[TheTigerMaster]

It may be faster for someone to transfer from bus to Stouffville to get downtown - at least the financial district and south core. Which is why an extension to Agincourt makes more sense: those on a bus can transfer at Agincourt, or travel ~4 stops for DRL, or a few more for line 1 (east), or another two stops to line 1 (west) if the western extension is also built.

Most riders will be using the DRL to get downtown. It's cheaper, more frequent, and generally puts people closer to their final destinations.

But lets analyze how your proposal would impact trip times. For people that want to take Stouffville RER to get Downtown, your proposal to extend the Sheppard Line to Agincourt has no impact on them. So let's look at persons coming from east of Agincourt (by bus), looking to travel Downtown via DRL

It's 5.3 km between Agincourt and Don Mills.

By BRT, moving at 23 km/5, it takes 14 mins to travel that distance.

Let's look at the subway travel time:

• A passenger would need to walk from the bus to the subway platform. Let’s say that adds +90 seconds (a pretty conservative estimate given then long transfer times in the new TYSSE stations)
  
• They’d need to wait, on average, 2.5 minutes for the subway train
• Then it would take the train, travelling at 30 km/h, 10.5 minutes to travel 5.3 km.

So the total time between Agincourt and Don Mills Stations for your proposal would be 14.5 minutes. This proposal of yours does not save people any time if they’re coming from east of Agincourt (in fact, it adds about half a minute).


Nevermind that there'd be issues with the ridership of this extension. The extension to STC was expected to add around 3,000 peak hour riders, and an extension only to Agincourt would be a fraction of that.

 

[innsertnamehere]

suburban subway lines average closer to 40km/h, 30km/h is more so the tight stop spacing of the Bloor line. The Spadina extension travels 8.6km in a little under 14 minutes, or 38km/h. And my personal experience on that line has had that travel time actually be lower, closer to 12 minutes, or 43km/h.

The general "transfer to the subway" time penalty I've seen used is 5 minutes.

So lets see.

A user transfers to the subway at Agincourt. They travel at 38km/h on the subway to Don Mills, arriving approximately 13 minutes after getting off the bus. The transfer to the DRL is probably about a minute quicker than if you were coming from a BRT terminal as well, since you are already underground. So lets say 4 minute transfer onto the DRL. Total time until you are sitting on a subway train on the DRL is 17 minutes.

On BRT, travelling 23km/h, you arrive at Don Mills 14 minutes after passing Agincourt. Add a 5 minute transfer, and you are on the DRL 19 minutes later.

So 2 minutes saved time. Not much, probably not worth a subway's construction costs.

Now of course, if the Sheppard subway gets built, it's not going to be just to Agincourt, It'll be to McCowan. If you get on the subway at McCowan, you would be on the DRL in 20 minutes, vs. 24 minutes on BRT.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

suburban subway lines average closer to 40km/h, 30km/h is more so the tight stop spacing of the Bloor line.

The Sheppard Line has a service speed of 29 km/h. See the TTC Service Summary

 

[innsertnamehere]

It travels Don Mills to Sheppard Yonge in 8 minutes.. which is 41km/h.

 

[M II A II R II K]

And more time is added with transfers to over built stations where you have to go on an unnecessarily long trek to get the platform.

 

[Leo_Chan]

And more time is added with transfers to over built stations where you have to go on an unnecessarily long trek to get the platform.

Are the Crosstown stations (or the current Sheppard stations) considered overbuilt? Because the future Sheppard stations probably won’t exceed them in grandness.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

It travels Don Mills to Sheppard Yonge in 8 minutes.. which is 41km/h.

Where are you getting that information from?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Are the Crosstown stations (or the current Sheppard stations) considered overbuilt? Because the future Sheppard stations probably won’t exceed them in grandness.

Yes. They’re huge, deep and cavernous.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Yes. They’re huge, deep and cavernous.

At least they're not as grand as the TYSSE stations.

 

[M II A II R II K]

It’s a pain to transfer at Pioneer Village. Totally unlike convenient transfers at Kipling or Victoria Park where it’s one floor away directly above or below.

 

[Leo_Chan]

It’s a pain to transfer at Pioneer Village. Totally unlike convenient transfers at Kipling or Victoria Park where it’s one floor away directly above or below.

The vertical distance (2 levels) is okay in my opinion, but the horizontal distance is way too much. Even strategic boarding/walking through the train doesn't reduce the distance by much.

 

[Streety McCarface]

If people want to have a BRT on Sheppard then I am fine with that. But I tend to think the anti LRT but PRO BRT crowd is really just delay delay delay until eventually we get a Subway. Once LRT goes in the thought is there is no turning back but BRT can be taken out eventually and Subway put in. Anyways maybe I shouldn't worry what peoples motives are. Personally I just would like to see our major roads which are decades away from even the thought of getting a subway getting some sort of ROW transit. So essentially I look at the Blue Night map and think all of these lines are important. These are the lines that need ROW. My preference is LRT over BRT but anything that keeps me out of traffic during rush hour is better than what we have. Obviously we do need subways. But the subways we need is the DRL Long and west. If we had enough transit elsewhere I wouldn't care too much of the thought of burning money on Sheppard.

