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.
-Well, Sheppard is not downtown. I don't see what's the problem to have a stop every 800m and a parallel bus for local stop. Morningside to Don Mills in 50 min by LRT is really slow if you ask me.
Transit City documents confirms that the LRV will wait at red lights which is the source of most of the complaints people have towards transit city. I'll post it again:
http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/sheppard_east_lrt/pdf/2008-06_display_panels_3.pdf
STAGE 1
• All east-west traffic / LRT/pedestrian stopped
• North-South traffic / pedestrians cross
STAGE 2
• All “through” traffic / LRT/pedestrians stopped
• Eastbound and westbound leftturn/ U-turn phase
STAGE 3
• Left-turn/U-turns stopped
• East-West LRT / “through” traffic /pedestrians intersection
Paris streetcars doesn't even do that. The signal changes as soon as the streetcar arrives at the intersection (search Paris T1 to T4 on Youtube). I don't like SELRT because were spending a billion dollars for a glorified streetcar lines. At least if they built it like Paris did or London's DRL, less people would complain starting with me. Like I said before, I do hope Metrolinx modifies theses designs.
If the parallel bus service is reduced to nothing like you said it's because of a TTC decision, not because they can't have more frequent buses. The 85 Sheppard East offers a frequent parallel bus service to the Sheppard Subway, so is NYC, Montreal, Chicago etc..,
But, I do see your point of you and as always, am respectful of people opinions and preferences
I said before that Sheppard is not too narrow. Refer to my previous comment
-Sheppard Avenue West between Bathurst and Yonge is 2 lanes in each directions. Too narrow for an at grade LRT which is why I said an LRT would have to be underground...just like Eglinton central section of the crosstown. If the TTC won't run an LRT at grade with 2 lanes in each directions on Eglinton, why would they on Sheppard?
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?
-yes I did, I just don't think that it will improve Sheppard West by that much.
They also said it's too expensive to extend. I guess it's a no win situation. Thanks Mike Harris.
-Too expensive with the context of back then. Their main argument is economic. Back then, the amount of funds was limited and they chose the best value for what was available then. With that new transit tax the province is planning on imposing on us, (if the budget pass) that argument went out the window which some councillors were quick to point out to advocate for the Scarborough Subway.
"Asking for families to pay up to 500-600$ a year extra and telling them they are still getting LRT even if the ridership for subway is there is wrong"
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.
It's a matter of opinion. You don't agree yet TTC and Metrolinx sees the merits.
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.
-Double Standards. Funny how you criticize that transfer to justify not extending the subway past Don Mills but most of the pro LRT supporters kept saying a transfer is normal, nothing to complain about and exists all around the world. So Scarborough should have just shut up and accept the transfer so they get LRT and in this case, there's shouldn't be any transfer just because you want the LRT there... yeah...ok
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.
I agree with everything you said. TTC should look at elevating rapid transit more often or at least study that option. Eglinton East Crosstown should have been elevated and I never thought underground was that necessary. But again, you ignore the fact that I brought Chicago in this debate to show that Sheppard's ridership is not abysmal and it's quite respectable when you look at how many stations it has and how short it is and most importantly, where it's located.
