[rbt]

Not according to STM's website. -

Line 1: http://www.stm.info/metro/inter1e.htm
Line 2: http://www.stm.info/metro/inter2n.htm

That's much more detailed than what I found. The English section of the STM website seems quite limited. I presumed the "2-5 minutes during rush" meant they scheduled trains in the 2 minute range.

Still, that's 4 train loads of people every 180 seconds in Montreal going through downtown at peak. Toronto achieves 2 trains every 140 seconds through the U (4 trains every 280 seconds).

What is the difference in capacity of trains and therefore theoretical capacity during rush?

The point about longer trips in Toronto is good - and matches my experiences, but I'd still be surprised if the passenger load in Toronto is less than Montreal. A measure of passenger-kilometres would be a better measure!

The numbers quoted are official ones from TTC and STM for that quarter. Lots of discussions can be had about how they might be collected. I.e. How does TTC estimate count of people going through an open gate.


Passenger-kms is a different beast and probably not one the TTC would want to win as it also means high expenses for low revenue.

 

[Ansem]

In the end, I guess we'll just have to wait and see if what the Eglinton line looks like ends up looking like a subway or not. Personally, I'd rather just go for the known factor. We're building a subway-sized tunnel from Keele to Laird, right? So why not just, I dunno, run a SUBWAY through it? Honestly the rest of the line you may as well just run buses there. That's what Torontonians are used to.

Secondly, I do see the rationale for comparing Montreal and Toronto. If Montreal is even close to Toronto in terms of subway length or usage, something is seriously WRONG. It's just intuitive. If we're not building subways, we're stagnating. Then people will point out that we are indeed building subways--to Vaughan and Richmond Hill. Because, you know, 905ers are people too. Call me old-fashioned but I'd rather the subway network conecentrate on the core first. DRL should be FIRST priority, no ifs, ands or buts. Not Spadina. Not Yonge. Not Eglinton. Not even my perennial favourites, Sheppard and Danforth to STC. Once the DRL is built and how it effects travel patterns, then we can more accurately plan out the rest of the system. The DRL would be like a second backbone, for both the BD and YUS lines.

Exactly.

Its not a competition but a wake up call.

I lived there and

-the Orange loop will happen by 2020.
-The blue to Pie-IX will happen by 2016 (Montreal transit plan 2008)
-2 weeks ago Transport minister said she was in favor for the yellow line extension in Longueuil.
If all cities work together this will only make it a done deal by 2020.

Again, I lived there until September 2008

Quebec is BROKE. Montreal is BROKE. Yet they build subways for half the price and will expend by 33%. About the density, Montreal is higher because of Plateau Mont-Royal who has the highest neighbourhood density in Canada but Toronto is not far behind.

I'm not looking for replies saying Its just was a little contest between both cities.

Like I said many time, this wake up call his to question our politician decisions and their motives.

I'm glad that Metrolinx seems to be pushing for ICTS for Eglinton. I don't even care if its LRT as long it doesn't stop at red lights, which the reports shows that it will outside the tunnel.

I like Trandit city except Sheppard east that should have been HRT to either STC or the future RT Station on Sheppard.

Transit City has NOTHING to resolve downtown transit issues or to help reduce pressure from the Yonge line.
What about King and Queen Streetcars? They need to be improved as well.

DRL should have been the very first thing on the list.

But for political reasons, the mayor pushed Transit City to get Scarborough,North York and Etobicoke's votes. You don't go to city hall with Old Toronto votes alone.
Transit City will attract aditionnal commuters to transit but they will all use the Yonge line (most of them) that is already overcrowded.

So Toronto is like the 5th city in North America.
TTC the 3rd Transit in North America.
Ontario is richer than Quebec.
Toronto has more tax payers, higher taxes and richer than Montreal.

and the best they can do is spend 10 billions for 10 extra km/h on average?

DRL not a short term priority?

Sheppard extension too expensive?(How many time do I need to write the blue line success story?) It was a subway to nowhere and it became a success because it was completed in 88 I think.

Didn't I proved with the stats from Chicago Transit that Sheppard had more ridership than 4 of Chicago's subways.
Sheppard is beating lines that have 20 stations and are 20 KM long and that are all linked directly to downtown Loop. Not bad for an incomplete line of 5 KM and 5 stations...not going Downtown.

and people believes and are defending the ''HRT standards by the TTC'' justifying the Sheppard east Subway kill. Funny that those standards don't apply to the York extension to Richmond Hill... and they don't apply it for DRL.

