[M II A II R II K]

They should add a Bay Street line to go up to Summerhill.

And the Line 2 interchange platform could be at the concourse level, so we'd have a Bay, Lower Bay, and an Upper Bay platform.

 

[nfitz]

They should add a Bay Street line to go up to Summerhill.

I've suggested that before. But not to Summerhill. Up Bay, cross over to Yonge somewhere around Wellesley (recall the Yonge line is east of Yonge here), carry up Yonge to Davisville, and then shift west to run under Duplex, and then up to Sheppard somehow, to take over the existing Yonge line. Stations only at Sheppard, Eglinton, St. Clair, Bloor, College, Dundas, Queen, King, Front, and Queens Quay.

So you can start at Richmond Hill, and then go super express down to Bloor. Meanwhile add some mid-block stations on the original Yonge Line, that terminates at Sheppard, between Sheppard and Eglinton.

Alternatively, link one or the other line into the Sheppard East subway.

No matter what we do, we're going to exceed the capacity of Yonge sooner or later. So something is going to be necessary (and I don't think the Richmond Hill line,that curves slowly up the valley, and only links back to Yonge at Richmond Hill is enough). Something like this will be built one day - though perhaps long after I'm gone.

 

[amnesiajune]

That's just tunnel right? We did about 10km on Eglinton for $600M. I think that included the pits around Line 1 (both of them) too.

Where's that $600 million price tag coming from? The Crosstown LRT is going to cost $6.6 billion. Assuming that the cost-per-kilometer for surface LRT isn't wildly different from Finch West ($100 million per km), the underground portion of Eglinton works out to more than $5 billion.

 

[amnesiajune]

If you're going to rest your case on the Yonge relief study, you could at least look at the results of the study and not the framing for the study that you've cited. Here's a quick summary:

That study was sorta garbage though - it didn't look at the potential impact of fare integration. Their RER+ option had new stations within Toronto and higher frequency (5-10 minutes), but that's a waste if the cost of using it is prohibitive. Go Transit is obviously going to have garbage ridership when you have to pay an extra $6.00 to use it, but it could do a lot better if there are free transfers to/from local service and it uses the TTC fare system within Toronto.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Where's that $600 million price tag coming from? The Crosstown LRT is going to cost $6.6 billion. Assuming that the cost-per-kilometer for surface LRT isn't wildly different from Finch West ($100 million per km), the underground portion of Eglinton works out to more than $5 billion.

Tunnelling isn't very expensive. $600 Million for 10 km of tunnel sounds about right to me. Mind that this is the costs of tunnelling and absolutely nothing else. This does not include station costs, emergency exists and whatever else is necessary to make a functional underground metro. This is just the cost of the tunnels. All that other stuff is what makes subways prohibively expensive.

Also the Crosstown is $5.3 Billion.

 

[amnesiajune]

Mind that this is the costs of tunnelling and absolutely nothing else. This does not include station costs, emergency exists and whatever else is necessary to make a functional underground metro. This is just the cost of the tunnels.

It's sort of a meaningless figure then. Like saying that the structure of a house is cheap, but the electricity, plumbing, appliances, finishes and land underneath it costs a lot more.

Also the Crosstown is $5.3 Billion.

$5.312 billion is the price in 2010 dollars. The actual amount being spent is $6.638 billion. http://www.thecrosstown.ca/progress/funding

 

[nfitz]

Where's that $600 million price tag coming from?

Presumably it's the sum of the two tunnelling (and portal) contracts. The western one was $320 million for 6.2 km. Less than $50 million per km. See https://www.thestar.com/business/20..._million_contract_to_tunnel_eglinton_lrt.html

The Crosstown LRT is going to cost $6.6 billion. Assuming that the cost-per-kilometer for surface LRT isn't wildly different from Finch West ($100 million per km), the underground portion of Eglinton works out to more than $5 billion.

Sure - but it's not the simple TBM tunnel that creates the cost. It's all the stations, emergency exits, tracks, power, signals, power stations, etc., etc., etc.

 

[aquateam]

And I wasn't touting three streetcar routes, I was examining possibilities in lieu of the obvious one for addressing crush loading at Summerhill stations when and if the Midtown becomes extant, and that's one already existent: Bathurst. I also considered the Spadina streetcar being extended, but it would be more problematic. As stated, Bathurst alone won't take the crush, even servicing, as I projected, both Summerhill and Spadina stations on the Midtown line. Some other form of distribution of load south from there is needed.

I'm not sure if you're deliberately ignoring the thrust of my statement as a kind of trolling or if you're just blindsided by pedantism. The point isn't whether or not all of the routes you proposed were mothballed, the point is that you are proposing multiple surface routes to handle a small additional peak-hour load when A) those new routes would be competing with a faster, grade separated route that has good coverage in those areas and B) the problem you are addressing, peak hour loading of the Yonge line, has a more effective solution in the works. You're swatting flies with an ineffective sledgehammer. You can put those streetcar lines someplace else in your fantasy map that needs coverage.

