Thinking very long term, does anyone else think there'll be a need for another downtown subway line beyond the DRL? We're talking at least 50 years out, here, so it's hard to imagine what the downtown core will look like. Still, I always imagined (dreamed?) that, one day, the area south of Bloor would have the density of Manhattan or a major European downtown like Paris or Barcelona. We could easily pack 1.5 million people in the area bounded by High Park, Bloor and, say, Woodbine*.

It would be great to have, maybe, a line down Dundas and some north-south connectors to make a tight grid in the downtown core, reminiscent of the systems in the major alpha cities we try to emulate.




*I know this seems unrealistic today, because most of those homes are highly desirable Bay and Gables owned by wealthy, politically influential homeowners who would be the first to mobilize against change, but you never know how the wind blows. For one, most of these homeowners and the culture they represent will be dead by then; secondly, the values that future generations hold about living in a heritage semi-detached home may be drastically different. It's happened before: the Upper East Side went from a wealthy enclave of detached mansions to a wealthy enclave of midrises and apartment towers in about 50 years.
 
Not sure if I've mentioned this, but why not use a BRT until a subway is completed? The first branch would go from Main St station down Main, along Kingston and Eastern, to Richmond, south on Bathurst to King, west to Atlantic and Liberty. Return trip would be similar, looping around the block to get back up to King, and then taking Adelaide instead of Richmond due to one way street restrictions.

A second branch would be similar, only that instead of continuing east past the DVP, it would go up the highway to Don Mills and terminate at the LRT station at Eglinton.

Taking a page from some of the BRT projects in the GTA, payment would be done entirely before boarding and stops would be spaced out. My idea behind this route is that it hits two GO stations (Exhibition and Danforth), and provides MUCH needed improvements to cross-downtown travel, as well as to people in Liberty Village and East Toronto NOW, not 25 years into the future.
 
I think you are discounting the value of such a route too easily. As I said, there are a lot of people in the lower ends of Toronto to whom such a line would be far more appealing than going north to the B-D subway just to transfer back down at Yonge, or to take the milk run streetcar into the core. Also with proper promotion it may attract some riders as well. For example in New York City, the automated announcements on the subway that tell which subways you can transfer on to will also mention any M-Select bus routes which operate from that station.

Finally, it might not be perfect, but I do believe it would be better than nothing. Which is what we have right now.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Why are there still buses in Manhattan if it is covered by subway lines?

busmap.jpg
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They are there to provide crosstown service on streets and ultra-local service on avenues. Also, there are buses that come in from the outer boroughs.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
It doesn't have anything with Toronto people being frustrating. Its just that a BRT would have a fraction of the needed capacity. Some people would ride it, but the impact would be negligible.
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Yup. The maximum capacity of a 60 foot articulated bus is 110, which is about 1/3 the crush load capacity of a single T-1 subway car (315).
 
Hipster Duck said:
Yup. The maximum capacity of a 60 foot articulated bus is 110, which is about 1/3 the crush load capacity of a single T-1 subway car (315).
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Well it is a good thing my BRT scheme would use more than one bus then.

Also Second Ave in New York is using a BRT until the subway is fully constructed, I don't see why we couldn't put something together.
 
Electrify said:
Well it is a good thing my BRT scheme would use more than one bus then.
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I don't think you understood my point.

The interior capacity of 1 articulated bus = 1/3 a subway car

There are 6 subway cars per train.

A train arrives every 2 minutes.

Assuming that you could run a bus reliably every 2 minutes with the same dwell times at a stop as a subway train, and that the bus could travel seamlessly in a mixed traffic environment as if it were a grade-separated subway, and that people would be able to circulate around a shared 8 foot wide sidewalk with the same efficiency as they use a purpose-built 10 foot wide subway platform...even then, you would alleviate 1/18 (5.6%) of the congestion on the subway.
 
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Hipster Duck said:
I don't think you understood my point.

The interior capacity of 1 articulated bus = 1/3 a subway car

There are 6 subway cars per train.

A train arrives every 2 minutes.

Assuming that you could run a bus reliably every 2 minutes with the same dwell times at a stop as a subway train, and that the bus could travel seamlessly in a mixed traffic environment as if it were a grade-separated subway, and that people would be able to circulate around a shared 8 foot wide sidewalk with the same efficiency as they use a purpose-built 10 foot wide subway platform...even then, you would alleviate 1/18 (5.6%) of the congestion on the subway.
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Ottawa's Transitway through downtown (dedicated one-way bus lanes), carries about 10,000 pphpd. So you're right, it wouldn't be able to handle DRL volumes. However, if such a service could be done for cheap, and run as a semi-express type of service (Woodbine Stn to downtown via Woodbine & Lake Shore, Keele Stn via Parkside & Lake Shore), it may be worth exploring as a stop-gap solution.

I've also proposed something like this in the past, again, as a stop-gap solution, although this was mainly done as a solution to overcrowding on the King streetcar:

Downtown BRT.jpg
 

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gweed123 said:
Ottawa's Transitway through downtown (dedicated one-way bus lanes), carries about 10,000 pphpd. So you're right, it wouldn't be able to handle DRL volumes. However, if such a service could be done for cheap, and run as a semi-express type of service (Woodbine Stn to downtown via Woodbine & Lake Shore, Keele Stn via Parkside & Lake Shore), it may be worth exploring as a stop-gap solution.
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Yes, you could relieve some of the passengers who travel on the Yonge line and who change at Bloor, but is the number of people you could relieve worth the expense? A DRL B-line would be a huge commitment of TTC resources. The end result could be realpolitik blowing up in our faces: the province suggesting that it already committed $100 million to building a B-line type service, so it can defer a proper DRL for the foreseeable future. Normally, I am not one of those people who suggest that we should aim for the perfect, rather than the merely good, but there's too much at stake with the DRL to do anything other than a subway 100% properly.

I also would not compare the Transitway to a DRL B-line. For starters, the on-street portion of the Transitway is much shorter than anything you have shown here, and doesn't involve left-turns or anything complicated. Secondly, the on-street portion of the Transitway is not something to actually emulate; it's a gridlock of buses at rush hour that move in slow convoys between red lights. Thirdly, the wide east-west block spacing in Ottawa can sort of permit this. You can probably barely fit three articulated buses, back to back, between the traffic light at Victoria and the traffic light at Yonge. Fourthly, the Transitway is so heavily used because it represents the best choice. For a TTC commuter, the subway is the best choice. The B-line is the worse choice.

If you are a commuter about to head north from King station to go to Scarborough, do you get on the subway or do you take the B-line? If you took the subway from King, you will probably get on to the first train. Your fellow commuter at College or Wellesley probably won't, but you don't care about him, so you don't make a decision to take an inferior form of transit so that he can get on. In other words, it may not help the actual people it's intended to help. If the DRL was a subway, however, and especially if that subway guaranteed a one seat ride to Scarborough, it would be the better of 2 choices, and a financial district commuter would likely make that choice.
 
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