It's just not reasonable to to expect to study every potential permutation of spaghetti on the map to be studied
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I'm not sure why not. Genetic software algorithms for exactly this kind of thing are quite common and pretty standardized (I do this kind of thing for a living at the moment; analysis of big data in unexpected ways to find unexpected patterns). It's the equivalent of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, but really fast and in really large numbers, then tweaking what stuck to make it stickier.

If a very basic calculation of a route can be performed in a few minutes, it's perfectly feasible to run 1 Million combinations over a couple weeks month including on Amazon's cluster for around $20G's. Metrolinx is asking for $3B, a $20G investment is a pittance.

You take the best ones and do a full evaluation by hand.


diminutive said:
Why not complain about the ECLRT EA not considering a rail corridor alternative? Trains could run down the Don Valley, through Union, then up to Mt.Dennis! It's pretty much exactly what you're proposing but rotated 90 degrees.
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Oddly enough, I kinda have indirectly. The money being spent on Eglinton is sufficient to put 10 minute frequencies on most GO lines including numerous new bus stations for TTC and other agents to siphon buses into. This would have immense impact across the entire region and significantly decrease East/West demand on Eglinton and numerous other streets.

Eglinton has few destinations. It's just a convenient corridor to get elsewhere. GO lines could be convenient corridors too.

Miller had no control over GO's priorities and just picked items from the reports Lastman requested about streets which were at capacity. Pretty reasonable for his administration to not propose something like that.


Metrolinx, however, was not only supposed to avoid politics and use business principals for planning lines but have the skill-set and authority to implement them. I'm not impressed with their actual results at all.


Anyway, Eglinton and the Yonge extension will both be great and heavily used.
 
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Y&E office market is around 4 million whereas NYCC is around 9 million ...

Note that the office markets include more then just the office's directly at Yonge and Eglinton or say Yonge and Finch.

I believe the North York Market starts at York Mills and heads up to north of Finch.

Whereas the Eglinton one goes south to Dasvilli (though not including St. Clair ... that has about 2 million on its own).


Honestly today, north of Finch, there isn't much in the way of dedicated class C/B+ office space ... but I'm sure this will change over time, take the new office building being built as part of World on Yonge *about 100K* ... though these are condo offices and I'm not sure I'd count them as they'll only cater to very small industry / doctors / layers / ... still employment though ! You'll see this in the Hullmark development as well (in all condo office projects).
 
diminutive said:
I
That's even more ridiculous. Even ignoring the issue of spending billions of dollars to build a 30km detour through an unpopulated valley, and assuming that there was no ridership penalty for this ridiculous diversion, you would end up dumping all of the passengers back onto the Yonge line right where it's busiest anyways!

What on earth is the advantage of this?
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Dude, time to pull out a map. Where's the Belleville sub south of Eglinton? Where's Spadina, for that matter?
 
taal said:
Y&E office market is around 4 million whereas NYCC is around 9 million ...

Note that the office markets include more then just the office's directly at Yonge and Eglinton or say Yonge and Finch.

I believe the North York Market starts at York Mills and heads up to north of Finch.

Whereas the Eglinton one goes south to Dasvilli (though not including St. Clair ... that has about 2 million on its own).


Honestly today, north of Finch, there isn't much in the way of dedicated class C/B+ office space ... but I'm sure this will change over time, take the new office building being built as part of World on Yonge *about 100K* ... though these are condo offices and I'm not sure I'd count them as they'll only cater to very small industry / doctors / layers / ... still employment though ! You'll see this in the Hullmark development as well (in all condo office projects).
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Is that square feet? Because 4 million square feet isn't a whole lot.
 
diminutive said:
That's the stupidest DRL alignment yet produced, spaghetti on the map which exists solely to serve the equally stupid idea that we should have a second Union station for some reason. Why on Earth anybody would think terminating the DRL at a derelict theme-park is better than Dundas West is beyond me.
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We're going to get a second Union Station one way or another.

It can be above (as in increased height), below (tunnel/underground) or adjacent to the current one. All options have numerous problems.
 
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Forgotten said:
Is that square feet? Because 4 million square feet isn't a whole lot.
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Here are some more accurate #s from CRBE

Y&E: 5 million
NYCC: 8 million
Greater downtown core (including Y&B): 75 million (with about 5.5 million under construction)
404 / 407: 7 million
Vaghuan: 2 Million (the entire city ...)
MCC: 3.5 million
Toronto East: 22 million (huge area, including Scarborough / 404 - 404 / Consumers / Steeles - Woodbine)

Western / Northern Mississauga: 20 million or so ... note I've combined several nodes so this is a huge are (think airport / Meadowvale) [about 1 million under construction].

The GTA overall is around 150 million.


So takeaways here are:

Notice there is a large amount of space around the 407 / 404 in Markham, this is why one hopes the new BRT on Hi-way 7 will improve transit use for Viva purple. The Yonge subway would help too, I know many (Including my self) who work in this node yet live in Toronto proper and commute (on occasion). But note, at least today, there is very little office use north of Finch on Yonge ... while this doesn't mean there isn't a lot of employment, at this area is full of retail / small business / industrial use.

