ronaldmcgddonald

I've seen a suicide at St. Clair station, southbound track. I was at the front of the train, so I know what happened. I ended up having to walk from St. Clair to St. Andrew Station because of that. If anyone remembers a subway delay around the dinner hour on June 20 (or 21st, I cannot remember), that was probably it.

Oh, fatal? I wasn't aware of what happened, but I was on a train that was affected. When it left Union, we were told it was going all the way to Aldershot. Only after Clarkson did they announce that it wouldn't go any farther than Oakville. What bothers me is that 680NEWS reported the accident before the train even left Union, so I would have thought that GO Transit would have reported it earlier. I guess they just forgot to.

How are toll booths superior? I would think that they would cause congestion, with all of the vehicles having to slow down and manually pay. Are you upset from the driver's perspective, the administration's, or about the follow-up payment process?

Oct 31st, around 11:30 PM, there was some sort of delay announced that affected trains southbound out of Queen's Park.

When I saw "Halloween stories for TTC", I immediately thought of all of the noisy drunk people on the subway last night...

I guess what I've really been wondering the most about all of this is, how much better is LRT over bus service? I've got to check out Spadina to see for myself. I'm curious to see how much better it is from a passenger perspective.

So if they're considering extending the tunneled portion, perhaps it would be a good idea to just build an RT line? It's pretty much a waste to spend billions on a tunnel, and then run articulated streetcars through it. If anything, the tunnel should be built with conversion to RT in the future in mind.

I do not feel that snide remarks such as this constructively communicate a difference of opinion.

If the province is willing to foot the bill for a subway on Eglinton, then I think the TTC should stop complaining and thank them for it. It's better to spend $10 billion on a subway now than to spend $2 billion to install inferior LRT technology, only to have it removed in 20 years and replaced by a subway because of overcrowding. Subways are just getting more expensive to build, the sooner we get them finished, the better.

It sounds like the driver just made a mistake with driving away, he/she probably didn't realize that the baby had boarded the bus.

Really? That's excellent. I'm glad that they were thinking ahead.

I suppose it's a bit disappointing that Eglinton will only get a light rail line, but I'm glad to see that a downtown relief line is still being considered. I just don't want to see billions of dollars spent on a tunnel under Eglinton, just for light rail. I think Metrolinx and the TTC should consider constructing the underground portion of the Eglinton line with an expected upgrade to subway in the future. It's better to spend a bit more money now then to have to spend much more in the future basically re-tunneling the entire line for subway.

That's interesting. If the TTC reported on the delay as early as 10:07, but I heard announcements about it after 11:30, then how could Citynews be correct about the 20 minutes under the train? Maybe it's because there was an investigation/inspection afterwards that took more time.

Yeah, I was on the YUS, but south of there. The delay was still present when I left the line at around 11:35 PM. According to Citynews, a man was trapped underneath a train at North York Centre. Here's the news page that I found that out from, it's at the bottom of the page: http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_27082.aspx

In my opinion, I'm in full support of subway construction. It's an investment in the future. A subway line is usable for well over 100 years, as evidenced by some of the lines in London, England, for example. As time goes on, subways are becoming harder and harder to build, politically and financially. I think they need to get the infrastructure in place when they still can, instead of just hoping that an LRT line will do forever. It's going to be easier to build it now than later, so I applaud their plans to get it going.

I read that in the Globe also today, and I'm really surprised that there was no mention of plans for dealing with increasing the capacity of the YUS line. Also, I think that 15 minute GO service all day is nice, but not a good use of money. I use GO a lot outside of peak hours, and the hourly-service Lakeshore trains are nowhere near full most of the time. Staying on topic, I think that this is going to be one of the most intense and interesting transit arguments that I've seen in a long time. I just hope it results in a better plan, not the opposite.

Well, they seem pretty intent on building it as LRT. I was thinking of the conversion to ART or subway later on, not from ART to subway (because it's not being built as ART in the first place).

It's definitely cheaper to do it that way, but it's a real pain to enforce. Either they're going to have to spend a lot of money enforcing it, or they'll lose a lot on fare evasion. It's one thing for GO Transit, with their fares being anywhere from less than $4 to over $15, but the TTC doesn't lose nearly as much for every person that evades paying the fare, thus making fare enforcement less cost-effective. Is the TTC's POP system still in it's trial phase, or is it permanently implemented now? Another issue that I forgot to mention is the difference in platform height between streetcar platforms and RT train platforms. That could require extensive renovation to change.

Perhaps they'll just install the ones with the extension displayed on them, and just cover up those lights for now.

Interestingly, the TTC claims in this PDF that the distances between underground stations (which is the section that I think should be able to be converted to RT in the future) will be similar to a subway line. Here's the exact quote from the PDF: That means that the station spacing will be sufficient for an RT line, which seems to solve one problem. Another issue is regarding the station structure: Will the stations be like subway stations, and have a fare-paid area (much faster for offloading/loading passengers), or will they be like the Queen's Quay station, where you have to pay in the vehicle as if it were on the street? If the stations were built using the second format that I mentioned, it would result in a very inefficient and slow passenger loading procedure. All passengers would have to file in though a single door to pay a far, show a card, etc. With fare-paid areas, all doors of the vehicle can be opened at once, which is much faster and efficient. Yet another fundamental issue lies with the platform length. The platforms will probably be just long enough to fit articulated LRVs of maybe 3 segments in length (that's what I remember the TTC saying that they are considering using on Eglinton). Still, those platforms could be retroactively extended for a full RT system, like how North York Centre was built.

Does anyone know if the TTC plans on building the Eglinton tunnel large enough to handle a conversion to a full subway line in the future? I think that if they're spending hundreds of millions (possibly over a billion) of dollars on a tunnel, they should invest in the future and build it to accommodate a rapid-transit conversion in the future. Another issue would be the stations, and other similar infrastructure. So, has anyone heard anything about if the Eglinton line tunnel will be built with that in mind?

It's actually cheaper to use tokens (I would have said tickets but, you know...) than the metropass if you're just commuting to and from work, 5 days per week. At $2.25 per token, that's $4.50/day. That comes out to $90/month, assuming that you work 5 days per week, every week. The metropass is only better value if you use the TTC for more than a twice daily commute on weekdays.

I know this is a bit late/old, but it's somewhat interesting. Back in June, I was in the front of a T1 train going southbound into St Clair station. There was a man at track level about halfway down the platform length. The operator didn't have a lot of time to react, as the train goes around a bend coming into St Clair. As the train slowed down, the guy actually ran at the train, and got clobbered by it. When the train came to a stop, only the front two cars were actually in the station. Luckily, I was in the front, so I was able to leave the train. The incident led to be having to walk for 45 minutes.

How much will you be spending per month on fuel?