[scarberiankhatru]

"What I really don't get is why anyone in their right mind would think Vaughan would be a more logical subway extension than Mississauga City Centre."

Vaughan (Yonge & Steeles) is less than 2km from Finch station.

 

[Degnaw]

They're not going to extend the Yonge line to steeles, they're (obviously) extending the Spadina line PAST steeles.

Oh right, as long as McCallion is in power Mississauga will continue to reject subways, and as long as Sorbara is the financial manager dude, Vaughan will get the extension.

 

[socialwoe]

Instead of trying to efficiently network population centres throughout the region, you're basing your plans on hopelessly obsolete and artificial political boundaries, treating the suburbs as if they exist as completely separate entities simply because they're on the other side of some arbitrary road.

If I did treat the suburbs like separate entities, my focus would be entirely on the downtown core whereby I'd support BOTH Queen and DRL solely, not jockeying for outer 416-suburban lines as well. If population weren't my concern I wouldn't have included jogs where a line passes by density but not close enough. At the end of the day the line has to run under (or above) a defined route so if that shaves siginificant time off a person's commute even if it doesn't run directly into said person's dense community so be it. The farther one goes from the core the less concentrated density and hence proximity to a subway stop will be, that's expected and normal. Suburban subways will not be of any use to pedestrians, BRTs connected to urban subways will.

This is all such a moot point, there never would be enough money to pay for all these dreamed up lines, in any city.

There would if everyone weren't afraid to demand it. Once they start building they have to finish it. Screw NIMBYs, we're destroying our transit system for the sake of some shmos hosting a cocktail party complaining an elevated line is an eyesore to their guests. The entire Eglinton line could/should/would be above ground at a fraction of the cost of traditional subways, remember its not a continuation of existing lines so it doesn't have to follow suit and be underground. Following recent stats 6km subway=100km surface LRT= $1 billion. Elevated RT would run somewhere in between hence more bang for your buck.

Yes your map was transwank for sure!

No it wasn't. Apart from NC Guong's, mine was one of the most extensive maps out there and does the unthinkable by fixing one of the TTC's and City of Toronto's biggest blunders: never building the Queen Line and filling-in the start of what would have been the Eglinton Line. It also brings mass transit to the city limits and beyond placating the suburbs although even that apparently wasn't good enough for some.

The Vaughan line is perfectly cromulent... but hey, you already know that - it's on your map!

Again VCC will be a massive failure meanwhile close to a half-million would daily ride the Queen-Harbourfront Line with Don Mills BRT tripper. More people would also ride the Eglinton Line.

What I really don't get is why anyone in their right mind would think Vaughan would be a more logical subway extension than Mississauga City Centre

Finally another right-minded thinker! Everyone in Vaughan lives in isolated pockets, at least MCC is surrounded by dense commercial and residential mixed use areas, proximity to 403, airport, etc.

They're not going to extend the Yonge line to steeles, they're (obviously) extending the Spadina line PAST steeles.

Although it's the more logical choice. If York U weren't up there, Spadina would be virtually useless beyond Yorkdale. Even with the extension ppd will only go up by 4000 in the first 20 years. Tell me $2 billion won't go into that. If people didn't insist on crowding the end cars and used the middle more the Yonge Line could defintely accomodate more, how much more could there be anyways, more than half the people using Finch now are from York Region anyway, why not make their commute a bit easier.

Oh right, as long as McCallion is in power Mississauga will continue to reject subways, and as long as Sorbara is the financial manager dude, Vaughan will get the extension.

Ain't that a shame, despite my favoratism for Queen or Eglinton first MCC gets my vote any day over VCC.

 

[M II A II R II K]

I would say a Queen Line would be a good idea, even if it's just an underground streetcar for a sizeable length of it.

And the B/D line can be extended to Sherway on one end, and on the other end to STC and beyond up to Steeles.

Another good idea would be to have an Etobicoke RT with MKII trains that paralleled the 427 having stops at the airport, woodbine, and perhaps terminate at a hub in Brampton.

