[Rainforest]

Rainforest

GO trains and buses running every few minutes is what we all want, but its not the only solution to our problems. A GO train or bus is great, but we need alternatives to allow people to travel to and from locations where stations aren't located. For Port Union to Pickering Town Centre, GO would be the best option - but what about Port Union to Kingston & Altona?

It doesn't have to be an LRT, but you cannot deny we need to establish connections - and that's what the whole point of this part of the thread is about.

Certainly some people might find it handy to use such an LRT line. But how do we know that the demand justifies the construction? LRT is cheaper than subway, yet the route in question will cost upwards of 500 million.

Most of the TC lines are planned along the existing busy bus routes. Perhaps establish a local or semi-express bus from Pickering to STC first, and estimate the demand?

 

[RedRocket191]

As I said, it doesn't have to be an LRT - but we do have to establish the connection. It could be BRT or it could be frequent local bus lines. It could even be swan boats.

My second point is a compare and contrast:

Then put a bus on Kingston that crosses the border, running every 20 minutes. Problem solved.

Versus:

No one would use a Sheppard-Kingston line, either! It's a genuinely terrible idea that belongs on fantasy maps and has no place in reality.

Which comment is more likely to lead to healthy discussion? With respect, I think that a lot of animosity could be eliminated if comments like the first one are made more often than the second one. I know people are passionate about this, but respectful critique is more likely to lead to shovels in the ground building the infrastructure we all wanna see get built.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

We don't need shovels in the ground to run a bus every 20 minutes...your comments are not more constructive and discussing useless projects only distracts from what really needs to be done.

Miketoronto was crucified on this forum for suggesting some express bus routes; since he left, people have proposed all kinds of exponentially more useless and expensive projects. These projects must be opposed, lest some eager kids read these threads, assume it's canon or policy because it's on the internet, and start harassing politicians about the need to play connect the dots with LRT. Anyone serious about improving transit will recognize silly proposals at a glance...they don't need giant 'planning arrows' on maps of exurbia for the sake of endless theoretical debates.

Rainforest: the GO bus already connects STC and Pickering Town Centre. But instead of running buses along the route more often or integrating fares, let's spend a billion dollars on an LRT line. After all, *any* number of riders is enough for light rail!

 

[unimaginative2]

Payback, you've got to think outside the box a little here. Why do GO trains inherently have to be too infrequent? There's absolutely no reason why they couldn't run as frequently as the subway if we just spent a little money and did it -- and rather less money than a $500 million streetcar, too. And then there's fare integration. There's absolutely no good reason why you shouldn't be able to pay the same fare for a GO bus or train as the TTC and Pickering Transit. People could get to places not directly on the GO line the same way people get to places not right on the subway: they take a connecting bus. If the TTC were integrated with GO, and started to route its buses to GO stations the way it does to subway stations, we could have a vastly improved system throughout the suburbs, for a fraction of the cost of these LRT lines, and with much shorter travel times.

 

[Rainforest]

... I know people are passionate about this, but respectful critique is more likely to lead to shovels in the ground building the infrastructure we all wanna see get built.

No contest : )

 

[Voltz]

scarberian.... on one hand you seem to shoot down any kind of future light rail service proposal that wont be full from day one (but only because you say it won't be full, and no one could say for sure yet weather or not it would be), and on the other hand you militantly support a subway extension that the ttc is projecting a max demand of only 3000 people per hour per direction. (sheppard)

The max capasity of a subway line with automatic train control can be as high as 50000. 3000 is no where near justifing a nearly $2 billion transit line. just because it was started does not mean it needs to be "finished". light rail service is much better suited to handle that damand

just a thought... but maybe people in scarborough, and other places, might actually want to use local transit to go somewhere other than downtown.

and try to be a bit more respectful of other peoples opinions,
and you seem present your opinions as absolute facts

 

[scarberiankhatru]

People could get to places not directly on the GO line the same way people get to places not right on the subway: they take a connecting bus. If the TTC were integrated with GO, and started to route its buses to GO stations the way it does to subway stations, we could have a vastly improved system throughout the suburbs, for a fraction of the cost of these LRT lines, and with much shorter travel times.

And when a skeleton network of local bus service or buses that speed people to rapid transit doesn't exist yet, it should be created...this is very, very obvious and generally understood (but unless we repeat it in every single post, people will explode with confusion and LRT schemes).