Contrary to your claims, the Yonge and University subways will be beyond capacity by 2031 to doing so *even with RL as projected*.

I am not sure how many times you can repeat that the "Yonge line will be beyond capacity by 2031 even with the RL" and how many times I can show that is false before you stop repeating it. I can only assume you got that idea from misreading the study, which would make sense since you looked at the Problem Statement and not the actual conclusions of the study. Here is probably what you saw:

But this assumes a Richmond Hill extension and no DRL. "Current improvements" to improve capacity are the TYSSE (siphons 5% demand), ATC (improves train throughput), RER (removes 400 peak hour passengers) and open gangway TR trains (10% capacity gain). This is the problem that the DRL is meant to address, not what remains after the DRL is built.

I'm not touting not building RL, just building it with enough capacity to handle further loading when the inevitable extension is needed.

View attachment 105399
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-94624.pdf

Four car subway trains running south from Pape aren't going to do it.
Your term "capacity" is undefined.

It's virtually guaranteed that the DRL will be standard TTC subway, is this insufficient? Does the Relief line need Relief already?

You shouldn't be so dismissive of the ability of subways to move people. The dedicated signalling system means they can come more frequently than GO trains, they're standing room so they pack passengers more space-efficiently than seated GO, and there is level boarding with more doors than GO, so they are able to board/alight passengers much more efficiently than GO. Add in platform screen doors, driverless operation and fast turn around time and you can get over 40 000 pphpd easily.

From the DRTES:

So from this, the highest "capacity" GO line can carry half as many people as the Yonge or Spadina lines.

I don't want this to turn into a long-winded discussion about the potential throughput of EMVs with Parisian ERTMS train control in four-track tunnels through downtown or whatever RER is going to look like in a railfan's wet dream... just pointing out that the highest "capacity" system operating in Toronto, as defined by whichever technocrat wrote these studies, are our subways.

 

[M II A II R II K]

On the cheap you could close all interchanges from Line 2 to 1 to free up capacity and force Line 2 riders to walk south to their destinations.

 

[rbt]

On the cheap you could close all interchanges from Line 2 to 1 to free up capacity and force Line 2 riders to walk south to their destinations.

MTA regularly and randomly skips stops at busy interchange stations; I think it's actually enforced by the fire marshal. Line 2 might stop every other train at Yonge without any signage to indicate this forcing folks to transfer at St. George instead.

 

[steveintoronto]

The point isn't whether or not all of the routes you proposed were mothballed,

The Bathurst streetcar line has never been mothballed, or the Spadina streetcar line. What I propose *irregardless of RL or not* is distributing the load south from the ostensible Midtown stations Summerhill and Spadina.

the problem you are addressing, peak hour loading of the Yonge line, has a more effective solution in the works.

lol...that's exactly what needs to be avoided, further loading of any extant subway line.

You can put those streetcar lines someplace else in your fantasy map that needs coverage.

The Midtown line may be a fantasy to you, but at this point, the funding for the RL is also partial fantasy. And you continue to insist that no further relief of the subway(s) is/are necessary beyond the short RL. You talk of the long or short at whim it seems.

I am not sure how many times you can repeat that the "Yonge line will be beyond capacity by 2031 even with the RL" and how many times I can show that is false before you stop repeating it.

Sections of both are close to or beyond design capacity already, especially the Yonge branch.

I can only assume you got that idea from misreading the study,

Errr...no. It's from watching how claims like yours have been wrong time and again in the past. The subway has limits, and it's being expected to handle loads it was never designed to do, just like Toronto's roads.

It's virtually guaranteed that the DRL will be standard TTC subway, is this insufficient? Does the Relief line need Relief already?

Yes it does. It needs to be designed to handle the inevitable load beyond present projections, not for the "four car subway trains" it is at present.

The dedicated signalling system means they can come more frequently than GO trains,

GO's present century-old moving block signalling? You make my point. You are completely unaware of the abject deficiencies of the present signalling and train control system GO and VIA are subject to. I posted references. You obviously didn't read or understand them. And btw, Paris RER A, all of the Paris RER routes, are *two track*! That is what state of the art, or at least thirty year old now signalling systems and train control can do. You just can't get past yesterday's thinking on approaching this. Subways are excellent for distributing load, poor at inter-regional transit, and expensive.

just pointing out that the highest "capacity" system operating in Toronto, as defined by whichever technocrat wrote these studies, are our subways.

Then stop miming a term without the necessary context to express it in. "Capacity" to convey a meaningful context, has to be expressed as units per time. And that Paris RER A mentioned? On two tracks, not four, carries a million persons a day into and out of Paris, more than any other rail line in Europe, by far.

