kettal
Banned
ICTS is the absolute worst choice, all the expense of a subway with the worst capacity, and you're Bombardier's bitch for life. What a gimmick, it's no surprise the Canada Line in Vancouver passed on it.
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Transit City Plan
- Thread starter 299 bloor call control.
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RedRocket191
Senior Member
That's totally not why they didn't select it. Bombardier couldn't match the price under the rules of the competition. If they were allowed to bundle equipment for the new line with equipment for the old line they would have won.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
How NOT to encourage transit use.
To encourage transit use, both the origin and destination should be close to a transit stop or station. However, in current years, the development I have seen does not encourage transit use. It has been the opposite. The development has been to encourage automobile usage, and ignores transit.
Here's some examples from St. Clair Avenue West:
This Wal-Mart was built in the last few years. The photo is from near the (limited use) bus stop. There is an asphalt desert to be crossed to reach the entrance. (When the St. Clair streetcar is extended, the stop may or may not be used.)
The entrance is close to St. Clair, but there is no transit stop here.
This corner of the Wal-Mart building is the closest to the St. Clair and Runnymede corner where several bus routes stop at. There is no entrances at all on this side of the building. One has to walk the entire side of the building to get to and return from the entrance. Bad design.
This is the corner of St. Clair Avenue West and Runnymede Avenue. A streetcar stop or station would most likely be built here. However, only the bank and a couple of other stores are convenient to transit users. The site is owned by (not very) SmartCentre, who unfortunately want to build a shopping centre in Leslieville. I hope it is not like this.
Then there is the Home Depot at St. Clair Avenue West and Keele. Get off at St. Clair or Keele, and you ask yourself "where's the entrance"? It's 180° around the building from here in the parking lot. Convenient is you use an automobile to take home those sheets of drywall, but if you are only looking from some screws and you use transit to get here, it's not. There is no entrance on this side of the building.
Here at St. Clair and Keele, it looks nice from the corner when you get off the streetcar or bus, but you have to go on an expedition from here if you do. Bad design.
St. Clair Avenue West and Gunns Road, the streetcar loop. The entrance to the Canadian Tire is not visible in this photo, its another 150 m left in the photo to the Canadian Tire entrance from here.
This is part of the Home Depot, but it is not the entrance. Its the greenhouse and outside garden centre yard. Still have to continue going around the building.
No entrance for pedestrians to the Home Depot from here.
The bus stop at Keele Street and West Toronto Street. There is no entrance to the Staples store behind the bus shelter. It's 180° around the building to walk to the entrance.
Just a blank Staples building wall.
To make Transit City a success, buildings along ALL streets within Toronto (and 905) have to be made more transit user friendly. These photos are examples of how NOT to design buildings. Buildings have to be multi-use, low-rise buildings, which indulge mainly to the pedestrian and transit user. Then Transit City can be successful. Start building for the pedestrian and transit user now.
To encourage transit use, both the origin and destination should be close to a transit stop or station. However, in current years, the development I have seen does not encourage transit use. It has been the opposite. The development has been to encourage automobile usage, and ignores transit.
Here's some examples from St. Clair Avenue West:
This Wal-Mart was built in the last few years. The photo is from near the (limited use) bus stop. There is an asphalt desert to be crossed to reach the entrance. (When the St. Clair streetcar is extended, the stop may or may not be used.)
The entrance is close to St. Clair, but there is no transit stop here.
This corner of the Wal-Mart building is the closest to the St. Clair and Runnymede corner where several bus routes stop at. There is no entrances at all on this side of the building. One has to walk the entire side of the building to get to and return from the entrance. Bad design.
This is the corner of St. Clair Avenue West and Runnymede Avenue. A streetcar stop or station would most likely be built here. However, only the bank and a couple of other stores are convenient to transit users. The site is owned by (not very) SmartCentre, who unfortunately want to build a shopping centre in Leslieville. I hope it is not like this.
Then there is the Home Depot at St. Clair Avenue West and Keele. Get off at St. Clair or Keele, and you ask yourself "where's the entrance"? It's 180° around the building from here in the parking lot. Convenient is you use an automobile to take home those sheets of drywall, but if you are only looking from some screws and you use transit to get here, it's not. There is no entrance on this side of the building.
Here at St. Clair and Keele, it looks nice from the corner when you get off the streetcar or bus, but you have to go on an expedition from here if you do. Bad design.
St. Clair Avenue West and Gunns Road, the streetcar loop. The entrance to the Canadian Tire is not visible in this photo, its another 150 m left in the photo to the Canadian Tire entrance from here.
