TTC does it again

[ITcomputer]

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080925/080925_subwayclosure/20080925/?hub=CP24Home

just for fun, do you have a backup transit route if the one you usually use is closed. How much longer does this route take you to get to work or home?

I'll go first: from Bathurst and Spadina to Royal York and Lake Shore W.

I usually take the Go Train; if that fails I can take The Queen W Long Branch car (extra 30 mins), failing that, Bloor subway to RYork station and RYork S bus to Lake Shore (extra 40 mins).

Cheers

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

Not really in the mood here to go on a TTC rant (long-time members here know my biases), but needless to say I think the slow and steady deterioration in ROW maintenance I've noticed over the past five years (manifested in increasing trash and debris along the corridor) seems to finally be coming home to roost in this incident. It seems the cause were decrepit, rusted out cable brackets along the walls of the tunnel that just snapped, and brought down about a 50m span of signaling and communications cable with them. I can't say I'm surprised, to be honest.

Walked home from Bloor to Mount Pleasant and Davisville, took about an hour. At least the weather was nice.

 

[DavidH]

just for fun, do you have a backup transit route if the one you usually use is closed. How much longer does this route take you to get to work or home?

I take GO's 96 Oshawa Highway 401 Express to work in North York. If there are problems along the 401, the drivers will usually divert somewhere else and get us to the destination, although it may be slower.

If the route is unavailable, I work from home. I'm fortunate to have that option, though.

 

[ShonTron]

I'm surprised how few people went around it by using the Spadina Line, since nearly all of the affected stations has a frequent bus connection between the two, Davisville/Glencarin perhaps being the one exception. It slowed things down on that line as well, probably as there were too many trains stuck on that section, making them stop at every signal north of Eglinton West.

 

[AgentOrange]

My regular route is the King streetcar.

Alternate is Queen.

The other alternative is about a 45 minute walk or a $10 cab.

 

[ITcomputer]

Not really in the mood here to go on a TTC rant (long-time members here know my biases), but needless to say I think the slow and steady deterioration in ROW maintenance I've noticed over the past five years (manifested in increasing trash and debris along the corridor) seems to finally be coming home to roost in this incident. It seems the cause were decrepit, rusted out cable brackets along the walls of the tunnel that just snapped, and brought down about a 50m span of signaling and communications cable with them. I can't say I'm surprised, to be honest.

Walked home from Bloor to Mount Pleasant and Davisville, took about an hour. At least the weather was nice.

You are right on the mark with that. the 50 billion dollar plan from Metrolinx is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. 20 years from now we will still have the same crumbling transit system. Don't let those lying politicians fool you.

 

[ITcomputer]

I'm surprised how few people went around it by using the Spadina Line, since nearly all of the affected stations has a frequent bus connection between the two, Davisville/Glencarin perhaps being the one exception. It slowed things down on that line as well, probably as there were too many trains stuck on that section, making them stop at every signal north of Eglinton West.

That was the problem, the alternate line experienced performance issues as well. So their was no real alternative, save for a cab or walking.

 

[taal]

What performance issues exactly?? Other then the fact you had to stand there was not one single problem on the other side of the line!

My mom did it, my friend did and later I to go downtown.

A comment I made in another thread is it's a little sad most people don't know their transit system better, there are so many alternatives ... even if it were just to take the bloor line across to one station (bathurst) for example and take a both north ... there are many many other choices.

Even easier would just be to take the subway all the way around - my mom did this and other then being crammed into the 196B (84 is local) her whole trip only took an extra 20min! ... this was at 6pm of all times.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Yonge and Bloor was a mess after the closure and probably was the worst between 6 and 630 when there weren't enough shuttle buses (since there's so few spares during peak), cars were still trying to get through the intersection, and a few thousand people were crammed out onto the street (which didn't help that the sidewalks were closed due to Bloor St. construction).

Things got better though as the night progressed, the police finally shut down the the street to traffic, which also helped the shuttle buses actually get to the passengers -- the buses actually were running very frequently (likely buses were sent to shuttle service after their peak runs for other routes were done) and were actually well managed. The buses ended up looping via Church and Park street to Bloor, and let people off at the subway entrance by the Marriott on Bloor, before going down the car-less street to the bus stop at Yonge and Bloor for boardings. The buses were a huge mess earlier on when they tried to loop via Church, Charles, back to Yonge.

Some photos:

On the street around 6pm

View from the Global Chopper at 6:30

View of the bus-only Bloor Street around 10:15pm

 

[ShonTron]

The TTC needs a proper crossover somewhere between Eglinton and Bloor, as Yonge/Bloor seems to constantly be the turn-back point, a horrible place if there ever was one if there are any problems at Eglinton or further south. Around St. Clair wouldn't be a bad location.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Well they ended up moving the turnback to Davisville at around 11pm... I assume they didn't do it earlier because they had to shut off power at Eglinton, which would have zapped Davisville as well.

 

[ITcomputer]

The TTC needs a proper crossover somewhere between Eglinton and Bloor, as Yonge/Bloor seems to constantly be the turn-back point, a horrible place if there ever was one if there are any problems at Eglinton or further south. Around St. Clair wouldn't be a bad location.

if they did that the subways could have traveled much further north

 

[Observer Walt]

They absolutely need to rethink how to handle emergency outages. I wondered why the trains couldn't have gone north at least as far as St. Clair, if not Davisville. They need to find methods to break up the entire system into smaller bites, so that a problem in one area does not take out such a great length of track.

 

[wyliepoon]

Maybe it's also time to consider New York style express-local tracks for our subway system. This is one time that they might come in handy.

 

[yin_yang]

instead of going to eglinton station and taking the avenue road bus north, i had to go to st. george, then go up to glencairn and walk for 30 minutes from there.

lytton park'd.