For some reason, some in Toronto just cannot appreciate that we can do a lot better than the current approach. Magnitudes better, positing projections on yesterday's performance isn't going to get answers.

 

[steveintoronto]

MTA regularly and randomly skips stops at busy interchange stations; I think it's actually enforced by the fire marshal. Line 2 might stop every other train at Yonge without any signage to indicate this forcing folks to transfer at St. George instead.

New York is no longer looking to relieve the crush by building more subways. It's looking to build more heavy rail through-running tunnels:

2017/02/07
What the RER A vs. C Contrast Means for New York Regional Rail

A few weeks ago, I published a piece in City Metric contrasting two ways of through-running regional rail, which I identify with the RER A and C in Paris. The RER C (or Thameslink) way is to minimally connect two stub-end terminals pointing in opposite directions. The RER A (or Crossrail) way is to build long city-center tunnels based on urban service demand but then connect to legacy commuter lines to go into the suburbs. Crossrail and the RER A are the two most expensive rail tunnels ever built outside New York, but the result is coherent east-west regional lines, whereas the RER C is considerably more awkward. In this post I’d like to explain what this means for New York.
[...]
https://pedestrianobservations.word...-c-contrast-means-for-new-york-regional-rail/

The downside to doing this is the election of Trump, albeit Trump, as completely unpredictable as he is, has stated he supports more Trans-Hudson Tunnels being built with Federal support. He "likes trains".

East Side Access, due to a very poor funding model, is a brilliant piece of engineering, and a fiscal funder cluck. London has done this vastly better. Even the Munk School University of Toronto has done a study on the London Crossrail model as an example for Toronto, as well as every major Toronto newspaper featuring the story.

Here's the lecture:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/londons-crossrail-a-case-study-in-transit-investment-tickets-8841855227

In the event, I think an announcement is coming soon on The Missing Link to allow Toronto to do similar at an absolute fraction of the cost with the Midtown Line. And this announcement most likely will come before the announcement of funding for the Toronto RL, bringing about a review of how it and almost every other transit scheme in the GTA will be engineered and funded.

 

[BurlOak]

Tunnelling isn't very expensive. $600 Million for 10 km of tunnel sounds about right to me. Mind that this is the costs of tunnelling and absolutely nothing else. This does not include station costs, emergency exists and whatever else is necessary to make a functional underground metro. This is just the cost of the tunnels. All that other stuff is what makes subways prohibively expensive.

And that's the trouble with the deep bore tunnel. It saves a few buck on the tunneling, but makes the stations and emergency exits much more expensive, more disruptive to construct, and take much more time. The deep tunnel is also much more expensive for ventilation, and it is more inconvenient for passengers as the time from street to platform is increased.

 

[aquateam]

Okay this will be my last post on this subject since I'm sure other people are sick of seeing this belabored back-and-forth and when my posts reach this level of snarkiness that means it's time for me to stop.

Perhaps Church/Davenport/Yonge streetcar to loop at Summerhill train station, but haven't figured out a direct way to do it from Bay to get there. It's worth another look, as again, it's all about *distributing* the trainload that would arrive in a crush, and if most are headed to the core (a given) then streetcars would get them the last mile or so instead of the subway. And buses are out of the question too. Bay St is prime for streetcars again. Perhaps Yonge is too? Or Church? Church would have the advantage of using Davenport to Yonge, and then up Yonge to Summerhill to loop.

If only there were some kind of heavily studied rapid transit line to downtown currently in design that would off-load the Yonge line, providing "Relief" to it...

You missed the gist. Mark's question was in regard to the Midtown Line and the loading problem at Summerhill. How is the Relief Line going to help that or the Dupont Station at Spadina for distributing Midtown train crush loading?

You missed the gist that you and Mark were talking about resurrecting several long-dead slow-moving mixed-traffic surface routes

It's termed Midtown, it's not "long-dead" [...] Perhaps you could explain why Metrolinx is rebuilding the spur from the east down to the Don Valley at this time if it is "long dead"? It's far from being "long dead"

"Long-dead" refers to the Church, Bay, and Yonge streetcar routes that you were talking about resurrecting and directing to Summerhill, which is the context of your post. Please try to keep up.

And I wasn't touting three streetcar routes, I was examining possibilities in lieu of the obvious one for addressing crush loading at Summerhill stations when and if the Midtown becomes extant, and that's one already existent: Bathurst. I also considered the Spadina streetcar being extended, but it would be more problematic.

The point isn't whether or not all of the routes you proposed were mothballed, the point is that you are proposing multiple surface routes to handle a small additional peak-hour load

The Bathurst streetcar line has never been mothballed, or the Spadina streetcar line. What I propose *irregardless of RL or not* is distributing the load south from the ostensible Midtown stations Summerhill and Spadina.

