[Midtown Urbanist]

Don Valley is very confusing.
If you want to take the Don Mills bus you would follow the signs to the bus terminal but NO!
You have to exit at the south west corner and potentially cross the street to a shelter-less top. Lots of walking.

Fairbank is like this as well, actually might be the worst station in the line, after having seen each station now.

The south bound Dufferin Bus is only accessible at the end of a long corridor and several series of stairs, with no escalators or elevators. I actually think it makes more sense for majority of people to exit in the opposite side of the street and cross the intersection twice.

 

[A 6264]

Another thing I noticed: There are flat screen ads on underground station platforms opposite the tracks, but 1 in 5 is just an ad for Paterson(?), the company that runs the ads, and all the rest are blank white screens, wasting electricity and using up their life cycle. You would think someone would want to have their ads up for the opening day crowds. They keep saying advertising signs are on the way out, but the TTC and ad companies aren't even trying to drum up business. New trains don't even have ad strips. I still look at ads when riding to pass the time, or I would if there weren't so few of them.

 

[ssiguy2]

Well just when Torontonians thought that the Second Coming was going to beat the Eglinton Line, it opens. The great news is that it seems like Metrolinx, politicians, and the TTC have genuinely been listening to TTC patrons and have learn that speed does matter to people and have responded accordingly and with higher speeds thru the tunnel sections and more signal priority still on the way, it look like this line will be a true success. This is also good news for people in N/W Toronto because if they can do on the street running portions of Eglinton , then they can do it on Finch. This means the TTC & ML will not be able to make up more excuses as to why Finch is so slow and how the necessary changes cannot be implemented quickly.

The moral of this long and painful story?........that, despite cries from the left-wing politicians, your crack smoking Mayor during one of his few lucid moments was right, this should have been a subway.

 

[cplchanb]

Well just when Torontonians thought that the Second Coming was going to beat the Eglinton Line, it opens. The great news is that it seems like Metrolinx, politicians, and the TTC have genuinely been listening to TTC patrons and have learn that speed does matter to people and have responded accordingly and with higher speeds thru the tunnel sections and more signal priority still on the way, it look like this line will be a true success. This is also good news for people in N/W Toronto because if they can do on the street running portions of Eglinton , then they can do it on Finch. This means the TTC & ML will not be able to make up more excuses as to why Finch is so slow and how the necessary changes cannot be implemented quickly.

The moral of this long and painful story?........that, despite cries from the left-wing politicians, your crack smoking Mayor during one of his few lucid moments was right, this should have been a subway.

Not necessarily.
Its more like politicians need to stop pandering to the car crowd and grow a spine to get signalling right. How can the C Train be so successful downtown but we are still stuck to the 1930s way of operating it like a streetcar......

 

[ProjectEnd]

Couple random shots from today:

 

[A 6264]

Well just when Torontonians thought that the Second Coming was going to beat the Eglinton Line, it opens. The great news is that it seems like Metrolinx, politicians, and the TTC have genuinely been listening to TTC patrons and have learn that speed does matter to people and have responded accordingly and with higher speeds thru the tunnel sections and more signal priority still on the way, it look like this line will be a true success. This is also good news for people in N/W Toronto because if they can do on the street running portions of Eglinton , then they can do it on Finch. This means the TTC & ML will not be able to make up more excuses as to why Finch is so slow and how the necessary changes cannot be implemented quickly.

The moral of this long and painful story?........that, despite cries from the left-wing politicians, your crack smoking Mayor during one of his few lucid moments was right, this should have been a subway.

Sure, if there wasn't a big difference in cost. If we had to choose between 1 new subway and 3 new surface LRTs, I'd pick the latter, and only then if it made sense. I'm not pro or anti one or the other. I've remarked that the surface part of line 5 seems to run almost as fast as underground, but if if it were above ground end to end, it would be a disaster. So pick what's sensible, and save some bucks if an LRT would be good enough.

 

[81-717]

If we had to choose between 1 new subway and 3 new surface LRTs, I'd pick the latter, and only then if it made sense.

^ i 2nd this.

