[Midtown Urbanist]

In this instance, taking a bus across Eglinton, Sheppard, Finch, etc beats going all the way down to Bloor and back (let alone all the way down to Union). The fact that line 6 doesn't allow this strips away probably well over 50% of its usefulness. And obviously extending line 4 to allow this (no LRTs plz) should be obligatory.

Speaking from experience, it is easiest to transfer on St Clair than to go down to Line 2. Under no circumstances ever should you be using the 32 Eglinton bus to switch sides of Line 1 (guess that is no longer a concern, hah).

But agreed overall with the message, it was one of my biggest takeaways yesterday. The network effects of Eglinton are simply game changing. So many new routes, destinations, and travel patterns unlocked in this city by just this line alone. The speed of movement through a central chunk of the city that was simply inaccessible without significant time and effort is incredible. I visited places and food spots on Eglinton West that I never thought of going to as easily as one would visit a place in Koreatown or Ossington/Bloor.

 

[JSF-1]

And one for Sheppard, until Lastman cancelled most of it (he only cared about the North York segment, and nobody cared about Scarborough....which gave rise to Ford's eventual platform).

I'll have to step in to defend Lastman here but he really had no choice. Not only did Harris cancel the Eglinton West Subway but he also wanted to cancel the Sheppard Subway as well. This sent Metro into a crisis to the point that they legitimately proposed simply digging the tunnels along Sheppard but not constructing any stations or laying an track just to get Harris to agree and hope that a more sympathetic government would come along in the future to finish the line. The Eglinton West subway was always in an untenable position since it was always the lowest priority route dating back to its inception as part of Network 2011. Once it got truncated to Mount Dennis (York Centre) that halved the potential of a route that already had little need at the time. Sheppard on the other hand was always the highest priority as the Sheppard Corridor was already at capacity and that was expected to grow as STC and NYC continued to develop. Unfortunately Harris wanted to cancel both projects so Metro needed to come up with a way to preserve at least one line and Sheppard was the higher priority. The extension to Downsview was also built at this time, likely because it was cheap due to it largely being at grade.

 

[turini2]

A positive article from Jarrett Walker on the opening of the line - the key point being

The internet is full of reviews and recriminations about how long Eglinton took and the pros and cons of its design, but I want to make a different point: Eglinton shows a city slowly awakening to its true nature as a grid.

A great point worth making - Toronto has a crosstown rapid transit line at last! An alternative rapid way to get east west if Line 2 is down...

 

[T3G]

We could afford to build a subway. Money was never an issue. The issue was that politicians simply didn't want to build a subway because they didn't want to be seen supporting Rob Ford.

Had the city council voted in favour of a subway along Eglinton, the province and Feds would have helped with funding. Just like they did with this LRT project.

Money is always an issue. 7 km of the line is overland tram line. Converting this to a subway would add a few billion extra to the project, and every penny spent on one project is a penny not spent on another project.

We can discuss whether that money would have been well spent (as a user of GO transit, I vehemently disagree), but it's not as though conversion to full subway could be done for the same pricetag we have here, or with the same repercussions.

 

[Westey]

We could afford to build a subway. Money was never an issue. The issue was that politicians simply didn't want to build a subway because they didn't want to be seen supporting Rob Ford.

Had the city council voted in favour of a subway along Eglinton, the province and Feds would have helped with funding. Just like they did with this LRT project.

This is exactly right.
Rob Ford came on board wanting the B-D extended to STC. There was a lot of support for that. A year later, Ford agreed to the connected Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown. Obviously that wasn't his idea, so it show he was willing to compromise, as long as transit didn't interfere with cars. They already had the money for this plan, using a Billion from Finch and a Billion from Sheppard LRT.
But then council killed it, along with the Provincial Liberals killing their own plan just to defeat Ford.
A classic case of defeating Rob Ford regardless of the cost. (and that cost now is a $10B B-D extension.

 

[evandyk]

A positive article from Jarrett Walker on the opening of the line - the key point being

A great point worth making - Toronto has a crosstown rapid transit line at last! An alternative rapid way to get east west if Line 2 is down...

Exactly. This is a major upgrade. My wife works on Eglinton and we live on Bloor. Line 2 shutting down is a disaster for her commute. Now... she could just take Eglinton across and the bus down.

 

[marcus_a_j]

A positive article from Jarrett Walker on the opening of the line - the key point being

A great point worth making - Toronto has a crosstown rapid transit line at last! An alternative rapid way to get east west if Line 2 is down...

That's why I have always believed Sheppard west extension is crucial!

 

[Westey]

You are misstating the history. There was a subway, until Harris cancelled it. And one for Sheppard, until Lastman cancelled most of it (he only cared about the North York segment, and nobody cared about Scarborough....which gave rise to Ford's eventual platform). The cancellations were publicly known, but there was no blowback and little advocacy to challenge those decisions.
The political mood of the day was very much about not spending money on subways because they were considered too expensive. Love him or hate him, Ford fought for an underground line on Eglinton. But in general, LRT was all the voters would accept.