The only technology that can serve all of the "nodes" that Payback listed is buses. The only technology appropriate for extremely low density subdivisions like most of Pickering is buses...that's just the way it is. Transferring two or three or four times can be fine if there's a stretch of real reliable rapid transit somewhere along the way. Even if McGuinty wrote us another cheque for $10 billion dollars, we still could not afford to link every sprawlly subdivision with every random site its residents might desire to travel to in a transfer-free straight line.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

scarberian.... on one hand you seem to shoot down any kind of future light rail service proposal that wont be full from day one (but only because you say it won't be full, and no one could say for sure yet weather or not it would be), and on the other hand you militantly support a subway extension that the ttc is projecting a max demand of only 3000 people per hour per direction. (sheppard)

The max capasity of a subway line with automatic train control can be as high as 50000. 3000 is no where near justifing a nearly $2 billion transit line. just because it was started does not mean it needs to be "finished". light rail service is much better suited to handle that damand

just a thought... but maybe people in scarborough, and other places, might actually want to use local transit to go somewhere other than downtown.

and try to be a bit more respectful of other peoples opinions,
and you seem present your opinions as absolute facts

You don't seem to have read a word I've posted other than what you disagree with. The only way to counter bad ideas on the internet is to present your opinions as facts...as you just did in your post. Yes, spending money on a subway extension like Sheppard would be far better than spending equal amounts of money on streetcar lines to places that can barely support reasonable bus service. I don't oppose some streetcar lines because they won't be full, I oppose them because they'll be empty! Like 1000 people per hour or less empty...how can you possibly justify spending billions of dollars on such routes without being hypocritical?

TTC projections are often dubious and politically motivated, anyway, and Sheppard's ridership will greatly rise as it's extended and as many thousands of residential units are built along its length. Ridership on the 190 continues to grow and the high turnover along the route proves that they're not all going downtown. Still, the to-downtown commuter base is what we need to design our transit system around since we cannot hope to deliver equal levels of transit service to random suburb-suburb trips (and if we try, we won't get far wasting money around the Rouge Park instead of arterials like McCowan or Bathurst or Lawrence). Express/Rocket buses are, by far, the best way to provide a quick and cheap boost to suburban transit, but the light rail brigade does everything it can to prevent this from happening.

edit - 50,000 per hour per direction is impossible in Toronto unless we run longer subway trains, or unless you think waiting three or four trains to get on counts as "service." It is funny, though, how subways are opposed unless they are beyond capacity, leaving thousands of people behind on the platform every hour, but light rail is supported no matter how few people it may carry or how much it costs, while buses are pure evil and GO train service will never change (unless it's being compared to subway service, in which case it can solve all of our problems).

another edit - and, no, I don't respect bad ideas, not for the sake of inclusive debate when billions of unspent dollars and the city's future is on the line.

 

[Voltz]

Many valid points, and of course a kingston rd lrt to pickering should not be considered for now, however, in my opinion, ridership numbers on many of the transit city routes do support rapid transit service. I believe that spending money on a few of those lite rail lines is better than one under used subway

Yes, the ttc ridership projections are often politically motivated, last i read in the paper the existing ridership on the sheppard subway is still well below what was projected, meaning those numbers where inflated to support the subway.

Suppose that 3000 pphpd doubles to 6000 or 7000, still not in subway territory.

I don't believe that simply building condos will drastically increase ridership. I am currently working on a large condo development right next to an existing subway and go station, I see many more people come and go in their cars than walk the 100 feet to the station.

i think that we can build a transit system that serves downtown trips as well as does its best to serve inter suburban trips. This could be done through a combo of existing subway and improved go transit, as well as the transit city lines and better express bus service

 

[Dan416]

You don't seem to have read a word I've posted other than what you disagree with. The only way to counter bad ideas on the internet is to present your opinions as facts...as you just did in your post. Yes, spending money on a subway extension like Sheppard would be far better than spending equal amounts of money on streetcar lines to places that can barely support reasonable bus service. I don't oppose some streetcar lines because they won't be full, I oppose them because they'll be empty! Like 1000 people per hour or less empty...how can you possibly justify spending billions of dollars on such routes without being hypocritical?

