AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Disparate - I don't think Hamilton will take it kindly to being called desperate. Oshawa, well...
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Disparate - I don't think Hamilton will take it kindly to being called desperate. Oshawa, well...
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steveintoronto
Superstar
It still depends on what constitutes the defined area. The Bay Area is a pretty much the population of Ontario, depending on how many adjacent municipalities you count. (Nine or twelve)
As that pertains to "election transit promises" BART covers this area:
http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-francisco-population/
Even the comparison to San Diego is completely misleading. I've spent time in SD and just outside, known as the "Greater SD Area" SAN Diego Area Governments, SANDAG). And it's nowhere near the vast size of the Bay Area. But again, as that pertains to transit, SANDAG even includes planning for highways within the region:
http://www.sdforward.com/pdfs/RP_final/AppendixU17-UrbanAreaTransitStrategy.pdf There are later papers published, but that establishes the co-operation across the region on transit and transportation issues.
The GTHA, saddled with a "Subways, Subways, Subways" Premier (and I defy anyone to produce evidence of his having a policy otherwise) had best enter a race for cripples, not athletes.
California's population exceeds that of Canada's. On the other hand, Canada is statistically more urban dwelling than the US. Along with Australia, (even more so) the ratio of urban to rural dwellers is one of the highest in the world.
And on that point:
Canada goes urban - Statistics Canada
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015004-eng.htm
May 17, 2018 - At that time, 3.2 million people lived in Canada, of whom 2.7 million ... Chart 1 - Proportion of population living in a rural area, Canada, 1851 to ...
Sorry city dwellers, Canadians are happier living in small towns: report ...
https://globalnews.ca/news/4214984/canadians-happiness-rural-small-towns/
May 18, 2018 - Sorry city dwellers, Canadians are happier living in small towns: report ... They took a total of 1,215 communities from across the country into ...
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Hopkins123
Senior Member
Being a Conservative doesn't necessarily mean cutting corners at all costs. If there's value in expanding the transit networks with subways then it's correct course of action to take; or have we learned nothing from the Scarborough RT experiment disaster?
Hopefully the threatened death of the Pink Line will be the death of the rise of the CAQ.
steveintoronto
Superstar
Of course it doesn't. It means choosing the most apt way to render value for money.
In almost all cases, that's not conventional subway. There's a reason that subways, with few exceptions, aren't being built in the most modern cities. RER in tunnel? Absolutely. Or Metros. Tunnel where necessary, higher speed travel beyond that, in greater comfort, at lower cost. And able to offer single seat travel from the core to the exurbs.
What a concept. Too bad it's absent from the dialog of the present OntCons.
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Streety McCarface
Senior Member
People like the concept of subways because they take away as little land from people as opposed to demolishing houses for new rail lines on the surface (this of course almost never happens). And with regards to underground transit, I'd argue that our subways are actually the best technology to be tunneled: they're lighter than LRVs and RER vehicles so they are less expensive to operate, and the lines are easier (and more importantly, cheaper) to build because tunnel diameters are smaller (any sort of tunnel that requires a pantograph is going to be hella wide). Pantographs are also more expensive to maintain in tunnels (because of inherent grounding dangers). The issue with Toronto is that metropolitan Old Toronto cannot accept the idea of having an HRV subway train running aboveground (including elevated), when in fact, that's how they should be running on corridors like Sheppard Avenue or almost the entirety of the TYSSE (Seriously, why did they not build half the line on the surface?).