I made this thread so you would realise something is wrong at city hall. It's not about money but spending priorities and political agenda.

Did I said that I'm tired of taking the 196B Rocket between Downsview and Sheppard-Yonge?
Not much of a rocket when they're trapped in road congestions. Why not just expend the Sheppard line to Downview and Even Jane?

Only thing we can do?

VOTE

 

[kettal]

We're building a subway-sized tunnel from Keele to Laird, right? So why not just, I dunno, run a SUBWAY through it? Honestly the rest of the line you may as well just run buses there. That's what Torontonians are used to.

Anybody who pushes this idea forfeits the right to call Transit City "Transfer City".

 

[Ansem]

I find Metro trains to be overcrowded, particularly in the downtown "loop".

I find the Metro fustrating for several reasons:
- Overbuilt and very deep stations: Place St-Henri or Lucien-L'Allier anyone?

Almost all the stations are overbuilt
http://metrodemontreal.com/index-e.html

And yet our system cost twice much...

- The Metro can be far from the main streets one wants to go to. The walk from St-Laurent to Berri (a block or two from even St-Denis) is long enough. It manages to just miss Westmount and does not serve NDG well.

There's station ST-Laurent Bus 55
Station Berri is corner ST-Denis and Maisonneuve
I've heard Westmount didn't want a station. They are all driving Mercedes anyways

NDG its a shame really, I lived there.

- Downtown, the locations of the lines/stations can be fustrating as well. Try getting from Gare Centrale with baggage to the Metro. The most logical connection appears to be Bonaventure, but is a trek up and down stairs and escalators and halls.

Agreed, The orange line should have been under Rene-Levesque. Instead it's under Viger and beside Champ-de-mars,Place-d'armes and Square Victoria, their locations are useless.

- Frequencies can be bad, though they were improved somewhat a few years ago in off-peak periods. Cars are overcrowded and hot.

The orange line was very overcrowded due to the buses coming from laval (at least 25 lines) but due to the extension to Laval it got even worse. They tried to shorturn the trains from Montreal's last station Henri-Bourassa. Still a mess.

Frequency has improved though.

- How about some elevators? They still have yet to retrofit any stations!

They are starting to build elevators at Berri (like Bloor) and Lionel-Groulx (like St-Georges or Spadina)

 

[Ansem]

Anybody who pushes this idea forfeits the right to call Transit City "Transfer City".

IF the transfer point is done right, I will gladly transfert to a subway for the middle part.

 

[unimaginative2]

But for political reasons, the mayor pushed Transit City to get Scarborough,North York and Etobicoke's votes. You don't go to city hall with Old Toronto votes alone.

I agree with all the points you made, Ansem, though I don't buy the idea that the Transit City plan was designed to attract the votes of suburbanites. While putting a streetcar in every ward is clearly intended to get the support of council, I think they must be aware that these projects aren't going to be big vote winners. The precedent of St. Clair shows that they may well in fact be vote losers. I think the motivation for this project is more simply ideologica.

 

[Ansem]

I agree with all the points you made, Ansem, though I don't buy the idea that the Transit City plan was designed to attract the votes of suburbanites. While putting a streetcar in every ward is clearly intended to get the support of council, I think they must be aware that these projects aren't going to be big vote winners. The precedent of St. Clair shows that they may well in fact be vote losers. I think the motivation for this project is more simply ideologica.

I work at Sheppad-Yonge in the gov building. Lots of my coworkers are from scarborough and Etobicoke.

The feeling they share is that they feel they are being completely ignored by the city council.

It makes sense to think that if you make them feel important by giving them Transit city, they will vote for you since you invest massively in their neighbourhoods.

I have no problem with that. I just think HRT extension both east and west would have had the same reasult but to increase your chances for getting money from the government, LRT is more likely to be fund than a subway.

Which I still think makes sense on paper.

Reality is by doing that, downtown transit will get worse since all you do is adding more commuters on an already overcrowded network.

What's my problem with all this?
Although I disagree with the York extension I do find admirable how they were able to push their project.

