[kettal]

hbl33, don't take it personally, but you are the embodiment of the average angry Torontonian who only has negative things to say.

I guess the only publicity TTC gets these days is bad. But there are so many improvements happening, which unfortunately, many are ignorant to.

 

[hbl33]

hbl33, don't take it personally, but you are the embodiment of the average angry Torontonian who only has negative things to say.

I guess the only publicity TTC gets these days is bad. But there are so many improvements happening, which unfortunately, many are ignorant to.

kettal, I am not from Toronto, so saying that I am an average angry Torontonian wouldn't make sense. Coming from where life seems short, Saugans like me do things in hurry and expect things quickly done on time. Surprisingly, I find people here are laid back as opposed to downtowners in T.O. or even Saugans (I know because I live here; the only time people are laid back is on weekends).

The only reason I am being frustrated is due to slow changes in T.O. and TTC. Yes I know there are plenty of improvements taking place, but what is the point of mentioning them when things are taking too slow?

 

[kEiThZ]

While I might disagree with plans like Transit City, I second the comments by others, the TTC has been doing its best to improve. They are however stymied by funding sometimes, politics and the union. That's an awful environment in which to do business.

Look at Presto. The province paid for the rest of the transit systems to implement it but told Toronto to come up with the cash by themselves. Politics too plays its role. Miller came in and trashed the previous long term plans and put in Transit City. Lastman came in before him and put forward as priority, the Sheppard subway....a good idea but hardly the most pressing need at the time. And then there's the union. They put pressure to get policies such as having operators on systems designed for driverless operation (SRT).

Despite all that the TTC has made some remarkable strides in the last few years. And keep in mind, it still remains the largest transit system in the country and by the far the best transit service in the GTA. Show me another transit system that has 5-10 min frequency on the bulk of its routes. Or one that can get you as far, as fast for under 3 bucks.

 

[LeonSKennedy]

I managed to get a reply from my councillor. It a was pretty typical and straight forward reply. I was made aware that Miller and Giambrone are capable of making transit decisions.... some crap about budget and funding is needed from all levels.

 

[Ansem]

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/728525--forget-about-a-refund-says-ttc-chair?bn=1

TTC chair Adam Giambrone answers some questions subway riders asked after Wednesday's six-hour shutdown between Bloor and Eglinton stations.

Q: Will riders be compensated for their inconvenience?

A: Not as a fare refund, says Giambrone.

"When a situation like this occurs, our first priority is to manage the situation safely, get people home. We did offer alternative transit. It wasn't ideal for people. There's no way of measuring who was there," he said, adding there's really only one person who pays – the taxpayer. "All the people riding that system were Toronto taxpayers; you'd be taking from one hand to give to the other hand. At the end of the day we'll be looking to recoup the overtime costs as well as the cost to repair the structure from the people responsible, because it wasn't the TTC."

Q: What did it cost the system?

A: "It will be in the tens of thousands to the low hundreds of thousands by the time we do the repairs."

Q: Why can't more staff be sent to give people information at the subway entrance?

A: "Toronto police and TTC deployed quickly in this case. Really we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people through that intersection (of Yonge and Bloor). Bullhorns don't work. They're not loud enough. In large mass crowds of people, trying to do that level of communication is just impossible. There were extra people there on overtime, people were called in, all our inspectors, all special constables that we could were deployed to the area. Crowd management went remarkably smoothly."

Q: Doesn't the TTC have a plan to move people in such emergencies?

A: "Yes, and the plan was enacted and worked well. The reality is that the plan accepts that you will not be able to replace the subway. If we could, we would just operate the old Yonge streetcar. The reality is that with that many people, you want a plan that ensures safety, that ensures the best possible order. If you look at it purely from that perspective, the plan worked. It did transport people; it took them a long time."

No major city can mobilize 500 or 600 shuttle buses. To do it, it would have to strand people on routes all over the city. And even if it had the buses and operators standing by to drive them, there wouldn't be space on Yonge St. to run them because police don't have the officers to block off every single intersection.

Q: Why doesn't the Yonge line have an alternate track like New York's subway?

A: Even New York experiences delays due to construction or problems like this. Only a few of their lines, such as Broadway and Lexington, have double tracks, but most don't. Even the new one being built on Second Ave. isn't double-tracked. So New York experiences the same difficulty in trying to deploy enough shuttle buses when its subways are disrupted, said Giambrone. Its advantage is that there are more subway lines, so people can often find an alternative.

Q: Why not buy articulated buses that carry more people?

A: Those currently on the market don't last as long (about 10 to 12 years) as the TTC's standard models, which hold up through multiple rebuilds. The TTC regularly uses buses past the 20-year mark.

Q: Would a downtown relief subway line have helped?