Also, almost every city is expanding or planning on expanding their subway system. BART is planning an extension to San Jose and Santa Clara, MUNI is building a new downtown line, LA is building the purple line extension, the MTA is building the Second Avenue Subway, new lines are being built for the mexico city metro, Montreal has the blue line extension and plans for a pink line (that will likely never come to fruition), we have many lines (like the DRL, YNSE, SSE, and plans for SWSE and SESE (beyond all these, and with ford in power, don't think he won't make the push for these lines (even though we should wait for SE until around 2041+)), Washington DC has the silver line extension, Chicago wants to extend the Red Line south and build a Clinton st subway, the MBTA is extending the green line as a subway and there are talks of extending the blue line, SEPTA is building an extension of the Norristown line, and wants to extend the blue line (Market-Frankford Line) North, MARTA has many extension ideas, Prague is building a brand new line, Vienna has been rapidly building their metro for the last 30 years and they're planning on building a new U5 line, London has the Battersea extension and Watford Heights extension planned, they're building rapid transit all over china and india, Seoul has expansion plans, etc etc etc.
We don't see new systems because no new cities warrant the need for a subway system or cannot currently afford a subway system, yes, but they're still building LRT subways all over North America: Ottawa, Edmonton, Quebec City, Dallas, Seattle, are all examples of this. These are all basically subway lines with lower capacity stations. Here's what the edmonton "LRT" looks like (these trains can be up to 5 cars long):
Subway aren't going anywhere.
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JSF-1
Active Member
Somewhere along the line people were somehow convinced that subways can only be built underground while forgetting a large part of what already exists is at ground level. Not to mention every time the idea of ground level and/or Elevated is brought up the same overused non-issues are brought up. In the most recent case even Metrolinx intentionally skewed the EWLRT against elevated by making it look as unattractive as possible. Underground should be a last resort because it is the most costly. If its possible to build the infrastructure above at/above grade then that should be the plan that moves forward because that will be the plan that delivers the same level of transit for a lower cost. That is thinking like a fiscal conservative.
syn
Senior Member
That actually isn't true at all. The kind of transit we're discussing can be built on existing roads.
Subways on the other hand generally require the expropriation of both commercial and residential property.
I have a idea! How about an above ground 'LRT subway' in Scarborough and north of Finch.
steveintoronto
Superstar
I'm sorry, but a lot of your claims just aren't the case.
Not only are many metros lighter, cheaper to operate and buy, have a much higher maximum speed and rate to accelerate and decelerate, so are modern mainline electrics. Catenary has become the favoured choice when possible for various good reasons. And if you're boring a tunnel, it costs only a fraction more to do it with a larger bore.
But on the bore point, perhaps you fail to realize that Crossrail not only uses a slightly smaller bore than the Spadina Extension, so does the Paris RER, and they run double deck mainline trains through them as well. And then well out to the suburbs, and well beyond in some cases.
London will only build Underground subways as extensions of existing lines, and limited ones at that. (The Northern extension from Brixton, for instance) The Channel Tunnel cost less per distance to build per tunnel section than London's last Underground line did. (see note at end) London will never build another 'subway' per-se. Why when Crossrail is better in every way and cheaper?
I repeat...well, I didn't actually state it last time: Ford is a moron. Apologies to those with deficiencies, but almost all of them mean no harm. Ford certainly does mean harm, he's proven it time and again.
When I see his handlers put a leash on him, and a muzzle, I'll back off the dialog and throw the poor Dougie a bone. A bull in a china shop would do less damage.
And for the record, I've voted Conservative in Canada before, and I'm the son of an UK Conservative rep, now deceased.
Note as per Jubilee Line Extension costs:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/feb/16/keithharper
There's a fair bit more involved in the overall project, but this does typify the fate of subways. NYC's Second Av project was the most expensive rail project per distance ever in the US. A good part of these instances is mismanagement. But another part is the medium. It's dated, inefficient and slow. And very expensive compared to far superior ways of satiating the demand.
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steveintoronto
Superstar
The term "subway" lends itself to all sorts of interpretations. To many outside of North Am, they mean pedestrian underpasses, so I see you're using the term in a loose manner. You make the case for LRT/Metro, not for *conventional* (in North Am lingo) "subway". Edmonton has an "LRT in Tunnel".
