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Transit Inspirations for Toronto

Already mentioned earlier, Beijing opened 5 new lines recently. Why were they opened so quickly?

"One of the reasons for that speed, of course, is a planning process that is less transparent than that in Canada. Environmental assessments for public projects in Canada, for example, can get bogged down in hearings for months and sometimes years, whereas here they are conducted by the state's own agencies with little if any public input.

The government is planner, builder and arbiter all in one.

[...]

Other factors in Beijing's speed are cheaper labour and more technological investment. Beijing has scores of tunnel-boring machines while the TTC has four on order for its 8.6-kilometre Spadina subway extension, expected to be in service in 2015.

The TTC standard estimate for subways is about $300 million per kilometre. Beijing paid $110 million for its new lines. Few here would argue with the benefits."

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/918664--beijing-tackles-transit-with-stunning-results



Unless EAs are completely reformed within the next short while, I doubt the Sheppard Line will be completed within a reasonable timeline. If Ford wants his Transit Plan to gain any traction, he also needs to start including other subway and LRT lines and should start pushing (or threatening) the provincial and federal governments to pony up some monies.
 
brainfreezed said:
I personally am a big fan of LRT, particularly on Eglinton, but I think buses (the same ones we currently use)
Click to expand...
I would disagree on the bus part, because some routes were pretty much raised on artics so there should be an artic order to assist those BRT routes and even increase ridership
 
Behold the French model

RER (Regional Express Network)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER

RER_sign.png


rer.jpg


RER-B_La-Plaine.jpg


Unlike the RER in France, the Go Train doesn't need to be underground in the city. The Go system should have more stations within the city of Toronto and be more frequent.

North-South lines should have stations stopping at major avenues like the Yonge line with buses corresponding more efficiently at the stations. The RER drastically reduced the travel time of passengers and some of their lines are overcrowded, especially the A line that can match the subway's frequency.

The RER fare system
The lines are divided into sections and the cost of a ticket (you can use the same ones as on the buses or the Metro within the metropolitan area) varies according to the number of sections you cross.

Stinz seems in favor of the Presto card, which would be necessary to make such a service more attractive to passengers. As long as we keep our current fare system, Torontonians will continue to avoid Go stations. Having the same card readers in buses and GO Stations will help to change the belief that the GO system is only for suburban.

Like Montreal below, that system will attract more passengers to alternative ways to use public transit

Montreal card readers

Bus
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43535643@N00/2455508448
2472833964_d0602f3512.jpg


Subways
opus_scanner.jpg


Commuter trains
amt-opus.jpg


You'd think a transit geek like Giambrone would have figure that the long term benefits of having PRESTO for the whole GTA outweighs the cost of implementing it. His position on the new fare system was ridiculous and short sighted, which seems to be the problem in Toronto...thinking short term
 
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Amy Rose said:
I would disagree on the bus part, because some routes were pretty much raised on artics so there should be an artic order to assist those BRT routes and even increase ridership
Click to expand...

Actually I agree that the TTC should get Artics for many routes (we should have always had them), but my main point is that we could make huge service improvements without new vehicles or garages by just doing road modifications that put an exclusive lane in the middle of the road (like Viva's plan). There is still the cost of adding lanes to streets and reconfiguring intersections with bus platforms and priority signals, but I imagine this cost is miniscule compared to LRT, which involves rails, new vehicles, new maintenance facilities, power substations and overhead, etc.
 
Solid Snake said:
Behold the French model

RER (Regional Express Network)

Unlike the RER in France, the Go Train doesn't need to be underground in the city. The Go system should have more stations within the city of Toronto and be more frequent.

North-South lines should have stations stopping at major avenues like the Yonge line with buses corresponding more efficiently at the stations. The RER drastically reduced the travel time of passengers and some of their lines are overcrowded, especially the A line that can match the subway's frequency.

The RER fare system
The lines are divided into sections and the cost of a ticket (you can use the same ones as on the buses or the Metro within the metropolitan area) varies according to the number of sections you cross.

Stinz seems in favor of the Presto card, which would be necessary to make such a service more attractive to passengers. As long as we keep our current fare system, Torontonians will continue to avoid Go stations. Having the same card readers in buses and GO Stations will help to change the belief that the GO system is only for suburban.

Like Montreal below, that system will attract more passengers to alternative ways to use public transit

You'd think a transit geek like Giambrone would have figure that the long term benefits of having PRESTO for the whole GTA outweighs the cost of implementing it. His position on the new fare system was ridiculous and short sighted, which seems to be the problem in Toronto...thinking short term
Click to expand...

