81-717
Active Member
Hint: a subway train does NOT look like a streetcar (while the L5 vehicles certainly do)!
- Thread starter JasonParis
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kotsy
Senior Member
I'm sure it's possible. Whether it'll happen is a completely different story. Might be worth emailing Metrolinx about
Toronto Rocks
Active Member
Toronto owns the former Science Centre land, so it most likely will be turned into many subsidized housing towers.
A 6264
Active Member
People keep saying it is / isn't a subway depending on how fast it moves, how big or heavy or wide the cars are, the track gauge, the distance between the tracks and floor or platform, etc.
If you look up "subway" in a dictionary, it will define it as: An underground railway. Sub = below ground. That's it.
Dictionaries are not prescriptive. They are not published by "authorities" who declare this is how a word should be used, but on research on how people already use it.
Objections usually boil down to, "This doesn't look like something I've seen before that was called a subway, so this must be something else".
Toronto is moving toward a system where every rail line is a little different and incompatible with other lines re. track gauge, height from track to floor, style of vehicle, signal system, etc.
Lines 1, 2, 4, 5, and OL meet the definition of a subway. The former line 3 and line 6 do not, but were never presented as such - single digit route numbers notwithstanding.
81-717
Active Member
I disagree that being underground is the sole definition of a subway, despite the "sub-" in subway (London has a famous location where the underground goes over the overground). It should be primarily about the vehicle design (and by design I mean more sophisticated features than width/length/height/weight/etc). The type of service does matter in the definition, but there's some flexibility to the definition. Theoretically a subway line with subway-type trains can be 100% above ground and still provide the exact same subway-style service and be fully grade-separated. Nor would it cease to be a subway if it had the occasional grade crossing (see Chicago & Oslo), but didn't run in mixed traffic like a streetcar (though a subway-type train running in mixed traffic wouldn't be a streetcar anymore than a street-running freight train would be a streetcar). Putting a streetcar underground wouldn't make it a subway anymore than putting a highway underground (401 tunnel, anyone?) would turn all the cars, buses & trucks into subways.
This is everything that's wrong with the direction that transit in this city is going. The right direction would've been to build L3 & L5 as part of the same network as L1/2/4, with compatible technology & track connections (obviously the same applies to SSE, YNSE & Sheppard extensions), and why "sometimes building no transit is better than the wrong transit", and every line being incompatible with every other is 100% the wrong transit.
A 6264
Active Member
So you and I take opposite sides. I'm still not sure why.
I don't agree. I don't know what else to say.
Well yes to the latter part, because subway is a variation of the word railway, and was originally applied to rail lines that are underground. Can an underground streetcar be called a subway? I don't see why not.
Yay, we agree on this one! I think at some future time, maybe 50 years from now, Toronto will make a decision that all future train purchases are to be compatible with all lines, and over time, they may shut down lines one at a time for a short while and install new tracks, alter platform height (raise the bridge or lower the river?), etc. By that time, construction labour will all be done by teams of robots, so you just push a button to start, and off they go.
T3G
Senior Member
The only area where I will agree with you on this is with the Ontario line.
There was never any danger of Finch being able to share rolling stock with Eglinton, or vice versa... they are too far apart to justify track connections between the two, and transfer by truck isn't practical... and at the same time it would be silly to introduce the limitations of the downtown streetcar network (requiring bespoke rolling stock) to the uptown LRT network, which can run off the shelf vehicles.
The fact that the Ontario line, which is supposed to relieve the struggling Yonge line, is deliberately using smaller rolling stock instead of being compatible with the base downtown network is, of course, inane. People can make their arguments that because of headways or whatever then the capacity will suffice, and that may well be true (only time will tell) but if your project was conceived for no other reason than to relieve an overloaded metro line, it's foolish, plain and simple, to leave additional capacity on the table. But what else to expect from Metrolinx, who ruin everything they touch?
81-717
Active Member
Because I define a vehicle by what it is, not where it is, in the same way that planes don't cease being planes when they're on the ground.
There are underground sections of mainline passenger/freight railways, do those become subways too when they enter the tunnel?
I don't know why. Many subway lines have above-ground sections, and in some systems (NYC, Stockholm) those make up more than 50% of the system. So why not 100% (if possible)?
"Danger" is the wrong word here, it would be an operational advantage if it were possible, despite the distance between them. I imagine a north/south connecting track between them akin to the track on Bathurst tying the 512 to the rest of the 500s, and the 512 is also quite out of place compared to the rest. Had L5 & L6 been designed as part of the 5XX network, and had track connections both to each other and to the 5XX (L5 to 512 is the same distance as, or less than, 512 to 5XX), it would've still been more sensible than having 2 standalone lines. The irony is that despite L3/5/6 being the only "off the shelf" lines from a global perspective, from a Toronto perspective it's L1/2/4 that are "off the shelf" for the subway network, and 5XX "off the shelf" for the streetcar network, whereas everything else is "bespoke" as it doesn't fit into either of those 2 Toronto specs, despite being "off the shelf" for the rest of the world.