A: Maybe. Some versions of that idea have a subway line extending all the way to Eglinton, a plan that would cost in the range of $10 billion to $12 billion.


WTF?????????

MAYBE??????????

In what fantasy world does he lives in anyways?????????

 

[rbt]

Q: Would a downtown relief subway line have helped?

A: Maybe. Some versions of that idea have a subway line extending all the way to Eglinton, a plan that would cost in the range of $10 billion to $12 billion.


WTF?????????

MAYBE??????????

Yes, Maybe. A DRL to Eglinton operating at 90% capacity would have allowed for about 5% of the Yonge Line passengers to move over to it. Nor really very helpful.

An over-capacity system can actually REDUCE total throughput because trains need to move slowly into stations and passenger movement into/out of trains is restricted. Bloor/King stations are a good example of this (dwell times). With those stations eliminated Yonge line capacity goes up by 30%.


Point being, the crush loads on the DRL could actually have caused fewer people to be moved by the DRL than would normally have been moved; making the problem worse.


What would have worked is if the DRL was operating at under 50% capacity (say 4 minute headways) and many of the Yonge Line trains could be physically moved onto the DRL line within 20 minutes of the problem being found; bringing the DRL down to 90 second headways.


London has this cascade failure issue regularly. One line will go down and in some cases adjacent lines become so overloaded their total capacity is reduced from what is normal which spreads the impact to far more passengers than would have been impacted otherwise.


Off-peak failures, DRL would be immensely useful (lots of empty train space) but a peak load failure of Yonge line with a DRL will still be very painful; particularly if the DRL is already at 25,000pph on a normal day.

Q: Why doesn't the Yonge line have an alternate track like New York's subway?

A: Even New York experiences delays due to construction or problems like this. Only a few of their lines, such as Broadway and Lexington, have double tracks, but most don't. Even the new one being built on Second Ave. isn't double-tracked. So New York experiences the same difficulty in trying to deploy enough shuttle buses when its subways are disrupted, said Giambrone. Its advantage is that there are more subway lines, so people can often find an alternative.

I can't imagine this type of incident (contractor cutting into the tunnel liner) into in New York over a quad tracked area. All 4 lines would be shut down immediately and potentially 1 million people would need to be rerouted.

Quad tracking only makes the impact of a shutdown significantly worse.

 

[whatever]

If a DRL were running at 90% capacity don't you think that would drastically cut into the number of people using (and thus inconvenienced) on the Yonge line?

The DRL plus Eglinton LRT would have handled just about everyone, given that the riders could have used the Spadina line to get to Eglinton West, and DRL riders could have gone to Don Mills, then the LRT would have gotten everyone (who needed to get further north) over to Eglinton. Same system in reverse could have gotten people down to Bloor-Danforth without any major delays. Of course in this scenario it would be the Eglinton LRT that gets swamped, not the DRL.

And I don't mind Giambrone's Yonge streetcar line either. If the city had unlimited cash I'd like to see it resurrected between the waterfront and Eglinton. It would be great for local service, would take some of the load off of the subway, would serve as a great upgrade to the blue night service, and would offer an auxillary service for the rare times that the subway goes down

 

[Tewder]

The time has come to make public transit the central issue it deserves to be. An election is forthcoming and the media and transit advocacy must focus its efforts on elevating this issue to the heart of the campaign. The message must be loud and clear:

no one running for office in Toronto and no political leader in Ontario can have any credibility whatsoever on issues of urban development, gridlock and urban sprawl, sustainability, quality of life, the economy and the environment without securing a commitment to immediate and comprehensive expansion of the public transit system in this city, including subways.

Politicians and the political discourse have ignored this for far too long, to the negligence of the city of Toronto and now we are scrambling for the pathetic crumbs that we are told wont come for decades. The fact that the situation has been allowed to fall behind to this alarming degree in what is a relatively affluent city (no matter what politicians will tell you) and country speaks to a profound lack of vision and leadership, and to political corruption.

The people of Toronto need to organize now on this issue because it's not going to get any better. The band-aid solutions being offered by all transit agencies are pathetic attempts to avoid the required financial commitments from all levels of government, and the timeline on offer is clearly inadequate given events this past week. Again, it's not going to get better. Billions of dollars in lost productivity, declining quality of life due to gridlock and congestion, and the constant lip-service/lack of commitment to a long term car-free vision of urban planning is costing the city far more money in the end. Lets stop talking about bike lanes and other smoke-and-mirror issues until the main issue of transit is address.

A protest is needed. A media barrage is needed. A targeting of political leaders and candidates is needed. The PanAm games and waterfront rejuvenation are all well and good but the city must get basic infrastructure in place to sustain development and population growth, not bread and circuses! In the end though the city will only get what the people demand. Time is now.