Also, note that Vaughan has little office use today, its by far and large industrial.
 
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taal said:
So takeaways here are:

Notice there is a large amount of space around the 407 / 404 in Markham, this is why one hopes the new BRT on Hi-way 7 will improve transit use for Viva purple. The Yonge subway would help too, I know many (Including my self) who work in this node yet live in Toronto proper and commute (on occasion). But note, at least today, there is very little office use north of Finch on Yonge ... while this doesn't mean there isn't a lot of employment, at this area is full of retail / small business / industrial use.

Also, note that Vaughan has little office use today, its by far and large industrial.
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407/404 is why the DRL should be extended up Don Mills to Seneca College and this Beaver Creek Area.
 
k10ery said:
Dude, time to pull out a map. Where's the Belleville sub south of Eglinton? Where's Spadina, for that matter?
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It runs through the middle of nowheres... Rerouting the Yonge extension via the Richmond Hill corridor then to Summerhill would serve approximately nothing and end up dumping all the passengers right back where the Yonge subway is busiest after a massive detour.

It's rube goldberg-ian.

Where would you even put a stop between Eglinton and Yonge? Mt. Pleasant (in a valley...)? Bayview (in a valley...)? We could serve the hell out of some industrial backyards...
 
rbt said:
We're going to get a second Union Station one way or another.

It can be above (as in increased height), below (tunnel/underground) or adjacent to the current one. All options have numerous problems.
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I very much doubt this. Those projections are based on ridiculous assumptions like no through running and 10 minute headway minimums. If you're running modern EMUs and off-peak service, which the highest usage scenarios would seem to dictate, then there's no reason that we have to be constrained by things like 10 minute headways.

I was under the impression the bigger issue is track conflicts on either side of the station itself with things like UPE having to cross over all the other tracks.

I'd also be surprised if we ended up seeing the massive expansion of train movements on corridors like Barrie or Richmond Hill that the USRC Study was expecting. Equally, I don't see how Metrolinx assumes GO ridership to double or triple by 2031 without a proportional (and unexpected) increase in core employment. We're only expected to see a <30% increase by 2031...

Metrolinx, however, was not only supposed to avoid politics and use business principals for planning lines but have the skill-set and authority to implement them. I'm not impressed with their actual results at all.
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This I'd agree with. Metrolinx hasn't lived up to its promise of providing non-political, regional focused transit planning. It's usually just proposed a grab-bag of municipal pet projects, and indeed in the case of the YSE it's not much different.

Where I'd disagree is if the place to do that is in a specific BCA... Metrolinx should public some kind of regional transit study which weighs the user benefits and costs of various levels of investments in just about every corridor in the GTA and their overall impact on the network to determine where the most bang-for-buck would be out of the thousands of network permutations and combinations. I suspect the overall priorities would have been quite different. And, like I've also said, I can't imagine the YSE would be the number one priority in that regard.
 
diminutive said:
Equally, I don't see how Metrolinx assumes GO ridership to double or triple by 2031 without a proportional (and unexpected) increase in core employment. We're only expected to see a <30% increase by 2031.
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Good points. This stood out though.

There are 2 ways, at the moment, of easily increasing the number of people getting into downtown.

NOTE: All numbers are guesses and there are numerous unconfirmed assumptions.

Mechanisms are:
1) Build more condos; this is pretty slow but faster than funding and building substantial new TTC capacity.
2) Increase GO trains.

Highways and TTC can be considered at capacity and incapable of major expansion. Until Metrolinx gets taxation capabilities, there is no DRL on the table.

Walking is viable but dependent on increased living space (condos) nearby. Folks won't walk more than about 3km to work.
Cycling has minimal ridership during winter and may essentially be ignored. 400% increase to current winter cycling numbers still rounds out.


GO's ratio is today is about 1/5th of total people going downtown and one of the few items that can be increased at a smallish investment. A 20% increase in office space added instantly would double GO ridership.

So, any office growth which outpaces condo growth (5000 units per year in the core; some residents will work outside the core? One office building every ~4 years?) will essentially be forced to take GO. It takes a lot of condos to fill a single office building with workers. X-Condos (450 units) seems to be about 20% students and another 20% working jobs like retail, 10% working out of the core, and another 10% retired; perhaps 200 office employees which is a little under a single floor in an office building.


Doubling GO ridership would require about 12 moderate sized office buildings being developed downtown over a decade; or an equivalent increase in worker density in existing buildings (another popular pattern; more staff in less space).

From a back-of-the-napkin estimate; doubling GO demand over a 20 year period doesn't seem all that impractical as the result of a small increase in downtown employment. Office construction has outpaced condo construction for a while.


A recession that caused bank layoffs would immediately put a stop to GO expansion demand.
 
