[RedRocket191]

Why are we extending subway lines at $300-350 million per km to suburban low density areas like Vaughan Corporate Centre (which has nothing but big box stores) and Richmond Hill Centre,

Because those areas have master plans that call for density levels that will rival many parts of the 416. In my humble opinion, building a transit culture from the start is a very noble cause.

It will always be a balancing act and there will likely never be consensus on where that balance is to be found, but building transit lines to the outlying areas will ensure that the people who move there don't add to the already congestion-clogged roads.

 

[Ansem]

Extention to Richmond Hill without DLR will fail
100% sure

Like I said earlier that's exactly what happened in Montreal.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

And this was the result:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/04/15/qc-mtccomplaints0415.html?ref=rss

Complaints about public transit delays have increased threefold since Montreal's subway network extended service into Laval, north of the city, but there's little that can be done in the short term to relieve the pressure, officials said.

According to documents obtained by Radio-Canada, the Montreal Transit Commission (MTC) has received about 400 complaints since three metro stations servicing Laval opened nine months ago.

Complaints about Montreal's public transit system have tripled in recent months.
That's a threefold increase from the previous nine months, when the MTC registered 122 complaints about slow or overcrowded public transit service, including buses and subway cars.

Ridership on the Montmorency-Cote-Vertu orange line has visibly increased over the winter because of the influx of passengers boarding from Laval's three new metro stops which opened in May 2007.

Officials didn't think so many people would choose public transit, and the MTC is now a victim of its own success, admitted agency spokesman Dominic Lemay.

"When we opened the metro, we were planning to receive 35,000 trips per day in that section of the network," the told CBC News. "In January, February of this year, we had 60,000 trips a day."

The MTC increased metro car service during the day by about 17 per cent but improvements to rush hour service are difficult because of a shortage of subway cars in the system, he said.

The agency is studying ways to improve subway car maintenance to keep more wagons on the rails, and may consider running shorter routes on the Orange line to increase service, said MTC operations director Sylvain Duquette.

The agency is waiting for a new fleet of subway cars but they won't be delivered until 2011, and riders should expect orange line rush hour traffic to be heavy until then, Duquette said.

They underestimate how many new client they will get like we did at first. We didnt think that people much farther away from Laval would leave their car in Laval and take the metro which explains why we got twice much new customer than anticipated. The same will happen here. People living much farther away will drop the car,Go Train and go to Richmond Hill Station and overload the Yonge line.

The only way this will work is by having a DRL built and opened at the same time

or

Find a way to have express line like in New York To skip stations.



I have nothing against the suburb but going beyond city limits with an incomplete network within the city will just fix Surburban problems and give Torontonians a new problem they didn't have.

Your just switching glitches without fixing the whole problem.

Subway are made to give fast transit within a city.

Commuter trains are made to give fast transit from suburbs to downtown by having the train stopping in strategic area in that city and make it go downtown asap. That's how it's done in Europe, Asia, New York, Chicago,L.A.
Etc...

Cities like Paris,wouldn't have all those line if they kept building subway lines outside the city. They have the (RER) for suburbs with frequent service.

I think the Go Train could increase the service to Richmond Hill and Vaughan or adopt the Paris RER model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER

The RER is an integration of a modern city-centre subway and a pre-existing set of regional rail lines. Within the city of Paris, the RER serves as an express network, offering multiple connections with the Paris Métro.

Take a city like New York. The PATH train is enough. What would happened if they started building more line in Jersey City, Newark etc... Would they have all those lines today if they had chosen that path?

There are plenty of new customers to be made within Toronto before thinking of going outside.

Eglington Subway from Kennedy to Airport
Sheppard Subway from STC to Etobicoke
DLR all the way to Sheppard Line crossing The Eglington
**They seriously underestimate the success these new lines would get.

Too many Torontonians are using their car in this city and when you don't have an easy access to subways, well drivers uses their cars.

Transit city is a good idea but with the wrong vision. It should be there to make local major transit corridors run faster and not replace subways.

Toronto would be a better city if we started thinking like we were a great Metropolitan City.

Take a minute and go look at this website
http://urbanrail.net/index.html

and compare subway maps around the world with ours...Its shameful.

 

[Brandon716]

It's worth noting that most European cities have much more impressive road networks, including urban expressways, than ours. The reason that people ride transit is that it's extremely convenient, fast, and accessible.

One of the most interesting points made, because people use transit by choice if:

a) its very convenient and goes where people need to go

and

b) if developments are made in transit oriented fashion across the entire region, not just downtown or central city locations

In Europe, they have the combination of good transit services (at least in most cities) and transit oriented development, in part due to historic methods of development.