It was our mayor duty to get Transit city,Sheppard and DRL
financed by the government.

It would have been more accpetable if at least he came back and said: Well for the federal infrastructure program, we put everything we could but we only got Transit City approved. Then you know what, I would have said good job, you tried.

So, I'm not satisfy with his philosophy and policy.

Vote my friends, Vote

 

[nfitz]

The numbers quoted are official ones from TTC and STM for that quarter.

Oh, you trust STM to release real data? Surely the data is what is politically acceptable - in the same way the initial cost estimates for the Laval extension were based on political accepability, rather than reality.

 

[GTS]

One reason that expansion costs a lot in Toronto is the amount of designing and funding that goes into our stations. I am originally from Montreal but lived most of my life in Vancouver and one thing that impressed me about the TTC is the design of a lot of the bus/subway stations here in Toronto. Not every station is so well designed but for a some of the better designed stations it is not an uncomfortable place to wait for my connecting bus even when the weather isn't so agreeable. I hope with the subway expansions that Toronto is planning that they keep on investing in this part of our system. No station is perfect of course, but, they are better here in TO then any other city I have lived in.

My wife and I just recently moved from the Victoria Park area and I used to use the VP station mostly. It is good to see the TTC seeing the benefits of a well designed bus/subway station and they are modernizing that station so that all the different buses that use that station will use one shared platform. My wife and I now live near Warden Station and I hope the TTC gets rid of the seperated bus platforms at this station and put in some variation of an island type of platform that all the different bus routes will share at this station.

These types of improvements show me that the TTC is trying to improve transit even here in the city. Maybe not by as much extensions as Montreal is planning but their are other ways to improve any system as well. Automatic Train Control would be a really great improvement.

 

[rbt]

Oh, you trust STM to release real data? Surely the data is what is politically acceptable - in the same way the initial cost estimates for the Laval extension were based on political accepability, rather than reality.

I said they are the official numbers, not that they were right. There also is no description of the method of counting. I don't trust the TTCs numbers either as they've been known to undercount significantly by publishing the same number for a route segment many years in a row without adjustment.

Short of getting together a very large number of volunteers to stand at predetermined points, you're not going to get anything better.

 

[kEiThZ]

I work at Sheppad-Yonge in the gov building. Lots of my coworkers are from scarborough and Etobicoke.

The feeling they share is that they feel they are being completely ignored by the city council.

And for the large part they were. What riles people in Scarborough and Etobicoke is projects like the Sheppard subway. That got prioritized over both replacement of the RT and the RT extension to Malvern. Ditto for the Eglinton West subway. Worse still when they built the Sheppard line, they run out of funds....just outside Scarborough. Now you can get a sense why people in this part of the city feel ignored.

It makes sense to think that if you make them feel important by giving them Transit city, they will vote for you since you invest massively in their neighbourhoods.


I have no problem with that. I just think HRT extension both east and west would have had the same reasult but to increase your chances for getting money from the government, LRT is more likely to be fund than a subway.

This is where you reach the wrong conclusion. There is barely ever any turnover in municipal politics in Toronto...and actually not all that much for our federal and provincial politicians either. As long as councillors look like they are doing something they'll keep getting re-elected. In this case though, councillors from Scarborough have advocated for a subway for a long time. They were re-buffed by the TTC which constantly says there's not enough ridership to warrant it, and that the cost would be too much. Instead, they sold the councillors this vision of LRT lines that would bring rail to the doorstep of their various neighbourhoods. And the councillors bought it, because it didn't seem like the city would be inclined to build a subway anyway. So there is no issue about earning votes. Most of these city councillors would have gotten re-elected with or without Transit City. But TC does help them say they are bringing transit to their wards/

Reality is by doing that, downtown transit will get worse since all you do is adding more commuters on an already overcrowded network.

I don't think Transit City is going to induce a significant amount of new ridership that would overwhelm the current subway network. For most commuters the lines will be an upgrade in speed to the core (and some would dispute that argument). What it will do is improve services outside the core where transit needs much more improvement if you want to draw people out of their cars.

It would have been more acceptable if at least he came back and said: Well for the federal infrastructure program, we put everything we could but we only got Transit City approved. Then you know what, I would have said good job, you tried.

So, I'm not satisfy with his philosophy and policy.

