adeel
Active Member
Thanks very much. Exactly what I needed.
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Transit City Plan
- Thread starter 299 bloor call control.
- Start date
Thanks very much. Exactly what I needed.
No problem. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
adeel
Active Member
LOL dont hold your breath...to be honest i had just a few surface ideas that probably arentl all that realistic anyways..and in a quck estimate dont really solve the major funding problems...ill leave the discussion to the better informed experts
Asterix
Active Member
Nope, because barely 200m east they've got the Eglinton bridge over the Don River.
The whole point is to have the portal come out the side of the hill. The total hill is only about 500m in length.
Across the bridge at present, Eglinton is six lanes wide. If you want to add to lanes of LRT beyond that to the south, you are looking at major, major construction. The bridge itself is at the bottom of the Eglinton gully. Heading east from that it climbs back up towards Leslie and the railway overpass beyond it. Immediately (literally) to the south, the drop-off to the parking lot on the valley floor only gets longer and longer the closer to Leslie you get.
That's an awful lot of fill or bridging you are going to need just to avoid the single intersection with Leslie. Then you are going to have to deal with digging right through the bridge foundation to the railway overpass.
I really fail to see the logic of going to that level of extra expense instead of just ensuring enough signal priority at Leslie such that north-to-east and east-to-north traffic doesn't impact the LRT (other traffic motions would not affect LRT operation).
Why does it matter where on the bridge the lanes are? Two lanes down the centre vs two lanes along the side is the same number of lanes. The portal out of the hill would not really have to change locations much. Instead of emerging in the middle of Eglinton, it emerges 5m south of Eglinton. Look at the site, there's a large patch of green on that hill directly to the south of Eglinton (on the west side of the valley). Why not have the portal exit there, and then run along the south side of the bridge? It would then pass directly south of the Leslie intersection, and then you do a small cut underneath the rail tracks. You don't have to touch the foundation, as a few metres away from the roadway, the rail tracks are built on fill, not a concrete foundation. Either that, or you use the incline that the rail bridge provides to build the east portal into Don Mills Stn.
It's a different engineering solution, but it's far from impossible.
Asterix
Active Member
I was addressing his option 'a'. You are looking at the differences between his options 'b' and 'c'. Whole different kettle of fish.
My apologies. In which case yes, you are correct. I would imagine that constructing an entirely new bridge would not be the optimal alternative.
nfitz
Superstar
It is 6-lanes wide, but just to the west - around where the portal is, it narrows to 4 lanes. If you move the 4-lane narrowing slightly further west. If you simply move the 6-lane to 4-lane transition further east, you'll only serve to move the traffic-jam from the bottlneck a bit, rather than reduce the road capacity.
One of the oddities around there, is the 4-lane cross-section at Brentcliffe has to carry more traffic than the 6-lane cross-section at the tracks, because most of the traffic on Leslie is heading towards Yonge, rather than towards Don Mills Road.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
The simple truth is that we can't afford a light rail-based transit system, especially one that ignores growth patterns, travel patterns, and the busiest corridors. We need the DRL, and we need to extend Yonge and run the Danforth line to STC. We need to beef up all the GO lines. We need to improve bus service, which will help many times as many people for the same dollars as light rail, or offers the same benefits for a fraction of the dollars. Nothing else really matters that much. With all that to do, the city's priority is a billion dollar streetcar ROW on Sheppard that just might save people 5 minutes if the TTC can transform its operational philosophy? That's idiotic. Sheppard doesn't even have an E branch yet, but out of nowhere, it needs light rail going to the Rouge.
Until that stuff is progressing, it is wildly irresponsible to direct money away from these things and towards a half-baked light rail scheme. Get the basics in place and then we can go back and fill in the rest of the city with things like a Wilson LRT line, or one across all of Finch, or throughout all of the Portlands, or a Sheppard subway extension, or whatever is not amongst the top tier of priorities. Miller took a multi-billion dollar "build whatever you want" funding windfall and wasted it on a few light rail lines that will move a small percentage of TTC riders around the city. Why look to the RGS, the RTES, the new official plan, the areas seeing or slated for growth, or even a list of the busiest corridors, when you can take out a napkin and draw up a quick scheme to run light rail to priority neighbourhoods? Even just a short DRL plus a comprehensive bus improvement plan would have improved transit for virtually every single person in the city. The vast majority of people and many entire city wards will be wholly unaffected by the scraps of Transfer City that may get built.
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EnviroTO
Senior Member
Transit City assumed removal of lanes in this segment of road. To Ford it matters little which lanes are removed. The war on the car must stop and removing lanes is not allowed. This is why he is against Transit City, not because it isn't fast transit in an exclusive ROW, he is against it because it takes away lanes of traffic. Secondly the ramp to Celestica is still there to deal with.
nfitz
Superstar
Surely that ramp isn't really necessary, and can be simply replaced by a left-turning lane ... with the LRT running on the south side of the road, towards the portal at Don Mills Road..
If it's a real problem either move the portal further west, or just keep the LRT along the south edge of the ramp.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
If it is truly grade separated I would imagine that would require fencing as well.
Asterix
Active Member
There is no room to move the portal further west. Besides, Eglinton is going uphill towards the railway underpass at that point.
There is also no room to go along the south edge of the ramp. There is a ravine and water/swamp there (besides making for a really silly bulb to the LRT line, greatly reducing potential operating speed and unnecessarily swaying passengers around).
One would have to ask Celestica how much use the ramp gets and how important it is to save. Alternatively, one could carry on running the LRT line down the middle of the road.
nfitz
Superstar
Quite likely.
The loop on the ramp is very large. Even if you couldn't skirt along the edge of it, there are many ways you can change the design of that ramp, to leave room for LRT to the south.
I suppose you could also escalate the LRT over the entire ramp - though that seems unnecessarily expensive.
Or you could do what one normally does, and do a traffic count. Personally I've driven past it many times on the way to work, and I've really not seen much traffic on it.
The problem here, is that then the LRT has to interfere with the Leslie/Eglinton traffic. The only place where it would interfere with traffic on Eglinton between Don Mills Road and Weston.
Exactly. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a completely grade-separated line when there's 1 intersection on the entire line. That's like having a 400 series highway, with 1 intersection on it. Yes, it saves on the cost of building an interchange or overpass, but is it really worth it not having that 1 intersection separated?