Transit City Plan

[kEiThZ]

I could easily see this being less than 50 minutes to get from Kennedy to Pearson.

It'll be quick but not that quick. If it took only 50 mins then it would be as fast as the Bloor-Danforth subway. Obviously, that's not going to be the case. It'll take well over an hour. Hopefully, the time saved from having to transfer at Kipling and ride the bus to the airport will compensate for the longer ride.

 

[Brandon716]

It'll be quick but not that quick. If it took only 50 mins then it would be as fast as the Bloor-Danforth subway. Obviously, that's not going to be the case. It'll take well over an hour. Hopefully, the time saved from having to transfer at Kipling and ride the bus to the airport will compensate for the longer ride.

Why will it take over an hour if the line is 31km?

The MAX reference I used goes through several blocks of traffic signals, I think its close to 10km, right through downtown Portland. And it manages to travel the distance in 50 minutes.

Edit: I just mapped out Portland's MAX as it goes through downtown and the central city. It spends 7.5km through intense urban street crossings (not long-spaced suburban crossings that are more quick) so compare that to the fewer than 20 intersections that Eglinton Crosstown will go through, I think its entirely accurate to expect Eglinton Crosstown to go through its entire 31 km route in 50-55 minutes. The 7.5km MAX downtown-east side route does not include other sections in other parts of the metro area it crosses traffic, and there are several other MAX sections that cross traffic. I used to live in Beaverton, and some of the stops were so close you could see the other station from Beaverton TC... I just fail to see how the Eglinton Crosstown LRT will be as slow as some people suggest.

Here's a calculation I've come up with.

Portland MAX Blue Line is 53km long. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAX_Blue_Line
According to the schedule, it takes 1 hour and 38 minutes to do a complete trip Source: http://trimet.org/schedules/maxblueline.htm

53km divided by 98 minutes = .54km a minute

MAX Blue Line goes through central Gresham, central Hillsboro, and downtown Portland. A significant portion is through urban downtowns, Hillsboro and Gresham each have about 100,000 residents and are urban for American suburban standards.

.54km/minute is a viable speed for Eglinton Crosstown. .54km x 60 minutes = 32.4km

So I believe you're right, it will take right at 1 hour from trains leaving Pearson airport to arrive at Kennedy.

Eglinton Crosstown is reported to be only 30.8km according to this source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eglinton_Crosstown_LRT_(TTC)

If this is true, I don't see how it can't achieve crosstown travel in 55 minutes, just under one hour. If MAX Blue Line goes across intersections throughout 4 downtowns: Portland, Gresham, Hillsboro, Beaverton (population 550,000, 120,000, 100,000, 100,000 respectively) and achieves this at .54km/minute, I fail to see how Eglinton will be ANY slower when it only goes through fewer than 20 suburban intersections.

This is the most scientific hypothesis I've seen yet as to what to expect, and given my personal experience of living in Portland nearly 1 year and using the Blue line to get to work, I think that is what you can expect with Eglinton Crosstown.

This LRT speed issue isn't as bad as it was once thought. The MAX crosses many suburban thoroughfares and downtown streets, and Eglinton Crosstown has the benefit of the entire central 10km core being tunneled with 850m spaced stops.

My hope is that they build the platforms capable of handling a minimum of 3 cars per train, because Portland MAX is only capable of 2 cars per train (2 compartments per car). If 3 cars per train are ran all day/all night on Eglinton Crosstown, this LRT could easily handle over 400-500k passengers a day no problem at all.

 

[kEiThZ]

Brandon,

The distance being reported these days is 32.5 km. If the speed is anything like that of Sheppard LRT (22 kph) then Eglinton will already be well over an hour. However, since a third of it is tunneled I think we will see the line get up to an average of around 25kph (yielding 1 hr 16.8 mins). The max I can ever see them achieving on Eglinton would be around 28-30 kph (the much rumoured extended tunneling along Eglinton West). And even then the ride would still take over an hour (albeit just a bit over an hour; 65-70 mins).

Your Portland example is not necessarily applicable here. Put it this way: If we achieved the same speed at Portland Max, then the Eglinton LRT would be as quick or quicker than the Bloor-Danforth line while having a half to two thirds of its distance at-grade. That does not seem very feasible to me.

 

[Dan416]

Well considernig the province will be paying for things like the Eglinton line, they should be deciding technology and stop spacing. And since the Eglinton line will be of regional significance, doesn't that mean Metrolinx, i.e. the province, will own it?

 

[Brandon716]

Brandon,

The distance being reported these days is 32.5 km. If the speed is anything like that of Sheppard LRT (22 kph) then Eglinton will already be well over an hour. However, since a third of it is tunneled I think we will see the line get up to an average of around 25kph (yielding 1 hr 16.8 mins). The max I can ever see them achieving on Eglinton would be around 28-30 kph (the much rumoured extended tunneling along Eglinton West). And even then the ride would still take over an hour (albeit just a bit over an hour; 65-70 mins).