That's what you get when a mayor comes in on a 'green' agenda of taking out a downtown airport (by ummm not building a bridge). His 'right-wing' opponent promised one to two subway stations to be built every year and the completions of the Bloor-Danforth and Sheppard lines.

People always get the governments they deserve. In this case, a good chunk of the electorate thought Miller would be better and we have Transit City as his legacy. Lastman gave us the stubway. Miller will give us trams from one end of TO to another.

But coming back on topic.... I still don't see what your point about the thread is. Are you saying we don't spend enough on transit? With TC that's obviously not the case....we're just spending it on the wrong priorities. And if you are arguing that we should care about Montreal having a longer subway system, I still don't see what the big deal is. We are not competing with Montreal. And as to the assertion that Quebec and Montreal are 'broke', what exactly do you mean? Virtually every government is running deficits these days so most governments are 'broke'. Both our provincial and municipal governments are have large budgetary holes and significant debts. So, naturally they are going to be prudent. If you are arguing that we should follow the example of Quebec and Montreal and spend money we don't have building subways, then I'll disagree with you. I don't want the government piling on debt just so we can have bragging rights over Montreal. We have already established that the subway system here is qualitatively better. I don't see the need to have service quality drop just so we can compete quantitatively. We can argue that 10 billion could have been deployed a lot better ( finish Sheppard (east and west), BD extension to STC, curbside bus lanes on Don Mills, Jane, Sheppard East, etc.), but I disagree that we need to spend more right now just to 'keep up' with Montreal. Again, what Montreal does is their business. Our transit policies should cater to our transit needs, not to some perceived need to compete with another city. And when we debate transit issues we really should stick to debates over how best to meet our needs or the effect of today's policies. Montreal is irrelevant to what we are doing, will do and have done in the past with regards to urban transit policies in Toronto.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Anybody who pushes this idea forfeits the right to call Transit City "Transfer City".

IF the transfer point is done right, I will gladly transfert to a subway for the middle part.

So would virtually everyone else. Bus service east/west of the tunnel could be vastly improved, but that would have meant identifying and solving transit problems with an open mind, something that was obviously not done. And, of course, the subway could always be extended later...if a ROW in the middle of the street is built, none of us will live to see it replaced. An extension through the Richview area could be very cheap (but *only* if non-Torontonians designed and built it).

Are crowds of people even going to use the Eglinton line to go across town? If not, why does it need to go across town? A parallel subway line already does this only 4km away at the farthest point (and intercepting at the other), while Sheppard 1) is partially finished and 2) runs to or close to more trip generators than Eglinton. I know, I know, it's pure insanity to raise these issues before spending like $4B on a transit line that stops for cars...

 

[LowerBay]

I won't call Transit City Transfer City, but I'll settle for Transit Shitty.

When someone like Miller (who lives near High Park station but drives downtown instead of taking the subway), and someone like Giambrone (an obvious dweeb who doesn't drive) make decisions about transportation policy, you know we're in trouble.

I've lived in the 'burbs and downtown, and I drive and take transit. Transit in the suburbs will not work. It's a waste of money, period.

Transit downtown works -- build the DRL using the Transit City money -- add more bike lanes. For the suburbs, widen roads that can be widened and that's it.

 

[Disparishun]

I've lived in the 'burbs and downtown, and I drive and take transit. Transit in the suburbs will not work.

It's already working. Where did you live?

 

[kEiThZ]

Transit in the suburbs will not work. It's a waste of money, period.

It's this kind of BS that pisses me off. How do you know transit won't work in the burbs? The burbs have never had decent transit until very recently (and most of the outer burbs still don't). That's why cars are still popular. Despite this, transit usage in our inner suburbs is fairly decent for a North American city. If you want to get people out of their cars, you will have to improve transit in the burbs. DRL is good and all, but useless if takes 45 mins to intercept the line. At that point, all you are doing is playing with the margins. Heading to Union, the DRL will only save something like 10 mins.....significant for a subway but not a huge difference in a trip that normally takes an hour. This is why I am all for integrating GO into the system. Travellers from the suburbs should largely be using a service like GO to get downtown not the TTC subway. Unfortunately, we have not made the right (and sufficient) investments to make that happen. And that doesn't even take into account the issues we have with local transit routes to facilitate travel within the burbs.