[CDL.TO]

Unimaginative2,

That was an excellent couple of posts and provides one of the few examples of a coordinated view of transportation planning that we have seen in the past few years on this forum. Your posts are the touchstone that all other transit-related posts will be judged against, and by comparison make most posts in the Transportation section of UT seem shallow and pointless.

Let us see if anyone can produce a quality retort.

 

[kettal]

I don't know if this is really Transit City 2 ish, but at some point I'd really like to see -- okay, I've said this elsewhere but still -- exploration of rejigging the GO RH line as a frequently-running north-south express line.

In particular, running every 5 minutes in rush hour, and:
- adding a Steeles stop collocated with a small bus terminal, to pick up Steeles buses;
- moving Old Cummer to be closer to a major street and collocating it with as small bus terminal to pick up Finch and Bayview buses;
- moving the Sheppard station to collocate it with subway stops;
- adding a stop collocated with the Eglinton LRT; and
- adding another stop in downtown Toronto prior to Union. (Bloor doesn't seem so feasible.)

Hence: RH - RHC - Steeles - Finch - Sheppard - Eglinton - Downtown - Union. Three advantage:

1) I think this would really relieve the Yonge line by absorbing a lot of the Scarborough/Willowdale traffic going west to Finch then south.

2) By taking advantage of existing rights of way and infrastructure, it would be about the cheapest North South Express line we are likely to build.

3) It would decentre things a little bit by providing an alternative north south axis, moving a little bit of traffic off the Yonge corridor.

It will be worthwhile, if they can re-route this train onto a straighter corridor. There exists one, but it has been destroyed and is property of Toronto. Awaiting conversion into a bike path.

A straight track and electric multiple unit trains will make travel significantly faster.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Err... you're now trying to defend that post by splitting hairs. To reiterate, you have unilaterally declared nearly all of the Transit City LRT routes to be implemented as inappropriate.

This is exactly the type of sentiment I was parodying.

You're still ignoring the part where I say pretty much every other concession-arterial road in the city could make a decent LRT line. You really should look up the term "anti-" in the dictionary. Only then can you learn to parody, because you're not very good at it now. I guess I'm "anti-LRT" because I only support perhaps 12 lines of it in this city, instead of a million km of LRT and zero subway construction, which seems to be what you'd prefer.

 

[Eug]

To the east, Scarborough Centre is the best interchange point.

What do you mean exactly by Scarborough Centre, and why specifically there? (I'm not arguing. It does make some intuitive sense, but I want to hear your take on it. I might have hoped to see the line extend east along Eglinton further for example.)

zero subway construction, which seems to be what you'd prefer.

Sorry, wrong yet again.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

What do you mean exactly by Scarborough Centre, and why specifically there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Centre_(TTC)
It's a perfect suburban transit hub in theory and practice. The only mall in Scarborough, civic facilities, thousands of jobs, thousands of residents, tons of bus routes feed into it, directly along the path to UTSC, Centennial, neighbourhoods with hundreds of thousands of people, etc., etc.

Kennedy should be an interchange between 2 transit lines, not 3 (or 4)...whatever's on Eglinton east of Kennedy should be run a ways west of Kennedy (but not up Morningside...UTSC, for instance, is best served directly from STC).

Sorry, wrong yet again.

Your posts are as constructive as a man's fight for the right to have babies.

 

[Whoaccio]

Hopefully in the event of a "Transit City 2" planners will take a more holistic view of transport. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that planners started with a mode (LRT) and then tried to shoehorn that into whatever routes would take them with TC1. I don't see how anything bearing the name "Transit City" could functionally ignore the way the overwhelming majority of us get around, cars, buses and heavy rail (subway/GO) in favor of fashionable LRTs. It goes without saying that more fundamental organizational changes are needed as well. A form of regional transport planning, with near unchallenged jurisdiction over roads, trains, buses and maybe even aviation (maybe if YYZ was under the auspices of a Metrolinx style agency, it would have more efficient connections to the larger network), to break down some of the more contrived barriers to transportation.

