[robmausser]

Vancouver has had automated trains since the 80s. The Subways in Toronto could too, but the unions would never go for it.

The subways in Toronto are in the process of being automated and will be complete in 2019.

Currently the subway from Dupont to Yorkdale is automated, and Bloor to Vaughan will be when the new extension opens in December.

 

[robmausser]

I'm not sure that the ATC/ATO system that the TTC is installing would allow for automated door closing. I've never been able to find out that level of detail.

But if it doesn't, than there needs to be someone staffing a cab at all times. There's no getting around that.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

The system allows for automated door closing. The staff on the ATC system is entirely due to the union, and for "safety"

 

[micheal_can]

The system allows for automated door closing. The staff on the ATC system is entirely due to the union, and for "safety"

No staff on the Skytrains.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Next thing we'll have would be automatic elevators. No elevator operator would be needed.

 

[MisterF]

Vancouver transit has unions too. If TTC management is too chicken to have the same staffing practices as TransLink, that's on them.

 

[Amare]

The subways in Toronto are in the process of being automated and will be complete in 2019.

Currently the subway from Dupont to Yorkdale is automated, and Bloor to Vaughan will be when the new extension opens in December.

You're getting your facts a bit off here. The section from Dupont to Bloor-Yonge wont be completed until early 2019 (unless things have changed from the last time I checked), while the section from Yorkdale to Sheppard West wont be complete until late in 2018.

 

[robmausser]

You're getting your facts a bit off here. The section from Dupont to Bloor-Yonge wont be completed until early 2019 (unless things have changed from the last time I checked), while the section from Yorkdale to Sheppard West wont be complete until late in 2018.

I was told that Yorkdale to Shepard West will be completed in time for opening of Spadina Extension.

 

[robmausser]

No staff on the Skytrains.

I was talking about the TTC, genius.

 

[aquateam]

That's assuming that you're using a staff-less automated system, which is not going to be the case in Toronto. And even then, there's a low marginal cost for additional service, but there is an additional cost, as those additional vehicles need to be cleaned and maintained, and additional enforcement staff may be required as well.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

I'm not saying that there would be additional vehicles: there would be smaller vehicles running on a shorter headway. So in theory that would actually be cheaper to clean. I'm not convinced that enforcement costs would scale with train frequency.

Vancouver has had automated trains since the 80s. The Subways in Toronto could too, but the unions would never go for it.

When the SRT was first built, it was capable of driving itself but the TTC insisted on expensive retrofits for them to be manually operated, because the unions wanted to keep work.

Our neglect of Scarborough RT is shameful: James
Much maligned SRT is actually TTC’s most reliable service, despite years of neglect — so why the rush to far more expensive LRTs and subways.

For years, experts have been pointing out that Scarborough Rapid Transit technology is our best bang for the buck. Yet LRTs and subways get all the headlines, laments Royson James.

“Notwithstanding criticisms and misinformation over the years, the Scarborough RT has been the single most-reliable service operated by the TTC.”

The words jump off the page of the January 2013 staff report to the Toronto Transit Commission.

Certainly, it couldn’t be describing the SRT, the Rodney Dangerfield of Toronto’s transit lines, the most disrespected 6.4-kilometre stretch of transit corridor in the system, the object of so much scorn that governments are prepared to spurn it at a cost of billions of dollars.

“The service has been very successful at attracting ridership and has been operating over capacity for a decade,” the report continues.

The same RT that’s been left to fall apart — abandoned like the discarded toy of some rich kid with eyes fixed on a shiny new plaything?

“For many years, it has carried daily passenger volumes of 40,000 people, with peak-period passenger volumes maxed-out at 4,000 passengers per hour, due to the limited number of vehicles in the SRT fleet.”

What? They can’t buy new trains?

They could. And the TTC wanted to. A 2006 report made the case forcefully. It considered replacing the RT with a subway or an LRT. Staff rejected both as “not needed or warranted … cannot be justified.”

But their political masters ignored the plea and ruined a good thing that the rest of the world came to embrace.

Now the Scarborough RT is so rickety, so rundown, so unloved, that to speak highly of it in its birthplace is to elicit ridicule. Vancouver bought the RT technology the same time as Toronto. It’s expanding its near 50 kilometres of SkyTrain service, again. Here the RT’s public image is that of a dinosaur.

A number of transit experts are risking extinction. They claim Toronto should not be debating whether it’s best to replace the RT with a subway or an LRT. Neither is wise. Both are a waste of valuable transit dollars. Billions, in fact.

The best route is to fix up the RT. In fact, one option might be to expand the technology — now branded a mini-subway — to the Eglinton Crosstown and Sheppard and Finch LRTs for a viable, low-cost network that is suitable for the lower ridership in those corridors.

“TTC could save $2 billion by refurbishing and extending the Scarborough RT rather than throwing it away and building a subway that will do much the same thing,” says Michael Schabas, who’s authored an extensive report for the Neptis Foundation.

Dick Soberman, a long-time transit planner, consultant and expert on GTA transportation, emailed from vacation: “Being in Florida doesn’t help me understand why we are not simply buying new cars for the RT … by far the cheapest, fastest, and most cost-effective thing to do.”[...]
Essentially, there is nothing wrong with the RT that a little tender loving care can’t solve, Steglich says. The Transit City plan to replace it with an LRT is misguided. To build a subway, as currently planned, is overkill and a colossal waste of money. And if you think the retiree’s head is gathering water, consider that there are many transit experts saying the same thing.

[...]

TTC never adopted the automatic (driverless) system the RT comes with (other cities have). And it won’t upgrade it. Instead it prefers to spend more than $3 billion on a subway to replace “one of the best systems around the word, developed right in Kingston.”

