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Transit City: Sheppard East Debate

rbt said:
The terms for receiving federal funding spell out in great detail what they will and will not cover and what all the other parties have for obligations. I don't know how much leeway we would have since the Building Canada Fund request was approved. I would expect the province would be required to submit an official request for the change (on our behalf, since BCF is with the provinces) and any negotiations of who covers what would likely need to start from scratch.

Don't know for sure of course. You would need a copy of the current agreement to find out. Often it seems the municipality receiving the funds isn't told all of the rules to acquiring the funds, so we have no way of knowing.


Of course, this is all in the name of a transparent and accountable federal government which probably costs billions in paperwork and construction delays per year.
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Working in procurement within the federal government, I can assure you that any agreement is negotiable even after it's signed. There just has to be the right political backing behind it. Ottawa dumped it's LRT plan after the feds pledged money. They recently pledged even more than the initial amount for an even more expensive plan that Ottawa's working on. If Toronto has the political clout, it can be done.
 
the way I see it Option 4 with extension to Downsview is a just common sense. Sheppard West traffic is so heavy at peak time that an LRT won't fix anything at all.

If the subway gets to Richmond Hill, this would provide them a link to the Wilson yard...which is huge. They could still expend it if they need to.

It seems that converting Sheppard and merging the line is not as cost effective as everyone thought.

They claim it will be faster than having a subway existing on Sheppard... I don't by it at all. 22km/h on the whole line...ugh. It's wrong to assume that there will be that much people going from Humber to Morningside. Most of them will be using part of the line and having the subway there will make it faster.

From the document:

The operational reliability of the route will vary. Even with significant signal priority there will be
delays in road intersections from cross-traffic, congestion and accidents. Experience from similar
tram/LRT systems shows that this delay may be in the order of 10%, which on the proposed route
could provide a variation in runtime of about 4-5 minutes for each segment. This potential
variability in journey time may result in differential headways, which at peak times can increase
the dwell times of vehicles at busy stops and further increase travel time.

In term of economic development, the Sheppard extension to downsview CANNOT be ignore and it would be irresponsible to do so. Even if at long term they claim that a continious LRT would be better at long term, the growth that the subway will bring short term completely eclipse the LRT.

It seems obvious that Metrolinx wants a single line and the option of having Sheppard and Finch separated will be rejected. They had said in the past they wanted a single crosstown anyways.

As far as Sheppard East goes...It's really up to the next mayor and how much the support for a full subway will influence him/her...
 
Ansem said:
I meant as head of the TTC
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There isn't one shred of evidence that would happen. Muscoe was TTC chair under Lastman, and remained under Miller.

Given how firmly you assert that something like that is going to happen, which is nothing but fiction at this point in time, how am I supposed to take anything else you write seriously? Your credibility is nil.
 
http://www.metrolinx.com/Docs/general/Sheppard-Finch_BCA_Report.pdf

The stops/stations listed for the various options, especially in the Keele-Fairview segments, are really bizarre. No stops between Leslie and Don Mills along Finch but a midblock stop at a forest preserve along Dufferin? No stop at Finch & Willowdale but a stop at Don River Blvd, as well as both Maxwell and Goddard? No added Willowdale station at Sheppard but stops at both Oriole Park and Fairview Mall Blvd on Don Mills? Yeah, fine, these are conceptual, but if you're going to go to the trouble and expense of predicting and comparing various lines, why use such silly station assumptions? It does make a measurable difference in terms of travel time and cost and walking distances and so on.

Here's some nice tidbits:

Linking Finch East and Sheppard West via a continuous service resulting in no delays caused by transfers;
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Oh, really? Splitting the busiest route in the city and adding a transfer at Don Mills will result in no delays caused by transfers? No delays for all those people who will surely be riding option 3 from Malvern to Humber, in a sensationally quick 1hr45min, no doubt...no one else matters. Similar scenarios would exist along Finch West and Sheppard West in other options and these 'fractured' corridors will have significant impacts on stuff like travel time savings (or lack thereof).

The operational reliability of the route will vary. Even with significant signal priority there will be delays in road intersections from cross-traffic, congestion and accidents. Experience from similar tram/LRT systems shows that this delay may be in the order of 10%, which on the proposed route could provide a variation in runtime of about 4-5 minutes for each segment. This potential variability in journey time may result in differential headways, which at peak times can increase the dwell times of vehicles at busy stops and further increase travel time.
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This is for option 1...they don't repeat this warning for the other options, even though other options have even longer or continuous surface distances.

40km long lines + delays & variability = ?
 
Option 2 is the most stupid idea I've ever seen.

The whole LTR thing is retarded, it will not make traveling from A to B faster than on a bus.

They should just build subways.
 
So option 2 has the highest ridership because it gets rid of the transfer. But Option 3 has the greatest reduction in greenhouse gases and the highest transportation user benefits, all because it takes up roadspace and increases traffic.

So is that the new game plan for getting people out of their cars in Toronto? "We won't get you there faster, but we'll make sure it's damn hard to use your car to get there."

ps. Note that the average speed of the LRT has now come down to 22 km/hr.
 