The LRT money would honestly be better spent on other corridors that don't already have a subway serving it. Take Dufferin, that bus sees on average 38K PPD and has no subway plans for the corridor for the foreseeable future. That, to me, seems like a better place to build LRT given that it's a busy corridor like Sheppard, but doesn't require an extra transfer to the subway along the same corridor. If the Sheppard subway wasn't built, then I could support an LRT line along Sheppard until ~2040, but currently, we have a subway on Sheppard and building an LRT along the east does nothing to help reduce the number of transfers an individual will have to make travelling along the corridor.

The fact that Steeles, York Mills, Lawrence, Dufferin, Kipling, Kennedy, and a few others aren't even being considered for LRT somewhat astounds me.

The Sheppard Line has a service speed of 29 km/h. See the TTC Service Summary

Where are you getting that information from?

Look at any video on Youtube of the Sheppard line.

The line is 5.5 km long and it takes 8 1/2 minutes to traverse it, or ~0.142 hrs. Dividing 5.5 km by 0.142, you get ~38.7 km/h, or about 39 km/h. These speeds are somewhat variable, but it's in no way near 29 km/h.

 

[BMO]

I don't have any ideological opposition to the Sheppard Line extension. I just don't believe it's the right time. The projected ridership is very low, RER will be seeping more ridership from Sheppard, and the Yonge Line is overloaded as is. This project cannot move forward until the Relief Line North is completed, which means mid 2030s at least.

The catch-22 here is that the presence of the Relief Line North and RER fare integration will reduce Sheppard Line ridership, which makes the Sheppard Line even more difficult to justify. Once RER and DRL North are implemented, peak ridership on the Sheppard Line may very well drop to 3,000 pphpd, and I would not expect it to exceed 5,000 pphpd (for reference, in 2011, Sheppard Line's extension was anticipated to carry 7,000 pphpd westbound into Yonge in 2031). It's impossible to justify a multi-billion subway extension that will have peak ridership that low. The only justifiable long-term solution on Sheppard might be a BRT or LRT system from Scarborough Centre and the Toronto Zoo, feeding into the Don Mills Line / Relief Line.

Also worth noting that the Don Mills Line + Sheppard BRT/LRT combination will offer faster downtown-bounds travel times than the proposed Sheppard East extension alone.

Basically, DRL North and RER will largely achieve the goals of the proposed Sheppard East extension. I don't see Sheppard East Extension serving any meaningful purpose in our network once those two projects are completed.

Since when did lines all focused on providing north-south travel ever get confused with providing east-west travel in the north of Toronto? It's almost as if (gasp) the busiest highway in the world is busy because people go east-west in Toronto as well as north-south.

 

[Streety McCarface]

Since when did lines all focused on providing north-south travel ever get confused with providing east-west travel in the north of Toronto? It's almost as if (gasp) the busiest highway in the world is busy because people go east-west in Toronto as well as north-south.

The problem with Sheppard is that it's just too close to the highway to be extremely valuable, it's like building the Spadina Line next to Allen Rd, but I digress. Finch would probably have been a better option at the time and Eglinton should have been prioritized, however, I can live with development occurring on Sheppard, there's plenty of room for it.

 

[aquateam]

Since when did lines all focused on providing north-south travel ever get confused with providing east-west travel in the north of Toronto? It's almost as if (gasp) the busiest highway in the world is busy because people go east-west in Toronto as well as north-south.

The Sheppard line is a circumferential feeder for the Yonge line, though. Most users go from end to end, and transfer at Sheppard-Yonge instead of going to points in-between.

If you have a DRL to Don Mills and an RER line at Agincourt, then Sheppard-line riders bound downtown will take those instead of going end-to-end. Overall ridership of Sheppard would be higher, but they would be making shorter trips, so the peak-point ridership would be lower (instead of riders accumulating onto a train at each stop before building to a peak just east of Yonge, it would be broken up at each north-south line.)

Since the peak capacity determines the type of transit you need, and not the overall ridership (e.g. the Spadina streetcar handles the same ridership as the Sheppard line because there is more turnover), that would undermine the decision to have built a subway along Sheppard.

I'm guessing Montreal have lost their mind then

Anjou
A mall with a some buildings

St-Michel

Jean-Talon
Orange meets Blue

Metro Acadie & Outremont

Snowdon
Queen Mary Rd & Decarie

Those Montrealers... Their planning staff are insane...

You've given a few examples of intersections... Toronto tends to have tiny pockets of very high density surrounded by oceans of low-density single family housing. Montreal has fewer high rises, but makes up for it with lots of midrise apartments, triplexes, etc.

This is what the population density looks like for the Sheppard line extension (courtesy of the 2016 census mapper)

And this is what it looks like in Montreal:

That's my whole point.

Who the hell are we to judge what's a good or bad decisions? The SRT was a horrendous decision, building Bloor ahead of Queen was another one, building Sheppard ahead of Eglinton was too. I don't think we can lecture other cities here.

Montreal are over the moon for the blue line extension, the line period. No one calls it "a mistake" and it doesn't matter who runs for mayor, everyone agrees on it. The blue line works in Montreal because they completed in!

If it was a stub from Jean-Talon to St-Michel, it would have been a disaster. Also, they closed the line at 11:30pm and ran only 3 wagons train-sets. They adjusted as ridership increased. Why on earth the TTC run trains everyday until 2am every 5 minutes (way off-peak) on the Sheppard line is a mystery to me.

A complete Sheppard Line (post 2030s) after all the development is advance will wield similar results

IMHO, "completing" the blue line would mean extending it to Montreal-Ouest and connecting it to an electrified Vaudreuil-Hudson line.