To be blunt, cars aren't going away. Absolute car usage is almost guaranteed to rise in the future. Any transit plan that doesn't acknowledge this reality is fundamentally flawed. That's not to say it is perfect or even desirable, but if we just willfully ignore it things will only be worse. Anyways, there are at least *some* soft management approaches we could take to this issue. Outfitting regional expressways with variable speed limits or signalized onramps and other traffic management systems. Not that it would be within the purview of any transit body, but offsetting school hours to reduce peak road usage and encouraging alternatives to 9-5/Monday-Friday work weeks. Finally, the most politically toxic yet genius policy, road pricing. The economic benefits of road pricing, allowing road users to ration out the supply of limited road space and reducing lost congestion time, are well documented and real. The cost to taxpayers? Nothing! We could even get a payoff, a la Indiana, if it were handled correctly.

Moving the across the spectrum from demand management to supply management, I am still of the opinion that we could develop a network of high capacity and speed tollways. Paris is currently constructing a "duplex" tunnel, to be financed by tolls, realizing significant cost savings by designing the tunnel to only accommodate passenger vehicles and tighter curvatures. Such a facilities could, potentially, ease congestion in Toronto at a reasonable price to government. The potential for a route from Black Creek Drive to downtown seems self evident. Other potential projects could include building dedicated trucking lanes/expressways.

The benefits of projects like a DRL, completing the Sheppard subway, Bloor to STC or electrified GO have been promoted here so many times I won't bother. That these projects weren't addressed in TC1 seems ignorant, not including them in a TC2 would be autistic. Instead, I would like to propose more atypical solutions. Deregulating the taxi-industry is an obvious way to decrease reliance on private cars. I will most likely never understand the taxi-quota systems reason for existence. Cabs are public transit, that we would intentionally raise prices is foolish. At the very least cabs should be licensed in a GTA-wide system. The current situation with 416 cabs unable to accept customers at Pearson is emblematic of the stupidity. Clauses which grant the TTC a monopoly on public transit should also be repealed. This would allow private jitneys to run private charter services. While not suitable for every situation, such services could be handy in suburban areas with charters to and from popular locations (say, a charter running from office parks around VicPark/Steeles to CityPlace). It would also fix the bizarre situation where car-pool services are prohibited.

The only other major element I would like to see in a TC2 would be a rapid bus network. While not rapid transit, limited stop bus routes along high demand arterial routes using larger articulated buses and various systems like multidoor boarding, diamond lanes, preferential signaling and queue jumps where possible should achieve tangible time savings at very low cost. I'm still skeptical to what extent TTC style LRT (Spadina, St. Clair) is an improvement on this to begin with. Anyways, there will always be routes not graced by LRT that would benefit. Routes like Lawrence East or Dufferin. Even if it was a total failure, the capital requirements would be so low as to make wide scale experimentation feasible.

 

[Eug]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Centre_(TTC)
It's a perfect suburban transit hub in theory and practice. The only mall in Scarborough, civic facilities, thousands of jobs, thousands of residents, tons of bus routes feed into it, directly along the path to UTSC, Centennial, neighbourhoods with hundreds of thousands of people, etc., etc.

Thx. Yes it does make sense intuitively. I mistakenly thought that was called Scarborough Town Centre after the mall, which is why I asked the question, but then realized after the fact that I was mistaken.

However, theoretically, if one were to go with tunneled subway, could it not also make sense to go slightly further east past Kennedy before heading up to Scarborough Town Centre?

Your posts are as constructive as a man's fight for the right to have babies.

You came out and declared that the $10 billion to be spent is simply wrong. This is specifically the sentiment I was talking about before.

You can agree to disagree, but's another thing to just simply to declare people wrong if they may think LRT along those lines can be a reasonable choice, esp. when bang for the buck is considered.

 

[kettal]

Hopefully in the event of a "Transit City 2" planners will take a more holistic view of transport. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that planners started with a mode (LRT) and then tried to shoehorn that into whatever routes would take them with TC1.

