[Woodbridge_Heights]

If memory serves me correctly, the busiest stretch of Eglinton is actually the stretch east of Kennedy station, which complicates the wisdom of spending a fortune on the central stretch and throwing a few bones to the east and west.

Than shouldn't we be looking at ways of improving transit for that part of Eglinton east and feeding into the pre existing Kennedy subway station. What purpose would an Eglinton crosstown LRT serve to those residents who want to head downtown?

Unlikely. There's no way the city would have suddenly rewritten its transit plans and created an astronomically unaffordable LRT scheme without some basic assurances from upper levels of government that some quantity of funding was on its way. That's why it was a surprise to almost everybody and why it was first presented with no detail...it was still lines on a napkin. If Miller wasn't told to draft up a wishlist, the funding would have gone towards existing transit plans like the stuff in the RGS and the RTES...and then we could be getting more actual rapid transit and much more local service improvements (instead of a pretty lame Bus City plan).

[/QUOTE]

I don't remember hearing anything like that, now maybe there was some quiet private talks re Toronto coming up with a transit plan and the province helping with funding and maybe there was discussion about what range the provice would be willing to put in. Still the technology choice was made by the city/TTC was a purely philisophical/political choice not a budgetary consideration. It seems to me that they could have come up with an $18 million all subway plan and the province would have still payed in. That's all I mean. Those defending the TTC and the city say there wasn't enough money to build a subway and yet we are spending subway like dollars for a less than subway project.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Than shouldn't we be looking at ways of improving transit for that part of Eglinton east and feeding into the pre existing Kennedy subway station. What purpose would an Eglinton crosstown LRT serve to those residents who want to head downtown?

How does running Eglinton east of Kennedy not feed the Danforth line? The Morningside line has been shelved for now, so the busiest stretch of Eglinton is being ignored.

There's no desperate need for a crosstown line along Eglinton right now - extending the B/D line and Sheppard, as well as improving GO, would all be of far more use to far more people - but there's still benefits to running one long line on Eglinton. Having four transit lines terminate at Kennedy station is stupid when we should have two lines intersecting...people could then transfer from one to the other or stay on in a straight line. Besides, in the ideal future, we won't be forcing everyone to go through Yonge & Bloor...some people will find it useful to go along Eglinton and then down Spadina, or down the DRL. The central stretch of Eglinton is getting a tunnel because there's no reasonable way to improve transit over this stretch without a tunnel, but everyone knows that this should not be the city's first priority. It's not the busiest route and it has few regional consequences in the short term. For one thing, there's nothing on Eglinton between Yonge and the airport. In the future, maybe there will be more people and jobs and shoppers and students needing to travel along Eglinton. But Eglinton was scorned by Mike Harris and it "runs through all six boroughs" and it could become a nice, long, aesthetically pleasing line through the middle of our transit map and blah blah blah, so people fight for it and have made it a priority...though, ironically, in a way that kills all of its crosstown value.

I don't remember hearing anything like that, now maybe there was some quiet private talks re Toronto coming up with a transit plan and the province helping with funding and maybe there was discussion about what range the provice would be willing to put in. Still the technology choice was made by the city/TTC was a purely philisophical/political choice not a budgetary consideration. It seems to me that they could have come up with an $18 million all subway plan and the province would have still payed in. That's all I mean. Those defending the TTC and the city say there wasn't enough money to build a subway and yet we are spending subway like dollars for a less than subway project.

Well, of course you didn't hear anything. If it had been made public, there would have been endless squabbling over how to spend the money and everyone would have fought for their pet projects. Yes, we ended up with pet projects, anyway, but our mayor supposedly speaks for everyone in the city. McGuinty would have also been criticized for throwing money around without a plan, and then would have been unable to change projects or budgets without getting slammed again. Yes, we know that the choice to build LRT or to not build subway or to decide on this or that technology anywhere else is entirely ideological and has absolutely nothing to do with budgets. The usual and pathetically lame counter-argument made by people in this and other threads is that we can't afford to build subways everywhere, which is a mind-numbingly stupid argument when we're spending more money on LRT on Eglinton than we've ever spent on any other project, and when there's only a few corridors and a few subway projects that anyone has any intention of supporting.

