TTC: Streetcar Network

[DSC]

Maybe one of these years (decades?), on-street parking of all kinds will be banned on ALL public transit routes, streetcars AND buses. Except for short-term deliveries.

If a street is not wide enough for parking it should probably not have ANY parking/stopping. It just takes one delivery driver to block all traffic - esp. streetcars and buses..

 

[drum118]

Doing the Waterfront Master Transit Plan and other EA's for transit, Parliament Line was raise many times that it was needed and told it was outside our scoop and Castle Frank Station could not support an loop.

I fully agree that a Parliament Line should be built as a mix line and service the Portland.

I haven't looked at the video and going by what been posted, The Park Lawn Spur will be the new loop to service the new GO Station and the community with Humber Loop being remove.

Dufferin St needs streetcar line, but has many issues from King to Eglinton that the City needs to deal with and not listen to the whinners who will loose parking space. The hill starting at Dupont to St Clair needs to be tunnel due to grade issues as well the hill section south of Eglinton.

Broadview North is DOA until more density is built along it.

Dupont Is seeing a lot of development, but can have a line on it so long duel end cars are use as there is no place for loops. The Dupont Line can be part of the Bay St Line That I have call for all the way to QQ.

Keele Line has feet to be a line, but a number of issues needs to be deal with to do it like Jane.

Eastern Ave line is DOA for too many reasons.

My 2 cents.

 

[KhalilHeron]

I was going to comment earlier that reintroducing the Parliament streetcar would be an example alternative to some of Reece's suggested streetcar extensions.

I know the Parliament bus ridership isn't that high, but I think that the Ontario Line's Distillery station at Parliament/Front adds impetus to creating this line. Linking it up with the Waterfront East LRT would give people in the Portlands a more direct route to the OL as well (since the OL bypasses Cherry.)

Given that most of the trackage already exists, adding an extension north to Castle Frank and South to Queens Quay would create downtown's only north/south streetcar east of Yonge, anchored by two rapid transit lines, for a modest cost.

I only see a few issues:

• It'll have to run in mixed traffic, no room for LRT lanes (except maybe for a short section on Bloor)
• It'd be fairly slow, given all the intersections and the mixed-traffic running

I mean car traffic on parliament would be fine with 1 lane in each direction the city just doesn't have the balls. Most businesses back onto alleyways already so stopping for deliveries shouldn't be an issue, and north of dundas there are enough side streets to park on, and south of it there are still quite a few surface parking lots that can be redeveloped to include underground public parking if it's that big a deal

 

[nfitz]

I don't really know East York well enough to comment on those proposed linkages, but I do like the idea of terminating at subway stations instead of at loops.

East York? I don't know how one does anything there with no streetcar track currently. I suppose extending 505 or something to a future Cosburn station ... or even further to Toronto East hospital might make sense.

Where is this list published? Who is this Martin guy - I encountered him on Twitter the other day ... he seemed to think very highly of himself, and that I was supposed to know his name or something ...

 

[aquateam]

According to Steve Munro a couple of years ago the Castle Frank station structure is not robust enough to support streetcars. "Castle Frank, aside from having a small loop, also has, as I understand things from previous discussions of this idea, a problem with insufficient structural strength to carry a loop full of streetcars. "" Parliament is also a fairly narrow street so creating a ROW would be VERY difficult. I am a streetcar fan but lets' get TTC to deal with the network it now has before getting into major expansions.

He also says this when someone suggestions an underground connection to Castle Frank for an across-the-platform link to the subway:

Steve: [...] The ramp down on Parliament would be challenging given the narrowness of the street and the fact that expansion is almost impossible with St. James Cemetery on one side and the underground structures (parking) of St. James Town on the other. Struturally, merging in a streetcar loop with the existing station would be quite a challenge. It would have to be at the mezzanine level to avoid conflicting with the subway itself, and this would likely run into utilities under Bloor Street.

None of these are insurmountable: the bus loop can be reinforced, and utilities can be moved for a tunnel. But it sounds like it is much more of an ordeal than simply laying down track.

If this were a new subway line with money raining down from the feds, the province, and the city then the connection would be a no-brainer. But for the TTC's regular capital budget where the purse strings are much tighter it's much harder to justify a ~300 meter tunnel or station rebuild on a cost-benefit basis with the current ridership of the Parliament bus.

East York? I don't know how one does anything there with no streetcar track currently. I suppose extending 505 or something to a future Cosburn station ... or even further to Toronto East hospital might make sense.

Where is this list published? Who is this Martin guy - I encountered him on Twitter the other day ... he seemed to think very highly of himself, and that I was supposed to know his name or something ...

Ah oops I meant Upper Beaches. He proposed replacing Bingham loop with an extension up Victoria Park to Danforth. There's no "list", just him describing his fantasy streetcar map in the video linked a page back.