- Paul

Harris was 15 years before Ford. That was a completely different time.
As soon as Ford came up with the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown, there was widespread support and most were content.
I guess some were scheming in the background and they blew up the entire thing.
Almost instantly, they realized the errors of their ways and that LRT was not acceptable to service Scarborough. All sorts of B-D extensions started to be discussed. Federal gov't started promising more money as the 2015 election neared. The Liberals who killed Rob Fords Crosstown, became the "subway champions". Doug Ford got elected on this as well. Ironically, everything proposed was more expensive than if they stuck with the Crosstown plan.
So, we spend $10B on a B-D extension to avoid paying the extra $2B on the Ford Crosstown.

 

[cplchanb]

That's why I have always believed Sheppard west extension is crucial!

everyone except for the bean counter politicians believe it to be crucial. they must have gotten their education from the beancounters at McDonell Douglas back in their formative years.

 

[81-717]

Line 2 shutting down is a disaster for her commute.

It's happening more & more often now, looks like we'll have to get used to it until they convert it to ATC.

An alternative rapid way to get east west if Line 2 is down

Another argument why it should be a subway not a tram. Imagine redirecting all (or even a significant chunk of) L2 users to L5 in this scenario, that's when capacity issues will really show.

 

[Bojaxs]

It's great that so many people riding the line have their phones out and have opened their speedometers apps so as to gauge the speed of the line. People are also timing the line and seeing how long it takes to go between stations.

The speed of the underground portion of Line 5, while Line 6 continues to plod along at street level, will just reinforce the notion to the general public that all rail based transit must be grade separated.

I feel as though when a lot of these LRT's were proposed back in the late 2000's/ early 2010's, the general public weren't as informed on transit and just figured, "it's on rails, so it must be faster". After Line 6's opening, people are more conscientious that this isn't always the case, and politicians, city councilors will be under more pressure from their constituents to make sure that their transit proposals are actually what's best.

- People in Mississauga need to ask serious questions about the City Centre loop.
- People in Hamilton need to ask serious questions about scrapping the 403 bridge
- People in Durham need to ask serious questions about the Bowmanville GO extension, in particular the tracks running parallel with the GM plant spur.
- People in Ottawa just need to start raising hell and getting mad!!!

 

[Chaplinurbex]

I realize I'm a day late to the party but wanted to share some of my thoughts from opening day:

- The underground portion is real quick. For my use case, I live at Chaplin and generally just need to get to Cedarvale or Eglinton stations, perhaps a bit further now that it is easy to do so. I can get from Chaplin to either of the Line 1 connecting stations in less than 5 minutes. No more waiting for a 32 bus that is 20 minutes late, no more waiting on Allen on ramp traffic.

- I think that stations are beautiful. Maybe a little sterile, but they are big, bright and clean. They feel very modern.

- Everyone was in a pretty good mood yesterday and having fun with the new line. Saw everyone taking pictures and videos and being impressed.

- I was surprised how busy it was, I took it to do stuff all day; morning, afternoon, and evening. It seems everyone came out to use it. Just shows how desperately it was needed. Though I think some of it at least were people taking it for fun and because it was free. I feel day to day it won't be so crazy crowded.

- There was a glitch at eglinton station where the station announcements were playing english and french overtop each other back to back without stopping. It was maybe kind of annoying but honestly funny hearing the computer have a meltdown. I'm sure that can be easily fixed.

- Shouts out to the guy yelling "Happy New Line" at every stop. Love the energy first thing in the morning.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I'm most interested to see how this line will impact travel patterns, particularly north-south routes that previously were forced to feed into line 2.

I suppose, in the West end there's capacity on line 1 to take on passengers at Eglinton W. So some passengers, particularly those near the Eglinton corridor would see improved travel times vs heading down to Line 2, with the same or marginally changed number of transfers.

In the East however, Line 1 is operating at capacity and the geography of the region puts Line 2 and Line 5 very close to each other. In fact the two lines interchange at Kennedy station. Plus with Go services (LE, ST, & RH) where the West (especially the far North West) of the city lacks Go service.

So I can see some change in travel patterns in the West, but in the East less so.

 

[Corktownie]

Money is always an issue. 7 km of the line is overland tram line. Converting this to a subway would add a few billion extra to the project, and every penny spent on one project is a penny not spent on another project.

We can discuss whether that money would have been well spent (as a user of GO transit, I vehemently disagree), but it's not as though conversion to full subway could be done for the same pricetag we have here, or with the same repercussions.

Building the whole line as a tunnelled subway would have been crazy expensive, but of course that's not the only option. The eastern part could have been elevated, like the Ontario Line, REM, or Skytrain. For that matter, the western extension from Mt Dennis to Renforth should also be elevated instead of tunnelled. I would be very interested to see a cost comparison of elevating both the east and the west vs. the current weirdness of building the east as a tramway and putting the west in a tunnel.

 

[SkyScraaaper]

All I can think about when I took this line was...this was $13B? Looks like a $2B line or maybe max $5B line...which is absurd. We need an Audit on where the money went, every cent because I can't see anything best of breed. Even the concrete finishing or lack thereof looks bare bones.