 

[unimaginative2]

So, socialwoe, the Vaughan Corporate Centre, an area designated for major development, will never see any kind of growth. Meanwhile, anyone who suggests that Rouge Park - a wilderness park - will not be developed is visionless and near-sighted.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

1. "Provided that the Sheppard Line convinently ends at Don Mills, the density east of Vic Park on Sheppard is slim and the density along Don Mills especially at York Mills, Lawrence, Eglinton is immense the 'Sheppard' Line could easily run down Don Mills and become the DRL line."
2. "the woodlands, cliff-faces and golf courses of Graydon Hall warrant a subway before dense Morningside-West Hill because its 'closer'?"

Two wildly opposing opinions from one poster wildly lost in his own fantasy land.

An elevated subway at Yonge & Eglinton? Yeah, that'll be popular...

"Again VCC will be a massive failure meanwhile close to a half-million would daily ride the Queen-Harbourfront Line"

If it's so doomed, why is it on your map? And half a million daily rides for the Queen line? That's optimistic, to say the least. Even if the line totally replaced service on King, Queen, Dundas, and College, ridership would need to triple.

 

[dashingdan]

Looking on Google Maps, Kipling Station appears to be about 3 km away from Etobicoke Creek (the Toronto/Mississauga boundary). On the other hand, Sheppard to Steeles is 4 km. So now tell me which is farther, Mississauga from Kipling, or Vaughan from Downsview.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

"So now tell me which is farther, Mississauga from Kipling, or Vaughan from Downsview."

It doesn't matter...Finch station is less than 2km from York Region and that's where the subway should breach the 905 border first, not Mississauga. Doesn't mean it will, but until shovels are in the ground for the Spadina extension, there's always a chance.

 

[roch5220]

Except European systems are newer, faster, go farther, often go underground in the core and aren't limited by farebox collection which in T.O.'s case almost single-handedly funds new expansion while maintaining the current system at the same time.

European routes are faster because of the tendency for the tracks to be in their own ROW. But for the vast majority of the networks, they are running both old streetcars and new LRT vehicles. I have pictures from Slovakia, Czech Rep, Austria, and Hungry from my last trip, where I took quite a few LRT/Streetcar photos - which when I get time I will post. Rarely do I see European LRTs going underground, unless you mean the ones that they call subways (which I have seen using LRT/streetcar rolling stock), which are like subways because of the length between stations, as they are not the shorter distance between stops like regular street network routes.

 

[cdl42]

"Rarely do I see European LRTs going underground"

There's plenty of interesting examples, but are mostly all concentrated in a small area of western Germany and the Low Countries. Many of them are also in smaller cities. Here's an incomplete list:
Porto, Rouen, Charleroi, Antwerp, The Hague, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, Dortmund, Bielfeld, Hannover, Vienna, Brussels, Lausanne, Linz, Zurich.

Can't speak to station spacing, but these lines are certainly LRTs that dip underground and not Metros.

 

[roch5220]

Vienna

Are you sure that they don't consider a lot of these metros? I admit that I havn't travelled all of the streetcar routes, but I definately don't recall Vienna streetcars going underground. If there is a small portion of a route that does, then its not material as most LRT routes in Vienna are above ground, in and outside the ring. Don't forget that I was responding to socialwoe saying that a lot of the european cities, the LRT goes underground downtown. Inside Vienna's ring, most (as if I missed some track going underground) of the routes are surface. Travelling outside, I also never encountered underground routes.

When I was in Budapest, one of the subway routes was an actual streetcar (2 connected) that travelled primarily underground. But it acted like a subway and was incorporated into their network. Whether you consider it a streetcar underground route or a subway is up to the individual.

 

[EnviroTO]

Vienna and Brussles have underground tram sections. They refer to them as "premetro" because they are built with the idea that the underground sections are too short to be a subway in their own right but the tunnel sections will eventually be extended to a length which will warrant running a full metro in the tunnel. In the short term LRT/trams use the tunnel sections and surface at the ends of the tunnels providing transferless service to far more destinations. This is what I think the TTC should be doing with Eglinton and should have done with Sheppard. An evolution of LRT to LRT with premetro sections and finally a full metro.

