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buschic

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Actually I do think that they are mindless twits that don't have the slightest clue what's going on (your words, I wouldn't have put it quite like that) -- have thought so for a while (not saying Vancouver's are any better -- the mindless folks in Surrey are only concerned about cost too when it comes to extending the Skytrain in Surrey -- they want LRT strictly because it costs less, not because it's a better "fit" for the community which is a bunch of hooey). It's obvious when the powers that be come out and say that you can serve more people with seven LRT stops vs. three subway stops when that is quite obviously not true. You just end up lengthening the travel time by stopping at stops no one will use when you can use buses to get people to other stations and make them more efficiently used. Then when one comes out and says that it's just too expensive to build a subway when no one rides the existing one, there's another example. Obviously no one rides Sheppard since it DOESN'T GO ANYWHERE. It's like running a VIA train between London and Woodstock only and wondering why no one is riding it. If it went even west to Downsview/Sheppard West, it would already have much more ridership than it does now because you'd have another connection to the trains downtown which are much less busy -- it would serve as a relief line. And once the Vaughan extension opens, you'd have an easier connection to York U. The TTC would also save money by having direct access to the Wilson Yard from the Sheppard line, which in itself would save oodles of money. While extending west, you could also extend east to Victoria Park, and prepare to extend further east once that's open. It would have to be a process that is planned out, which is the part that the powers that be have no idea how to do -- they just get in and have their own agenda and want to make changes for ideological reasons. Try telling the folks in New York that they can save money by making a subway extension with LRT -- won't fly and Toronto should be no different. World class cities use subways and subway-like technology. Calgary and Edmonton are reeling from the major downsides of LRT -- that they are at-grade and block traffic. More level crossing accidents can occur, which results in less reliable service. Also, you cannot run them in ATC due to having level crossings (not fully ATC anyway, you can have semi auto). Unfortunately they don't have much choice now and there's no point in switching to subway since the infrastructure is already there for LRT (would be similar arguments for extending an LRT with a subway -- the change of trains would not make it an efficient service).

As for the maintenance thing, they would absolutely be neglecting maintenance if they only do a tiny portion between two sets of crossovers each night. Go ahead and advocate for 24 hour service and then don't come back later when another 1995 happens due to a cracked track or something they would normally have caught during maintenance. Now I'm not saying it cannot be done ever, I'm just saying it's much more efficient to run buses overnight than running infrequent subways in order to maintain maintenance levels. Now you may be able to run "shuttle" trains between certain sections and provide a slightly more frequent service, which may be a good option (i.e. run trains from St. Andrew to Bloor Yonge on Line 1, then run separate trains from Bloor-Yonge to, say, Eglinton, and again from Eglinton to Finch or something like that. And leave the west side of Line 1 with nothing for now.) This would not be customer-friendly either, but it could provide an option. Or maybe a better option would be to run from St. Andrew or Union to Eglinton and back, pretty much single-tracking when possible except to allow trains in the opposite direction to pass (maybe at any passing pockets if there are any between there [bloor??]). 24 hour service should also be about customer friendliness, not just running service for the sake of running it -- it has to be usable or no one will use it.

Yeah, there's really no point in arguing with you at this point. You are so far removed from what happens in the real world that trying to continue to have any semblance of a rational conversation with you is just going to be wasting my time.

Have fun.

Dan

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And I stopped reading right there, because you are absolutely wrong.

That trains on the line right now are near capacity with standing loads in the morning rush (PM rush isn't quite so heavy as it tends to be more spread out time-wise). Yes, there is room to add more trains to the line in the headway if needed so it isn't at capacity like Line 1 is, but to say that no one uses that line is a load of steaming crap.

Once again, stop talking about the system here from half a continent away like you have any idea of what is actually happening here.

True but after really peak hours the subway line is dead

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I don't think that's true. It's not uncommon to see 2/3rds seated loads in both directions in the middle of the day and until 8 or 9 pm in the evening.

Dan

But we can all agree on that fact that there is no growth specific to this line. It would be nice to see some updated ridership numbers.
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But we can all agree on that fact that there is no growth specific to this line. It would be nice to see some updated ridership numbers.

TTC releases ridership numbers every year. They just released the 2014 ones a few days ago.

2014 daily ridership for the line was 47,680. This was down from 48,250 in 2013. and from 49,440 in 2012/2013. In 2011/2012 it was 50,410. Bessarion has also dropped again, down to 2,380 a day; I thought this would start to go up with the development around there (and there was a bit of a bump about 3 years ago).

Not surprisingly the SRT is also down (though perhaps it will now start to increase with the recent maintenance to improve reliability).

The most surprising change was that Dundas station is now 75,780 a day, up from 61,690 the previous year. Though it's more in line with historical numbers ... I don't know what would have lead it to have dropped for a couple of years, other than data issues. Still, that's higher than ever; being so much higher than King/Queen - at some point we'll have to start suggesting that the relief line should be going through Dundas not King!

