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Your experiences with the 2010 Museum subway diversion (May 22–25, Aug 14-15)

There is no way they are going to use those track through lower Bay other than exceptional circumstances such as taking cars in / out of service or during construction. It reduces the capacity of the line. If there ever was a University to Danforth regular service then the question would quickly be, why not University to Bloor, and how does one maintain the capacity on the Spadina line and have transfer options maintained. It simply isn't feasible.

As for a new line, when you are spending a fortune on tunnels already the effort to connect that line to lower Bay would be insignificant. I can't see what line they would be building at Bay though that would make sense to re-orient a north-south or diagonal line to go east-west at that point simply to use the underused station.
 
To my great surprise, it was not a disaster

I was there yesterday afternoon and was gobsmacked to see the TTC had taken advice from somebody outside the company for the first time ever. Yes, I was the one who suggested they hold up cards stating the direction of each incoming train. (There’s a whole tale to tell involving last week’s media preview of the Museum detour. Spoiler alert: Danny Nicholson walked away from me mid-sentence.)

It was as loud as last time and the voice announcements were impossible to understand unless you were standing right next to the announcer, also as last time. In-train announcements once the trains were stopped in the station helped.

Koreans and Chinese I observed could not figure out what the hell was going on and, in the latter case, were standing there fixedly for much too long to give the impression they were just waiting for the right train.

My westbound train claimed to be heading to Kennedy (again, you can’t trust destination signs during these diversions) and the conductor epically fucked up the announcement the first two out of four times he made it.

But overall it was much better this time. I don’t think the decorations at the new, “improved†Museum station helped in any way at all.
 
LowerBay said:
I'm just telling you what they told me. They would not reopen Lower Bay -- they would just use the tracks through it to ferry passengers between lines. It never ceases to amaze me how stupid and arrogant some people on this board really are. Before you open your mouth, you should realize that they could not possibly build a new line down there to make use of it. It's an interlocking.
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The only way Lower Bay would ever be used in normal service is if a 'downtown loop' was created, with another partial wye between Lower Bay and Wellesley. That way, trains could do a loop through downtown, dropping passengers off at Bay instead of St. George or Yonge. This would in effect create 3 transfer stations along the Bloor line in a row, reducing stress on Bloor-Yonge. But that's quite unlikely to happen.
 
I saw the new improved Museum station -- looks awful. The original 60s version looked much better.

Downtown loop? ... where's the benefit in that? -- the idea is to AVOID transfers at Bloor, not create a new one at Bay. If we wanted to do that, we'd just install an x-over west of L. Bay and terminate the AM Spadina short turns there. Remember that the Spadina line runs at half-frequency in the AM, so an AM Danforth-University service or Bloor-University service could blend in on a 50/50 basis, but the better service would be from the west. East-enders never used the Y because it always meant a longer trip to their Yonge line destination and because every train from the east reached Yonge first, so people got off and transferred. From the west, only every other train reached Yonge.

EnviroTO said ... "As for a new line, when you are spending a fortune on tunnels already the effort to connect that line to lower Bay would be insignificant" ...

I take it you're not an engineering student. It would be impossible to thread a new subway line through there.
 
Civil engineer. Yes it is possible. If you can put a freeway under Boston you can connect a subway line to lower Bay. A line could run down Avenue Rd turning east into lower Bay. Why wouldn't you be able to? Is there some sort of kryptonite and lead combo used to build the walls of the tunnels between Museum and lower Bay preventing a northern wye?
 
I was at Museum yesterday. It was crowded and noisy but most people seemed to be able to find their trains. I certainly had no problem finding the right connection.
 
LowerBay said:
I take it you're not an engineering student. It would be impossible to thread a new subway line through there.
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Toronto doesn't know the meaning of impossible threading. Have a walk through Times Square subway station if you want to see what an intertwined subway station, also built in several stages, looks like. For that matter, New York has done the equivalent of running the entire Union Station rail corridor underneath King Street through the financial district as trains head under Park Avenue toward Grand Central Station. Where there is a will, need, and money, there's a way. Routing a new subway line through Lower Bay is not impossible at all, though it would admittedly serve little purpose.
 
Chuck said:
Toronto doesn't know the meaning of impossible threading. Have a walk through Times Square subway station if you want to see what an intertwined subway station, also built in several stages, looks like. For that matter, New York has done the equivalent of running the entire Union Station rail corridor underneath King Street through the financial district as trains head under Park Avenue toward Grand Central Station. Where there is a will, need, and money, there's a way. Routing a new subway line through Lower Bay is not impossible at all, though it would admittedly serve little purpose.
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Steve Munro and I discussed this once and we both agreed that a line cannot be threaded there -- this discussion came up because there was talk of taking a branch off Yonge south of Rosedale and routing it into L. Bay. Since you guys all view Steve as a de-facto Transit God, can we put this silly discussion to rest now?
 
My experience with this was actually pretty positive. Went off without a hitch and from what I could tell, those around me weren't struggling to figure out what was going on.

joeclark said:
I was there yesterday afternoon and was gobsmacked to see the TTC had taken advice from somebody outside the company for the first time ever. Yes, I was the one who suggested they hold up cards stating the direction of each incoming train. (There’s a whole tale to tell involving last week’s media preview of the Museum detour. Spoiler alert: Danny Nicholson walked away from me mid-sentence.)
Click to expand...

Sadly, having read your blog before, it doesn't surprise me that you believe you were the catalyst for such a minor decision that ultimately contributed to saving the day here. To be honest, I'm actually surprised you have to time to post here considering all of your financial backers (who have contributed hundreds of thousands to your projects) must be expecting your latest project sometime soon.
 
Just got back. It went pretty well, and I don't really see that the TTC did anything wrong. They even had professional looking signs all over Museum station.

The only problem was that I got on a train that was supposedly going west, but it went east. That led to a very unhappy train full of people. It worked out for me though because I thought the train was going east anyway. The driver was really frustrated about what happened, because he had asked the supervisors twice which way he was going (and which way to set the rollsign), and they clearly said west.
 
reaperexpress said:
Just got back. It went pretty well, and I don't really see that the TTC did anything wrong. They even had professional looking signs all over Museum station.

The only problem was that I got on a train that was supposedly going west, but it went east. That led to a very unhappy train full of people. It worked out for me though because I thought the train was going east anyway. The driver was really frustrated about what happened, because he had asked the supervisors twice which way he was going (and which way to set the rollsign), and they clearly said west.
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What did those people do? ... get off at Yonge? Didn't the driver see the double yellow up ahead before pulling out of Museum (double yellow means a route to Lower Bay, double green or yellow over green means the switch is set for St. George.
 
LowerBay said:
What did those people do? ... get off at Yonge? Didn't the driver see the double yellow up ahead before pulling out of Museum (double yellow means a route to Lower Bay, double green or yellow over green means the switch is set for St. George.
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All those people had to get off at Yonge, get in a train (that sat there for a few minutes), go to Museum, get off, wait for the train to come back, and get on again. A few people asked the driver what he was going to do and he said that at that point he was just going to go to all the way to Kennedy because at that point there would be no point in turning back. My guess is that he wouldn't have had the authority to do that anyway.

When I was getting off, someone asked the driver exactly that question about the signals because he had noticed that we had gotten a "double amber". I didn't hear what the driver's answer was.

I don't know what he could have done anyway. If he stopped he would have to argue with transit control about what was going on, and that would hold up traffic that was already backed up in all directions.
 
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