At a cost of $150 million per kilometre, the TTC can expand the RT by four kilometres up to Sheppard. Add another $400 million to retrofit and upgrade the system and the total is $1 billion, less than half the LRT and a third of the subway cost, Steglich says.

[...]
“The evaluation shows that the huge capacity achievable with a subway is not needed or warranted in this corridor and, therefore, the very large capital cost premium of a subway cannot be justified.”
“The broader assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks associated with each of the options concluded that the upgrading of the existing line to accommodate larger, new generation RT vehicles provides the best way of quickly improving rapid transit service in Scarborough while still allowing an expansion of rapid transit services in other corridors in Scarborough as identified in the city’s Official Plan.”
“Upgrading the Scarborough RT line to accommodate larger, new-generation vehicles is the lowest-cost, and most-easily implemented, option for maintaining and providing the increased capacity needed to accommodate the projected future increasing demand for rapid transit in the corridor.”

 

[micheal_can]

I was talking about the TTC, genius.

I'm not saying that there would be additional vehicles: there would be smaller vehicles running on a shorter headway. So in theory that would actually be cheaper to clean. I'm not convinced that enforcement costs would scale with train frequency.

When the SRT was first built, it was capable of driving itself but the TTC insisted on expensive retrofits for them to be manually operated, because the unions wanted to keep work.

So, uhm, Vancouver's system is the same as the SRT, yet the TTC cannot run it automated.....

 

[smallspy]

The system allows for automated door closing. The staff on the ATC system is entirely due to the union, and for "safety"

And you're basing this on reading the tender documents, or the bid specs, or the wiring schematics, or what, exactly?

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[smallspy]

I'm not saying that there would be additional vehicles: there would be smaller vehicles running on a shorter headway. So in theory that would actually be cheaper to clean. I'm not convinced that enforcement costs would scale with train frequency.

Maybe not in Toronto, but from speaking to people at Translink they did in Vancouver.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[aquateam]

Vancouver transit has unions too. If TTC management is too chicken to have the same staffing practices as TransLink, that's on them.

They aren't as entrenched though. Toronto already had 90% of its current subway network when the SRT was built. Vancouver built theirs from scratch so there were no subway drivers worried about losing their jobs. Plus, they seem to accept private operation/maintenance of their lines (e.g. Canada line.)

Next thing we'll have would be automatic elevators. No elevator operator would be needed.

But what if the doors opened between floors? Think of the children.

And you're basing this on reading the tender documents, or the bid specs, or the wiring schematics, or what, exactly?

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

Once ATC is installed the trains are completely capable of driving themselves.

The TTC has the technology to run its subway without drivers. At least it will in 2018, when it completes installation of its new $566 million computerized signaling system on the Yonge-University-Spadina line.

Cities from Vancouver to Shanghai are already running driverless trains, although many still maintain staff on the vehicles. But TTC CEO Andy Byford isn’t ready to drop operators from the Toronto subway system.

In theory the TTC could put its busiest subway on auto-pilot once the new signaling system, called Automatic Train Control (ATC), is fully operational.

But Byford thinks single-operator trains are as far as Toronto should or wants to go.

[...]

“The computer … does mean every train is driven to the perfect driving profile, acceleration and braking. Every single train. You couldn’t possibly replicate that with human beings,” said Byford.

“And,” he added, “the trains stop dead on the mark.”

Transit expert Michael Schabas, says in his review of Metrolinx’s Big Move, released by the Neptis Foundation in December, that Toronto could trim transit operating costs by moving to driverless subways.

So why not let the computer do all the work?

Byford offers three reasons:
Push-back from the union representing the TTC’s 612 subway operators and guards would be substantial. But that’s not his main objection, he said.

• Automatic Train Control is only one piece of the infrastructure required to go driverless. The TTC would also need to install platform edge doors that would prevent people from jumping or falling to track level. They could also prevent many delays caused by debris falling on the tracks.
• The doors — used on the Pearson airport people mover, the LINK train — line up perfectly with the train doors, opening once the train comes to a halt at the platform.

• Byford’s chief reason for rejecting driverless trains, however, is that he thinks the city would reject the notion.

“It would be a real leap of faith for Torontonians to even countenance having a train that didn’t have a driver. I don’t think, politically or societally, it would be tenable. I just don’t think there’s an appetite for that,” he said.

He points out that the Scarborough RT — the forerunner to Vancouver’s Skytrain, which has been automated since it opened in 1986, was designed to be automated.

It has, however, always had an operator who is responsible for watching for debris on the guideway.
[...]
Blackett said he doesn’t have an issue with employing people to work on the trains. But if you’re going to staff a train that could be driven by a computer, why not have a transit worker instead walking up and down offering customer service assistance?

“There are lots of reasons to move those people off the trains and into the stations, because that’s where it’s really needed,” he said, “especially the busier stations.”

PSDs are a nice add-on (I would argue that they're one of the main benefits of ATC), but they are definitely not a requirement.

 

[smallspy]

Once ATC is installed the trains are completely capable of driving themselves.

So you're basing it on anecdotal evidence from a newspaper article, rather than any technical documentation?

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[robmausser]

From the new Smarttrack document:

http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2017.EX29.1

4. City Council approve an at-grade Eglinton West Light Rail Transit extension concept for the Toronto Segment between Mount Dennis Station and Renforth Station (at Commerce Boulevard), including:


a. Ten stops as described in Attachment 2 to the report (November 17, 2017); and


b. No further consideration of grade separations at Eglinton Flats (i.e. Jane Street and Scarlett Road), Royal York Road, Islington Avenue, Martin Grove Road, and Kipling Avenue.

Stupid.

Must we half-ass everything in this city?