Interesting that you say this, and then go on to propose that Sheppard should be a subway and STC should be a subway. Wasn't the subway shoehorned into Sheppard by politicians? It was porkbarrel planning and not holistic at all.

 

[unimaginative2]

However, theoretically, if one were to go with tunneled subway, could it not also make sense to go slightly further east before heading up to Scarborough Town Centre?

Sure. That's not a bad idea at all since there's a fair bit of stuff around McCowan there. It might make more sense, though, to have the BD go directly to SC and serve that area with the Eglinton RT/LRT.

It will be worthwhile, if they can re-route this train onto a straighter corridor. There exists one, but it has been destroyed and is property of Toronto. Awaiting conversion into a bike path.

A straight track and electric multiple unit trains will make travel significantly faster.

I think you're referring to the Leaside spur, right? I completely agree that shifting the trains onto that route makes perfect sense. Not only would it be somewhat straighter, but it would also allow a direct connection with the North Toronto line and an additional station in the Leaside/Thorncliffe Park area.

Moving the across the spectrum from demand management to supply management, I am still of the opinion that we could develop a network of high capacity and speed tollways. Paris is currently constructing a "duplex" tunnel, to be financed by tolls, realizing significant cost savings by designing the tunnel to only accommodate passenger vehicles and tighter curvatures. Such a facilities could, potentially, ease congestion in Toronto at a reasonable price to government. The potential for a route from Black Creek Drive to downtown seems self evident. Other potential projects could include building dedicated trucking lanes/expressways.

I actually mentioned that duplex approach a while ago in another thread. I was all excited by the possibilities for economically replacing the Gardiner, especially since the relatively small number of trucks and directly parallel surface road would mean that the low clearances wouldn't be much of a problem. Unfortunately the thread was hijacked by a forumer who declared that he would be uncomfortable in such a tunnel and it was therefore ridiculous, but I think the point still stands. While I don't necessarily agree about some of those big highway projects like finishing Black Creek, it would certainly make a lot of sense for the Gardiner.

A dream I've had ever since I was a little kid, which was also recently devised independently by a friend, was to build a second level over Bayview and the DVP south of Bloor, sort of like Wacker Drive in Chicago. I'd love to urbanize the riverfront and make it really a part of the city, with public streets on either side.

The only other major element I would like to see in a TC2 would be a rapid bus network. While not rapid transit, limited stop bus routes along high demand arterial routes using larger articulated buses and various systems like multidoor boarding, diamond lanes, preferential signaling and queue jumps where possible should achieve tangible time savings at very low cost. I'm still skeptical to what extent TTC style LRT (Spadina, St. Clair) is an improvement on this to begin with. Anyways, there will always be routes not graced by LRT that would benefit. Routes like Lawrence East or Dufferin. Even if it was a total failure, the capital requirements would be so low as to make wide scale experimentation feasible.

You're absolutely right! And you'd have thought that in my endless multipost, I'd have remembered to mention express buses. I'm not really talking about those American-style routes that trundle around a suburb and then take the highway downtown. Regional rail and the subway can more than handle those tasks. I'm talking about feeders from outlying neighbourhoods that really don't need to take as long as they do to get to the subway. For me, the perfect example is the Neilson bus. It's already packed coming down from Malvern before it even gets to Ellesmere. Why not send half the buses down the 401 (ideally on a bus lane) to Scarborough Centre? You could instantly shave off at least 10 minutes each way for virtually no capital cost at all. There are countless other places in the city where this is possible and would be very successful.

Interesting that you say this, and then go on to propose that Sheppard should be a subway and STC should be a subway. Wasn't the subway shoehorned into Sheppard by politicians? It was porkbarrel planning and not holistic at all.

If you're familiar with the history if transit planning in Toronto, you'd realize that the Sheppard subway was developed as part of Network 2011, the last apolitical and holistic transit plan that Toronto has had.

 

[Whoaccio]

Interesting that you say this, and then go on to propose that Sheppard should be a subway and STC should be a subway. Wasn't the subway shoehorned into Sheppard by politicians? It was porkbarrel planning and not holistic at all.