This is part of the Home Depot, but it is not the entrance. Its the greenhouse and outside garden centre yard. Still have to continue going around the building.
No entrance for pedestrians to the Home Depot from here.
The bus stop at Keele Street and West Toronto Street. There is no entrance to the Staples store behind the bus shelter. It's 180° around the building to walk to the entrance.
Just a blank Staples building wall.
To make Transit City a success, buildings along ALL streets within Toronto (and 905) have to be made more transit user friendly. These photos are examples of how NOT to design buildings. Buildings have to be multi-use, low-rise buildings, which indulge mainly to the pedestrian and transit user. Then Transit City can be successful. Start building for the pedestrian and transit user now.
Prometheus The Supremo
►Member №41+⅜◄
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the planning stinks. for the amount of regulations builders have to follow, a few more wouldn't hurt. the cookie cutter designs also don't help.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
It wouldn't have to be tunneled. The entire section west of Jane street could be elevated like the Skytrain and the section east of Leslie as well.
In fact, if we were going to use subway technology, I would advocate elevating the same stretches as well.
Ha ha. As if streetcar technology makes us any less dependent on Bombardier.
ICTS is not proven to its full potential in Toronto. Look: we have a 6 km stub (sound familiar?) in Scarborough that the TTC union wouldn't even allow to be remotely operated running at subway headways in a strict 4-car formation. In Vancouver, they vary the length of the train and the automatic operation allows for headways as close as 90 seconds during rush hour. Vancouverites seem to like it; in fact they like it so much that they're dumping LRT technology in favour of ICTS for their Evergreen line and any subsequent rapid transit expansions they roll out in the region.
This Translink backgrounder on the Evergreen line says it all:
LRT costs more to maintain, has three times the operating subsidy per passenger and is only marginally less expensive to construct than ICTS.
And look at those time savings: 12.6 minutes for ICTS vs. 23.6 minutes for LRT.
Beware the folly of the trolley.
kettal
Banned
Luckily for Vancouver, they rarely get 5 cm of snow. The Scarborough RT has to close in normal winter weather. It literally has no advantage over LRT, the capacity is the same.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
I don't think winterizing an elevated section of the SRT/Eglinton line would take much - a barrel-shaped corrugated metal roof would do the trick. It's not like low floor LRT glides around as effortlessly as a sleigh, either.
As for the advantages of ICTS over LRT, that backgrounder I posted from Translink is pretty revealing.
I reiterate: 1/3 the per-passenger operating subsidy, 3X the ridership, lower operational and maintenance costs and only marginally higher capital costs.
As for the advantages of ICTS over LRT, that backgrounder I posted from Translink is pretty revealing.
I reiterate: 1/3 the per-passenger operating subsidy, 3X the ridership, lower operational and maintenance costs and only marginally higher capital costs.
kettal
Banned
Those advantages have nothing to do with ICTS technology. Vancouver was really evaluating surface vs. elevated lines. An LRV running on an elevated track is all that and a piece of cake, and cheaper. It was only ever economical for Vancouver because they had a large ICTS system already, so they won't have to order a whole different type of vehicle.
There is nothing about ICTS that makes it especially good at being elevated.
There is nothing about ICTS that makes it especially good at being elevated.
RedRocket191
Senior Member
Walmart @ St. Clair & Runnymede
While I agree that this stretch of St. Clair was not designed for transit use, I have to give credit to the Walmart here. Its a massive improvement over the majority of Walmarts in the GTA. The entrance is about 150 metres from the nearest bus stop, and 220 metres from a major transfer point. With the entrance almost on the sidewalk, it's a walk in a relatively pleasant environment. Comparing this to the Walmart in north Brampton, it's 320 metres to the nearest bus stop through a harsh environment.
I guess you can say that its the best of the worst land use.
While I agree that this stretch of St. Clair was not designed for transit use, I have to give credit to the Walmart here. Its a massive improvement over the majority of Walmarts in the GTA. The entrance is about 150 metres from the nearest bus stop, and 220 metres from a major transfer point. With the entrance almost on the sidewalk, it's a walk in a relatively pleasant environment. Comparing this to the Walmart in north Brampton, it's 320 metres to the nearest bus stop through a harsh environment.
I guess you can say that its the best of the worst land use.
Mike in TO
Senior Member
Maybe we need a seperate Eglinton thread (unless the poll counts):
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Eglinton subway strategy gets more traction than streetcar, councillors say
JOHN LORINC
July 25, 2008 at 4:26 AM EDT
They represent very different stretches of Eglinton Avenue, but two Toronto councillors think it's time to bury the idea of building a streetcar or light-rail line across Eglinton and instead go with a full-fledged subway.
