Rainforest
Senior Member
I also agree his analogy was poor. Definitely does not justify subway over LRT in tunnel. The difference in speed between the tunnelled section and the East section is around 7km. The increase in travel time will be minimal and will not require any extra LRVs. Regardless, whatever headway the TTC chooses will be maintained. I do not know how you came to that assumption, that more LRV will be needed because of a slightly longer travel time on the surface.
It is a mathematical fact that faster service requires fewer vehicles for the same headways.
Let's say you have a 20-km subway line from Kennedy to Jane and it runs at 32 kph. The round trip time is (2 x 20 / 32) x 60 = 75 min. For 3-min headways, you need 25 trains (27 if you have a spare at each terminus).
Compare to an LRT line that runs at the same 32 kph in the tunnel (10 km) and at 24 kph in the median (another 10 km). The round trip time is ((2 x 10 / 32) + (2 x 10) / 24)) x 60 = 87.5 min. For 3-min headways, you need 29 trains (31 if you have a spare at each terminus).
LRT is being built because you do NOT need the capacity of a Subway. The new TR trains must be purchased as one train, so that is automatically $18.9Million dollars. a 3 car LRV train will be half that cost, and will be more versatile. You can break up the train if necessary to save costs. Cannot do that with the new TR's.
The new TR trains are meant for Yonge / Spadina. Bloor and Sheppard will still operate with old cars for a while. You can buy a few more TRs for Bloor and move some older cars to Eglinton, and run them in 4-car consists (effectively 12.6 million per train).
Even if brand-new trains had to be purchased for Eglinton, I'm sure that shorter than 6-car consists could be bought.
On the other hand, look at the the recent 1.2 billion purchase of the 204 replacement streetcars for the legacy network: almost 6 million per car. The Transit City cars might cost somewhat less (standard gauge and no need to handle tight curves; on the other hand, they will need cabins at both ends), but even at 5 million apiece, it would be 15 million for a 3-car train.
People with much more experience modeled the Eglinton LRT will peak at 5,400pph in 2031. The LRT is capable of much higher capacity.
How can you explain that 5,400 max projection for Eglinton, when Bloor has already reached 24,000? The two lines having similar length, and the two corridors having similar density ...
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