North America is still getting there.

Its partially why I'm so mixed on the Transit City proposal. There is a specific need for subways, such as the DRL being a subway, doing Eglinton as a subway, and finishing Sheppard as a subway.

The other routes would work as LRT. I could see the other routes as working fine as LRT, but not some of the key routes mentioned above. LRT would be a good starter technology, but I could see the system being overwhelmed very quickly.

Here in Pittsburgh the T is overloaded during rush hour and we only have 35,000 riders a day on the entire system. Its a high quality LRT network, but it works here because its a smaller market and city.

Granted, Portland's MAX system takes 120,000 riders a day and functions quite well, and I lived in Portland as well right off the Blue Line.

So I suppose if done right, LRT would work if they build the stations large enough and use enough train cars. But they have to basically build the highest grade/quality LRT network available using the most modern of cars, and large platforms that can handle above average train sizes (say 4-6-8 cars per train average instead of 1-2 cars per train, which is standard for many LRT systems).

 

[MisterF]

The RER is an integration of a modern city-centre subway and a pre-existing set of regional rail lines. Within the city of Paris, the RER serves as an express network, offering multiple connections with the Paris Métro.

This is the kind of system that should be used to "build a transit culture" in the outer suburbs, not continuous extension of the heavy rail subway system. Subway extensions to areas that might someday have density similar to 416 areas (to use RedRocket191's comparison) is usually incredibly wasteful when there are so many dense central 416 neighbourhoods have no rapid transit anywhere near them. While the Yonge extension makes sense, York University, downtown Vaughan, downtown Markham, and MCC are prime examples of destinations that would be best served by RER style transit, not subway. You could even add Scarborough city centre to that list - an SCC spur from the Stouffville GO line makes more sense than replacing the SRT.

 

[Disparishun]

Because those areas have master plans that call for density levels that will rival many parts of the 416.

... and will be far higher than many parts of the 416, don't forget. The 416, like most of the Toronto area, is a mix of higher- and lower-density urban and suburban areas.

 

[Disparishun]

Extention to Richmond Hill without DLR will fail
100% sure

Like I said earlier that's exactly what happened in Montreal.

So, just to be clear: in contradistinction to those who insist that Yonge between Finch and 7 is too low-density and just can't support the ridership that would justify the Yonge extension, you are arguing that the Yonge extension will have too many riders?

I have nothing against the suburb but going beyond city limits with an incomplete network within the city will just fix Surburban problems and give Torontonians a new problem they didn't have.

People coming in from Laval have to cross a bridge. People coming in from Thornhill do not have to cross a bridge -- it is continuous city. Do you see how these things are different?

Incidentally: where are these "city limits" you are talking about?

There are plenty of new customers to be made within Toronto before thinking of going outside.

Eglington Subway from Kennedy to Airport
Sheppard Subway from STC to Etobicoke
DLR all the way to Sheppard Line crossing The Eglington
**They seriously underestimate the success these new lines would get.

You are talking about parts of Scarborough and Mississauga that, in relationship to the downtown Toronto you are basing it all on, are more remote, more suburban, and lower-density than the Yonge extension you are against. When you distinguish "within Toronto" from "going outside", it is hard not to get the impression you are confusing Montreal<-->bridge<-->Laval with continuous Toronto.

On the other hand, you are right. Those three lines are essential, although I don't know whether you have all of the alignments quite right. But, yes, they need to happen.

 

[kEiThZ]

Going back to Karen Stintz's comments....she is doing a disservice to her constituents with her grandstanding on the Yonge subway line. I am glad the mayor put her in her place. It is sad that she had to be reminded that her constituents would suffer a drastic degradation of service should the Yonge line be extended without updates to Yonge/Bloor. I sincerely hope her opponents plaster her comments all over the ward come next election. I despise politicians like these who have an easy time making grand statements but lack the practicality to implement the real world solutions that their constituents need. What does she think would happen if we didn't upgrade the line and just extended it? And where the hell does she think the money would come from to pay for the extension and the increased services upkeep? Giambrone and Miller are absolutely correct to ask those questions before signing off on the project.

 

[kEiThZ]

Has anybody assessed the alternative to Transit City? As in how many km of subway that would by? And whether that would meet the city's goals of transit use, densification, etc.