Indeed, many cities do this, but they are not termed "subways" which almost always use third rail, and can't do 'on-street running'. RER and LRT however, can share track and tunnels, as Paris does, and as is done in a number of cities. And LRTs can be coupled in lengths longer than TTC subway trains, albeit loading efficiency is lost at some point, which is where modern RER come in.
Here's an Edmonton six car LRT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_rail#/media/File:Lrt7770.JPG
Amd a 9 car (later 12 car) Crossrail train, open internally the entire length:
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/new-trains/
But realize that Edmonton is moving to low platform LRTs:
Calgary, Edmonton adopt low-floor approach - Railway Age
So when the term "subway" is used, what exactly does that mean? Cuz Ford sure as hell doesn't...
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Streety McCarface
Senior Member
When I refer to "subway" I refer to underground transit here. When I refer to scarborough, and the suburbs having heavy rail transit, I mean having subway technology (the rolling stock used on the existing subways) run grade separated yet aboveground.
Having an LRT subway in Scarborough and north of finch would be stupid, if you're going to tunnel more than 5 km, just make it a full-fledged grade separated line with heavy rail.
I'm sorry, but that statement is a load of bullsh!t, crossrail tunnels are 6.2 meters in diameter (http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/railway-tunnels/), and TYSSE tunnels are 5.4 meters in diameter, (https://www.thestar.com/news/ttc/2011/06/16/supersized_tunneling_machines_ready_to_launch.html), a difference of 0.8 meters in diameter, which, for a tunnel, is huge, requiring (1-(7.29 pi/9.61 pi))*100 = 24.2% more material to be excavated. There are also a lot of challenges with digging larger tunnels (more prone to hitting utilities, greater breakdown rate, etc), so this is a huge cost factor that has to be considered. The Paris RER twin tunnels (not single bore tunnels, that's an unfair comparison) require tunnels 6.7m in diameter, even wider than Crossrail. (https://www.tunneltalk.com/France-Jul2017-Paris-constructing-mega-metro-system.php)
In terms of cost, this becomes extremely evident when you actually look at the cost of tunneling. Now, it's hard to say for crossrail and the Paris RER, but we'll make some basic assumptions. The cost of building crossrail is 14.8 Billion pounds, or 26.06 billion Canadian dollars, and the Paris RER is 20.5 billion €, or 31.75 Billion Cad. Now, it's difficult to say how much of this is on tunnels, but looking at distance alone, Crossrail is ~220 CAD/km and the Paris RER is ~159M Cad/km. Now, those alone seem fairly impressive, but once you consider that a good majority of these lines are running at grade and on existing lines, their price becomes less impressive, but this isn't the point. We're looking at tunnels.
We'll first look at Crossrail. Of the 118km of the line that's being built, only about 21 km of it is actually new, and that's the underground section. The rest is preexisting. Now, there are rehabilitation costs and new station costs. There are 28 aboveground stations and 97km of track. If we assume it costs 200 million per aboveground station and 20 million per kilometer of track, the total costs for the aboveground section are 5.6 + 2 B is about 7.6 billion for the aboveground section. We'll add another 2 billion dollars for rolling stock, and the total for the aboveground section and all rolling stock is 9.6 billion dollars (and this is a high estimate, station construction and rehabilitation is probably closer to 100 million dollars per station. This leaves about 16.46 billion dollars left for the tunnels and underground stations or about 784 million dollars per kilometer of tunnel and stations. Compare this even to the SSE, which is estimated at 3.6 billion for 7 km, that's only 514 million/km. Even if you throw in 2 more stations and add a billion dollars to the price, the price per kilometer is 660M/km, still significantly less than that of Crossrail. The TYSSE was built for 3.2 Billion for 8.6 km of track, or 375 M/km, and this subway started construction at around the time of crossrail, so it's a better comparison.
The Paris RER doesn't really have numbers on tunneling distances, but I can guarantee that it's almost the same if not more than crossrail.
