[salsa]

Transit City LRT except Eglinton Crosstown is better but not rapid transit, there's too many stops (400m spacing) and the operation average speed will be 22-23 km/h because they want to avoid running parallele buses.

Subway stations in downtown are spaced 400m, therefore it's not rapid transit. Am I right? The operating speed is not very fast, but you also have to consider how long it takes to walk to the station. Where I live is less than 6 min walk to my bus stop, but over 20 minutes to Bathurst & Sheppard. So with a subway, I will have to walk over 20 minutes rain or shine, and parallel bus service will be reduced to almost nothing. But with an LRT, a station could definitely be build at my current bus stop (based on the 400m spacing). Most people do not live near main intersections, and are not willing to walk that much. There are lots of people like me who clearly would not be well served by the sheppard subway, especially when I only need a short ride to the YUS line. Vehicle speed is nice, but accessibility is very important.

Sheppard West is too narrow from Yonge Street to Bathurst Street, meaning you would have the same problem at getting the LRT over the ravine.

I said before that Sheppard is not too narrow. Refer to my previous comment.

How would you increase the bus service? There's already an express bus and it's still terrible.

There are many ways to improve bus service. Shorter headways, queue jump lanes, bigger buses, all door boarding, transit priority. Did you read the transit city bus plan?

They said it would be too expensive to convert Sheppard Subway into an LRT. The subway is here to stay.

http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regiona...enefitscases/Benefits_Case-Sheppard-Finch.pdf

It makes sense for the TTC to want that extension to happen at some point to optimize their operations and maintenance

Yes there are operational benefits, but spending billions on a subway extension just to reduce deadheading or whatever is not a good enough reason to spend that much money. I see it only as a side benefit, not as the primary justification.

Like I said, Sheppard East fate will most likely depend on who win the Ontario election. You "await a change of heart"? I would actually prefer a BRT over an LRT. I think the ridership is there for a subway to Consumers since the TTC studied extending the subway there but chose to build an underground LRT. I feel they could go to Victoria Park since I think the ridership starts dropping east of there. I bring up Agincourt because of the Agincourt GO station and they should move Oriole GO station so its connected to Leslie Subway station. Otherwise, I support BRT east of Victoria Park until the ridership someday increases for a higher mode of transit.

You support a BRT? That's funny, because I always see you advocating for a subway extension. In my opinion, I don't think extending it further than Don Mills is a good idea, and here's why. Lets say the DRL (orange) goes up to Sheppard, and the sheppard line is extended to Victoria Park. To get downtown, imagine having to transfer from the sheppard LRT (red) to the subway, travel only 2 stops to Don Mills, then transfer again to the relief line. That's two transfers in a short amount of time, which everyone is going to hate.

But if the subway is not extended beyond Don Mills, then it's only one transfer. Don Mills station can become a major transit hub instead. I'm sure there's high ridership up to Victoria Park, but it's not something that a BRT or LRT can't handle either, so lets not waste money on a subway.

Sheppard's ridership at an average of 50 000 on a weekday[/B] is way less than our other lines but on par with some of Chicago's line that are longer, have more station and goes Downtown and/or Midway Airport

Yeah Chicago is a great city to copy. They build their subways in the middle of highways and rail corridors rather than actual streets. Every station outside the downtown is surrounded by low density. Our tiny subway system gets more ridership than them. What a joke. But unlike Chicago, Toronto insists that every new subway must be underground, even in the suburbs. Look at the spadina extension, or the proposed yonge extension, or the scarborough subway. Why does everything have to be in a tunnel? Unfortunately that comes with a price tag:

- Chicago Red Line extension: 1.2 billion, 4 stations, ~5 km, elevated
- Scarborough subway: 3 billion, 3 stations, ~7 km, underground

Our fixation on underground transit means that it costs a lot more to build subways in Toronto. Therefore, we can't afford to throw money at low performing subway lines just because Chicago does it too. The money must go where it's needed most. And keep in mind that Toronto also gets no funding from higher governments to operate these financial sink holes.