Your Portland example is not necessarily applicable here. Put it this way: If we achieved the same speed at Portland Max, then the Eglinton LRT would be as quick or quicker than the Bloor-Danforth line while having a half to two thirds of its distance at-grade. That does not seem very feasible to me.

Considering how much they are patterning Transit City after LRT like found in Portland (right down to the fare system) I doubt it'll be that different. There's a reason Portland's system is relatively quick despite the in traffic sections: the fare system boards just like a subway. Although its an honor system largely, they just have transit officers that make rounds in the trains every so often to check for tickets.

There's other factors involved, but Transit City is following a lot of key principles that make LRT faster. I know Portland's MAX system was faster than what we have here in Pittsburgh purely because of the fare system and platform only boarding system.

You do realize MAX crosses many busy urban intersections almost like a TTC streetcar in downtown Toronto and still attains that speed because of the fact LRT runs so damn fast when its in its own ROW.

I could see it being as high as an hour and 10 minutes, but not much more. It really depends on the final alignment and actual plan.

32.5 km could be an hour and 10 minutes easy.

 

[kEiThZ]

Considering how much they are patterning Transit City after LRT like found in Portland (right down to the fare system) I doubt it'll be that different. There's a reason Portland's system is relatively quick despite the in traffic sections: the fare system boards just like a subway. Although its an honor system largely, they just have transit officers that make rounds in the trains every so often to check for tickets.

There's other factors involved, but Transit City is following a lot of key principles that make LRT faster. I know Portland's MAX system was faster than what we have here in Pittsburgh purely because of the fare system and platform only boarding system.

You do realize MAX crosses many busy urban intersections almost like a TTC streetcar in downtown Toronto and still attains that speed because of the fact LRT runs so damn fast when its in its own ROW.

There's a lot of similarities to be sure. But the context of Eglinton is unique to Toronto. Portland's system provides something akin to a regional service in that it provides services between communities (significantly wider average stop spacing along the entire route). That's not going to be case here. This LRT is being targeted towards local needs (as of now). In that sense, it is not likely to be anywhere as fast as the example you provided. Portland MAX has an average speed of 32.4 kph which pretty much what the Bloor-Danforth line achieves in Toronto. There is virtually no chance that the Eglinton LRT would match that unless we bury the whole thing and have 800m+ spacing the entire way; that would essentially be a subway! Once again, using the Sheppard LRT example....if that line is achieving only 22 kph in an operational context that is less restrictive than Eglinton, I can't see how Eglinton could be significantly faster without burying almost the entire line.

I could see it being as high as an hour and 10 minutes, but not much more. It really depends on the final alignment and actual plan.

32.5 km could be an hour and 10 minutes easy.

Did you read my posts? That's exactly the scenario I laid out: a 70 min ride if it achieves 28kph. That's probably the best case scenario and we would have to lengthen the tunnel significantly for that (at least half to three quarters of the line being buried). As per Steve Munro's post on the issue there is speculation that the tunnel will be lengthened westward which might account for the extra cost.

Well considernig the province will be paying for things like the Eglinton line, they should be deciding technology and stop spacing. And since the Eglinton line will be of regional significance, doesn't that mean Metrolinx, i.e. the province, will own it?

Come now CC. You know that's not really a fair excuse. The province is paying for all the TC lines. If we are to debate the city's plans on the basis of provincial involvement then why not scrap TC all together and give Metrolinx is a blank slate. Then we'd get the ultimate political show....all 905 lines (where the swing voters are) and nothing for the 416 (where the Liberal sheep are). Eglinton may not be perfect but I am not going to trade that for guidance from the same people who gave us the Sorbara subway.

Ultimately though, people have to keep in mind, it's not the technology it's the implementation. LRT can be as fast as HRT if it's buried in a tunnel and has 800m stop spacing throughout. Would Metroliinx force that on the city? God only knows. But I would guess that it would be a step too far for the city for a number of reasons: higher operational cost for no real gain on ridership (a lot of it will be diverted from Bloor-Danforth, and the replacement of the Eglinton bus routes, the higher stop spacing might necessitate a parallel bus service as well like Yonge today), significantly increased capital costs for an insignificant time benefit (1.08333 hrs @ 30 kph vs. 1.3 hrs @ 25 kph...difference of 13 mins for the whole route), etc. I support a subway, but let's not pretend that the subway would make things dramatically faster. At BD speeds we'd save 20 mins or less over the current setup. That's significant for the handful of riders who will be using the whole crosstown function. But is it worth spending 9 billion for HRT?

