Dan416
Senior Member
I highly doubt the Dundas LRT and Hurontario LRTs are going to be interlined (assuming either are even built). You don't see Yonge and Bloor interlined do you?
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Whose vision of transit in Toronto do you support?
- Thread starter Dan416
- Start date
Interlining subways is much more expensive than interlining LRTs though. With subways, you need a complex network of tunnels, basically a highway interchange underground. LRT interchanges can be done at-grade if needed (or on the same grade). And they were at one point interlined, so it is possible (not necessarily at Yonge and Bloor, but the St. George-Museum-Bay wye). I'm not saying that it won't take some creativity with alignments and station locations, but it can be done, especially if that possibility is taken into account from the start.
doady
Senior Member
Dundas LRT west of Hurontario would be a waste of money. Interlining it with Hurontario LRT and serving MCC makes sense. Dundas is the one of two suitable corridors for subway in Mississauga. The other is Hurontario. But if both Hurontario and Dundas get LRT, there will be no more need for subway.
Neither the Hurontario or Dundas LRT solve the problem of express connections between MCC, Airport, UTM, let alone beyond Mississauga, so I don't see how the Mississauga Transitway can be "decommissioned." Besides, the transitway will serve regional express connections far better than any subway extension.
Neither the Hurontario or Dundas LRT solve the problem of express connections between MCC, Airport, UTM, let alone beyond Mississauga, so I don't see how the Mississauga Transitway can be "decommissioned." Besides, the transitway will serve regional express connections far better than any subway extension.
Dan416
Senior Member
Why wouldn't you continue the LRT west of Hurontario? A good portion of Mississauga's population lies WEST of Hurontario. Plus there's UTM at Mississauga Road. It would be short-sighted to end the Dundas LRT at Hurontario just as it is short-sighted that UT Scarborough is still unserved by rail.
I don't really see Hurontario as a candidate for subway right now. It's too long a corridor and where would you even put a subway to start? It's just too spread out a corridor. There's no dense section where you would logically put a subway and it's just not needed as a standalone subway. LRT will be fine on Hurontario for years to come. As for the Bloor line continuing west, I've already said my piece about that.
Fresh Start
Banned
I don't see how a Mississauga subway with the stop spacings you've described could ever replace the Dundas bus. Dundas from the 427 is Conferderation is very dense and intensified with lots of commercial and residential buildings lining it. And what of the area west of Hurontario? LRT by far is the better model for this area of Mississauga. We could not afford to stop space every 800m like the rest of Bloor-Danforth and the the end to end trip time or even just the Square 1 to Yonge-Bloor commute time would take far too long to be worthwhile. It'd be a lot easier to argue for an Eglinton subway with a long-term extension from Renforth Gateway to Square One as there needs no more than five stops to cover all of that distance: Dixie, Tomken, Kennedy, Hurontario/Eglinton, Square One. East of the 403 it can even run at-grade/trenched/elevated, saving money.
And see this is where an Eglinton subway would become of use to Mississauga City Centre. There's the future potential to interline it onto the DRL at Mount Dennis Stn. It's not as complicated as you'd think to interline subways. Montreal was able to have the tracks of two separate lines converge on the same platform level opposite to eachother without incident. The TTC operates regularly scheduled short turns that require switching, and of course every single train gets switched at the ends of lines so switching at Mount Dennis wouldn't be an issue. In the Eglinton West case, the northbound-to-westbound track of the DRL subway can merge into the Eglinton subway ROW via curving in one level below the east-to-west line. This would place the station a lot further west of the rail corridor than probably hoped for but it'd still be short walk back over to the GO line; not unlike the walk from Dundas West's exit heading down onto Bloor St then walking it over a jig. East-to-south is even easier as this is the convex inward curve vs. the bulging outward concaves the north-to-west faces a la the screechy turn from Museum to St George.