 

[sunnyraytoronto]

Has anybody assessed the alternative to Transit City? As in how many km of subway that would by? And whether that would meet the city's goals of transit use, densification, etc.

http://lrt.daxack.ca/LRTvsHRT/CostCompare.html

Usually, 1km of subway can buy you about 6km of above ground LRT. But with both the Yonge and Spadina subway extensions both costing about $300-350 million per km. Whereas regular above ground LRT would cost about $40 million per km; the 1 km of subway would buy about 8-9km of LRT in Toronto.

In terms of Transit City,... 7 LRT lines,... with the most expensive Eglinton crosstown being about $2.2 billion because part of it is underground (the underground part is basically as expensive to build as an underground subway). Pick the average Transit City LRT line (can't be Eglinton!) and if you were to convert that one average Transit City LRT line to underground Subway, it would basically cost the same as the entire Transit City budget (well money they still need to get) for all 7 LRT lines.

 

[Voltz]

Going back to Karen Stintz's comments....she is doing a disservice to her constituents with her grandstanding on the Yonge subway line. I am glad the mayor put her in her place. It is sad that she had to be reminded that her constituents would suffer a drastic degradation of service should the Yonge line be extended without updates to Yonge/Bloor. I sincerely hope her opponents plaster her comments all over the ward come next election. I despise politicians like these who have an easy time making grand statements but lack the practicality to implement the real world solutions that their constituents need. What does she think would happen if we didn't upgrade the line and just extended it? And where the hell does she think the money would come from to pay for the extension and the increased services upkeep? Giambrone and Miller are absolutely correct to ask those questions before signing off on the project.

Hold on a sec, do you mean to say that it is actually okay for Giambrone and Miller to ask questions before approving a transit project I thought that merely questioning a subway proposal is an unspeakable sin,

Has anybody assessed the alternative to Transit City? As in how many km of subway that would by? And whether that would meet the city's goals of transit use, densification, etc.

You could built a eglinton subway for the same price, but Karen Stintz seems to think that we can build subways for almost nothing after the air rights have been sold...

 

[Brandon716]

http://lrt.daxack.ca/LRTvsHRT/CostCompare.html

Usually, 1km of subway can buy you about 6km of above ground LRT. But with both the Yonge and Spadina subway extensions both costing about $300-350 million per km. Whereas regular above ground LRT would cost about $40 million per km; the 1 km of subway would buy about 8-9km of LRT in Toronto.

In terms of Transit City,... 7 LRT lines,... with the most expensive Eglinton crosstown being about $2.2 billion because part of it is underground (the underground part is basically as expensive to build as an underground subway). Pick the average Transit City LRT line (can't be Eglinton!) and if you were to convert that one average Transit City LRT line to underground Subway, it would basically cost the same as the entire Transit City budget (well money they still need to get) for all 7 LRT lines.

Some of the planners in Toronto need to come down to Pittsburgh for a little bit to study LRT. Pittsburgh has one of the few subway-based LRT systems in America, and its an interesting system, but they never run more than 2 cars per train. Its certainly no where near as close to the capacity of a subway as anyone might think.

But the system works great for Pittsburgh because its a smaller city.

I think putting it in context for Toronto would be a good thing, because if they are going to plan subway LRT's, they need to build stations that accept at least 4 cars per train, if not more.

I don't even know if there is a max, maybe they should build it with capacity for 8 cars per train if possible.

Here is a link of the history of the T, for those interested.

http://www.portauthority.org/PAAC/C...LightRailTransitSystem/tabid/186/Default.aspx

Unfortunately no many photos there.

 

[Brandon716]

when i converted this from cell phone video to WMV it totaly messed up the soundtrack, but here is the LRT station here in Castle Shannon, 6-7 miles south of Pittsburgh.

http://home.comcast.net/~b26pa/SSPX0038.wmv

Hopefully that works. Doesn't have a train but you can see the platform, video was taken last month when I was going to work.

 

[kEiThZ]

http://lrt.daxack.ca/LRTvsHRT/CostCompare.html

I have seen the link before. And it makes a good point. LRT is much, much cheaper. Were to buy subways with our TC budget, Toronto would end up with about 20km of subway lines. That would be barely enough to finish Sheppard to the east and west and maybe have some spare capacity to finish the Yonge line extension. So although, TC has its flaws, it buys capacity and capability that this city could otherwise never attain. Let's face it, as long as other levels of government aren't committed to building the TTC (and there's no evidence Metrolinx is inclined to hand over new cash either) and Torontonians aren't willing to pay more in taxes to get there, subway construction will be an unaffordable pipe dream.

 

[Ansem]

So, just to be clear: in contradistinction to those who insist that Yonge between Finch and 7 is too low-density and just can't support the ridership that would justify the Yonge extension, you are arguing that the Yonge extension will have too many riders?.