Now for train weights: a TR train weighs 1.47 tonnes per meter, while a Crossrail train weighs 1.29 tonnes per meter, which is a difference of about 12.25%, but when you consider the fact that the TR is 0.36 meters (~11.5% wider), this difference is negligible, especially when you consider that the 345s are newer and therefore have lighter technologies and fewer seats.
The acceleration argument is moot: they are highly variable depending on the city and system. For instance, prague has train accelerations of 1.4 m/s^2, while the TTC's is 0.9 m/s^2. Compare this to crossrail, which has an absolute maximum (not practice) acceleration of 1 m/s. Maximum speed is also moot; it's dependent on the city's needs. Since Toronto doesn't have station spacing wide enough necessary for 140 km/h operation, they don't use it. I also guarantee that Crossrail trains will be running closer to 100 km/h while underground.
Price per trains is another moot point: both the TRs and the class 345s cost around 3 million dollars per car, however, the TRs are longer and wider and have a unique guage.
Catenary is favored for aboveground purposes for obvious reasons, yes, it allows trains to go faster, but there are still really bad icing issues and higher costs to maintain. This is why catenary works so well for RER; all of it is aboveground. It does not, however, work at all well for the DRL or any other underground line in the city, especially if we're trying to save money.
Crossrail is not cheaper, it's just geared more towards the suburbs and commuters. Downtown London has more than enough lines to serve every location. 4th rail is inefficient, and the trains (with the exception of the subsurface lines) are tiny. That's why they're making a shift to the larger class 345 type trains, not because it's inherently better in terms of tunneling costs.
There's no doubt that Ford is a moron, he doesn't even take public transit so he should have no say on what should be built where.
I'm not a conservative, I voted NDP in the last election. That doesn't mean my favoring of subway technology is a determining factor to my political views, and it doesn't mean I despise what you dub "metro" technology either, it just doesn't make sense as a technology for new subway lines in the city.
330 GBPs equate to 580 CAD, it's still cheaper than Crossrail, and by a longshot.
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
That's not entirely true. A lot of subway systems (the Toei subway, minatomirai line, etc) use pantograph in their subway systems. The only thing that a "subway" has to do is be grade separated, and I don't think that's too much to ask for, even if they're just lift barriers (The Chicago L uses these in the suburbs), and you could never "street run" any sort of RER vehicle anywhere in the world.
You can couple as many TTC subway cars together, the only limiting factor is the platform length of the station. Edmonton trains are now 5 LRVs long (which has a greater carrying capacity than a TTC subway train). If ETS ever decided that it would be to their benefit utilizing full open gangway HRVs instead of 5 LRVs in the future, they could do so. It would mean an increase in capacity and less electricity usage, but it would reduce flexibility.
I'm not sure how I feel about those new LRT lines being built in Calgary and Edmonton. Although they serve a completely different purpose, they're just going to increase dwell times significantly. LFLRV technology should really be reserved for trams and street running lines.
BurlOak
Senior Member
Semi-grade separated LRT could have worked if they had branches.
First of all, the Transit City LRT plan was garbage, with its on-street LRT running in place of a subway.
For Eglinton - it should have been fully grade separated until the branches. Logically, this could have been near Vic Park. One branch goes via the Gatineau Hydro corridor (and up one of the other roads (Midland, Brimley) to STC, Centennial, and Malvern. The other branch could have continued along Eglinton.
In the West, it could have been grade-separated to Jane, with one branch going up to Dixon and the other along Eglinton.
The problem was, the tunnel portions, both East and West, stopped short of any possible branching location.
Let's face it, Transit City was designed for local transit at a time when people wanted improvements to their rapid transit. For local transit - the benefit of more stop with a bus far outweighs the slight speed improvement of LRT. For distant travel, the additional stops, slower speed, and uncertainty of running in traffic makes the LRT far worse than subway. Essentially, Transit City was the worst of both worlds.
