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Meanwhile...

Berlin Will Spend €2 Billion Per Year to Improve Public Transit

The German capital plans to make major investments to expand bus and rail networks, boost frequency, and get ahead of population growth. Are you jealous yet?

(That's $3.02 Billion in Canadian Dollars, per year. Okay, Berlin has a population of 3,748,148, so cut that by a third to $2 billion CAD per year.)

From link.

When it comes to public transit, you can’t accuse Berlin of holding back on cash.

This week, the city announced its transit masterplan for 2019 to 2023 (with a period of focus that actually extends to 2035), and a major overhaul of the city’s transit networks is in the cards. The funds allocated are generous, to say the least: Berlin is committing a remarkable €28.1 billion, or just under $32 billion, to transportation projects.

That huge investment won’t all come in one burst, of course, but will be spread out over the years between now and 2035. That still means a phenomenal €2 billion every year pumped into the system until 2035, a level of consistent investment that would make the average American public transit official weep with envy.

Berlin’s spending on improving public transit has always been generous—last year, for example, the city pledged €1 billion for new subway trains. The promised level of investment is still remarkable, even in Europe. London’s Crossrail link, for example, is a major 74-mile heavy rail route due to open this autumn that has required the construction of new stations and new tunnels beneath the city core. Its initial budget was around $20 billion. The Grand Paris Express, a massive expansion of the French capital’s metro system into its suburbs that entails the opening of 65 new stations, will cost around $28 billion. Both projects are seen as remarkable, even grandiose transformations of the way their cities connect to their regions. Their funding still falls comfortably short of what Berlin plans to spend in a metro region that has far less than half the population of either London or Paris.

So what does $32 billion buy you in Berlin? A fair bit, it seems. The headline item from the masterplan is a massive expansion of the city’s streetcar network. For years now, Berlin’s trams have been spreading out from East Berlin—where the state retained them long after they were junked in the West. This trend is continuing, with major lines due in the western districts of Kreuzberg, Schöneberg, and Spandau. According to the plan, the city’s the network in 2035 will be 28 percent more extensive than it is now, with the length of its lines increasing from 194 kilometers to 267 kilometers. When complete, Berlin’s tram lines placed end to end would be enough to cover the distance between Houston and Austin. Trams on this expanded network will also be more frequent than they are currently, as a major expansion of the fleet will increase Berlin’s current number of trams by 38 percent.

There will also be significant extensions to the S-Bahn—the city rail network that, while running somewhat more commonly above ground and being somewhat more suburban in reach than the U-bahn, is actually quite difficult to tell apart from the subway in both function and frequency. Berlin’s new S-Bahn lines will be concentrated in the north and run mainly on a north-south axis. In a spirit of pragmatism, they won’t be newly constructed, but mainly consist of former railway lines that have been left unused in the past few decades.

Bus services will likewise get a complete overhaul. The plan calls for every bus in the city to be electric by 2030, while more lines will have their timetables packed to ensure a bus at least every 10 minutes. For far-flung parts of the bus network where stops and passengers are few, the city will also experiment with a hail-a-bus service, by which passengers in less-frequented areas can summon a mini-bus (hopefully within a short waiting time) by letting the depot know they’re there.
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Other changes could be similarly transformative, but still require feasibility studies before exact plans are published. Chief among these are four proposed subway extensions, including U-Bahn lines out to both the new BER airport (if that ever opens) and to the old airport at Tegel, which is due to become a tech park when it is finally allowed to retire as a passenger terminal. Meanwhile there are some other rumblings of investigating whether it’s feasible to ship goods around the city using the tram network. All of this will come at a cost. Some of that cost will come from increased fares, which are scheduled to go up by 1.4 percent. Elsewhere, increased ridership should also provide some funds—not just from people using the new lines, but from the ongoing expansion of Berlin’s population, which by 2030 should rise to beyond 4 million from its current level of 3.63 million.
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Berlin is already expanding its tram (streetcar) network into the old western sectors. Berlin already uses Bombardier Flexity vehicles in their fleet (narrower than Toronto's streetcars). "The city’s the (tram/streetcar) network in 2035 will be 28 percent more extensive than it is now, with the length of its lines increasing from 194 kilometers to 267 kilometers." Currently, Toronto streetcar network is around 83 km in length.
 