Paris would be a much better city to look at. As you said, we should see how they do transit signals, so that our LRTs can be even better.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

The problem is that the TTC is subsidized by fares and the City of Toronto. Granted they paid for their share of the project but the Toronto taxpayers will continue to pay through their taxes for the operationnal costs of the York extensions while some of them still have no access to rapid transit. Montreal did the same but the difference is that the STM in Montreal is also subsidized by the Province and all the suburbs around Montreal Islands, which didn't cause any controversies when Laval got its extension.

If the TTC was uploaded to the province or subsidized by the Province, I don't think no one would that negative.

....or if we had a regional transit system. But you hit the nail on the head because the lines on the map are obsolete and have been from years. If you got off the train at Finch and walked north you wouldn't know, based on the development, traffic or anything else, that you were suddenly crossing into the "suburbs" of York Region. The problem is largely one of perception and territorial pissing. A subway up to Highway 7 makes 100% sense, even based on current development, but it's "not in Toronto" so people find reasons to shoot it down. I understand that, superficially, as a "taxpayer" but it's terrible planning to miss how the region has grown.

Other points, catching up to the thread:
-The $600 the feds sent to Scarborough likely did not come out of money dedicated to the Yonge extension. Clearly that's more of a regional priority than a Toronto priority and, as anyone paying attention to Fordlandia knows, that money was NOT new money but money that was coming to Toronto anyway as part of the new, forthcoming infrastructure deal. York Region will have some money coming to it too, I suspect. Something is going to have force TTC's hand to get it moving and I suspect that will be simultaneous funding for the DRL.

-As others have pointed out, the problem with Sheppard is not entirely that it failed to meet expectations. What was built was not what was planned. The Conservatives truncated it. There may be other reasons that the jobs didn't materialize as hoped for in NYCC but it has nonetheless stimulated massive development along its entire length. We can only imagine what it would have done if built properly. (And we can be amused by how much Scarborough missed its targets. We can cross our fingers and hope it will go better this time...)

-There are no questions it has low ridership but I think most of the people who like to bash it haven't seen the development all around Yonge/Sheppard, nor around the Ikea, nor Fairview Mall. Most of the people talking about "subways to nowhere" aren't much different from Ford ranting about the "St. Clair Disaster" I suspect he's never seen with his own eyes.

The smart move, at the time, probably would have been LRT but I guess we just got a delayed preview of what that debate would have looked like. RT on that corridor is perfect but a subway doesn't work if it's not connecting two points, which this one isn't. So, it's fair to bash it but only if you acknowledge the context. It was, you know, a noble effort. If it and Eglinton had both been built as planned the city would be better off today, but then we wouldn't have had 10 glorious years of Mike Harris!

-Accordingly, neither the Yonge nor Spadina extension is comparable. Bother are extensions, not new lines, and neither (As yet!) is truncated. If you want to reproduce Sheppard, your best bet is to castrate the Yonge extension at Steeles and (as someone suggested) stop the Spadina extension at Finch. It's amusing to see someone suggest these ideas while bashing Sheppard; missing the entire cause and effect

Deciding not to bring Spadina into Vaughan would be compromising regional planning but I understand some people see it as "nowhere." Stopping it one block away from York University is about as dumb a planning decision as I can think of. The only reason for someone to extend the subway from Downsview to Finch would be as a personal vendetta against the university which must be the biggest single trip generator in the city north of the 401.

-Yes, we're trying to guess at future development at both terminals but one is straight up along Yonge which is basically a sure bet in this town. Vaughan is a bit dicier but the condos are already going up and, as others have pointed out, Sheppard was affected by a recession and other external factors. So far this one is coasting on the condo boom, which is a good thing.

If you want to build a proper regional network (and I think we do) all these projects are necessary. The trick is building them to their logical termini and funding them properly and in sequence. All the rest of this debate is just retrograde thinking.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Transit City LRT except Eglinton Crosstown is better but not rapid transit, there's too many stops (400m spacing)

We don't know this. Finch West LRT and Sheppard East LRT don't even have any tentative design details.

What we do know is that the ROW portion of the Eglinton Crosstown line has stop spacing of 625 meters. This is a little less than the average spacing on the Bloor-Danforth and is actually wider spacing than the Yonge-Univiersity Subway south of Bloor. So it most certainly does quality as RT. This is probably a good indication of what we'll see on Finch and Sheppard.

and the operation average speed will be 22-23 km/h because they want to avoid running parallele buses.