This is the section of Victoria Park it would be going through, a two-lane residential road, so I'm a bit skeptical that the bus merits being replaced with a streetcar extension.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

Who is this Martin guy - I encountered him on Twitter the other day ... he seemed to think very highly of himself, and that I was supposed to know his name or something ...

He has a youtube channel where he puts out somewhat informative videos on transit mainly in Toronto and Canada. He does come across as being full of himself though and when prested with other ideas or someone who disagrees with him he gets argumenitive , I also think he may be a schill for metrolinx as he had some guy who was rersosable for the wayfinding sytem do an interview with him amd metrolinx retweeted the video

 

[nfitz]

Ah oops I meant Upper Beaches. He proposed replacing Bingham loop with an extension up Victoria Park to Danforth. T

Didn't I suggest that here a decade ago? Though based on the community consultation for the BRT from Victoria Park to Eglinton/Kingston Road, there was huge community opposition to running BRT down Victoria Park south of Gerrard. I doubt this would be popular to many - all the more reason to go for it!

This is the section of Victoria Park it would be going through, a two-lane residential road, so I'm a bit skeptical that the bus merits being replaced with a streetcar extension.

Lots of space - everyone's front yards here is in the road-right-of-way. Hence the community uproar on the BRT.

A better solution is just extending the 502/503 to the Danforth/Kingston Road interchange to intersect the proposed BRT.

There's no "list", just him describing his fantasy streetcar map in the video linked a page back.

Oh, a combination of my two least favourite transit fan things. Fantasy maps (if you can't describe it in a few words, you don't need to draw it!) and fan videos. Shoot. Me. Now.

... I also think he may be a schill for metrolinx ...

LOL. Really?

That would explain the reaction I got when I dared question Metrolinx's comments on the Ontario line vehicle choice. You'd have thought I'd shot their dog or something. And quite clearly had to get the last word, no matter what. Metrolinx really doesn't have a clue do they?

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

That would explain the reaction I got when I dared question Metrolinx's comments on the Ontario line vehicle choice. You'd have thought I'd shot their dog or something. And quite clearly had to get the last word, no matter what. Metrolinx really doesn't have a clue do they?

I think Metrolinx is good at running go transit however everything else they seem lost on and end up going to the Ontario government to fix like a Kindergarten student going to the teacher because another student won't share.

 

[nfitz]

I think Metrolinx is good at running go transit however everything else they seem lost on and end up going to the Ontario government to fix like a Kindergarten student going to the teacher because another student won't share.

They seem to have changed. They used to make TTC look bad at communications. But somehow while TTC has improved immensely since the 2000s, Metrolinx has seemed to have gone the other direction.

I've had some bizarre exchanges with them The most confounding was when I complained they'd not opened the new north entrance to Exhibition GO, and even worse had left the two north doors out of the existing locked creating unnecessary bottlenecks ... and they spent weeks denying that there'd even been any construction at Exhibition GO.

Bizarrely they've still not opened that new exit years later. I wonder if they'll now knock it down for the new Ontario Line platform.

 

[CapitalSeven]

Having worked in government for years, I understand your frustration from the other side. Canadian public employees are simply not allowed to tell the truth, and any dealings with "comms" makes a sane head explode.

 

[superelevation]

He has a youtube channel where he puts out somewhat informative videos on transit mainly in Toronto and Canada. He does come across as being full of himself though and when prested with other ideas or someone who disagrees with him he gets argumenitive , I also think he may be a schill for metrolinx as he had some guy who was rersosable for the wayfinding sytem do an interview with him amd metrolinx retweeted the video

I think you're making some pretty big accusations based on someone doing a video, I remember him complaining a lot about various Metrolinx lines being tunnelled and also about Presto

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

I think you're making some pretty big accusations based on someone doing a video, I remember him complaining a lot about various Metrolinx lines being tunnelled and also about Presto

True but lately he seems to be defending them a lot more.

 

[afransen]

True but lately he seems to be defending them a lot more.

Maybe he's just... sharing his honest opinions! Sometimes he might like what Metrolinx is doing and other times criticize it, rather than mindlessly hating or fawning over everything they do.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

Maybe he's just... sharing his honest opinions! Sometimes he might like what Metrolinx is doing and other times criticize it, rather than mindlessly hating or fawning over everything they do.

Maybe but he seems to have gone the opposite way since he was in Vancouver for a little bit. Whatever it's only speculation. I think that Metrolinx has done some good things too but I also think that they have done some things that aren't necessary and only did them because they created a problem so that they could create a solution to it.

 

[nfitz]

Having worked in government for years, I understand your frustration from the other side. Canadian public employees are simply not allowed to tell the truth, and any dealings with "comms" makes a sane head explode.

Perhaps that's why they don't let the engineers speak directly to the public. We have professional ethical requirements, that would not allow actually lying. Maybe there should be professional public relations licensing.

(though, note that the government has exempted government-employed engineers to be professionally licenced ... though many are voluntarily).