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When I was last there in 2012, they were building a tram extension to the main Railway station as well a subway extension. Major upgrading of the tram and rail line by the airport with a plan to add tram and rail to the airport. There were other tram lines being rebuilt as well extended. This was one place that show me we were not 25 years behind Europe on transit, but close to 50 years.

We are great at talking about expansion, but very poor at doing it and this includes the Quebec Windsor High Speed Corridor. High Speed trains in NA is only a dream and we will never see it in our life time.
 
The first TTC all-electric bus is on the road

June 3, 2019

Today, TTC Chair Jaye Robinson and Mayor John Tory joined Marco Mendicino, Member of Parliament for Eglinton-Lawrence and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities to launch the first of the TTC's all-electric buses into service on the 35 Jane route.

The bus, manufactured by New Flyer Industries Inc., arrived in Toronto in April and has since undergone testing and commissioning as well as operator training. It is the first of 60 electric buses the TTC will have by the first quarter of 2020, making up one of the largest mini-fleets of electric buses in North America.

In addition to New Flyer, the TTC is also procuring electric buses from Proterra Inc. and BYD Canada Co. Ltd., allowing the TTC to inform future procurement through a head-to-head evaluation.

The electrification of vehicles is a key component of the City's TransformTO climate action strategy, which targets an 80 per cent reduction in local greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To meet that target, 100 per cent of vehicles in Toronto must transition to low-carbon energy by 2050. The electrification of buses is an example of the City's commitment to lead by example. Vehicles generate about one-third of the emissions in Toronto today.

The TTC's new eBuses operate on truly green propulsion technology with zero tailpipe emissions. In Ontario, generation of electricity for overnight charging is 100% nuclear and completely free of GHG emissions.

The Government of Canada and the City of Toronto are investing $140 million in these electric buses as part of the federal Public Transit Infrastructure Fund (PTIF). This fund is helping keep Torontonians moving through investments in the repair, modernization and expansion of the city's transit and active transportation networks. In total, up to $1.8 billion is being invested in Toronto through PTIF, which was launched on August 23, 2016.

For more information on the TTC's green initiatives, please visit ttc.ca/green.
 
drum118 said:
The first TTC all-electric bus is on the road

June 3, 2019

Today, TTC Chair Jaye Robinson and Mayor John Tory joined Marco Mendicino, Member of Parliament for Eglinton-Lawrence and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities to launch the first of the TTC's all-electric buses into service on the 35 Jane route.

The bus, manufactured by New Flyer Industries Inc., arrived in Toronto in April and has since undergone testing and commissioning as well as operator training. It is the first of 60 electric buses the TTC will have by the first quarter of 2020, making up one of the largest mini-fleets of electric buses in North America.

In addition to New Flyer, the TTC is also procuring electric buses from Proterra Inc. and BYD Canada Co. Ltd., allowing the TTC to inform future procurement through a head-to-head evaluation.

The electrification of vehicles is a key component of the City's TransformTO climate action strategy, which targets an 80 per cent reduction in local greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To meet that target, 100 per cent of vehicles in Toronto must transition to low-carbon energy by 2050. The electrification of buses is an example of the City's commitment to lead by example. Vehicles generate about one-third of the emissions in Toronto today.

The TTC's new eBuses operate on truly green propulsion technology with zero tailpipe emissions. In Ontario, generation of electricity for overnight charging is 100% nuclear and completely free of GHG emissions.

The Government of Canada and the City of Toronto are investing $140 million in these electric buses as part of the federal Public Transit Infrastructure Fund (PTIF). This fund is helping keep Torontonians moving through investments in the repair, modernization and expansion of the city's transit and active transportation networks. In total, up to $1.8 billion is being invested in Toronto through PTIF, which was launched on August 23, 2016.

For more information on the TTC's green initiatives, please visit ttc.ca/green.
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Wrong about the first all-electric bus.

sun-november-19-mt-pleasanr-rd-new-ttc-trolley-coach-bicycle-rider-mtp-road-near-belsize-1922-e1511034582678.jpg

From link.