MisterF
Senior Member
I wouldn't be so sure. You're right that it's impossible to tell without any doubt, but as I said, there are are plenty of rankings of urban areas around the world that don't necessarily support what you're saying. While Worldatlas.com agrees with you that Toronto is 5th in North America, Citymayors.com puts it at 7th, Demographia has us in the 6th spot, and citypopulation.de has us way back in 9th. I have no idea what the methodologies of any of these are, but at least some of them have a standardized way of measuring.
steveintoronto
Superstar
It depends where you are in the tunnel. Generally, the TYSSE tunnels are 6m on the straight, more on curves.
https://kiewit.ca/!trash/transportation1/tunnels/spadina-subway-extension/
For Crossrail, in general:
http://74f85f59f39b887b696f-ab65625...riginal/d08tunnelconstructionmethodology1.pdf
That's *before* being lined, concrete rings in some sections, sprayed (Ostensibly Austrian method) in others.
Crossrail traines are designed for speeds of 160 kmh. I don't have the figure handy for in-tunnel running, but it will be considerably more than TTC subway in tunnel, such that greater wall clearance is necessary for safety.
The Channel Tunnel main bores are 7.2m for comparison.
Eglinton Crosstown is:
http://thecrosstown.ca/EastStationDesignUpdateTextSummary
Whether any or all of these specs are incrementally accurate or not (there will be exceptions for soil condition, curve arcs, and geological reasons) the point stands: Why build a *conventional subway as Ford speaks of and most understand as being* when you can build something vastly more potent, faster in velocity, faster to accelerate/brake, more energy efficient, cheaper to buy off the shelf, and totally integratable with outlying regions on *mainline track*, much of it already extant.
Why is this concept so incredibly difficult for so many Torontonians to understand? No wonder Ford won. He could sell third rail roller skates to cripples.
As for station distancing, it's no different that what the TTC is now doing on their 'extensions'.
How London's 10 new Crossrail stations including Canary Wharf and...
Paris RER and many other European higher speed regional services do same, and Far Eastern, and southern Asian, Australian and...the world. Just not here.
I'll address your other points later.
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steveintoronto
Superstar
Well before discussing this any further, we'd best figure out what Ford means by a "subway" and what most Torontonians do, which is why I've been using the term "orthodox subway". You are misunderstanding much of my gist, and I never stated 'RER on road' albeit such does exist on the South Shore Line if you really want to flog a monkey. (Technically, it's an Interurban, but I digress)
What I stated is that 'LRT in tunnel' can be run both on the road and on mainline tracks, as is done in Paris, Karlsruhe, and many other locales in the UK, Europe, Australia and elsewhere. RER can share those same tracks and power supply, and often does. Third rail complicates that. Even Metro North is run on catenary outside of third rail territory.
Metrolinx has decided on 25kVAC as the supply of choice. Surely you can see the rationale in aspiring to build standard track gauge and power supply for through-running RER in the GTHA? Both Bombardier and Alstom (as do almost all LRT suppliers) offer LRTs in bi-mode form for both 750/1500VDC and 25kV to allow highly flexible inter-running on both light and heavy rail tracks.
You seem to overlook the massive problem Toronto has with TTC gauge forcing "subways" to have to have their own track common only to TTC streetcars. It's time to stop building that way unless Toronto pays for it...which it shouldn't. Since it's the Province funding transit in the GTHA (Toronto's claims to the contrary, a whole argument in itself) then it only makes sense to adopt *standard gauge* and interoperability with all the LRT systems outside of the TTC. The Province has already decided that with any systems it builds and runs.
Yet again, Ford hasn't a clue when it comes to "subways, subways, subways". I'm glad we both agree on that, save that you are bound to the concept of running a system common to only one other place in the world (which slips my memory right now) that uses TTC gauge.
You do realize that you'd have to lay dedicated TTC gauge track out to the regions with a totally separate power supply too?
https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/standard-vs-ttc-gauge-an-lrt-standard-in-ontario.8914/
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