Yes because those who say is it's too low density are partially right but making the same mistake as Montreal STM did and TTC is about to repeat.

Montreal prediction were 35 000 new customers, they got 65 000. Almost half... Why is that? Because they underestimated the number of people living far away willing to leave their cars and take the subway. They only calculated within Laval and the cities near by but ignored the towns and cities much farther away.

The result was that the orange line was not design to accomodate 65 000 extra customers and even by increasing train service by 17%, it has little to no impacts.

Now they are looking for a LRT to act as a DRL and Laval as proposed to Loop the Orange line. By the time they do all this, Montrealers are the one that pays the price.

Lets not make the same mistake and lets just built DRL before or ate the same time as the York extensions

People coming in from Laval have to cross a bridge. People coming in from Thornhill do not have to cross a bridge -- it is continuous city. Do you see how these things are different?

Incidentally: where are these "city limits" you are talking about?



You are talking about parts of Scarborough and Mississauga that, in relationship to the downtown Toronto you are basing it all on, are more remote, more suburban, and lower-density than the Yonge extension you are against. When you distinguish "within Toronto" from "going outside", it is hard not to get the impression you are confusing Montreal<-->bridge<-->Laval with continuous Toronto.

On the other hand, you are right. Those three lines are essential, although I don't know whether you have all of the alignments quite right. But, yes, they need to happen.

Who pays for the subway? Vaughan? Richmond Hill? Missisauga?

The one thing STM did right is when the Provincial government built the Laval subway, the Montreal Mayor said if Laval doesnt pay its share, the train wont go to Laval. As of today, Montreal Metro is a not only a Montreal infrastructure but a Metropolitan infrastructure. Meaning that all the 65 or plus cities in the region MUST SHARE the cost for building and maintaining the subway.

It makes perfect sense. Their citizen are using the system.

So far all I've heard is that Richmond Hill and Vaughan deserve a FREE subway. If the other cities doesn't pay for it than any subway extensions should be south of Steeles
like Eglington and Sheppard and sepacially the DRL. They pay taxes so its unfair to them to see their taxes be used to give the suburbs station while they don't have any stations.

That's what I mean by ''city Limits''

With that extra money, our ''regional transit'' would be improved

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

So, just to be clear: in contradistinction to those who insist that Yonge between Finch and 7 is too low-density and just can't support the ridership that would justify the Yonge extension, you are arguing that the Yonge extension will have too many riders?

Ha ha - I noticed that too. You can't win. And, as you rightly point out, Toronto is not Montreal in terms of physical geography or overall transit/road network. Was the new Montreal line part of an overall regional transit plan with new LRT, BRT and other rapid transit? I don't think it was.

People are still looking at maps with lines. It should be obvious to anyone that ending the Yonge subway at Finch is entirely abstract so let's agree, for the sake of argument, it's natural terminus is further north.

Steeles is just as abstract. There is no difference between Willowdale and Thornhill aside from the municipal boundary. Now, just a few Km to the north, RHC is a provinically-designated with growth node AND a transit terminal serving the 407 Transitway, GO, Viva, YRT...so why on earth would you not extend the subway to there? Why would you have buses still running along Yonge south of 7? So people can take one form of transit to Hwy 7, another to Steeles and another to downtown?

Similarly on Spadina - no sane person can argue that Downsview is a natural terminus. And, again, once you've agreed it makes sense to take it York U and Steeles, why would you stop there with a major transit terminal and growth node 3 km away?

People need to stop looking at old maps and see the ENTIRE transit network. When Metrolinx is approving 3 different transit systems in the 7/407 corridor and people want to keep the subway at Finch or Steeles because it's what they're used to, it just sounds absurd.

I understand TTC is cash poor and I understand downtown is underserved but most of the anti-subway arguments just don't hold water - as seen by the mixed messages on this board about how:
a) There is no density to justify the stations
b) The new line will overload the system

I can't say enough times on this board how obviously shortsighted city/TTC is. If I can give a non-transit example of this mentality: Everyone who drives on Steeles Avenue knows what a mess it is - it tops that "Worst Road" poll every year. It is 100% Toronto's road but they don't want to pay to fix it because, obviously, people from York Region drive on it too. So it gets worse and worse, year after year, because Toronto wants someone else to pay their "fare share." So they fix their internal roads and leave Steeles to rot. Toronto cares about Toronto first and has little regard for the degree to which they are part of a larger region but there IS a larger region and it's time to wake up to that.