paris metro, yes, it does have the shortest stop spacing of any system. However, besides the density factor, they also wanted to keep the poor from the suburbs away from the wealthy within the city. The close stop spacing also became problematic as the city grew, which is why they had to build a whole new system, the RER, on top of it.

 

[nfitz]

Okay, I'll admit I didn't express this properly. For Queen, it would be half way between King and Queen (ie: Richmond), therefore those at the north end of the train could catch a Queen car, and those at the south could catch a King car. Likewise, the College stop would be closer to Gerrard, so that one could catch a Dundas or College from one station. Same goes for Bloor station and Wellesley.

Hang on ... Dundas is the busiest station between Union and Bloor - and frequently overcrowded. And your suggesting that it might not be necessary? And replacing the extremely busy King and Queen stations with one? Wouldn't that lead to extended time on the platform loading/unloading, resulting in a reduction of capacity?

The close stop spacing also became problematic as the city grew, which is why they had to build a whole new system, the RER, on top of it.

Is there any reference anywhere to support that the reason the RER was built was because of close stop spacing on the Metro? Because that's not what I've read at all. In fact, there's a big hint in what the second R stands for!

If Paris was really concerned about the stop spacing, they'd simply have closed stations, the same way they did in Manhattan on some lines.

 

[diminutive]

Is there any reference anywhere to support that the reason the RER was built was because of close stop spacing on the Metro? Because that's not what I've read at all. In fact, there's a big hint in what the second R stands for!

If Paris was really concerned about the stop spacing, they'd simply have closed stations, the same way they did in Manhattan on some lines.

The RER came about for a number of reasons, one being the slow speed of Paris existing metro network. Given <500m station spacing it seemed impractical to extend them ~50km into the suburbs. Another big reason though was that Paris' commuter rail network was all stub-ended in the City, which lead to unnecessary transfers onto the already crowded metro network.

Compare to Toronto where we've basically been able to just grow the Yonge line out. If we had built the Yonge line with 20 stations between Eglinton and Union we wouldn't have been able to extend it to Finch, let alone proposals to go to Hwy 7!

And Line 14? For the most part, Line 14 is an express line, that parallels pieces of other lines, where there are a lot of stations. Though there are spots they could have dropped another station and didn't.

Most of the Paris metro runs near other metro lines. That's why something like a 5th of stations are interchanges. Line 14 was built the way it is because it's no longer seen as necessary or practical to have stations 400m apart.

Honestly, the only recent system i can think of with ~400m station spacing is Turin's.

 

[nfitz]

Most of the Paris metro runs near other metro lines. That's why something like a 5th of stations are interchanges. Line 14 was built the way it is because it's no longer seen as necessary or practical to have stations 400m apart.

No longer necessary, because there are already stations just about anywhere you want them. Similar is seen with the newer Jubilee and Victoria lines in London (which is part of the reason they are so overcrowded, because they are faster and more popular).

But if you were starting from scratch in Paris today without any subway, you'd likely still build a subway with some stations 400 metres or less apart.

I can't imagine anyone in Toronto, if we were building our first subway today, would advocate than any of Dundas, Queen, King, or Union would be removed ... and the average spacing there is about 400 metres.

 

[diminutive]

No longer necessary, because there are already stations just about anywhere you want them. Similar is seen with the newer Jubilee and Victoria lines in London (which is part of the reason they are so overcrowded, because they are faster and more popular).

But if you were starting from scratch in Paris today without any subway, you'd likely still build a subway with some stations 400 metres or less apart.

I can't imagine anyone in Toronto, if we were building our first subway today, would advocate than any of Dundas, Queen, King, or Union would be removed ... and the average spacing there is about 400 metres.

I could see Summerhill and Rosedale being consolidated nowadays.

In any case, no, you're right. Having a few stations 400m apart in a dense urban area isn't the end of the world. The issue with a place like Paris is that 400-500m spacing is the norm not the exception. You've basically got a station for every 30 hectares which is overkill. I honestly don't think if the Metro was being built from scratch you would have such such tight spacing

 

[BurlOak]

What do you mean? There are subway lines in Manhattan with stops every 400 metres.

And Paris?? I was surprised riding the Metro in Paris how close together the stops were ... and checking Google maps, 400 metres or less is every common between stops. Let's pick a line. line 3. 11.7 km with 25 stations. So the average spacing is 488 metres. And that's average, like many lines, it's tighter in the centre, and spreads out a bit at the edges.