Sheppard is a subway. I didn't actually propose it either, I just agree with the arguments of many hear that Sheppard East LRT serves little purpose but some kind of irrational catharsis against the forces of Mel Lastman. I would rather the status quo be maintained than the ridiculous proposal to run LRTs into nature reserve until such time as the subway can be justifiably completed.

A dream I've had ever since I was a little kid, which was also recently devised independently by a friend, was to build a second level over Bayview and the DVP south of Bloor, sort of like Wacker Drive in Chicago. I'd love to urbanize the riverfront and make it really a part of the city, with public streets on either side.

I came up with a similar idea after watching The Dark Knight's digitally pimped Chicago. I thought about proposing it here, but can't quite resolve appropriate elevations and such.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Interesting that you say this, and then go on to propose that Sheppard should be a subway and STC should be a subway. Wasn't the subway shoehorned into Sheppard by politicians? It was porkbarrel planning and not holistic at all.

It's not pork barrel if it's needed...it replaced one of the busiest surface routes on one of the most congested streets in the city along a corridor rife with residents, jobs, and more.

And last time I checked, part of Sheppard already had a subway...something tells me people are suggesting Sheppard east of Don Mills should be a subway because of the Sheppard subway.

However, theoretically, if one were to go with tunneled subway, could it not also make sense to go slightly further east before heading up to Scarborough Town Centre?

Not farther than McCowan.

You come out and declare that the $10 billion to be spent is simply wrong. This is specifically the sentiment I was talking about before.

You can agree to disagree, but's another thing to just simply to declare people wrong if they may think LRT along those lines can be a reasonable choice, esp. when bang for the buck is considered.

"Wrong"? What does that even mean, specifically? Where did I declare people wrong? I *clearly* said that for a plan ostensibly for an LRT network, it did a poor job of selecting corridors appropriate for LRT. You were talking about an anti-LRT sentiment, but I oppose the bulk of Transfer City because there's a dozen corridors that warrant LRT that weren't selected. I'm anti-LRT because I think Transfer City doesn't have enough good LRT lines? Instead, they managed to select some of the few corridors in the city that might warrant subways (including one corridor that already has an unfinished subway) and some places that should remain buses, while totally ignoring all kinds of routes desperately needing improvements. That's a lame track record for something supposedly heralding in the light rail revolution. Lame. Few people have stopped to ask how the lines were selected, and the truth is that need and ridership and the impact of spending all those billions on infrastructure and streetscaping in certain places and not others were not factors...everyone just went "OMG, who cares where the LRT goes, it's LRT!" A streetcar in every ward, hitting as many priority neighbourhoods as possible, ushering in the Avenues. Uh, yeah, fine, but where's the actual transit plan? When the centrepiece is a multi-billion dollar, largely tunnelled LRT line that goes crosstown from Scarborough to Etobicoke, yet without making use of the Richview corridor, and even though the Bloor/Danforth line already goes crosstown to the same places, you know the "plan" has some serious flaws.

Note that it wasn't $10B when first announced, which matters because the "plan" was an explicit declaration that subways are off the table and LRT is the cheap alternative. What's the bang/buck ratio for a tunnelled LRT that costs the equivalent of a full-blown underground subway line yet runs in the middle of the street outside the tunnel where the TTC will have every opportunity to bunch vehicles? If it'll be fine because they say so, why don't they fix all the other operational problems in the system first? What's the bang/buck ratio for having $2B worth of LRT lines intersect at Morningside & Sheppard, where there are no traffic issues and no riders? Lawrence East is totally dysfunctional, Finch East is the busiest bus route in the city, Dufferin is comical for the wrong reasons, etc., etc.

Oh, that's what Transfer City 2 is for, they say. Another $10B? Another $15B? No matter how much is spent, subways are still "too expensive," right? They didn't extend the Danforth line to STC partially because, apparently, it was literally unaffordable...couldn't possibly pay for it and it would steal money away from other lines, as if only an exact amount of funds would ever be available. Imagine the gall some forumers have to suggest that perhaps a larger portion of the tens of billions of dollars proposed for transit infrastructure should be spent on modest expansions to a clearly undersized subway network as part of a vast and multi-modal (where appropriate) transit network improvement.