 

[cdl42]

Roch:

"Are you sure that they don't consider a lot of these metros?"

Questions like this are basically impossible to answer because it's a question of semantics. One person might "consider" something to be a metro and another might not. Best not to look at labels and instead look at the reality of service patterns and network design.

"If there is a small portion of a route that does, then its not material as most LRT routes in Vienna are above ground, in and outside the ring."

Quite right that most of the system is above ground. However, there is a tram tunnel with six stations and used by 5 tram lines to the west of Sudbahnhof. You can see it in a pinky shade on the Urbanrail Map. Sure it's small, but I don't think it should be ignored just because most of the system doesn't utilise it.

"When I was in Budapest, one of the subway routes was an actual streetcar (2 connected) that travelled primarily underground. But it acted like a subway and was incorporated into their network. Whether you consider it a streetcar underground route or a subway is up to the individual."

That was the first Metro line on the European continent, opened in 1896. In this case it isn't really considered by anyone to be an underground tram because it doesn't continue above ground at any point; its small profile is due to historical reasons.

 

[socialwoe]

I would say a Queen Line would be a good idea, even if it's just an underground streetcar for a sizeable length of it.

But the density in the downtown is 100 times greater than the suburbs, and yet they get the subways? I know its more expensive to excavate in the core but the pay-off for hundreds of thousands far outweighs the benefit to a few thousand suburbanites already well-served by GO. Isn't York U already getting a busway? A fleet of cross-GTA BRT ROWs meeting with Toronto subways at the city limits is the cheapest, quickest, most reliable, efficient and effective solution for the entire GTA. You seem to already agree with me since you advocate: "the B/D line can be extended to Sherway on one end, and on the other end to STC and beyond up to Steeles...the 427 having stops at the airport, woodbine"

So, socialwoe, the Vaughan Corporate Centre, an area designated for major development, will never see any kind of growth. Meanwhile, anyone who suggests that Rouge Park - a wilderness park - will not be developed is visionless and near-sighted.

I never said never but much like my map's timeline the end results (meeting sustainable capacity via premanent population growth NOT merely seasonal university use) will likely be far, far off in the future. So VCC which doesn't exist yet, (which the TTC itself predicts won't hit 20,000 ppd- an extremely low ridership tally considering the immediate heavy usage of Eglinton, Queen, even Sheppard- until 20 years after line completion), deserves a line ahead of STC, Centennial College, Markham gateway, Sheppard East- another area designated for major development, Malvern Town Centre, 000s of new residents in Morningside Heights, Rouge Park (hey if it worked for Christie, High Park and Downsview it'll work again- campers and skiers will shrill in glee) and yes again the Zoo which I've already explained wouldn't destroy the environment like some eco-nuts around here suspect.

And for the record its Scarberian who said it'd take developing the park to support the subway which are really RTs which would not damage an acre of parkland due to its own ROW on Zoo property :rolleyes .

Two wildly opposing opinions from one poster wildly lost in his own fantasy land.

The only person living in his own fantasy land is the one that'd sink billions into a DRL line that'll go underused west of Bathurst, run the BD line into the hinterland of Markberia to serve a shopping mall, yes folks a shopping mall already complete with its very own GO station and yet still needs a subway line, neglect nearly one-third of the city because its not close enough to Yonge St., ridicule the ingenious Sheppard West-Hwy 27 area lines because it's a bad idea despite the fact that the connection between NYC and Pearson is done quicker via south Rexdale and yet for the sake of ten people at Jane-Finch having to ride down for 2 mins to reach it thinks I'm playing connect-the-dots when he's proposing absurdities "Canada's Wonderland...why not...it's just another 5kms" (Maple-Major Mac before Morningside?) and few condos at Cosburn-who was griping about everywhere there's some condos needs a subway again?- and the list goes on.

An elevated subway at Yonge & Eglinton? Yeah, that'll be popular...