It seems that most, if not all, international examples have stations closer together where the density and demand are higher. Toronto seemed to follow this in the past. For Transit City (Eglinton, Sheppard), it seems the philosophy is to have closer spacing at the outer edges and farther spacing where demand is higher.

 

[Electrify]

Hang on ... Dundas is the busiest station between Union and Bloor - and frequently overcrowded. And your suggesting that it might not be necessary? And replacing the extremely busy King and Queen stations with one? Wouldn't that lead to extended time on the platform loading/unloading, resulting in a reduction of capacity?

Is there any reference anywhere to support that the reason the RER was built was because of close stop spacing on the Metro? Because that's not what I've read at all. In fact, there's a big hint in what the second R stands for!

If Paris was really concerned about the stop spacing, they'd simply have closed stations, the same way they did in Manhattan on some lines.

1. For the time, yes. Dundas has grown remarkably well, in part due to the subway. But up until the mid 20th century it was not considered a major road when compared to College and Queen. In fact, up until the late 19th century, it didn't exist at all!

2.

The network reached saturation after World War II. The Métro introduced newer trains to allow higher traffic. Further improvements are limited by the design of the network, such as short distances between stations, the solution was a second network. Besides the Metro, Downtown Paris and its urban area are served by the RER developed from the 1960s, several tramway lines, the Transilien (suburban trains) and two VAL lines serving Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_metro

 

[tayser]

I found this interesting article on stop spacing for Melbourne's tram system that argue it's lack of proper signal priority, not the number of stops that slow trams down.

http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/nonstop.shtml

The PTUA mean well, but really the stop spacing in Melbourne hasn't changed since the days of cable trams and many stops are completely irrelevant (you could quite literally remove half the stops on the network and you'd on average only have an extra 200m to get to a tram stop).

They also advocate building branch rail lines to continue the notion that trains are just for suburb to city commuters.

 

[Electrify]

I'm looking to go out for one more day of surveys, since so far my return rate have been piss poor. While I won't speak for all of the local Transit City stops, I can say with certainty that the demand for use of the Bay Mills one is low enough that running a bus every 20-30 minutes would more than adequately meet its demand.

I was thinking of surveying the Ferrand stop on Eglinton, since it was to be cut but apparently has been reinstated. However, after doing some research, it appears it is only serviced on Sundays. WE ARE BUILDING A RAPID TRANSIT STATION FOR A SUNDAY STOP?!? These people want a rapid transit station, shouldn't they first be petitioning for a bus stop which is active 7 days a week? $10 bucks says that the people who were up in arms with having it cut are not transit users, and simply are interested in what it means for their property values.

 

[nfitz]

I was thinking of surveying the Ferrand stop on Eglinton, since it was to be cut but apparently has been reinstated. However, after doing some research, it appears it is only serviced on Sundays. WE ARE BUILDING A RAPID TRANSIT STATION FOR A SUNDAY STOP?!? These people want a rapid transit station, shouldn't they first be petitioning for a bus stop which is active 7 days a week? $10 bucks says that the people who were up in arms with having it cut are not transit users, and simply are interested in what it means for their property values.

You must be looking at the wrong stop. If you click on the stop in Google maps right now (5:35 pm), I see there is a 34 bus every 4 minutes. The stop name is "Eglinton Ave East at Don Valley Pkwy West Side". Not only that, you can see 2 people in the shelter on the north side in Streetview from the westbound lanes of Eglinton and a different person from the eastbound lanes.

If you look in the density map previously posted by CDL.TO in this forum (below), you can see there is very high density in the area south of the stop. There's no reason to think that this stop wouldn't get well used - probably more so than many of the surface stops in the golden mile.


Full size

 

[Electrify]

I'm looking at the stop which is closest to the access to Ferrand, which is Eglinton at Jesus Christ Church for Latter Day Saints. I would assume that this is where the stop would be located, not next to the DVP.

But say that is where it will be located, I predict the ridership would be pitifully low. While the other stops have the benefit of at least connecting with residential side streets, this stop would connect with a highway off ramp! There are some offices to the south, but they would be within a 10 minute walk (800m) of Don Mills and Eglinton. Or if that is too much, a 2.5 minute walk (200m) from the Flemingdon Park bus, which can be transferred on to from the Wynford Dr station.

 

[innsertnamehere]

ferrand will be directly north of the ICICI bank office building, directly west of the DVP offramp. it will likely end up being the stop for 3 office buildings, and a large portion of eastern flemingdon park.