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Something needs to be done to attract people to transit late at night.

According to the TTC, only 20% of Blue Night riders are "choice riders". Meaning most people out late night, are driving.

The TTC needs to fix service up around 2AM. The current Blue Night network gets overcrowded around that time, adn unpleasent. They need into introduce to tripper routes that just pic up in the entertainment area, and then shoot up Yonge, without stopping along the way, till Bloor. That would handle many of the load problems.
 
Should be noted that in Chicago not all lines run 24/7...I believe it's only the Blue and Red, and not the Loop lines.
 
Why not run just the Yonge subway, and only between Union and Eglinton. One train every 15 minutes is fine, and it only has to run on Friday and Saturday night. That should clear up a lot of the congestion downtown, and ideally would reduce crowding on other routes.
 
Berlin: 4am - 1:30am
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I could be wrong, but I believe BVG offers 24-hour service on some U-Bahn lines over the weekend. Although, most people don't leave Berlin bars until morning service would have been started anyway.
 
Why not run just the Yonge subway, and only between Union and Eglinton.
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Maintenance.

TTC rips out and replaces a surprising amount of track, tunnel liner, etc during the night. The signaling system currently in place does not allow for reverse operation either, so you could not easily bypass the sections being worked on.

You could probably run Union to Downsview or Finch on alternating nights, but that would probably make for a lot of confusion.
 
Maintenance is really a silly excuse, and I doubt even the TTC uses that excuse. Its not as if they're fixing every single line on the network every single night. They could easily run subways 24/7, but replace them with Blue Night buses when maintenance is being performed.

Heck, they routinely replace subways with shuttle buses during work hours. They have recently closed the Scarborough RT and the Sheppard subway early to perform maintenance. Having 24/7 subway service does not preclude occasionally closing down a line for maintenance.
 
That just shows that even with 4-5 hours of downtime every night (7-8 hours on Sundays), they STILL don't have enough time for maintenance and must still shut down the system during operating hours on occasion. Maintenance is ongoing, and certainly happens in at least one point on each line most nights.

This is the reason given by the TTC when people (such as city councillors) ask about starting subway service earlier, including Sundays.

In New York there are so many lines and many lines have 3 or 4 tracks it makes it possible to route trains around maintenance. In Chicago, frankly their subways aren't very long (because most lines are ELs). The Dearborn and State Street subways are only 15km combined, while the TTC has 52km of tunnel to maintain.

I still think this would only be an issue if the TTC were to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I am confident that the TTC should be able to run late night, or even 24-hour service 2 or 3 days a week without problems.
 
I agree, because if the TTC really was doing so much maintenance at night, then howcome they had maintenance crews out on the track infront of Vic Park Station for like 5 years during the day, slowing down every single train going through that station, while they performed track work.

I really doubt much maintenance is going on overnight. And agree it does not need to be done every night.

WMATA in Washington DC runs trains till 3AM on Friday and Saturday nights.

All the TTC would have to do is run trains every 15min. They could even time the trains with the Blue Night buses at each station. So say the trains ran from Union at 00, 15, 30, 45 after each hour.
Then people would know that if they caught the train at 00, or 30 after each hour, they would make the Blue Night bus connections at FINCH. Or if they caught the trains at 15, and 45 min after each hour, they would catch the Blue Night connections for York Mills, Eglinton, etc.

It could work out well.
 
Isn't the point of early subway closures so that you have a more useful chunk of time to work? Otherwise the crews have, what, about 3 hours to get in and out?
 
Yes, all lines probably do experience some form of maintenance or insepection every night of the week. But no, I don't think that every segment of every line has overnight work being performed 365 days of the year. Therefore I think that it would be more than possible to specify that repair and inspection on certain segments, such as Union to Eglinton, can only occur Sunday night to Thursday night.

I also believe that there are times when the TTC should loosen its strict cost recovery guidelines. Regardless of how much revenue would actually be made, keeping the subways open late on certain nights would offer a huge overall value. This includes safety because less people would drive, a better bar experience, and an easier commute home.
 
Expanding the TTC subway to 24hours (at a much higher loss/hr) while struggling financially.... seems a little stupid.

If you want it 24hrs -- how is it to be paid for (electrical current running through the tracks, stations manned, security, electicity at each station, additional cleaning staff required etc.)?

Increase fares? Increase cost to city? Consider it a zero-sum game -- do we cut service to some routes to offset? If it costs more for the city -- which programs do you cut?
 
My father-in-law works for the TTC. He's in the tunnels five nights a week doing maintenance, clean up etc.
 
Realistically, the TTC is in the business of running cost-efficient transit, not providing good "societal-value" services. If someone thinks late night TTC service is important, someone other than the TTC will have to pony up the cash, as the TTC shouldn't have to.
 
Realistically, the TTC is in the business of running cost-efficient transit
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No, the TTC is in charge of public transit, first and foremost. It contributes immeasurably to the wellbeing of the city in ways that cannot simply be measured by cost effectiveness.

Cost-efficiency is an important issue, but it is far from the only issue.
 
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