neubilder
Banned
Gee, hopefully whats going to be done will be spectacular, right now its nothing
"Gee, I love Rob Ford, and these are the kinds of things I think of to say."
Gee, hopefully whats going to be done will be spectacular, right now its nothing
Perhaps the best option, as then you can build the (relative to a new portal and bigger Union streetcar station) the relatively cheap permanent line down Queens Quay East. The question is how do you loop it? There's various options - I suppose even including some double-ended version of the new legacy streetcars, given they'll have to buy some more.Option 3:
Some type of streetcar looping service on the surface and need to see what being proposed before commenting on it.
The proposal of converting Bay St. to transit pedestrian mall is interesting. If it can run new streetcars (design load 150 riders) on 2' headways, that will be 30 cars per hour, 4,500 riders per hour per direction. That's more than 10% of Yonge subway's capacity; a noticeable relief.
If the Bay line is combined with the QQ East streetcar line, the ridership on the Bay section will be pretty much bi-directional. In the morning rush, southbound cars would take riders from Bloor subway to the CBD destinations, whereas northbound cars would take QQ East residents to the same destinations. That's very good from the operational costs perspective, as the cars will not run empty in the counter-peak direction.
Note that QQ West streetcars will not fit in the Bay line schedule alongside with QQ East streetcars. If the peak forecast for QQ East is > 4,000 pphpd, then it will need pretty much all streetcar (30 per hour = 2 min frequency) that Bay can handle. Therefore, it might be both cheaper and more effective to leave the existing underground Union loop unchanged, and keep running QQ West streetcars to that loop in the tunnel. QQ East line could be entirely on surface, turning from QQ to Bay and running at the street level above the tunnel up to Union, then continuing at street level all the way to Bloor.
Closing Bay St. to car traffic is a non starter. Where is bus route 6 supposed to go? The GO buses going to Union Station GO Bus Terminal all use part of Bay as well, where are they supposed to be moved to?
I don't see how 2' could be a maximum frequency. The only factor affecting this is the signal priority of the EW cross streets. I would also not see a plethora of stops. With my idea of a loop around old city hall, I would see stops at QQ, Union, S of King, S of Queen and Albert. Also, I would only see the the 509 and QQE line going up Bay. The 510 Spadina line I would keep on QQ with a loop to the east. Eventually it would travel up Cherry and loop at King.