It'll be interesting to see how quickly L3 will be "over capacity" like L1 already is, and what their plan would be to increase capacity for it.
Westey
Active Member
The key thing that can be changed from line to line is the number of cars (and length). A four car train can run on Yonge, or maybe a 7 car train could to. You just have to work out the warning system for the car that doesn't meet the platform. At least they can run to share yards. Electrical power, track gauge, vehicle width, boarding height, signaling - these are what should all be the same.
What is being proposed for Ontario Line - could it not have been the same 3rd rail power as the Yonge Line Trains. could it not have been the exact same width and height? I suspect they could have made that geometry the same and just made a few tweaks to suit the Ontario Line requirements (maybe a bit more power since it goes up and down a lot, or shorter cars to allow tighter curves, etc.
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Westey
Active Member
I said this a dozen years ago, or more.
Transit City wanted to get rid of the SRT because it was an orphan technology.
So, they brought in a new orphan technology in LRT that was designed in such a way that the streetcar could have sufficed.
I wonder how many transit lines would loose their subway designation if the "sub" was strictly enforced.
Vancouver would have 0.
Toronto would have 1 - 5km of Sheppard Line as subway.
Only Montreal would remain intact. (I don't quite know how they refer to REM since its not fully open yet).
Overall, that means probably 2/3 of the subways are gone.
I wonder what the percentage would be globally.
81-717
Active Member
The SRT isn't an orphan technology either as it exists in Vancouver & Detroit. Sadly, the only orphan technology was gotten rid of in 2013, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I'm not at all thrilled with losing the SRT in favor of 2 streetcars & another light metro either.
To me it seems like A6264 wasn't excluding subway lines that are only partially above-ground (which includes L1/2), but rather any hypothetical subway lines that are 100% above-ground with no exceptions (I know of none that actually exist).
JSF-1
Active Member
When people say orphan technology in the context of the SRT they mean it was the only line in Toronto that used ICTS trains and the city had no plans on building any new ones. There was a time when the city did... Back in the 70's Metro examined the possibility of an ICTS line along Eglinton between Weston Road and Bellamy Road. It fell by the wayside probably due to both ridership concerns (remember this is the 70's were talking about) and the increasing cost of subway construction (the line would still have to be underground west of Brentcliffe). Any lingering idea of using ICTS trains for any other lines was thoroughly dead after the SRT opened.
T3G
Senior Member
The SRT and LRT might be "orphan technologies" for Toronto (I'm not sure this is true, at least not with the line 5 Flexities), but that's not really what the phrase means when used in discussions like this. It refers to vehicles that are bespoke and customly made for only one or two customers, and as they age parts become difficult to source. A good example of a genuine orphan technology was the CLRV/ALRV cars, parts were hard to come by and they had to manufacture a lot of them in house towards the end.
In comparison, lots of cities across the globe have bought similar trams as run on our LRT network, and that is precisely why they are not orphan technologies - the manufacturers will keep making parts for them for a long time, and maintaining them in the long run won't be a problem.
The ICTS technology of the SRT, for this reason, also doesn't qualify as orphan tech. Other cities use it, a place like Vancouver to quite a substantial extent. If we wanted to keep the SRT going, parts available wouldn't have been an issue. They wanted to get rid of it because a) it was old and failing, b) buying new cars would have required the reworking of the tunnel at Ellesmere, c) its route was of highly dubious value, and d) the tech didn't play nice in Toronto winters.
There is no need to take my word choice so literally. "There's no danger of XYZ" is very common parlance in English and seldom refers to things actually being dangerous.
Except that comparing the distance from Eglinton to SSt. Clair is inaccurate, as there is no maintenance facility on St. Clair. So to be accurate, you need to calculate the distance from Leslie, Russell, and Roncesvalles to Eglinton or Finch. For some perspective, the deadhead time from Leslie to Spadina Avenue is already around 40 minutes, just how long would such a journey take if they were driving a streetcar that had to run in mixed traffic already to get all the way to Finch? It's 12 km from St. Clair to Finch, that is not a small amount of trackage to keep only for yard movements. To achieve operational efficiency, you'd need to construct a carhouse on Finch anyway, and therefore no advantage is gained from this so-called interoperability. Finch to Eglinton is not much better, it's 8 km between the two. If you're building that much trackage, you might as well implement rail service on that street... except that Eglinton, and Finch are not logical end points for a rail service along Bathurst Street, and much of Bathurst is too narrow to build a private ROW.
For comparison, the distance between the 512 and the northernmost east-west streetcar route, the 506, is only 3.04 km. That is a completely different scale we're talking about here.
81-717
Active Member
I know it's not literally "dangerous", but the implication is that it's still a bad thing, whereas I'm saying it's definitely not, because interoperability & interconnectedness is a good thing.
Did I ever suggest the opposite? Of course extending the 5XX network to connect to L5/6 would include the new carhouse at MTD and wherever FW's is, in the same way the YNSE will include a new yard at RH, ShE will include a new yard somewhere beside the CPKC yard, and ShW will connect to Wilson.
There's a better example, which are their subway equivalents.
The conspiracy against orphan technologies is a very real thing.
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