 

[Eug]

Not farther than McCowan.

That's what I was thinking (and apparently unimaginative2 was thinking that as well).

"Wrong"? What does that even mean, specifically? Where did I declare people wrong? I *clearly* said that for a plan ostensibly for an LRT network, it did a poor job of selecting corridors appropriate for LRT. You were talking about an anti-LRT sentiment, but I oppose the bulk of Transfer City because there's a dozen corridors that warrant LRT that weren't selected. I'm anti-LRT because I think Transfer City doesn't have enough good LRT lines? Instead, they managed to select some of the few corridors in the city that might warrant subways (including one corridor that already has an unfinished subway) and some places that should remain buses, while totally ignoring all kinds of routes desperately needing improvements. That's a lame track record for something supposedly heralding in the light rail revolution. Lame. Few people have stopped to ask how the lines were selected, and the truth is that need and ridership and the impact of spending all those billions on infrastructure and streetscaping in certain places and not others were not factors...everyone just went "OMG, who cares where the LRT goes, it's LRT!"

You keep stating your OPINION on this is correct, and to support this contention you make quite unsubstantiated claims.

According to the few TTC planners I have had contact with, their ridership growth estimates were such that LRT would be feasible in the foreseeable future, and the cost savings over tunneled subway for the length of the line made LRT quite cost effective in comparison, for the foreseen ridership. Maybe not 50 years down the line no, but that's a different argument, esp. since they weren't really willing to guess that far into the future anyway. Now you may argue that you think their methodology for arriving at that conclusion was faulty, but I think you're doing everyone a great disservice if you are trying to convince everyone that LRT is just the entire TTC's pet project.

 

[kettal]

If you're familiar with the history if transit planning in Toronto, you'd realize that the Sheppard subway was developed as part of Network 2011, the last apolitical and holistic transit plan that Toronto has had.

What makes Network 2011 any more noble than Transit City? Were all alternatives given equal consideration for Sheppard then?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

You keep stating your OPINION on this is correct, and to support this contention you make quite unsubstantiated claims.

According to the few TTC planners I have had contact with, their ridership growth estimates were such that LRT would be feasible in the foreseeable future, and the cost savings over tunneled subway for the length of the line made LRT quite cost effective in comparison, for the foreseen ridership. Maybe not 50 years down the line no, but that's a different argument, esp. since they weren't really willing to guess that far into the future anyway. Now you may argue that you think their methodology for arriving at that conclusion was faulty, but I think you're doing everyone a great disservice if you are trying to convince everyone that LRT is just the entire TTC's pet project.

Learn to read. Then, go back and read the posts I've made here and elsewhere that mention there's a dozen or so routes that I'd like to see turned into real LRT lines (and not Spadina streetcar lines). I'm certainly not pro-streetcar, but there's lots of places where real light rail lines would be great.

Why might I think my opinion is correct...gee, maybe because it's my opinion? Try poking holes in it, if you're up to it. Keep in mind that lines were selected for Transfer City and only after that were facts and figures created to justify the decisions. Questions like "What does Morningside need?" and "What do riders who use Morningside need?" were not asked then and have not yet been asked. Show me a substantiated claim that Morningside & Sheppard (at Morningside & Sheppard, of course) will see more than, say, a thousand riders per hour combined. Sheppard's EA already stated it won't be any faster than Rocket buses would be out there.

 

[unimaginative2]

Eug, Scarberian made most of the point I was was trying to make, if a little sharply. I think that Scarborough Centre makes perfect sense simply because, whether downtown councillors like it or not, it's the hub of activity, particularly public transit, in Scarborough. Most buses from northern and eastern Scarborough funnel into the centre, it's a provincially- and locally-designated growth centre, and it's easily the biggest trip generator in Scarborough. It just makes sense to maintain the existing hub there rather than trying to build another elsewhere.