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diminutive said:
Where would you even put a stop between Eglinton and Yonge? Mt. Pleasant (in a valley...)? Bayview (in a valley...)? We could serve the hell out of some industrial backyards...
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At Millwood, a 5 minute bus ride from the 30,000+ who live in Thorncliffe and Flemingdon Parks.
 
taal said:
Here are some more accurate #s from CRBE

Y&E: 5 million
NYCC: 8 million
Greater downtown core (including Y&B): 75 million (with about 5.5 million under construction)
404 / 407: 7 million
Vaghuan: 2 Million (the entire city ...)
MCC: 3.5 million
Toronto East: 22 million (huge area, including Scarborough / 404 - 404 / Consumers / Steeles - Woodbine)

Western / Northern Mississauga: 20 million or so ... note I've combined several nodes so this is a huge are (think airport / Meadowvale) [about 1 million under construction].

The GTA overall is around 150 million.


So takeaways here are:

Notice there is a large amount of space around the 407 / 404 in Markham, this is why one hopes the new BRT on Hi-way 7 will improve transit use for Viva purple. The Yonge subway would help too, I know many (Including my self) who work in this node yet live in Toronto proper and commute (on occasion). But note, at least today, there is very little office use north of Finch on Yonge ... while this doesn't mean there isn't a lot of employment, at this area is full of retail / small business / industrial use.

Also, note that Vaughan has little office use today, its by far and large industrial.
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Where did you get the numbers?
 
http://stevemunro.ca/?p=8964

There are four sets of numbers in this table with columns corresponding to the three model networks.

Capacity: This gives the capacity of each route based on service levels and train lengths.
Inbound demand: This is the modeled demand on the network.
V/C: This is the ratio of demand to capacity. A value near to or greater than 1.0 indicates that the line will be over capacity during at least part of the peak period.
Inbound deficiency: Where the capacity is lower than the demand, this is the magnitude of the shortfall.

The capacity of the reference network is about 50% greater than the existing one. Note that for the northern GO services, ten-car trains are assumed although 20% could be added to the capacity with 12-car trains on the same presumed schedules. (The model also considered the east-west GO services and their effect in draining trips off of the BD subway that would otherwise contribute to demand south of Bloor Station.)

The modeled demand is also about 50% greater than the demand that the model assigns to the “existing” network configuration. This shows the modeled effect of increased transit service on network demand. However, this also begs the question of where those trips would be if the TTC and GO improvements did not take place. An obvious useful addition to the discussion would be the added road trips, or the trips simply not taken because there was no network capacity to handle them.

The big surprise is that there is almost no difference between the total demand with or without the Richmond Hill extension. Indeed, most changes are re-assignments of trips from GO lines and the University subway in the “reference” network to the Yonge subway in the “reference + YSE” network.

Route Without YSE With YSE
University Subway 25,100 23,500
Yonge S of Bloor 35,800 39,400
Barrie GO 7,500 7,400
Richmond Hill GO 2,500 2,200
Stouffville GO 8,600 8,000
Total 79,500 80,500

Why would we spend billions of dollars building a subway to Richmond Hill to carry no more total riders on the network than we do without it?

There are two obvious responses to this question:

Some of the new trips have destinations at or north of Bloor Street and therefore they do not contribute to the count of riders into the core area.
In the model’s world, the subway extension does not attract any net new trips beyond what would occur simply with better service on the subway to Finch and enhanced GO services (i.e. with the reference network).
 
Why the need to build the subway to RH, is to help York to pay off the $2B debit they have and take transit off the road so there is more room for cars. Also so there is no need to cut land for an ROW for transit. To help York developer to make money on the land they own along the route.

The amount of riders using the extension on open date as original plan was less than 15,000 for the whole day. All you are doing is moving current riders using Finch and moving them to RHC including the cars. Moving cars will help some what, but will be replace by new development on Yonge south of Steele. Based on numbers going back a fair number of years and going from memory since I don't know where my report is at this time, Service was to be every 10 minutes at peak time with 15-20 off peak along with 20-30 minutes on the weekend. TTC has never disputed those numbers in public nor at commissioner meetings.

Even looking at 2031 numbers, there is no business case to support a subway, let alone an LRT. BRT will work, but will have to be converted to LRT by 2040. Therefore you builds an LRT from day one.

If the GO RH line is upgraded like it should along with EMU, no need for a subway at all. This is all day service with EMU's operating in various length based on the time of day. Unless the whole line is electrify, you will still need to operate the current trains to the north end. EMU's would only run as far as RHC.

You are going to save X riders X time, but not enough to justify the building of a subway in the first place.

To get the numbers that are needed to justify an subway extension to RHC, the current ridership needs to grow 7% yearly on the line north of Steele.

Current riders on the Sheppard Line are being subsidizes $17.XX per rider per trip by all of us while we are only being subsidizes $1.35(?). The Yonge extension will be far more than the Sheppard line.

Not every rider getting on at RHC nor Finch are going to the city core in the first place.

You have to look at a network within a network how riders travel as well what is require to create a full regional network that can be used by all as well getting them to use transit in the first place.

At this time, Hurontario route 19 carries more riders then the full Yonge Line for YRT and that close to 30,000 riders, not trips.
 
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