Yea, the RER/S-Bahn systems in Europe are excellent, brings back memories as a kid seeing double-decker trains pull into an underground station in Switzerland.

Zurich's new Siemens Desiro trains for their S-Bahn:

800px-SBB_RABe_514.jpg


I guarantee if GO electrified and put these in service, you'd get a bunch of new transit riders just from the aesthetics of the train...
 
Solid Snake said:
You'd think a transit geek like Giambrone would have figure that the long term benefits of having PRESTO for the whole GTA outweighs the cost of implementing it. His position on the new fare system was ridiculous and short sighted, which seems to be the problem in Toronto...thinking short term
Click to expand...

No. Getting a vendor that is in the software business, card technology business, or who already has a system to buy makes sense. Presto has been designed by people who don't have a clue and it shows. Whatever technology the TTC gets will be the one that gets supported, even if Presto readers get modified to handle the TTC card. TTC has the greatest number of passengers... it was goofy for Metrolinx and Accenture to run off and create something without ensuring if met the TTCs needs and buy in requirements.
 
Our public transit policy: it’s clearly off the rails

From the Orangeville Citizen at this link:

Our public transit policy: it’s clearly off the rails
2011-01-20 / Editorial

ANYONE WHO HAS VISITED Europe in recent years will be struck by the importance placed on rail transit.

Just about anywhere you travel, rails provide a viable public alternative to the private car.

Sure, there are buses for both urban and interurban travel, but most of the great European cities offer a combination of subways, commuter trains and various forms of “light rail transit,†including streetcars and multiple unit trains.

Even Paris, which once offered only a choice of the Metro and buses, now has a modern light rail system that’s sometimes on streets and more often on its own right-of-way on the city’s outskirts.

When it comes to inter-city travel, France has its high-speed rail lines and even the poverty-stricken Czech Republic has electrified rail links of the sort Sir Adam Beck once envisioned criss-crossing Southern Ontario.

Go to a city like Vienna and you’ll find streetcars just about everywhere, but not the lumbering heavyweights you find in Toronto. And their lightweight, low-slung trams fairly glide along, sometimes in the middle of streets and sometimes on their own rights-of-way at one side of the vehicular traffic.

We don’t know, but strongly suspect, that European motorists detest streetcars every bit as much as Toronto’s new mayor, who wants to see them gone and replaced by buses.

That’s of course what happened in once-great cities like Detroit and Cleveland, where the love affair with the car doomed the streetcars and the buses that replaced them quickly became trapped in rush-hour traffic and were used only by those who couldn’t afford cars.

Today, Canada has virtually no inter-city rail service of any consequence outside the Windsor-Montreal corridor. Although there is still a token transcontinental service, it consists of three trains a week using the drab CNR lines through the Northern Ontario bush, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Jasper rather than the far more scenic CPR trackage along the north shore of Lake Superior and through Banff and the Rockies via Regina and Calgary.

Meanwhile, both the CNR and CPR have ridded themselves of all trackage in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island and all branch lines in Southern Ontario, effectively eliminating the possibility of anyone outside the Greater Toronto Area ever having rail passenger service.

The only place where plans are afoot to improve rail passenger serve is the GTA, where GO Transit has embarked on plans to upgrade its Georgetown service to something approaching the service offered on its Lakeshore lines and there is supposedly a plan to provide basic GO service on some other rail lines radiating out of Toronto.

However, last week brought some interesting news from Peterborough, which currently has no rail passenger service – not even a VIA train – on CPR trackage that once formed a main line (and the only direct route) between Toronto and Ottawa.

There, the local Conservative MP declared that passenger service will return in just three years, and that he’ll be aboard passenger train that will leave downtown Peterborough on July 1, 2014.“It’s full steam ahead and all aboard,†Del Mastro said, in updating the community on the Shining Waters Railway Authority (SWRA), which is to operate the Peterborough-to- Toronto rail link,

He said the plan would cost $233 million, which includes track refurbishing, building or upgrading six stations and platforms, repairing bridges and purchasing refurbished rail cars, “There’s no question that rail travel is going through a renaissance.â€

The plan calls for the non-profit SWRA to own the service, with professional rail operators hired to run the route. CP Rail would donate the rail corridor.