The reality is that true crosstown can only be done by GO in this city. Imagine GO train service from Agincourt that uses the crosstown route to somehow allow connection to Blue 22. The ride to the airport from Malvern would be under an hour. Anything longer than that is really piddling at the margins.

 

[Brandon716]

Portland's MAX stops are varied. Some are within seeing distance of one another, only a few hundred feet. Others are as long as a mile (or more on certain parts).

I think the average stop size on MAX isn't as far apart as you'd like to think, I think Eglinton Crosstown will be right at 1 hour because its going through fewer than 20 intersections where it'll be 500m per stop.

But at this point our discussion is becoming meaningless until we see more concrete plans of the construction phase.

 

[kEiThZ]

Portland's MAX stops are varied. Some are within seeing distance of one another, only a few hundred feet. Others are as long as a mile (or more on certain parts).

I think the average stop size on MAX isn't as far apart as you'd like to think, I think Eglinton Crosstown will be right at 1 hour because its going through fewer than 20 intersections where it'll be 500m per stop.

It's quite likely that the stops that are a mile apart more than make up for the stops in urban centres that are hundreds of feet apart (and surely you exaggerate here). A mile is 1.6 km. That's double Eglinton's stop spacing in the tunnel. That easily explains why Portland MAX achieves the 32 kph speed it does. Eglinton on the other hand has only 12 of its 40 or more stops in the tunnel. One third of it's line will be operating at something like 30-35 kph average speed while the rest will likely be in line with the projected speed for the Sheppard LRT (22 kph). When it comes to blended average speeds: best case scenario - 27 kph, likely scenario - 25 kph. That's just simple math and an assumption that the tunnel will see LRT moving as fast as the Bloor-Danforth line. We'll see about that one.

But at this point our discussion is becoming meaningless until we see more concrete plans of the construction phase.

There's plenty that can be gleaned from the public consultation and EA. That's why this thread is here. For one, a lot of our discussion about speed can be based on what's being said at these consultations. I'd be severely and pleasantly surprised if the TTC all of a sudden suggested that they have found some miraculous way to achieve 30 kph speeds across all of Eglinton using at-grade LRT.

 

[kettal]

I really don't understand this hard-on people have for replacing the Sheppard subway with LRTs. What, should we start running LRT between Old Mill and Royal York now too? Those stations aren't used much. They sure as hell don't need subway do they? They can survive on LRT. Hell, let's go back to the past and convert all of Bloor-Danforth to LRT. That way we can interline it with both the future Dundas LRT and the Scarborough LRT and the Sheppard LRT. Ridership isn't really that high on portions of B-D anyway. Hmm I think I feel a poll coming up...

No need to act stupid.

The benefit of converting Sheppard into LRT is that it will remove an arbitrary transfer. It benefits nobody to have to change vehicles at Don Mills.

 

[Ansem]

No need to act stupid.

The benefit of converting Sheppard into LRT is that it will remove an arbitrary transfer. It benefits nobody to have to change vehicles at Don Mills.

Yes that's a good idea...

Try to convince someone that it will take at least twice the time to get to Sheppard-Yonge from Don Mills to save 1 transfer point...

Sorry, you will find my lack of faith disturbing

 

[kettal]

Remind me why it will be any slower than it is today?

I fully expect it will be the same speed. Using the same tunnel and stopping at the same stations the subway currently does.

 

[Ansem]

1-less capacity

2-If you convert the entire line, the streetcar will get delayed by left turns and lights before it gets to Don Mills. No way the service will be as efficient as the Subway now...

3-There is nothing wrong with the Sheppard line.
I posted this on the Eglinton topic.

*********************************************

Ridership doesn't justify a subway

-----------------------------------------------------------------

That's TTC argument but let's compare...really

Toronto:2,503,281
Chicago:2,836,659

TORONTO
Daily ridership ***just to give us a rough idea**
2007-2008

Yonge-University-Spadina
672,390 (avg. weekday)
32 Stations and 30.2Km

Bloor-Danforth
484,000 (avg. weekday)
31 Stations and 26.2 Km

Sheppard
45,860 (avg. weekday)
5 Stations and 5.5 Km

Scarborough RT
43,770 (avg. weekday)
6 Stations and 6.4 Km


CHICAGO

Red Line
approx. 230,000 (avg. weekday boardings)
34 Stations
37.7 KM

Blue Line
approx. 147,000 (avg. weekday boardings)
33 Stations
55.7 KM

Brown Line
approx. 90,000 (avg. weekday boardings)
28 Stations
18.3 KM

Orange Line
approx. 59,000 (avg. weekday boardings)
17 stations
20.1 KM

Pink Line
approx. 26,000 (avg. weekday boardings)
22 Stations
18 KM

Purple Line
approx. 31,000 (avg. weekday boardings including Purple Express)
19 Stations
24 KM

Yellow Line
approx. 5,000 (avg. weekday boardings)
2 Stations
5.1 KM
--------------------------------------------------------------

Is it me or our useless low ridership Sheppard Subway has more ridership than Pink, purple and Yellow line?