TTC projections are often dubious and politically motivated, anyway, and Sheppard's ridership will greatly rise as it's extended and as many thousands of residential units are built along its length. Ridership on the 190 continues to grow and the high turnover along the route proves that they're not all going downtown. Still, the to-downtown commuter base is what we need to design our transit system around since we cannot hope to deliver equal levels of transit service to random suburb-suburb trips (and if we try, we won't get far wasting money around the Rouge Park instead of arterials like McCowan or Bathurst or Lawrence). Express/Rocket buses are, by far, the best way to provide a quick and cheap boost to suburban transit, but the light rail brigade does everything it can to prevent this from happening.

edit - 50,000 per hour per direction is impossible in Toronto unless we run longer subway trains, or unless you think waiting three or four trains to get on counts as "service." It is funny, though, how subways are opposed unless they are beyond capacity, leaving thousands of people behind on the platform every hour, but light rail is supported no matter how few people it may carry or how much it costs, while buses are pure evil and GO train service will never change (unless it's being compared to subway service, in which case it can solve all of our problems).

another edit - and, no, I don't respect bad ideas, not for the sake of inclusive debate when billions of unspent dollars and the city's future is on the line.

I agree with everything you've said in this post.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Many valid points, and of course a kingston rd lrt to pickering should not be considered for now, however, in my opinion, ridership numbers on many of the transit city routes do support rapid transit service. I believe that spending money on a few of those lite rail lines is better than one under used subway

Yes, the ttc ridership projections are often politically motivated, last i read in the paper the existing ridership on the sheppard subway is still well below what was projected, meaning those numbers where inflated to support the subway.

Suppose that 3000 pphpd doubles to 6000 or 7000, still not in subway territory.

I don't believe that simply building condos will drastically increase ridership. I am currently working on a large condo development right next to an existing subway and go station, I see many more people come and go in their cars than walk the 100 feet to the station.

i think that we can build a transit system that serves downtown trips as well as does its best to serve inter suburban trips. This could be done through a combo of existing subway and improved go transit, as well as the transit city lines and better express bus service

Show me where I said none of the Transit City routes should have rapid transit...you won't be able to, because I've never said that. Some TC routes will be overcrowded and should be built as subways, while others will be lightly used and should stay as bus routes. I probably support more km of light rail than you do, just not in ridiculous places or where other modes are more appropriate.

As long as the proper use of light rail is for anything between 0 and 1,000,000 rides a day in your eyes, you'll think every route should be light rail. "Under-used" subway is a meaningless statement...under-used compared to what? To a subway line that leaves people behind at the platform? To Tokyo? Do you really want overcrowded streetcars just to prove to some guy on the internet that a subway project would be "under-used"? Yeah, that attitude sure has the city's best interests in mind...

You say the Sheppard projections were inflated to support the subway, but when were those projections made? I'd bet real money that the projected Sheppard ridership was for a line to Victoria Park. Anyway, the projections will soon be reached, probably next year. At some point, you're all going to have to face the fact that the Sheppard line is a success even though it was amputated at both ends.

Condos won't boost ridership? Tell that to North York Centre station. Condos will add thousands of riders, but as for drawing more riders, extending the subway is the very best way to stimulate ridership amongst existing residents, and the longer the line is, the more people will be tempted to switch from parallel routes, especially if it went over to Downsview like it was supposed to. No transit line makes complete sense if you only build 1/3 of it - it'd be like building a Kingston streetcar from Morningside to Altoona and then complaining not enough people from Ajax are riding it.

There's a big difference between a subway extension and an entirely new subway line, a difference that you and other light rail supporters consistently ignore. Short, logical extensions should always be done using the same technology...*extension* means extension of the existing line, not a piece-meal string of modes. An extension cannot utilize the full capacity of a subway line or no one would be able to get on. In some places, it's better to spend a bit more per km and reap the benefits of higher ridership, of redevelopment, of eliminating a transfer, of improving travel time, perhaps of keeping road lanes available for cars, etc. Subways don't need to be as expensive as everyone claims (the Spadina extension includes $500M of padding, for example, as well as everything from vehicles to yard modifications) and LRT is not as cheap as it seems.

If ridership on outer stretches of some subway lines could be handled by crowded LRT, ridership on outer stretches of every LRT line could be handled by simple buses...LRT lines costing, cumulatively, many billions of dollars. At an estimated $9 billion and counting, Transit City isn't exactly a cheap way to marginally improve upon bus service.

