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It's cute for him to bring up the whole subway alternative - like, how much luck did the city have in getting any new subway lines built in the core?

M II A II R II K said:
Maybe having frequent crossover tracks can allow streetcars to pass each other.
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Not really necessary where there are frequent opportunities to detour - i.e. the core. Maybe a good idea for the shoulder areas of the city though.

AoD
 
M II A II R II K said:
Streetcars nothing but outdated technology kept alive by political forces

July 18, 2014

By Terence Corcoran
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I thought the National Post was more of a pros and cons newspaper than a right wing rag like the Toronto Sun. What happened? That streetcar reliability graphic is a joke. Why not a graphic showing how many H5 and H6 subways are still in service out of the original order. Or perhaps buses purchased 25 years ago still in service. Or perhaps automobiles purchased in the 70s and 80s still on the road, or scrap. I have seen bunches of buses on Eglinton as well which is what happens if you don't keep conflicting traffic out of the way of transit vehicles, for example if there is an accident on route or significant congestion at a single point..
 
Honestly a really stupid article.

Firstly, subways are also rail-based technology from the 19th century, the same tech as streetcars.

There are 4 inherent advantages of using rail over a trolley bus:

1. Higher vehicle capacity (even compared to articulated or double decker buses). The fact is the standard streetcar is much longer than the any standard articulated bus.
2. Ability to run multi unit trains (which subways do and Eglinton LRT will and the Bloor streetcar did)
3. Smoother ride
4. Can go into narrow tunnels, which is why rails are generally used on subways. (Even rubber tire metros are kind of on rails). We take advantage of this with subways, streetcars that go underground (Spadina streetcar), and LRTs which go underground.
 
I don't want to imagine the disaster we'd be going through if we had gotten rid of streetcars in the 70's. The streetcars today can hardly meet the capacity demands. Imagine if we had replaced them with lower capacity busses. It would be madness.
 
EnviroTO said:
I thought the National Post was more of a pros and cons newspaper than a right wing rag like the Toronto Sun. What happened? That streetcar reliability graphic is a joke. Why not a graphic showing how many H5 and H6 subways are still in service out of the original order. Or perhaps buses purchased 25 years ago still in service. Or perhaps automobiles purchased in the 70s and 80s still on the road, or scrap. I have seen bunches of buses on Eglinton as well which is what happens if you don't keep conflicting traffic out of the way of transit vehicles, for example if there is an accident on route or significant congestion at a single point..
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Though to be fair, Peter Kuitenbrouwer provided "balance" in *his* piece.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/0...t-the-problem-too-much-automobile-traffic-is/

Of course, it's Terence Corcoran who has the lead story--then again, it's Terence Corcoran.
 
The actual passengers do not like buses. Whenever streetcars are replaced by buses, and only buses, ridership goes down, sometimes way down. We've seen it in North American cities. We've seen it in Toronto.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I don't want to imagine the disaster we'd be going through if we had gotten rid of streetcars in the 70's. The streetcars today can hardly meet the capacity demands. Imagine if we had replaced them with lower capacity busses. It would be madness.
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Unfortunately the whole thing works on the theory of induced demand. The supply will dictate the demand. Thus, even with bigger or more frequent streetcars the crowding will be the same as it is now. As soon as people realize the streetcars aren't as crowded or are more reliable, more people will use them and the crowding will be exactly the same. Induced demand. Look it up if you're not familiar with the theory. I'm all for replacing older equipment with newer more efficient equipment, but don't expect it to reduce congestion any more than building new highways reduces traffic congestion.
 
RE: Bombardier

I've been looking to sell my tanking stock in the company, and this might be what pushes me to do it. Bombardier is "scared" that they may face increased international competition, yet they have signed so many international contracts themselves in mass transit that it is not even funny! While a different plant, in Kingston they are building monorails for foreign transit systems in Brazil and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps if they got the former lines running in time for the World Cup, they could have an international showpiece creating so much interest for their technology that they have to move some production to Thunder Bay just to meet demand. Instead the only news which came about was a fatal construction accident.

Maybe some extra competition might get us subway trains with doors which close without challenging the driver, or with announcements which say "Terminal station Finch." Seriously, that sounds like a bad French translation or something!
 
One thing I noticed about this series were the people who were taking streetcars long distances, several kilometers. Due to crosstown traffic congestion along with frequent stops, I rarely take the streetcar more than a couple of kilometers, tops. Let's just say I am going from Queen and Dufferin to Queen and Broadview, even assuming there is no construction I would take the bus to the subway, across to Broadview station, and then the streetcar back down. Taking it across downtown is simply an exercise in frustration.

That said, some of the complaints The Putz found were for St. Clair, which has its own dedicated lane. A quick look at its frequency on the TTC's site shows its frequency scheduled at every 2-3 minutes westbound during morning rush hour. Considering the length of light cycles and regular far side stops, boarding time, etc. it is no wonder that line bunches up! One missed light or passenger digging for her token, and three trams are stuck together.

If a newspaper or TTC themselves wanted to figure out the 5Ws of bunching, get three people to ride three consecutive streetcars with full schedules printed out (a bit of a tricky task since the TTC doesn't make grid schedules public, thus requiring lots of fooling around with Google Maps to extract this data). This way they could identify the chokepoints and what causes them.
 
Ideally, a subway in that vicinity would accommodate both King and Queen traffic. All these streetcars will do is just accommodate large hoards of people to slowly share the road with other traffic.

Streetcars should only exist in its own ROW, without too many frequent stops.
 
Electrify said:
One thing I noticed about this series were the people who were taking streetcars long distances, several kilometers. Due to crosstown traffic congestion along with frequent stops, I rarely take the streetcar more than a couple of kilometers, tops. Let's just say I am going from Queen and Dufferin to Queen and Broadview, even assuming there is no construction I would take the bus to the subway, across to Broadview station, and then the streetcar back down. Taking it across downtown is simply an exercise in frustration.
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Depends on time of day. Perhaps at the worst of rush hour. Though that's 6.5 km.
 
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