[felix123]

I think people at least here are beginning to see the problem with the design choices taken with the ECLRT. We have a pseudo subway in the west paired up with a glorified streetcar in the east, I think operational issues will be inevitable due to the distinct modes of operation.

We may even see a splitting of the line with a well served, frequent "subway" in the western section, while we see an overcrowded and slow tram service in Scarborough due to at grade operations, lack of TSP, etc. Which would then further justify the existence of an "anti-Scaborough" conspiracy at city hall (which looks more true everyday if I'm being honest).

Not disagreeing about the likelihood of operational issues (and let's all hope that we're pleasantly surprised because Toronto transit really needs a good news story right now), but I don't think people here are just beginning to see the shortcomings of the ECLRT. They've been apparent since the project's inception.

 

[T3G]

So?
People in wheel chairs can still access the C-train.

Yes, because they built large ramps, ramps that take up more physical square footage than the platforms on the Crosstown do. Whether rightly or wrongly, this was not the path we decided to take here.

Ramp height seems to be the only advantage low floor has over high floor. Name another advantage of low floor.

I think you might have me confused with the people who chose the specifications for this project. I am not saying that LF was the be all, end all, I am merely trying to offer a reasoned alternative explanation to your frankly farcical assertion that LF cars were chosen so that we look more like Europe.

But as long as we're playing... evacuations are a hell of a lot easier when you don't have to jump down 700 mm into the street.

No it's not. The low floor trains have higher maintenance costs. Fixed bogies vs the more conventional bogies on a high floor train.

Care to provide an official source for this assertion?

Yea we spent an extra 3B$ on the underground stations to make them longer to accomodate the longer trams, but at least we saved 10M$ on the concrete used for the outdoor aboveground loading platforms because we lowered those platforms 20cm

Longer trams? Longer than what? Surely not a subway train?

One Crosstown car is 30.2 metres long (citation). Two cars coupled together therefore make 60.4 metres. A 4 car Sheppard subway train is 91.44 meters. A 6 car Yonge line train is 137.16 meters.

 

[MrGoose]

Longer trams? Longer than what? Surely not a subway train?

One Crosstown car is 30.2 metres long (citation). Two cars coupled together therefore make 60.4 metres. A 4 car Sheppard subway train is 91.44 meters. A 6 car Yonge line train is 137.16 meters.

Except that the 4 car Sheppard train carries 948 people at crush load and 3 crosstown cars carry 750 people at crush load.

So trams that are longer to carry the same number of people as a subway car

 

[yurt2022]

Except that the 4 car Sheppard train carries 948 people at crush load and 3 crosstown cars carry 750 people at crush load.

So trams that are longer to carry the same number of people as a subway car

Which is another shortfall of a low floor LRV design. The wheel wells take up half the space in the interior and make awkward seating positions. This is true for the Flexity at least, however the Citadis for Line 6 seems much better designed and seems more like a "true" LRV.

Maybe there should've been a switch of vehicles for the lines...

 

[urbancog]

Yawn

 

[nfitz]

I think people at least here are beginning to see the problem with the design choices taken with the ECLRT.

At last???

There's been over a decade of whining in this thread about the ECLRT design choices. I thought we'd all mostly agreed to stop discussing the ancient history in this thread. Why start it again?

 

[NoahB]

Which is another shortfall of a low floor LRV design. The wheel wells take up half the space in the interior and make awkward seating positions. This is true for the Flexity at least, however the Citadis for Line 6 seems much better designed and seems more like a "true" LRV.

Maybe there should've been a switch of vehicles for the lines...

I recommend you go back and read the last 500-1000 pages of this thread. I have read your arguments at least four different ways. People posted insightful things. It's worth a read. ( At least, read the last 100, which is what I did when I joined a couple of years ago)

It will touch on every point you have mentioned so far. I would rather have this thread talk about progress while we 'celebrate' the project's 14th year of construction. What could have been or should have been should be in a fantasy thread somewhere else.

