Transit City Plan

[lafard]

Canada line = being promised solid wood floors for cheap and getting printed chipboard laminate. Dug up Cambie when they promised tunneling, platforms too short with extensions not roughed in, single-track termini and almost a km of the approach in Richmond single-tracked limit headways.

P3 is a failure for transit. Vancouver's Evergreen line will be publicly owned Skytrain. By the way, they tried to get it built as LRT but the voters were not amused.

I don't understand the love of ICTS. There are no benefits over conventional rotational motor driven vehicles. Vancouver keeps theirs mostly because they like to interline.

 

[CapitalSeven]

Combining Eglinton and Scarborough into a single line through a 3P doesn't depend on using the present technology. It might actually work out cheaper to build it as high floor LRT, which would reduce the amount of work required on the existing stations and possibly allow for a faster, more robust vehicle than low-floor cars. A change of specs for a portion of the existing vehicle order could be negotiated. Sorry, more speculation.

 

[GenerationW]

I'm not sure Thomson should have been dismissed as bluntly as she was. She had ideas, even if some of them were unlikely having an idea person on your staff can be an incredible asset.

I would have voted for her hands down had she stayed in, but she earned her way into political obscurity for supporting the leading candidate not named Ford who got his clock cleaned on election day.

And yes, I believe that Eglinton will remain, there's no way the TTC or Metrolinx is going to lie that die on the table. Same with a connection to STC replacing the SRT (in whatever form it ends up in). The rest of it however, is very much up in the air.

The rest of it is really Sheppard, and how is that up in the air? With Federal funding in place that is specific to Sheppard, and with work already having started on the Agincourt grade separation, I can't see how a Sheppard subway extension isn't virtually guaranteed to be part of Ford's plan.

Pretty much everyone believes his plan will include an SRT replacement, so the real wild-card is Eglinton. I still think it's on life support, but we shall see.

Then again, I'll believe Ford has a post-election transit plan when I actually see one.

 

[gweed123]

I would have voted for her hands down had she stayed in, but she earned her way into political obscurity for supporting the leading candidate not named Ford who got his clock cleaned on election day.

True that.

The rest of it is really Sheppard, and how is that up in the air? With Federal funding in place that is specific to Sheppard, and with work already having started on the Agincourt grade separation, I can't see how a Sheppard subway extension isn't virtually guaranteed to be part of Ford's plan.

Pretty much everyone believes his plan will include an SRT replacement, so the real wild-card is Eglinton. I still think it's on life support, but we shall see.

Then again, I'll believe Ford has a post-election transit plan when I actually see one.

While Sheppard is a priority for Ford, and it was a priority for Miller, I don't really think that it's a priority for Metrolinx. Their main focus is on lines with regional benefit. While it could be argued that Sheppard would be because of the connection to STC, I still think that a connection from the south is much more of a priority. And Metrolinx considers the Eglinton line to be the centrepiece of the 1st phase of the Big Move (connection to Pearson, regional implications, pretty much hits most of the '10 targets' all in 1 line). They're not going to let it die without a fight. Ford can get out of the Sheppard jam by saying "well, I got us a subway on Eglinton" (even though he didn't), so it wouldn't be like he's 100% backing out on his promise. Most of the people in the city probably don't even know that Sheppard is his top priority, they just know that he wants subways. Most voters have the political memory of Goldfish, so come next election, he can say he delivered subways, regardless of what happens on Sheppard (assuming Eglinton gets built).

EDIT: Ford strictly speaking won't have a post-election plan. The plan will be a combination of what Ford wants, what the TTC wants, and what Metrolinx wants. Them each publicizing separate plans is a recipe for a political disaster. Better to compromise behind closed doors, and then present to the public a unified plan.

 

[Ed Drass]

Roger's Rules...

I don't see how it could be on there without there being huge criticism of the TTC. The final meeting isn't until tonight, so presumably the report isn't completed yet (as if ...).

I'd expect to see it on the supplementary agenda, which usually comes out a day or two before hand.

A report must be completed before it can appear on an agenda?

 

[accura407]

Why does the Sheppard Subway extension have to be done by Bored tunnel?
It is a wide open suburban arterial with plenty of space. I'm sure that a full out 100% cut and cover subway wont make a huge impact.

How much savings would be in place for doing the extension to STC by cut and cover?
How much savings would be in place for buildings stations with 4-car platforms? instead of 6?

Wouldn't these two factors alone save us at least a billion dollars? Maybe more?

Why not elevate the line from Agincourt GO Station (as it deviates from Sheppard) to Scarborough Town Center with a bridge over the 401?

I did a rough calculation of ridership per kilometer for our subway lines...

YUS: 23,583 per KM
BD: 18903 per KM
Sheppard: 8672 per KM
SRT: 6143 per KM

Scarborough RT has more KM of service than the Sheppard Subway but has less ridership on an average weekday?

Does that mean the Sheppard subway is more successful than the Scarborough RT?

These are all questions that people need to be asking...Instead of just dismissing ideas!