 

[Second_in_pie]

A good Eglinton right now would be a subway from Pearson to Don Mills, and an extension/spur of the B-D going out to Kingston Road, so the Kingston Road LRT/BRT can continue as one route down to Main station. Though I wouldn't put the Eglinton spur/extension of the B-D as a priority, the little bit in between the is definitely not needed now.

 

[Filip]

That's exactly the problem with the Eglinton LRT plan.. We were force-fed that the reason this is LRT is because we cannot afford a subway, yet now the tunneled section is costing a bit more per km than a full fledged subway!

That's when politicians should draw the line. If you're offered a Lamborghini and a Ford Focus for the same price, which one would you take?

 

[EnviroTO]

That's exactly the problem with the Eglinton LRT plan.. We were force-fed that the reason this is LRT is because we cannot afford a subway, yet now the tunneled section is costing a bit more per km than a full fledged subway!

There is no way the LRT is costing more than a full fledged subway. The only thing they are close to tendering for the LRT is the tunnel and there is no price variation in the tunnel itself because the cost of the tunnel is the same regardless of what goes in it. Only when stations, yards, and surface lines are constructed will there be price differentials and every one of those will favour the LRT because there are costs associated with building for more people and vehicles with wider turning radii.

That's when politicians should draw the line. If you're offered a Lamborghini and a Ford Focus for the same price, which one would you take?

This sums up your argument. You believe that a subway is deluxe and the LRT is lower class. However, in your comparison of Lamborghini or Ford Focus the reality is that if you want to drive four people around and throw two pieces of luggage in a Lamborghini is obviously the wrong choice. Use cases matter. The use case for LRT is transferless service from Renforth to Kennedy for a specified number of passengers. The solution for this use case has two different prices.

 

[M II A II R II K]

What if down the line there's a need for more of it to be tunneled, such as putting more of it underground on either ends.

 

[Dan416]

What if down the line there's a need for more of it to be tunneled, such as putting more of it underground on either ends.

I don't imagine it'd be that hard, if you have the funding. Certainly it won't be built to preclude that possibility.

 

[M II A II R II K]

And plus they should take the opportunity to add an express track underground for faster crosstown service.

 

[dunkalunk]

^Won't a crosstown GO route/401 express bus handle this?

 

[Rainforest]

^ 401 Express bus won't handle large numbers of riders. Perhaps you can get to 5,000 or 6,000 pphpd with a dedicated lane and artic buses, but that's it. Without the dedicated lane, epxress buses would often be stuck in 401 jams.

Another problem is station locations. If the buses have to exit / reenter 401 to serve stations, then either the stations must be very far apart, or the service speed will degrade.

GO train service on the North Toronto (midtown) sub could be much more suitable for that purpose, but somehow there is no movement in that direction and Metrolinx does not have such service with any intra-416 function even in the long-range plans. Perhaps there are issues with CP freight traffic, space for stations and extra tracks, or noise where the line runs through residential areas.

 

[Filip]

The midtown rail corridor is heavily used by freight trains - which is the problem GO is having to convert the line to mixed passenger/freight use.

I wonder if there exists a northern bypass for railways? If not it should be seriously considered. Freight trains shouldn't be running through the city anyway.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

The midtown rail corridor is heavily used by freight trains - which is the problem GO is having to convert the line to mixed passenger/freight use.

I wonder if there exists a northern bypass for railways? If not it should be seriously considered. Freight trains shouldn't be running through the city anyway.

There is (well kind of) the corridor running North of Steeles is clearly a bypass. However 1) I think CP owns one line and CN owns the other, and they are loathe to share the track 2) there are still a few industrial sites that are served by the midtown line, no?

 

[dunkalunk]

I think it would be great if they built a new rail corridor along the 407 from the CN York Subdivision in the east to the CP Galt Subdivision in the west to help take some of the freight traffic off CP's mainline through Toronto. Although this would require that GO purchase all of the east-west rail lines from Meadowvale to Pickering, something which is unlikely, but not impossible. Also, any trips that would require the use of Agincourt Yard would have another 5km tacked on to them or be at the mercy of GO's scheduling.

 

[Dan416]

I think a Midtown GO line is very important. But it doesn't take away the necessity of the Eglinton line.

 

[dunkalunk]

Neither do I, but it would be a good alternative to boring express tunnels on eglinton, at least for the time being.