In a hypothetical trip from Kennedy Station to Don Mills Station on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT (this is the entire ROW portion), the choice to go with a ROW LRT rather than a subway results in a 4 minute increase in travel times. This is an absolutely tiny difference. And when you consider that probably won't even be using the entire ROW portion for their trip, the time difference becomes even more negligible. If I had to estimate, I'd say that the average trip that uses the ROW will have another 2 - 2.5 minutes added onto it.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

-Accordingly, neither the Yonge nor Spadina extension is comparable. Bother are extensions, not new lines, and neither (As yet!) is truncated. If you want to reproduce Sheppard, your best bet is to castrate the Yonge extension at Steeles and (as someone suggested) stop the Spadina extension at Finch. It's amusing to see someone suggest these ideas while bashing Sheppard; missing the entire cause and effect

Deciding not to bring Spadina into Vaughan would be compromising regional planning but I understand some people see it as "nowhere." Stopping it one block away from York University is about as dumb a planning decision as I can think of. The only reason for someone to extend the subway from Downsview to Finch would be as a personal vendetta against the university which must be the biggest single trip generator in the city north of the 401.

-Yes, we're trying to guess at future development at both terminals but one is straight up along Yonge which is basically a sure bet in this town. Vaughan is a bit dicier but the condos are already going up and, as others have pointed out, Sheppard was affected by a recession and other external factors. So far this one is coasting on the condo boom, which is a good thing.

If you want to build a proper regional network (and I think we do) all these projects are necessary. The trick is building them to their logical termini and funding them properly and in sequence. All the rest of this debate is just retrograde thinking.

Earlier I said that I made an error when I suggested cutting of the subway at Finch. That's a dumb thing to do for multiple reasons. Mainly because that cuts off YorkU, which is half the reason for building this thing. It also limits the relief potential of the line.

I'm not as happy about north of Steeles because that will be a huge revenue loss for the TTC and York region will be contributing exactly zero to its operations. If York Region were paying to operate it north of steels then I'd have no issue with bringing Spadina to York Region. \

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

You can't simply turn a train 90 degrees to go south. It takes hundreds of metres of curvy tunnels under a bunch of high rise buildings to do that. Plus you would have to retrofit the existing sheppard subway stations to accommodate 6-car trains. It also doesn't help that the Don Mills platform is located on the east side of Don Mills road, and that the planned sheppard LRT is supposed to share the subway platform as well. It's simply not worth spending tons of money on this, even if it's somehow possible.

This is why we should never build subways based on assumptions that massive future development will make it pay off. In this case the projected growth failed to materialize, so we are stuck with running empty trains on this truncated money pit. And meanwhile, the Yonge line is going to implode by the time people shut up with their suburban subway fixations.

Salsa are you an engineeer? You are very knowledgeable about this.


EDIT: I see you are!

 

[TheTigerMaster]

The TTC hates tight curves, such as the one we see at Union Station. They really strain the tracks and trains, which means higher maintenance. I doubt we'll ever see anything that tight built in Toronto. Even what salsa suggested appears to be relatively tight when compared to the curves we see on Spadina and the Scarborough extension.

You can't simply turn a train 90 degrees to go south. It takes hundreds of metres of curvy tunnels under a bunch of high rise buildings to do that. Plus you would have to retrofit the existing sheppard subway stations to accommodate 6-car trains.

Don Mills/Sheppard Station already supports six car configuration. The TTC would just have to knock out a wall.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

....or if we had a regional transit system. But you hit the nail on the head because the lines on the map are obsolete and have been from years. If you got off the train at Finch and walked north you wouldn't know, based on the development, traffic or anything else, that you were suddenly crossing into the "suburbs" of York Region. The problem is largely one of perception and territorial pissing. A subway up to Highway 7 makes 100% sense, even based on current development, but it's "not in Toronto" so people find reasons to shoot it down. I understand that, superficially, as a "taxpayer" but it's terrible planning to miss how the region has grown.