On June 19, 1922, Torontonians got their very first look at the latest in public transit vehicles when the one-year-old Toronto Transportation Commission placed four of its newly-arrived electric trolley buses on the Mount Pleasant route that had heretofore been served by gasoline-powered buses. With this improvement in public transportation, the north Toronto community served by these new buses grew quickly — so much so, that three years later, the Commission decided to replace the 30-seat trolley buses with larger electric streetcars. To accommodate the local population and the resulting increase in transit ridership the original trolley bus route, by which the buses had connected Eglinton Ave. with the Toronto and York Radial Railway stop at Merton and Yonge Sts. via Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Merton St., was expanded. In this 1922 photo from the TTC Archives, trolley bus #1 is shown southbound on Mt. Pleasant Rd. approaching Davisville Ave. That cyclist would have to wait and wait and wait for dedicated bicycle lanes. On Nov. 3, 1925, streetcars on the St. Clair route began operating from the route’s existing eastern loop at the northeast corner of the St. Clair and Mt. Pleasant intersection north on Mt. Pleasant Rd. to a loop at Eglinton Ave. When the bridge on Mt. Pleasant Rd. south of Merton that carried traffic over the old Belt Line railway right-of-way was replaced in 1976 so too were the streetcars…by trolley buses. On July 16, 1993, all trolley bus operations throughout the city (with the Bay route being the last) came to an end.
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steveintoronto said:
Reecemartin said:
we are spending more than maybe any other city in North America on transit expansion right now and will easily have doubled our rapid transit network within the next decade.
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?
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That sounds about right ... we were 69 rapid transit stops only a couple of year ago - 75 now. Once Line 5 and Line 6 open in 2023 then 38 more stops are added with 19 more on Hurontario - so that's 132 in only half-a-decade. A decade out should see the Yonge extension (5 stations), Line 2 extension (let's assume 3 new stations but closing 5 Line 3 stations) and the Ontario Line (about 11 new stops to Eglinton and 4 interchanges with existing stops) ... that will bring us to 146 stops in a decade.

That's double. Perhaps more if the TTC plans for Line 7 (25 stops) and Line 8 (20 to 25 stops) bear fruit, or the Eglinton East (18 stops) and Eglinton West (7 to 17 stops) extensions are built within a decade. And then there's the various Line 6 extensions (11 stops to Yonge, 5 or more stops to Pearson), Line 7 extension (3 stops to Meadowvale), and Malvern projects. I doubt much of it (or any of it) will be completed by 2029, but that totals about 250 stops.

And then there's the grade-separated bus rapid transit in Mississauga (Transitway) - that's 12 stops that have opened recently .. with talk of further grade-separated transitways, such as along Highway 407, etc.

Also, at what point does RER become rapid transit? Every 15 minutes off-peak? The UPE is doing that already (3 more stops), and Lakeshore East is now every 15-minutes mid-day (10 stops).
 
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Remember this?
[...]
Titled ‘This is Where…’, the campaign confronts different kinds of harassment through a series of real-life customer encounters, including sexual harassment and harassment based on gender identity, ability and race.

Over the next several weeks, customers will begin seeing posters and other printed material placed throughout the TTC, on all vehicles and in stations.
[...]
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https://www.ttc.ca/News/2017/September/09_06_17NR_ThisIsWhere.jsp

It got really out of hand, almost offensive in itself. It's now quietly disappeared. "This is where the bad man wore unmatched socks and hadn't brushed his teeth". One was about a man "leering".

They must have received all manner of neurotic complaints, and meantime, the real ones remained unaddressed. Whoever conceived of this must have been beyond naive.
 
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steveintoronto said:
Remember this?

https://www.ttc.ca/News/2017/September/09_06_17NR_ThisIsWhere.jsp

It got really out of hand, almost offensive in itself. It's now quietly disappeared. "Here's where the bad man wore unmatched socks and hadn't brushed his teeth". One was about a man "leering".

They must have received all manner of neurotic complaints, and meantime, the real ones remained unaddressed. Whoever conceived of this must have been beyond naive.
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If I am not mistaken they also had a reporting app to go with it.
 
My favorite is the "You said it" campaigns which have now become stale. Those ads looked almost amusing, like they found the most ardent complainers and chose their tweets to use.

I find it amusing that they chose to use tweets about feet on seats, bags on people and headphones for their campaign. You think they would have got rid of the last remnants of the campaign by now.
 
Richard White said:
If I am not mistaken they also had a reporting app to go with it.
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They did, one that most people couldn't use until the train pulled into a station. I read reports of $800,000 for the app, but this states less:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tr...tc-launches-anti-harassment-campaign-app.html

The app's creators got sued in San Francisco for something that went wrong, probably unfounded allegations against someone. This campaign really lent itself to abuse. Not a peep that I can find to when it stopped and why. Could well be the same thing in Toronto, someone got accused by a neurotic of looking at them and smiling.
 
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