 

[GraphicMatt]

Ridership per kilometre is kind of a ridiculous metric for judging success, especially as the SRT acts as a B-D extension.

Sheppard was already built with four-car platforms (expandable to six), and I would assume the estimates assume the stations would be done the same way.

We're never going to see Cut & Cover construction on an arterial. Businesses would go nuts.

 

[gweed123]

Ridership per kilometre is kind of a ridiculous metric for judging success, especially as the SRT acts as a B-D extension.

Agreed.

Sheppard was already built with four-car platforms (expandable to six), and I would assume the estimates assume the stations would be done the same way.

I would think so as well, no sense building different halves of the same line with different standards.

We're never going to see Cut & Cover construction on an arterial. Businesses would go nuts.

Businesses went nuts enough on St. Clair with just a streetcar ROW, and that didn't even really shut down the entire street. They could never do again what the did to Yonge St in the 50s.

 

[accura407]

Ridership per kilometre is kind of a ridiculous metric for judging success, especially as the SRT acts as a B-D extension.

Sheppard was already built with four-car platforms (expandable to six), and I would assume the estimates assume the stations would be done the same way.

We're never going to see Cut & Cover construction on an arterial. Businesses would go nuts.

Maybe it is, but you have to ask how a SRT Line that actually goes somewhere (STC) has less daily average ridership than a Subway to nowhere?

Yes Sheppard was built with 6 car platforms but really...will we EVER need that kind of capacity? I read somewhere that a 4-car subway can carry 12,000 passengers an hour.
I dont think we will EVER pass that threshold on this line so why build out full 6-car subway stations when all we realistically need is 4-car stations.

Long Frequency with High Capacity vs. Short Frequency with Low Capacity. Which is better?

Sheppard Ave is a 5 Lane Arterial Road. I do not think that maintaining a single lane of traffic for a short period is going to be unacceptable! Its not like we are talking about doing cut and cover along the central Eglinton section, this is suburban Scarborough! Sheppard Ave is so wide open that you could even temporarily pave over the adjacent green space right of way with pavement to maintain 2 lanes per direction. The only loss would be a centre turning lane...but we would loose that anyways if we had to build the sheppard east lrt

the only tunnel boring portion would be between Don Mills and Victoria Park. The rest is simple cut and over.

 

[LAz]

Yes Sheppard was built with 6 car platforms but really...will we EVER need that kind of capacity? I read somewhere that a 4-car subway can carry 12,000 passengers an hour.

Why are you bothered by high capacity? The speed is what is important. We need rapid transit. We need to be able to zip from one part of the city to the other. How else are we going to have viable alternative to the automobile? How? LRTs are not a worse off alternative. I can see some logic in having some LRTS, but the fact remains that the core of our transit infrastructure should be rapid transit.

 

[jje1000]

Why are you bothered by high capacity? The speed is what is important. We need rapid transit. We need to be able to zip from one part of the city to the other. How else are we going to have viable alternative to the automobile? How? LRTs are not a worse off alternative. I can see some logic in having some LRTS, but the fact remains that the core of our transit infrastructure should be rapid transit.

Illogical. Having shorter, extendable stations is fiscal prudence. Why would a sparsely used line require 6 six cars, most of which are empty anyways? When the line gets reaches capacity, then operations should be expanded.

The rest of your statement is just rambling.

 

[Electrify]

Why are you bothered by high capacity? The speed is what is important. We need rapid transit. We need to be able to zip from one part of the city to the other. How else are we going to have viable alternative to the automobile? How? LRTs are not a worse off alternative. I can see some logic in having some LRTS, but the fact remains that the core of our transit infrastructure should be rapid transit.

Rapid transit is the core of our transit infrastructure. Even if we have light rail swarming every corner of our city, subways will still be the main connectors between the north, west, and east parts of the city into downtown.

And I agree that whatever gets built, it needs to be fast. As you know LA has some super quick LRT lines, and I'm sure you also know that the Transit City lines are anything but. For the record, I don't have a problem with using LRTs, but stop spacing needs to be at least double to what is proposed, and offer full light priority and/or signalized crossings. Doing this I estimate could yield an average speed of 35km/h, as opposed to the 22km/h the TTC claims it will achieve with the current plan (current average speed is about 17km/h).

 

[nfitz]

A report must be completed before it can appear on an agenda?

No ... but in the past, these last minute reports have often been on the supplementary agenda, not the main agenda.

 

[GraphicMatt]

An average operating speed of 35 km/h would be faster than the current subway system.

Average operating speed is a weird metric. The perception of speed is generally more important. If you asked people to estimate their average speed when driving their car, they'd give you numbers far beyond what they actually average.

 

[Asterix]

Why does the Sheppard Subway extension have to be done by Bored tunnel?
It is a wide open suburban arterial with plenty of space. I'm sure that a full out 100% cut and cover subway wont make a huge impact.

Why do you think cut-and-cover would be significantly cheaper than bored tunnel? The far bigger cost is going underground in the first place (acknowledging that cut-and-cover is cheaper than bored tunnel, just not a panacea of savings, especially compared with the planned LRT construction in median ROW).