"A subway along Eglinton makes more sense," said Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence), citing its potential to revitalize employment zones such as the Thorncliffe Park area, east of the Don Valley. "Now is the time to start talking about it."
Gloria Lindsay Luby, whose Ward 4 (Etobicoke Centre) is bisected by a stretch of Eglinton once set aside for the aborted Richview Expressway, agreed, noting that a subway will trigger high-density development west of Jane. "I would think more people would support a subway over here but there has been no consultation whatsoever."
Their comments come in response to yesterday's report in The Globe and Mail that Metrolinx, the agency assigned to develop a regional transit strategy, is pushing for a subway beneath Eglinton rather than a partly buried light-rail transit line, as proposed in Mayor David Miller's Transit City strategy.
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The debate has also resurfaced in a week when in Britain royal assent was given for a £16-billion ($32-billion) plan to finance a crosstown subway line in London linking Heathrow Airport, in the west, to Canary Wharf and the new commercial suburbs, in the east.
Many transit activists strongly back a network of dedicated light-rail routes over subways because streetcar lines are cheaper, faster to build and stretch money further. In the wake of the fight over the St. Clair West streetcar right-of-way, the province has streamlined the approval process for such projects and the city is pressing ahead with several other light-rail lines included in the Transit City plan.
Yet for Ms. Stintz and other critics, the lingering question mark about the proposed $2.24-billion Eglinton LRT - which will extend 31 kilometres from Pearson International to Kennedy Station - has to do with the fact that it will have to operate through a 10-kilometre-long tunnel between Laird Drive and Keele Street because the road allowance is simply too narrow for a surface route. "We know we're going to have to put it underground anyway," Ms. Stintz said.
What's more, even the tunnelled sections may prove to be an inconvenience, says Steven Petroff, chair of the Upper Village Business Improvement Area and co-owner of the Petroff Gallery on Eglinton. In briefing sessions with the city, he's been told that the TTC is not planning to operate city buses along those stretches of Eglinton where the LRT will run below grade. "In this area, there are a number of homes for the elderly. It's going to be a big adjustment."
The price tag, however, remains the decisive factor, unless the provincial and federal government underwrite a subway line, as has happened with the Spadina Extension. TTC chair Adam Giambrone has said an Eglinton subway would cost about three times as much as an LRT.
York South-Weston Councillor Frances Nunziata, who was mayor of the former City of York when Queen's Park spent $150-million to cancel an Eglinton subway line, says she would rather have an LRT built within the foreseeable future rather than wait a generation or more for a subway. "I don't want to stall the project."
But both Ms. Stintz and Ms. Lindsay Luby feel that a subway is more likely to attract development, investment and therefore transit riders to the corridor.
Eglinton West is seeing some signs of intensification, with high-rise projects either under construction or approved at Royal York Road and Martin Grove Road.
But there remains a great deal of empty or underutilized land in the areas west of Jane Street where Eglinton remains a broad, car-dominated arterial with little pedestrian or commercial activity.
In the east end, Ms. Stintz points out that a subway line will do more to spur the revitalization of business parks and employment districts, which council has moved to protect as a means of attracting manufacturing jobs and businesses back to the city. "Yes, it's expensive," she says, "but we have a manufacturing sector in decline and people are looking for work. If we made this an investment strategy, we could rejuvenate areas that have not been well served by transit."
Special to The Globe and Mail
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Eglinton subway strategy gets more traction than streetcar, councillors say
JOHN LORINC
July 25, 2008 at 4:26 AM EDT
They represent very different stretches of Eglinton Avenue, but two Toronto councillors think it's time to bury the idea of building a streetcar or light-rail line across Eglinton and instead go with a full-fledged subway.
"A subway along Eglinton makes more sense," said Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence), citing its potential to revitalize employment zones such as the Thorncliffe Park area, east of the Don Valley. "Now is the time to start talking about it."
Gloria Lindsay Luby, whose Ward 4 (Etobicoke Centre) is bisected by a stretch of Eglinton once set aside for the aborted Richview Expressway, agreed, noting that a subway will trigger high-density development west of Jane. "I would think more people would support a subway over here but there has been no consultation whatsoever."
Their comments come in response to yesterday's report in The Globe and Mail that Metrolinx, the agency assigned to develop a regional transit strategy, is pushing for a subway beneath Eglinton rather than a partly buried light-rail transit line, as proposed in Mayor David Miller's Transit City strategy.