 

[rbt]

If a DRL were running at 90% capacity don't you think that would drastically cut into the number of people using (and thus inconvenienced) on the Yonge line?

Actually, no I don't believe this. If the DRL is running at 90% capacity then Yonge line will still be at or very close to 100% capacity (Yonge line corridor will always have more people).

The two together makes for 190% capacity of either line individually OR 250% capacity when you account for the below optimal operating conditions occurred when crush loads take place.

Commute London regularly enough and you will quickly realize that when one line goes out and above 100% capacity crowds appear on the platforms of nearby lines; those lines quickly DECREASE in throughput because of dramatically increased dwell periods.


A lightly loaded DRL, which may exist for the first 10 years after it is built (downtown, including office space will expand rapidly after that point), would have been useful. After that, Giambrone was correct to say "maybe" because it is entirely possible the situation would have been worse if the DRL existed and growth it will spur would have occurred.



I do emergency system planning for financial services for a living. It's not the same as subway but it makes you aware of the potential for cascading failures when you assume a secondary conduit will simply take over the work.

A great example of a cascading failure was the 2004 blackout. The actual failure added an additional ~20% surge on 5 nearby lines which were already operating near capacity. These failed as a result and the load moved to other adjacent lines.

Redundancy can save your ass many times but in others it can make for some spectacular failures.


Between integrated fares, GO Transit frequent service (10 minute or better on all lines during rush) and the DRL you have a suitable backup load as any single service will only have a small increase in load and likely will not go over capacity.

Remember, over capacity means larger dwell times which actually decreases total throughput.


The DRL has many good things going for it but a backup plan for failure of the Yonge line is not one of them. This is very much like saying "widening 401 by another 6 lanes would eliminate congestion!"

 

[Rainforest]

Q: Would a downtown relief subway line have helped?

A: Maybe. Some versions of that idea have a subway line extending all the way to Eglinton, a plan that would cost in the range of $10 billion to $12 billion.


WTF?????????

MAYBE??????????

In what fantasy world does he lives in anyways?????????

Yeah ... even if he counts both "wings", east to Eglinton / Don Mills and west to Eglinton / Jane, it is about 20 km, and should be doable for $6-7 billion (assuming $300 million per km). The eastern wing only, which is desperately needed, should be about $3-4 billion.

The tricky part is of course the downtown section, which has to bypass the PATH and numerous utilities. But this is just Victoria to John, about 1 km. The rest of the route would be just regular subway construction. Might be even less expensive if railway alignment is used for part of the route.

 

[Rainforest]

The DRL has many good things going for it but a backup plan for failure of the Yonge line is not one of them. This is very much like saying "widening 401 by another 6 lanes would eliminate congestion!"

Got the point.

However, growth in downtown continues even without DRL at place, and Yonge line approaches its capacity limit for normal operation. DRL is needed just to continue normal operation of the subway network, even if it won't salvage the situations of Yonge shutdown.

 

[rbt]

Got the point.

However, growth in downtown continues even without DRL at place, and Yonge line approaches its capacity limit for normal operation. DRL is needed just to continue normal operation of the subway network, even if it won't salvage the situations of Yonge shutdown.

I agree entirely and have written powers that be that I am willing to be taxed for this benefit.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Q: Would a downtown relief subway line have helped?

A: Maybe. Some versions of that idea have a subway line extending all the way to Eglinton, a plan that would cost in the range of $10 billion to $12 billion.

What the hell?!! $10 billion for the DRL up to Eglinton? Maybe $10 Billion from Finch to Dundas West, or even Jane. Now, I'm totally assured of Giambrone's complete incompetence in transit.

 

[nfitz]

What the hell?!! $10 billion for the DRL up to Eglinton? Maybe $10 Billion from Finch to Dundas West, or even Jane. Now, I'm totally assured of Giambrone's complete incompetence in transit.

They've been pondering tunelling the Jane LRT from Wilson. If the entire thing was DRL that would be about 28 km. That could easily come in at $10-billion if they were starting construction now. If the construction index returns to it's 10% level, and it's another 5-years before it starts, it could easily be $15-billion before they start.

Perhaps he was speaking off the top of his head ... but I don't see any reason to declare his incompetence ... it's not like the TTC has actually studied it yet.

 

[andrewpmk]

Actually, no I don't believe this. If the DRL is running at 90% capacity then Yonge line will still be at or very close to 100% capacity (Yonge line corridor will always have more people).

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. No doubt we will eventually need to build a "downtown relief relief line". But since a subway line has much more capacity than a 4-6 lane expressway (probably more comparable to the capacity of Highway 401 through Toronto) it ought to be a while before this is needed. For instance the Spadina line is well below capacity right now despite having been built in the 1970s.