See unlike you I have a real enthusiasm for all aspects of planning including station design. That's the best part! I envison it everytime I'm in the area. Now that the bus terminus has been relocated don't you think the land vaccated could support a platform? This would allow above ground connection to the Yonge-Eglinton Centre and Canada Square, forming tri-level transit in one of the city's densest neighbourhoods. The link to the Yonge line would be via demantling the wall adjacent to Cinnabon. Elevated subways would so work along Eglinton given its hilly nature. Mount Pleasant and Sunnybrook (Bayview) would also run into Moore Place and Sunnybrook Plaza respectively with sound-deminishers installed to reduce noise pollution. I've even thought beyond subway technology putting a people-mover at Sunnybrook to shuttle people between the hospital and the subway, similarly Centenary Hosp. would be linked to West Hill Stn. We can no longer afford to see spaces as fixed premanent constants, we must transform wherever possible if the progression of Toronto on a whole depends on it!

If it's so doomed, why is it on your map?

Good God man I told you already my map is a combination of existing proposals already floating around city officials, the TTC's plans, other transit fans ideas and my own recommendations. I support a line to York U, no farther- if politicians are placating to the fat cats in Woodbridge they may as well veer the line along Hwy 7 to serve there. Does that make any sense? The buck should stop at York U and only after every other option is explored.

And half a million daily rides for the Queen line? That's optimistic, to say the least.

Shocking, I know. No one wants to even attempt it cause they know it'll be a massive success and no one does what's in the best interest of the majority of city-dwellers anyway, only the handful of 905ers. At least half the people riding everything from YUS, BD, GO and all south of Bloor TTC routes would ride the Queen line, more still if we add your DRL-thingy.

So now tell me which is farther, Mississauga from Kipling, or Vaughan from Downsview.

Vaughan is alot closer to becoming a reality as long as Peel refuses to help fund a Mississauga extension and YR does. However I don't see why an extension to Sherway couldn't be done first, it'd cost around $250 million if ran above ground leaving a ton of money left over for MT BRT and even possibly a Hwy 27 ROW between Sherway and Albion Mall via Renforth/Pearson diversion.

European routes are faster because of the tendency for the tracks to be in their own ROW.

Would that seriously work in Toronto though? The SRT is literally a streetcar 'subway' too but is largely underused intermediately while parallel bus routes see alot of traffic. All the new ROWs proposed are for the lakeshore areas (Queens Quay East, Exhibition) where there aren't alot of density. Spadina with its own ROW is still at the mercy of pesky stop lights, unless that problem's eliminated Toronto streetcar routes will never succeed in speed, that and too many stops in places and too few in others.

I have pictures from Slovakia, Czech Rep, Austria, and Hungry... Rarely do I see European LRTs going underground, unless you mean the ones that they call subways

I was refering primarily to Western Europe and I guess its up to interpretation what one considers a subway but if streetcar lines are included in a subway system map you tend to think of them as such.

 

[roch5220]

Would that seriously work in Toronto though? The SRT is literally a streetcar 'subway' too but is largely underused intermediately while parallel bus routes see alot of traffic. All the new ROWs proposed are for the lakeshore areas (Queens Quay East, Exhibition) where there aren't alot of density. Spadina with its own ROW is still at the mercy of pesky stop lights, unless that problem's eliminated Toronto streetcar routes will never succeed in speed, that and too many stops in places and too few in others.

I wouldn't consider the SRT as such, and it wouldn't be a good example either as it doesn't follow a street grid. It is hard to put all of the lines on its on ROW like on King or Queen, however, they can tinker around with wider streets like Adelaide, Jarvis, and University Ave. Also, in more surbaban areas it is easier, the downtowner coming from Long Branch could be easily converted with increased frequency, as for the most part, some of the stops anyways prohibited people from driving fully on the streetcar tracks lane. I also wouldn't support putiing ROWs on King and Queen downtown even though based upon the ST Clair route, they could probably due it but delivery/service trucks have to be able to stop in front of office buildings.

The other option would be to convert two way streets like yonge and bay, into one way only streets. Then you could have one lane dedicated to ROW lrt, one lane for parking (in non rushour) and 2 lanes for driving (3 in rush hour).