Other points, catching up to the thread:
-The $600 the feds sent to Scarborough likely did not come out of money dedicated to the Yonge extension. Clearly that's more of a regional priority than a Toronto priority and, as anyone paying attention to Fordlandia knows, that money was NOT new money but money that was coming to Toronto anyway as part of the new, forthcoming infrastructure deal. York Region will have some money coming to it too, I suspect. Something is going to have force TTC's hand to get it moving and I suspect that will be simultaneous funding for the DRL.

-As others have pointed out, the problem with Sheppard is not entirely that it failed to meet expectations. What was built was not what was planned. The Conservatives truncated it. There may be other reasons that the jobs didn't materialize as hoped for in NYCC but it has nonetheless stimulated massive development along its entire length. We can only imagine what it would have done if built properly. (And we can be amused by how much Scarborough missed its targets. We can cross our fingers and hope it will go better this time...)

-There are no questions it has low ridership but I think most of the people who like to bash it haven't seen the development all around Yonge/Sheppard, nor around the Ikea, nor Fairview Mall. Most of the people talking about "subways to nowhere" aren't much different from Ford ranting about the "St. Clair Disaster" I suspect he's never seen with his own eyes.

The smart move, at the time, probably would have been LRT but I guess we just got a delayed preview of what that debate would have looked like. RT on that corridor is perfect but a subway doesn't work if it's not connecting two points, which this one isn't. So, it's fair to bash it but only if you acknowledge the context. It was, you know, a noble effort. If it and Eglinton had both been built as planned the city would be better off today, but then we wouldn't have had 10 glorious years of Mike Harris!

-Accordingly, neither the Yonge nor Spadina extension is comparable. Bother are extensions, not new lines, and neither (As yet!) is truncated. If you want to reproduce Sheppard, your best bet is to castrate the Yonge extension at Steeles and (as someone suggested) stop the Spadina extension at Finch. It's amusing to see someone suggest these ideas while bashing Sheppard; missing the entire cause and effect

Deciding not to bring Spadina into Vaughan would be compromising regional planning but I understand some people see it as "nowhere." Stopping it one block away from York University is about as dumb a planning decision as I can think of. The only reason for someone to extend the subway from Downsview to Finch would be as a personal vendetta against the university which must be the biggest single trip generator in the city north of the 401.

-Yes, we're trying to guess at future development at both terminals but one is straight up along Yonge which is basically a sure bet in this town. Vaughan is a bit dicier but the condos are already going up and, as others have pointed out, Sheppard was affected by a recession and other external factors. So far this one is coasting on the condo boom, which is a good thing.

If you want to build a proper regional network (and I think we do) all these projects are necessary. The trick is building them to their logical termini and funding them properly and in sequence. All the rest of this debate is just retrograde thinking.

I have suggested before taking sheppard to weston and McCowan is what we might end up with if the taxes are enough. Then we will see. Personally I think Tigermaster is right and this will be a problem going forward.

 

[salsa]

Don Mills/Sheppard Station already supports six car configuration. The TTC would just have to knock out a wall.

That's right, however they still need do the tile work after knocking down the walls, which costs money. The sheppard line has a long way to go before it needs a six car configuration.

 

[Transportfan]

I have suggested before taking sheppard to weston and McCowan...

Having Sheppard go to Weston makes no sense, as there's not much on Sheppard west of Dufferin.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Having Sheppard go to Weston makes no sense, as there's not much on Sheppard west of Dufferin.

Yet you support the yonge extension.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Yet you support the yonge extension.

As has been pointed put before, the busses on Yonge north or Finch alone necessitate a subway there. Even if there were nothing on Yonge, the extension would still likely make sense.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

As has been pointed put before, the busses on Yonge north or Finch alone necessitate a subway there. Even if there were nothing on Yonge, the extension would still likely make sense.

Oh no, I know that, I'm just saying.

 

[innsertnamehere]

just because he supports one subway doesn't mean he should support another.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

just because he supports one subway doesn't mean he should support another.

ok ok...I digress.

 

[andrewpmk]

I see a double standard here. The Yonge extension will have reasonable ridership but won't be absurdly busy except for the Finch to Steeles section. My guess is the Sheppard subway extension would be similar except for the busy Don Mills to Victoria Park section. It doesn't mean we should arbitrarily put subway on Yonge and LRT with an annoying transfer on Sheppard.