 

[reinventingthewheel]

We could really use some sort of thread throttling…

 

[generalcanada]

We could really use some sort of thread throttling…

anyone else remember when mods shut down the Ontario line and Ontario place threads when those got heated...ahhhh good times

 

[dowlingm]

If people are going to be rehashing Eglinton subway retrofit arguments again, I am throwing in for a Lawrence LRT instead again

 

[kaptrice]

It's unfortunate that Toronto fell for the now declining LRT fad that struck North America. I've always believed that a subway along Eglinton (and in Scarborough) would serve our needs much better, especially in the future since the region has seen record growth over the years...

Toronto has a pretty uniquely weird LRT complex. In most of the US and in Alberta, the modern (70s and onwards) systems tend to be of a "tram-train" type, mixing fast railway or highway rights-of-way with inexpensive surface access into urban cores. There are a few examples of systems that are mostly rapid-transit, like those in St. Louis and Ottawa; Seattle mostly builds to rapid transit standard but is constrained by the relatively small suburban street median segment. There are some legacy systems that have central tunnels with surface branches, like San Francisco and Philadelphia. Toronto's first LRTs, on Spadina and Queens Quay, were higher-quality tramways, and the Transit City lines to me evoke the Ile-de-France tramways, even if the FWLRT flops the execution.

The ECLRT, stitching together a rapid transit line and a tramway at Laird, definitely ought to have been either one or the other. But it's rather distinct from other LRT lines across the continent; I don't think its poor planning is a product of imitation. It's a homegrown Toronto mistake.

 

[kaptrice]

One thing I also don't hope to see on Line 5.

The Flexity Outlooks on Toronto's streetcar system seem to have alot of rocking and general "instability" when accelerating and coming to a stop (and even some during static motion). Is this something we're also going to see on Line 5 due to the low floor design of the vehicles/the design of the flexity itself, or is it just due to poor track conditions of Toronto's tram network?

Oscillation has been a recurring problem, but the LRT vehicles are different from the streetcar ones, and their infrastructure's very different, too.

 

[DirectionNorth]

Toronto has a pretty uniquely weird LRT complex. In most of the US and in Alberta, the modern (70s and onwards) systems tend to be of a "tram-train" type, mixing fast railway or highway rights-of-way with inexpensive surface access into urban cores. There are a few examples of systems that are mostly rapid-transit, like those in St. Louis and Ottawa; Seattle mostly builds to rapid transit standard but is constrained by the relatively small suburban street median segment. There are some legacy systems that have central tunnels with surface branches, like San Francisco and Philadelphia. Toronto's first LRTs, on Spadina and Queens Quay, were higher-quality tramways, and the Transit City lines to me evoke the Ile-de-France tramways, even if the FWLRT flops the execution.

The ECLRT, stitching together a rapid transit line and a tramway at Laird, definitely ought to have been either one or the other. But it's rather distinct from other LRT lines across the continent; I don't think its poor planning is a product of imitation. It's a homegrown Toronto mistake.

Stitching a tramway with a tunnel is fine, if you have more than one branch to make the best use of the tunnel's expensive capacity (like Edmonton-ish with 1.5 branches, or San Francisco with 5 branches - not the Central Subway mistake). Theoretically, we could turn around trains at Science Centre to gain capacity, and I think that is what will eventually happen. But still, it's a very strange decision. So here's today's really, really terrible idea: Lawrence East LRT, branching into the Eglinton tunnel at Science Centre or Sunnybrook Park station. Instead of turning at Science Centre, trains alternate on Lawrence and Eglinton.

I feel like we argue this every other week. I personally don't expect anything to be rebuilt, not for the first 50 years of operation - come back to me in 2076 (I plan/hope to be alive then) to check in with this debate.

Is the news still "we don't know anything because Metrolinx is a wall"?

 

[Aplus23]

Why would a signaling system built from the ground up be so difficult to implement? After a few updates should fix any jinks or bugs if your engineers n programmers are really good.

 

[generalcanada]

if your engineers n programmers are really good.

you answered your own question