Related Articles
Recent
Competing plans for Toronto transit cause delays
Blindsided Bombardier defends disqualified streetcar as 'safe'
The debate has also resurfaced in a week when in Britain royal assent was given for a £16-billion ($32-billion) plan to finance a crosstown subway line in London linking Heathrow Airport, in the west, to Canary Wharf and the new commercial suburbs, in the east.
Many transit activists strongly back a network of dedicated light-rail routes over subways because streetcar lines are cheaper, faster to build and stretch money further. In the wake of the fight over the St. Clair West streetcar right-of-way, the province has streamlined the approval process for such projects and the city is pressing ahead with several other light-rail lines included in the Transit City plan.
Yet for Ms. Stintz and other critics, the lingering question mark about the proposed $2.24-billion Eglinton LRT - which will extend 31 kilometres from Pearson International to Kennedy Station - has to do with the fact that it will have to operate through a 10-kilometre-long tunnel between Laird Drive and Keele Street because the road allowance is simply too narrow for a surface route. "We know we're going to have to put it underground anyway," Ms. Stintz said.
What's more, even the tunnelled sections may prove to be an inconvenience, says Steven Petroff, chair of the Upper Village Business Improvement Area and co-owner of the Petroff Gallery on Eglinton. In briefing sessions with the city, he's been told that the TTC is not planning to operate city buses along those stretches of Eglinton where the LRT will run below grade. "In this area, there are a number of homes for the elderly. It's going to be a big adjustment."
The price tag, however, remains the decisive factor, unless the provincial and federal government underwrite a subway line, as has happened with the Spadina Extension. TTC chair Adam Giambrone has said an Eglinton subway would cost about three times as much as an LRT.
York South-Weston Councillor Frances Nunziata, who was mayor of the former City of York when Queen's Park spent $150-million to cancel an Eglinton subway line, says she would rather have an LRT built within the foreseeable future rather than wait a generation or more for a subway. "I don't want to stall the project."
But both Ms. Stintz and Ms. Lindsay Luby feel that a subway is more likely to attract development, investment and therefore transit riders to the corridor.
Eglinton West is seeing some signs of intensification, with high-rise projects either under construction or approved at Royal York Road and Martin Grove Road.
But there remains a great deal of empty or underutilized land in the areas west of Jane Street where Eglinton remains a broad, car-dominated arterial with little pedestrian or commercial activity.
In the east end, Ms. Stintz points out that a subway line will do more to spur the revitalization of business parks and employment districts, which council has moved to protect as a means of attracting manufacturing jobs and businesses back to the city. "Yes, it's expensive," she says, "but we have a manufacturing sector in decline and people are looking for work. If we made this an investment strategy, we could rejuvenate areas that have not been well served by transit."
Special to The Globe and Mail
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Nothing needs to be stalled. It's not like any set-in-stone planning for the Eglinton LRT has been done other than draw a line on a map; we're early enouh in the process that it can be halted. Why would we have to wait a generation for a subway? It's not like the LRT won't cost $3+ billion and take many years to finish. If we can build multiple tunneled streetcar lines simultaneously, we can build multiple subway projects simultaneously.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
Why would we go through the trouble of building grade-separated infrastructure, such as a continuous elevated viaduct, only to run dinky light rail vehicles on them? I guess there is some literal truth to Transit City boosters putting streetcars on a pedestal.
In order to fulfill Transit City we will have to do exactly that: order a whole different type of vehicle. Now that we know that the TTC has failed every potential bidder for their streetcar, we know we can't just buy off the shelf Flexities for Transit City, either. We also have to replace our SRT stock within a few years too, so it would seem more economical to place a bulk order for ICTS vehicles that meet our specifications and provide rolling stock for an Eglinton line.
Of course, I should point out that my preferred transit mode for Eglinton is still a subway. By that I don't mean that it will be tunneled all the way, but that it would use the same tunneled portion proposed for TC and then continue above ground as an elevated.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Parts of a subway can be elevated, and parts can be trenched, with underground stations that are immediately below the surface, like Wellesley, with no wildly expensive mezzanines. Save a few hundred million here and a few hundred million there and you're looking at marginally more cost than the LRT, but with more benefit.
TOinTO
Active Member
Transit City must have R.C. Harris turning in his grave. No consideration of future growth. No courage.
kettal
Banned
What does dinky even mean?
How is this light rail vehicle above any more dinky than the Scarborough RT vehicle below?
The LRV pictured has a higher carrying capacity, is cheaper, has the same headway requirements, and will be run on an automated system (Canada line in Vancouver.) The LRV would also better handle Toronto's climate...
Oh, that's right, it's "dinky". I guess ICTS is worth the extra expense then!!