The MP said the provincial and federal governments have each set aside $150 million to bring the rail service back. “We’ve had very clear signals, certainly from our government and also from the Province of Ontario, the premier was clear when he indicated the $150 million they have budgeted for this is available for the project, provided it can be completed on budget.â€

Interestingly, much of what is being proposed for Peterborough could be accomplished far more easily on another former CPR line, that between Orangeville and Streetsville. But for some reason, Mr. Del Mastro has no local counterpart.

Sure, Orangeville’s population,currently just short of 30,000, is less than one-third that of Peterborough. However, the town is a lot closer to Toronto and the line goes through much more heavily populated areas, passing within walking distance of the Brampton GO station.

As for the tracks, anyone who has travelled on the Credit Valley Explorer will know they are probably in better shape than those on the Peterborough line, and certainly good enough for the refurbished Budd rail diesel cars planned for the Peterborough service.
Click to expand...
 
That article has somewhat of a hint of "why not me?"-ism. Given the choice between rail service from Toronto to Peterborough vs Toronto to Orangeville, I'd probably pick Peterborough too.
 
"Poverty-stricken" is not exactly the best way to describe the Czech Republic ...

Peterborough is larger but it also has Trent, which alone would surely produce, at a minimum, dozens of weekly train trips (hundreds of weekly trips at certain times of year). Orangeville has no such base.
 
I also think Orangeville is a better choice than Peterborough. It's much closer
 
Closer, yes, but more complex. In particular although there is a rail corridor between Brampton and Orangeville, it's steep and winding and will be slow for passenger service. Like, very slow. Additionally, because of a lack of rail connections, you actually have to run the service through Streetsville which increases new track km substantially.
 
The biggest problem with rapid transit in North America is the cheap cost of gas for cars. For me taking transit from mid-town Toronto to Markham takes about 45 minutes and costs about $55 a week, while driving takes about the same time and costs $40 a week in gas. Granted I'm paying for insurance and maintainence on top of that, but I'd own a car no matter what so those costs don't really factor in. If gas was $2 per litre or I had to pay $5 a day for parking transit would suddenly become much more attractive. Conversly, if it only cost me $35 a week to get to work that too would make transit more attractive.

The question is how long will cheap gas be with us? and, Will be ready for the massive shift to transit when cheap gas disappears?
 
howl said:
The biggest problem with rapid transit in North America is the cheap cost of gas for cars. For me taking transit from mid-town Toronto to Markham takes about 45 minutes and costs about $55 a week, while driving takes about the same time and costs $40 a week in gas. Granted I'm paying for insurance and maintainence on top of that, but I'd own a car no matter what so those costs don't really factor in. If gas was $2 per litre or I had to pay $5 a day for parking transit would suddenly become much more attractive. Conversly, if it only cost me $35 a week to get to work that too would make transit more attractive.

The question is how long will cheap gas be with us? and, Will be ready for the massive shift to transit when cheap gas disappears?
Click to expand...

If those gas and parking costs increased to $2 and $5 gradually over a few years, you would continue to drive. "Cheap" is relative. You would get used to the new costs, as would everyone else. The *only* way increases will impact driving/transit share is if they increase very, very quickly. Doubling two years in a row might do it, but it would have to keep going up or people would return to their cars.

But with train ridership to Peterborough, for example, car costs rising 300% in two years could still be cheaper than train fare if you're piling multiple people into a car. Many of the Trent students I mentioned earlier can get rides at least sometimes and are not bound to transit. If transit isn't going to be cheaper (or if it is cheaper but it takes twice as long to get anywhere), it needs to be more attractive in other ways. Before the train can compete with the car, it has to exist first, though!
 
howl said:
The biggest problem with rapid transit in North America is the cheap cost of gas for cars. For me taking transit from mid-town Toronto to Markham takes about 45 minutes and costs about $55 a week, while driving takes about the same time and costs $40 a week in gas. Granted I'm paying for insurance and maintainence on top of that, but I'd own a car no matter what so those costs don't really factor in.
Click to expand...
As your insurance rates are partially based on if you drive to work or not, and how many kilometres it is to your workplace, your rates would go down somewhat - assuming you have told your insurer that you are driving to work every day. Personally I found my maintenance costs dropped significantly when I stopped driving the 30 km (round trip) to work every day.

That aside ... if the travel times are the same, wouldn't one benefit from the spare time by not driving? You can read, nap, write e-mails, answer phones, etc. I commute by choice, however I've found that generally for me the switch happens when the transit travel time is still longer than the drive time, because of simply not having to concentrate on driving for so much time.
 
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