 

[Jm gravel]

Don Valley is very confusing.
If you want to take the Don Mills bus you would follow the signs to the bus terminal but NO!
You have to exit at the south west corner and potentially cross the street to a shelter-less top. Lots of walking.

We were also musing last night why the TTC did not change the route of the 162 to run it down from Barber Greene to the new Don Mills station.

 

[cplchanb]

The screens on the mythical unopened platforms on the stouffville line have entered the chat....

 

[nightstreak]

And a little video....

 

[nfitz]

... the sunday crowd is in force... trains all near cap. I suspect 10 minute on weekends will not be enough!

Perhaps that's why the Sunday schedule is every 7.5 minutes. And less than 4 minutes on Saturday.

Another odd thing is the non-cab ends of the LRV's have windshield wipers, and it looked like they have wiped recently

With all the expense of a control unit to run the train at the non-cab ends, I'd have been surprised if there wasn't windshield wipers!

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Having experienced a few crush loads on the train now, I am bit concerned about this line’s capacity to handle peak hour commutes.

It should have been a full subway. I think upping the frequency and adding an additional car on the vehicles is something that will be needed in the near-term rather than long-term.

 

[robmausser]

Timed the line. 57 minutes end to end.

Underground portion was very fast even without having the full speed in place. Approximately 22 minutes from Mt Dennis to Laird. Average time between stops underground (including dwell time) were 1:45-2:30 minutes.

The line is basically the St Clair streetcar once you reach the above ground portion. It really suffers at red lights, but the fact that it goes underground at Don Mills is saving it from being a disaster like Finch. It took 35 minutes to travel Laird to Kennedy. The shortest stops took 2 minutes but the longest stops that included dwell time at red lights took 4:30 minutes.

I’ve heard Olivia Chow and various TTC peeps talk about signal priority enhancements coming to the LRTs but if it is not giving the full signal priority at lights, then don’t believe it will help. It has to be actual signal priority or it is not enough. Every delay in this portion of my ride was literally due to red light signals.

It slowing to a crawl through intersections also did not help things.

They need to shut down the Leslie intersection to cars. Only let them turn west off of Leslie and come from the east to Leslie. Or build another ramp like the Celestica Lands have. Then there is zero interference until Don Valley station.

They also need to build two onramp clovers at the Don Valley Expressway so that cars don't need to cross the streetcar tracks there to get on the highway. Eliminating those two intersections will help a lot, considering they aren't even necessary intersections to have at all

 

[Allandale25]

Inaugural trip (WB)
29:30 Kennedy to Laird
Met inaugural EB at 31:30
37:00 to Eglinton
44:30 to Cedarvale
55:00 to MD!!!

Will update as continues. I have lap for every stn
*Pls note this train is nealy full, we had to wait at some stns a bit longer due to congestion. Red lights was 2 to 10. as in hit 10 reds then green, and hit 2 greens.

EDIT: i posted full lap time for all stns is a later post ~1 or 2 pages down

I was on that train!

 

[JSF-1]

Just got back from my trip on the line from Kennedy to Mount Dennis and then back. Overall I'll say it was a more pleasing experience then the Finch West line on opening day, and the journey took about an hour although it didn't feel like it (on Line 6 you could feel the minutes of your life ticking away). At least the trains I rode on the surface section moved at a decent pace and was noticeably faster then Line 6. That said there is still the issue of stopping at red lights which only highlights the need for aggressive TSP since when trains are allowed to get up to speed on the surface portion it is actually a pleasant ride. In fact there was a section between I believe Wynford and Bermundsey where we were actually moving faster then cars on the road which only proves the service can be good if the powers that be get their heads out of there asses. The underground section is exactly what it says on the can, no issue there. Overall a good first impression to me and the line can become great with only some minor changes. I won't comment on crowding since it is the first day so there are more people then what the line may usually see, that said I can see the need to run trains as 3 train MU's or increasing frequency like the TTC and ML plan but we won't know until the line has operated under normal circumstances.

On the topic of stop spacing the only arguments I would make for stop removal would be Aga Kahn and Hakimi-Lebovic and even then on my trips the Aga Kahn stop didn't feel egregious, Hakimi-Lebovic however is definitely an outlier.