Taking the 60 Steeles West Bus seriously makes me question the will to live on a daily basis. If they're not going to extend the subway to Highway 7 SOMETHING needs to happen to relieve the area. Whether you're driving, or taking transit it's absolutely congested. Maybe modify the intersection for a double left onto Steeles with one left turn lane being transit only, likewise for the Eastbound Left turn. The intersection needs to be re-jigged when the subway comes (for the bus portals, etc) maybe they could expand it ahead of time?

Do the bus lanes help?

Even if they start building a subway tomorrow (which they won't) it won't be done for years and you'll get years of construction which will make traffic worse, I'm sorry to say.
 
Do the bus lanes help?

Even if they start building a subway tomorrow (which they won't) it won't be done for years and you'll get years of construction which will make traffic worse, I'm sorry to say.

*whistle* cut and cover.... needs to happen. Tunnel Boring costs more and takes too long. They could have the RHC extension open in 2018 if they tried.
 
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Do the bus lanes help?

Even if they start building a subway tomorrow (which they won't) it won't be done for years and you'll get years of construction which will make traffic worse, I'm sorry to say.

There are so many buses, taxis and cars (3 ppl) that are stopping and going in the commuter lanes that half the time buses don't even use them.
 
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*whistle* cut and cover.... needs to happen. Tunnel Boring costs more and takes too long. They could have the RHC extension open in 2018 if they tried.

I'm skeptical as usual that it would make it that much cheaper or faster :)

It would definitely be an even worse disruption to the surface traffic for the years the construction takes.

I feel like at the end of the day we have to build this at least to Steeles due to the # of buses, even though yes further south on the Yonge line will be even more congested.
 
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from my experience the bus lanes work fairly well, the exception is a short distance before the TTC parking lot, where lots of cars cut into it to turn into the lot. most buses have left the lane at that point however to make the left into the bus terminal.

I wouldn't be surprised if the yonge line gets extended to steeles as part of this budget, but I'm doubtful it will go any further.
 
*whistle* cut and cover.... needs to happen. Tunnel Boring costs more and takes too long. They could have the RHC extension open in 2018 if they tried.

Someone with some real political balls could try doing cut and cover to move the construction faster but you're never going to sell that on Yonge Street at the municipal border, at intersections that see hundreds of buses alone each hour. There are some side streets you could use to reroute traffic but hardly any that go straight through.

Remember the brouhaha about closing the Allen for a few weeks to speed up Crosstown construction? Yeah, no one lives or owns a business that fronts onto the Allen. Cut and cover miiiight work on something like Scarborough but it will never happen on Yonge.
 
Someone with some real political balls could try doing cut and cover to move the construction faster ...
I can't imagine that cut-and-cover would be faster if tunnelling is an option.

What takes the most time, and costs the most money are the stations - which are already cut-and-cover. Tunnel boring itself is quick. It will be finished on Eglinton in 2016, and was finished on Spadina last year. The stations are finished 3-4 years later.
 
There are so many buses, taxis and cars (3 ppl) that are stopping and going in the computer lanes that half the time buses don't even use them.

Woooo!!! Information superhighway!!!!!!
 
I'm skeptical as usual that it would make it that much cheaper or faster :)

It would definitely be an even worse disruption to the surface traffic for the years the construction takes.

I feel like at the end of the day we have to build this at least to Steeles due to the # of buses, even though yes further south on the Yonge line will be even more congested.

Someone with some real political balls could try doing cut and cover to move the construction faster but you're never going to sell that on Yonge Street at the municipal border, at intersections that see hundreds of buses alone each hour. There are some side streets you could use to reroute traffic but hardly any that go straight through.

Remember the brouhaha about closing the Allen for a few weeks to speed up Crosstown construction? Yeah, no one lives or owns a business that fronts onto the Allen. Cut and cover miiiight work on something like Scarborough but it will never happen on Yonge.

I can't imagine that cut-and-cover would be faster if tunnelling is an option.

What takes the most time, and costs the most money are the stations - which are already cut-and-cover. Tunnel boring itself is quick. It will be finished on Eglinton in 2016, and was finished on Spadina last year. The stations are finished 3-4 years later.

That's only because every station has to have a bathroom and accessibility. The station does not need to be nice, you will spend all of 60 seconds in there most of the time. So cut and cover should be faster.
 
The two stations that will get most of the ridership on the extension will need to be huge to handle the load of passengers that will use them. (Steeles and RHC)

I think we will see it extended to Steeles with a temporary YRT bus terminal, with the next part coming in a decade or so. Bringing it to Steeles let's buses avoid the worst part of traffic on Yonge which is south of Steeles, Yonge moves quite quickly north of it, and the amount of buses north of Steeles drops considerably anyway.
 
That's only because every station has to have a bathroom and accessibility. The station does not need to be nice, you will spend all of 60 seconds in there most of the time. So cut and cover should be faster.

Most of the bathrooms are for employees only and thus are very small and spartan. And are you even remotely suggesting that we can't make them accessible???

The vast majority of the time spent on a subway construction is simply digging out the station box and then building its structure - all of the stations have been under construction for over three years, and only two of them are even close to being ready to be closed up and covered. The station finishes and fit-out only takes a year or so - that's why the line will (hopefully) open in a bit over two years.

So, yeah, no. Yonge could not be done by 2018. Not in any universe where reality is still applicable.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
That's only because every station has to have a bathroom and accessibility. The station does not need to be nice, you will spend all of 60 seconds in there most of the time. So cut and cover should be faster.
I really can't believe you think that the reason it takes so long to build a station is because they need elevators and washrooms (I doubt any have baths ...).

The TBMs can dig the twin-tunnels at a speed of 15 metres/day. There's no way you can achieve a speed of 15 metres/day in cut-and-cover tunnelling. The extra time that needs to be spent to deal with shallow services would eat much of the time.

Tunelling isn't even a particularly expensive part of the project. The first tunnelling contract for Eglinton from Black Creek to Yonge was less than $50 million/km for the twin tunnels (less than $25 million/km for each tunnel). I doubt you can build 1 km of cut-and-cover for $50 million.
 
I think anybody looking for some magic "solution" to building subways fast & cheap should be very skeptical. This includes removing bathrooms from stations :)
 

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