Sheppard a 5 station and 5.5KM has more ridership than a
22 station line with 18 KM (Pink) or (Purple) 24 KM and 19 stations. Imagine a Complete Sheppard line.

May I add that the trains have similar capacity?

Since Eglington should have more ridership than Sheppard, it should be at least at the same level as the Orange line or could even rival the brown line.

By comparing our network with a city who has slighlty more inhabitants than Toronto, I come to the conclusion that it's not only about ridership but those in charge right now have a problem with subway technology.

I would prefer they say ''We don't believe in subways'' instead of saying: ''well, the ridership doesn't justify it''.

Of course, you guys are free to refute my theory.
*********************************************

 

[kettal]

1. Some LRT Trains in use today have a higher capacity than the subway trains which run on the Sheppard Stubway. Calgary's LRT trains, for example, can fit more people in than Sheppard's subway trains.

2. If demand so warrants, certain trains can terminate at Don Mills, negating any effects of surface sectoions to travellers in the tunneled portion.

3. Nothing wrong with the Sheppard Line? How about the fact that it is a stub? Conversion will allow it to stretch from Morningside all the way to Etobicoke without any transfers. Downsview Station to Don Mills Station can be tunnelled, the rest surface. Number of transfers cross-town? Zero.

4. You still have not explained why it will take "twice the time to travel Yonge to Don Mills" ??

 

[golodhendil]

1. Some LRT Trains in use today have a higher capacity than the subway trains which run on the Sheppard Stubway. Calgary's LRT trains, for example, can fit more people in than Sheppard's subway trains.

To be fair, each Siemens SD-160 holds between 233 (C-Train) to 261 (Salt Lake City), while one T1 train car holds 250. Moreover, Sheppard subway currently runs 4-car trains, so that's 1000 passengers per train, and the ultimate allowance is 6-car trains or 1500/train. I do not forsee LRT trains of more than 4 cars ever being run on the surface portion, and thus the subway portion, of a Sheppard LRT unless it has a completely separate ROW and no grade-crossing (at which point it will be effectively a subway and the debate is moot), so the per-train capacity will still be less. Putting in trains that short-turn at Don Mills could, however, partially address this problem.

As for the speed/travelling time issue, twice is probably an exaggeration, and it will ultimately depend on the exact type of rolling stock chosen. However, seeing that Sheppard LRT (unlike Eglinton but like the rest of TC) will likely be using a "scaled-up" version of the new streetcars, rather than the stadtbahn-type premetro cars used by the C-train, the operating speed will likely be ~25% less than a heavy-rail subway (and at 1-2 km between stations, the max operating speed does matter).

 

[Ansem]

1. Some LRT Trains in use today have a higher capacity than the subway trains which run on the Sheppard Stubway. Calgary's LRT trains, for example, can fit more people in than Sheppard's subway trains.

We're not Calgary unless you want us to be like them. I'm not saying to build a subway from Morningside to Pearson, but what your talking about is to go a 100% back...which is horribly wrong...

Besides...your killing the capacity and service of the line...

2. If demand so warrants, certain trains can terminate at Don Mills, negating any effects of surface sectoions to travellers in the tunneled portion.

And you guarantee this based on what? Will they garantee a LRT every 5 minutes? What if there's an accident on Sheppard east and LRT can't make it?

3. Nothing wrong with the Sheppard Line? How about the fact that it is a stub? Conversion will allow it to stretch from Morningside all the way to Etobicoke without any transfers. Downsview Station to Don Mills Station can be tunnelled, the rest surface. Number of transfers cross-town? Zero.

Sheppard's ridership is increasing and now that there is a possibility for an extension to Downsview if Yonge get's extended, ridership will go up.

I said many time that Sheppard was like the blue line in Montreal. The blue line was a subway to nowhere starting near Jean-Talon east to Jean-Talon west.

It took some time but now its a success and there are more trains and it closes later.

I think the issue in Toronto is how the transfer points were designed while in Mtl its very well done (Lionel-Groulx station is the best exemple)

Majority wants the subway technology anyways, 1 transfer will kill nobody, they just have to do it right and effcientely.

4. You still have not explained why it will take "twice the time to travel Yonge to Don Mills" ??

Like I said, if something happens to the line...Then what?
You have no guarantee they will short turn every 5 minutes ( not in the scenario). If the LRT gets delay at Consumers for exemple...well the line gets delay.

What I meant, is that it may have the same travel speed but it will be less reliable...