 

[Payback]

Payback, you've got to think outside the box a little here. Why do GO trains inherently have to be too infrequent? There's absolutely no reason why they couldn't run as frequently as the subway if we just spent a little money and did it -- and rather less money than a $500 million streetcar, too.

Can GO trains be run sequentially every 2-3 minutes, 20 hours a day? There's out-of-the-box and then there's quackerbox, lol! At best we'd recieve three trips per hour every 20 minutes.

And then there's fare integration. There's absolutely no good reason why you shouldn't be able to pay the same fare for a GO bus or train as the TTC and Pickering Transit.

That'd require rigid fare zoning throughout the GTAA, making taking transit a draconian affair where every extra mile of distance bulks on another dollar to your commute. In the end you'll probably be better off paying two subsidized ticket/tokens if going from one region to another than distance-based fare calculators making suburban 416 to downtown trips higher than today's $2.75.

What GO could implement instead is a more flexible faring system, not based on distance but time and subsidizing for transfer stub holders, much like 905 bus operators do for GO ticket holders.

People could get to places not directly on the GO line the same way people get to places not right on the subway: they take a connecting bus.

But for someone starting out in the 905 suburbs that could be 7 or 8 buses and several hours spent commuting one way. All those people heading down to the Lakeshore East GO probably started commuting an hour well in advance of the train and who knows much commuting they'll have to do once in Toronto. And what of the frustration to know that if you're even a minute late arriving for a connection you'll be stuck in limbo for another 20, 30 even 60 minutes?

If the TTC were integrated with GO, and started to route its buses to GO stations the way it does to subway stations, we could have a vastly improved system throughout the suburbs, for a fraction of the cost of these LRT lines, and with much shorter travel times.

If the GO/TTC were really serious about improving customer service they would've done this years, YEARS ago. They obviously don't care, why should we? Sometimes it takes increased competition to improve quantity and quality of serivce. Maybe Transit City is just the kick in the tooth GO needs to shape up its act and provide us cheaper, more reliable and frequent rides.

Surely not every single commuter will want or need a direct downtown-downtown link when in fact it'd probably be less counter-intuitive to head straight across the city in a direct path and not over-capacitate a few transit lines with too many commuters converging upon it all at once. Diversification is key and if it costs a little more so be it. I'd sooner see multibillions spent on multi-regional LRT/BRT service than the same amount on a few kms of new subway.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

But for someone starting out in the 905 suburbs that could be 7 or 8 buses and several hours spent commuting one way. All those people heading down to the Lakeshore East GO probably started commuting an hour well in advance of the train and who knows much commuting they'll have to do once in Toronto. And what of the frustration to know that if you're even a minute late arriving for a connection you'll be stuck in limbo for another 20, 30 even 60 minutes?

8 buses? The only place in Durham more than an hour from the Lakeshore line is Beaverton. If there's any place in the GTA that's more than 2 buses from a GO line, minor bus route rejiggings can solve that problem. If GO trains ran both ways, all-day every 20 minutes or better - and they will, eventually - pretty much any point in the GTA would be within 2 hours of pretty much any other point. And this excludes express GO buses that quickly and easily connect the kinds of suburban places that people actually travel to in numbers large enough to be able to serve them.

 

[EnviroTO]

Can GO trains be run sequentially every 2-3 minutes, 20 hours a day? There's out-of-the-box and then there's quackerbox, lol! At best we'd recieve three trips per hour every 20 minutes.

Can the current stock run run sequentially every 2-3 minutes with the existing signalling? No. Can heavy rail operate at such frequencies? Definitely.

http://sunnyfortuna.com/fortunacam/showcams/japan/shinagawa.htm

 

[nfitz]

Or check out the Paris-RER. Here's the schedule of departures on one route (B), southbound out of Gare-du-Nord. A train every 3 to 6 minutes from 5:30 AM to midnight. After running through downtown, the line branches, and some trains short-turn, but all run through the centre of Paris. And this doesn't include the trains on line A that follow the same route initially south out of Gare-du-Nord - frequencies on line A are one train every 2 minutes in rush-hour.

RER is heavy-rail. Some of the trains even are double-decker like GO trains.