I still think linking Sheppard and Finch is stupid. But at the same time, if option 3 comes to pass, it IS salvageable: you can continue the Finch line east of Don Mills to have a full Finch LRT. And the Don Mills portion will work with the Don Mills LRT anyway. As for the Sheppard part, it only overlaps with what a Sheppard subway would be for a portion anyway, so there could be an LRT from Agincourt or so to the Zoo.
 
kEiThZ said:
So option 2 has the highest ridership because it gets rid of the transfer. But Option 3 has the greatest reduction in greenhouse gases and the highest transportation user benefits, all because it takes up roadspace and increases traffic.

So is that the new game plan for getting people out of their cars in Toronto? "We won't get you there faster, but we'll make sure it's damn hard to use your car to get there.
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Yeah, including this weird assumption as part of the cost-benefit was just ludicrous. Come to think of it, why didn't Option 4 incorporate cement blocks at every intersection to block off a lane of traffic? Then it clearly would have won the day.

Speaking of cost-benefit:

"Possible cost reduction for a Yonge subway extension - the expansion of Wilson Yard (instead of building a yard in Richmond Hill) could provide cost savings However these potential benefits have not been quantified as the TTC’s forthcoming Rail Yards Needs Study will examine these and other issues on the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line. This report, however, contains valuable information to which that study can relate to and build on."

Uh huh.
 
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lol posted this in the wrong thread...

I'd like to point out again that, if you're using 18 km/h average bus travel times (it could very well be faster past McCowan,) then there is very, very little difference for a Malvern citizen between a LRT and Subway. My calculations put LRT to Don Mills at about 27.5 minutes, and a subway + 18km/h bus at 28.3 minutes to Don Mills.

So Malvern is about the point when Subway becomes a better option. Especially since probably over 90% of all Sheppard riders come from west of Malvern, Subway would easily be a good choice for this corridor. And since probably over 75% of the current SE bus comes from west of Midland, there will be significant improvements to the majority of Sheppard riders, as well as to the entire northern corridor between Scarborough Town Centre and North York City Centre, which will end up attracting a huge amount of riders.
 
Second_in_pie said:
lol posted this in the wrong thread...

I'd like to point out again that, if you're using 18 km/h average bus travel times (it could very well be faster past McCowan,) then there is very, very little difference for a Malvern citizen between a LRT and Subway. My calculations put LRT to Don Mills at about 27.5 minutes, and a subway + 18km/h bus at 28.3 minutes to Don Mills.

So Malvern is about the point when Subway becomes a better option. Especially since probably over 90% of all Sheppard riders come from west of Malvern, Subway would easily be a good choice for this corridor. And since probably over 75% of the current SE bus comes from west of Midland, there will be significant improvements to the majority of Sheppard riders, as well as to the entire northern corridor between Scarborough Town Centre and North York City Centre, which will end up attracting a huge amount of riders.
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22 kph vs. 17 kph means a 12 minute travel time difference from Meadowvale to Don Mills over the 15 km length. For every km you get closer to Don Mills your time savings goes down by 48 seconds. For the majority of riders coming from west of Agincourt the time savings will be less than 5 mins or less. However, frequecies on Sheppard will go down from 90 seconds today to 5 mins, canceling out most of the time savings. In the best case scenario, a rider saves 12 mins from Meadowvale (though most of Malvern's riders get on at Morningside, Neilson, Progress and Markham). In the average scenario a rider save 5 mins from northern central Scarborough. In the worst case scenario, a reduction in frequencies combined with poor TPS and reduced reliability would actually mean slower transit than what's there today.
 
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kEiThZ said:
22 kph vs. 17 kph means a 12 minute travel time difference from Meadowvale to Don Mills over the 15 km length. For every km you get closer to Don Mills your time savings goes down by 48 seconds. For the majority of riders coming from west of Agincourt the time savings will be less than 5 mins or less. However, frequecies on Sheppard will go down from 90 seconds today to 5 mins, canceling out most of the time savings. In the best case scenario, a rider saves 12 mins from Meadowvale (though most of Malvern's riders get on at Morningside, Neilson, Progress and Markham). In the average scenario a rider save 5 mins from northern central Scarborough. In the worst case scenario, a reduction in frequencies combined with poor TPS and reduced reliability would actually mean slower transit than what's there today.
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The headway's are 90 seconds today??? Even if that is the average scheduled headway of the various routes on sheppard there is no way it is maintained with any useful regularity. The buses are most often held up by traffic congestion, loading at stops and arrive in packs (As a recently posted picture in this forum demonstrates). So I really don't think it is fair to compare the scheduled bus headway today with what would happen with the LRT.
 
Voltz said:
The headway's are 90 seconds today??? Even if that is the average scheduled headway of the various routes on sheppard there is no way it is maintained with any useful regularity. The buses are most often held up by traffic congestion, loading at stops and arrive in packs (As a recently posted picture in this forum demonstrates). So I really don't think it is fair to compare the scheduled bus headway today with what would happen with the LRT.
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If you think a LRT will do more than slightly improve that bunching problem, then... you're wrong.

The LRTs will move to the end of the ROW, then stop at a light. That light could be 1 1/2 minutes to 2 minutes, then they go through the intersection, and then drop off/pick up their passengers. That gives more than enough time for a LRT from Medowvale to catch up to one going on the same route by Markham Road. And unlike busses, LRTs can't pass eachother, so they'll be stuck until they get back on schedule over at Don Mills.

Just take a look at St. Clair. It's less than 2 kilometers, and I've seen a couple instances where there's two streetcars tailgating. Imagine what'll happen on a route over 7 times as long.
 
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