Fresh Start
Banned
Hear, hear! People keep forgetting the limited scope of what light rail transit can offer in contrast to bus rapid transit. If you can justify spending or having governments on your behalf pay for extending meandering versions of railed transit deeper and deeper into suburbia where the prospects for return on investment can never be acheived and the ridership you'll fetch may only be marginally higher than attempting to do the same road procurements (dedicated transit lanes, signalized intersections, preboard fare collection, queue jumps) with buses... then that's a mistake not to be taken on the taxpayer's dollar. Add to that tramways' never failing ability to incur bunching and stalling, which results in long delays in service and by design road-median LRTs have to abide to a every 5 minutes interval as not to conflict too much with the surrounding motorists using the corridor and driving across it. And I wouldn't risk my life by attempting to cross a 6 lane semi-highway to get into the road median LRT cause I'm in a hurry to get to work/class/home.
Unfortunately, and there's endless stats to prove this, streetcar-to-pedestrian accidental injuries/fatalities are a constant issue in urban areas. If you can place mass transit in a private side-of-roadway or grade-separated ROW, it's worth the higher expense. If not, don't shoot for the moon, be conservative and resourceful of the transit modes we already have functioning down a corridor and find ways to improve upon those. Apart from ridership capacity and the number of drivers required for a line, there really aren't that many points of divergence between BRT and LRT, except on the one matter that matters most... CA-CHING!!
Fresh Start
Banned
All subway lines are needed, the only question is how to pay for them. The method of piecemeal extensions the TTC has engaged in for the past 30 years has only worsened the situation as core lines like the DRL and yes, Eglinton were never built from the haydays when subway construction was relatively affordable. Now its trying to play catch-up in its densely populated urban centres; as demand levels both in the inner- and outer-suburbs has skyrocketed to the point that transit upgrades need to be made to adequately serve the entire region, all at once. I can see the kind of thinking that went behind concepts like Transit City as a means of distributing "rapid" service across the city. However a few kilometres of tramway along random select corridors that never had the ridership density to justify the high cost of LRT to begin with, is not a long-term solution. Only further subway expansion is.
Dan416
Senior Member
The whole point of SOS was to SAVE OUR SUBWAYS. Our lines haven't been extended in 30 years. Kipling was built before I was born, and that was ONE STOP extension! I don't know when Kennedy was built, but probably before that. When was the Yonge line last extended? Doesn't it bother anyone that our terminii haven't changed in 30 years? Nevermind trying to build entirely new lines! And Sheppard isn't even finished! Total logic #fail.
andomano
Active Member
Skew your data anyway you like. You may discount Sheppard as an 'extension' but the Downsview extension was completed in 1996.
Dan416
Senior Member
Um please elaborate how any "data" was skewed. I referenced Kipling, Kennedy and Yonge. That's three out of four terminii excluding Sheppard. I know Downsview is newer, but wasn't it a single stop extension as well? Okay let me rephrase that. 75% of our terminii haven't been extended in 30 years excluding Sheppard which was just chopped off and doesn't reach as far as it was supposed to in its original EA.
SlickFranky
Active Member
It doesn't really matter though because Yonge and Danforth can't handle extensions until DRL is built. I get the Sheppard issues, that's a shame. But setting that aside, you're complaining that one line hasn't been extended since 1980...to a mall surrounded by light industry.
Dan416
Senior Member
One line? No, three or four. Bloor west of Kipling, Danforth east of Kennedy, Yonge north of Finch, Sheppard east of Don Mills and west of Sheppard-Yonge. Even if you consider Bloor-Danforth one line, that's three, not one. And I don't recall any capacity issues on Danforth.
Besides, has it ever occurred to anyone that the extension of the Bloor line west of Kipling could result in TOD and redevelopment of that whole section of Etobicoke?
sixrings
Senior Member
If I were SOS I would have simply extended danforth to STC. Built an EGLINTON subway from the airport to DON MILLS... Then BUILD a DRL from DONMILLS and Sheppard down through Pape through Queen and all the way to Dundas West. Those three are the main routes... everything else can have bus or lrt.
You pretty much just quoted our original plan....