I'm just gonna quote the above posts so you can get your bearings on the conversation...

Where are you getting "still beyond capacity with the DRL" from? Maybe you're talking about DRL-short to Pape but the full DRL definitely resolves any capacity issues.

The Midtown line may be a fantasy to you, but at this point, the funding for the RL is also partial fantasy. And you continue to insist that no further relief of the subway(s) is/are necessary beyond the short RL. You talk of the long or short at whim it seems.

No, I've been talking about the Long ("Full") DRL this whole time.

• Even with current improvements, the
Yonge subway will still be at capacity in
2031

That's why. We need solutions that address the cause, not the effect.

Where are you getting "still beyond capacity with the DRL" from? Maybe you're talking about DRL-short to Pape but the full DRL definitely resolves any capacity issues.

"No impact on the Yonge Corridor"....the one that Metrolinx and City themselves agree that will *still be beyond capacity with the DRL" by 2030?

I am not sure how many times you can repeat that the "Yonge line will be beyond capacity by 2031 even with the RL" and how many times I can show that is false before you stop repeating it. I can only assume you got that idea from misreading the study, which would make sense since you looked at the Problem Statement and not the actual conclusions of the study. Here is probably what you saw:

View attachment 105428

But this assumes a Richmond Hill extension and no DRL.

Errr...no. It's from watching how claims like yours have been wrong time and again in the past. The subway has limits, and it's being expected to handle loads it was never designed to do, just like Toronto's roads.

I'm absolutely convinced at this point in the conversation that you misread the study and its conclusions. The full DRL resolves any capacity crunch in the Yonge line until the distant planning future.

It's virtually guaranteed that the DRL will be standard TTC subway, is this insufficient? Does the Relief line need Relief already?

Yes it does. It needs to be designed to handle the inevitable load beyond present projections, not for the "four car subway trains" it is at present.

The DRL has been sized for 4-car trains like the Sheppard line? I find that hard to believe since the preferred alignment doesn't even seem to be static yet, and there is $150 million worth of design work that hasn't yet been done. Even if it has been decided, like with the Sheppard line, it would be expandable to 6-car trains. PSDs are a likely add-in. And complaining about an underbuilt line that is years away from starting construction is putting the cart before the horse.

I don't want this to turn into a long-winded discussion about the potential throughput of EMVs with Parisian ERTMS train control in four-track tunnels through downtown or whatever RER is going to look like in a railfan's wet dream... just pointing out that the highest "capacity" system operating in Toronto, as defined by whichever technocrat wrote these studies, are our subways.

GO's present century-old moving block signalling? You make my point. You are completely unaware of the abject deficiencies of the present signalling and train control system GO and VIA are subject to. I posted references. You obviously didn't read or understand them. And btw, Paris RER A, all of the Paris RER routes, are *two track*! That is what state of the art, or at least thirty year old now signalling systems and train control can do. You just can't get past yesterday's thinking on approaching this.

Again I'll provide a quote

I'm not sure if you're deliberately ignoring the thrust of my statement as a kind of trolling or if you're just blindsided by pedantism.

 

[nfitz]

The Bathurst streetcar line has never been mothballed, or the Spadina streetcar line.

That's an interesting rewrite of history. Streetcar service began on Spadina in the 1800s, and by the 1890s, ran from King Street to Bloor.

What I propose *irregardless of RL or not* is distributing the load south from the ostensible Midtown stations Summerhill and Spadina. However buses were introducted to extend the line further north to Dupont, and by the late 1960s, much of the track north of College had been removed. If you come to Toronto though, you will again find streetcars running from Bloor to King.

I'm not sure why you say that the Spadina streetcar line was never mothballed, or what the relevance is of this - but this is not true.

New York is no longer looking to relieve the crush by building more subways.

Not true, it's looking at ways of funding the Second Avenue Phase 2. In fact last week, the MTA voted to award an early contract for Phase 2 outreach work. See http://www.railwayage.com/index.php...next-phase-of-2nd-avenue-subway-projects.html

Meanwhile the New York Port Authority was recently thinking again of extending Line 7 to New Jersey. See http://www.hudsonreporter.com/view/...C-subway-with-Secaucus-?instance=latest_story

It's looking to build more heavy rail through-running tunnels

It's been looking to do so for years. That doesn't preclude more subway, or also streetcar, which is also being proposed for New York City. See https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/...or-streetcar-in-brooklyn-and-queens.html?_r=0

One wonders on what your source is, for heavy rail being the only consideration.

https://pedestrianobservations.word...-c-contrast-means-for-new-york-regional-rail/

A Swedish-based transit blog by an Israeli who grew up in Singapore. Which actually says nothing about Subway being off the table, and talks entirely hypothetically.

I'm not entirely sure what your motives are - but a transparent discussion doesn't seem to be one of them.