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Err. I am talking about how to do maintenance when running 24 hours with ATC. I suggested that service from from Friday 6 AM to Sunday 9 PM continually without planned interruptions. Then I said at 9 PM, you close one side and run maintenance until end of service single-tracking on the open side (of course the location would vary depending on the maintenance plan and schedule). ...

Ah. Okay, that makes sense (though 9 pm might be too early, especially on Thursday through Saturday nights - but easy enough to establish the best times by checking the ridership at various times of day/week).

It's not an option though until the signalling conversion is completed. Which isn't scheduled until 2020 on Line 1 and years later on Line 2.

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Then what exactly would you call streetcars? Those are trams and work well. The subways provide the base service, and the streetcars serve also busy routes.

I don't understand your point. Streetcars, as we call them here, are what a tram is to Europeans.

A tram, and an LRT, though some may choose to differentiate between the two for reasons not entirely clear to me, are one and the same. Therefore, by saying that trams work well in Europe, you are contradicting the following point:

k... It's people like on this subforum that are the reason Toronto will get a dumb LRT system since they think they know what they are talking about. I dare you all to go to the world class cities that have the mix of TRAMS and subways and ask them to extend a subway line with LRT and see what they say.

That is precisely what occurs in Prague:

Prague-Tram-Map.png

Subway line A, in the top left corner of the map, terminates at Dejvická, a stop that is shared with routes 2, 20, and 26, which continue further westward. Is that not, essentially, what is being proposed with the Sheppard tram?

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One thing is different. Toronto has too much traffic that impedes the operation of streetcars and LRT. Smaller European cities have less of that problem.

I think Toronto can have a good LRT system but certain busy location need to be grade separated. Eg. Finch West around the 400 is a mess. The LRT should be tunneled to avoid that kind of traffic. What if they have a truck blocking the track or any collisions with them? Also a surface connection between Queensway to Lakeshore for the Waterfront West LRT is probably a bad idea. They should elevate that section.

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One thing is different. Toronto has too much traffic that impedes the operation of streetcars and LRT. Smaller European cities have less of that problem.

Are you saying that Paris and London - both of which have recently put LRT on the surface without tunelling - don't have too much traffic?

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One thing is different. Toronto has too much traffic that impedes the operation of streetcars and LRT. Smaller European cities have less of that problem.

Actually, it is the traffic organization and the emphasis on truly prioritizing transit that are different in Europe.

To give a simple example, since someone mentioned the tram system in Prague: on most two-lane streets with streetcar tracks on them (similar to most of our downtown streetcar thoroughfares), the streetcar track is generally not to be used as a regular traffic lane by motorists. It is reserved for trams only and the rule is enforced. If you need to make a left-turn, you do so from the lane adjacent to the curb, giving priority to the trams coming from behind you on your left, if necessary. You don't hold a vehicle ,with 100+ people on it, until you make that turn.

Similarly, on dedicated sections of track (think Spadina, Harbourfront etc.), the trams often have priority at pedestrian crossings!! In Brno (Czech Republic's second largest city), there were a couple of cases of inattentive pedestrians run over by trams, while crossing the tracks, with the tram operators found not at fault for doing so. So in that case, the phrase POZOR TRAMVAJ, is not to be taken lightly.

The upside is that the vehicles are often so punctual you can easily set your watch based on the time they show up.

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Actually, it is the traffic organization and the emphasis on truly prioritizing transit that are different in Europe.

To give a simple example, since someone mentioned the tram system in Prague: on most two-lane streets with streetcar tracks on them (similar to most of our downtown streetcar thoroughfares), the streetcar track is generally not to be used as a regular traffic lane by motorists. It is reserved for trams only and the rule is enforced. If you need to make a left-turn, you do so from the lane adjacent to the curb, giving priority to the trams coming from behind you on your left, if necessary. You don't hold a vehicle with 100+ people on it, until you make that turn.

Similarly, on dedicated sections of track (think Spadina, Harbourfront etc.), the trams often have priority at pedestrian crossings!! In Brno (Czech Republic's second largest city), there were a couple of cases of inattentive pedestrians run over by trams, while crossing the tracks, with the tram operators found not at fault for doing so. So in that case, the phrase POZOR TRAMVAJ, is not to be taken lightly.

Yes that's true but if we have too many cars, it's not going to work. Traffic is going to backlog and we'll have cars making lefts that block the tram tracks. They don't want to take over parking spaces plus the traffic engineers in TO are in favour of auto traffic, not public transit. BUT if people intend to block the tracks to save themselves time, it's not going to work. We'll need very strict enforcement and the cops don't care AND they don't want someone else to do their job either.

People get run over on Spadina and QQ too. Some people here are just idiots and get run over unfortunately.

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Meanwhile, in Toronto: wanting to avoid the rush hour crowds at Bloor or St. George, I made the mistake of taking the streetcar from Harbord & Spadina to Union Station.

Trip time: 41 minutes on a dedicated row (on a new streetcar, so the times for loading and off-loading passengers at various stops were supposedly kept at a minimum). There were no accidents, blockages or other unusual events on the route, so this is clearly a regular occurence.

Meanwhile, the service summary indicates a round-trip time (so going from Spadina Stn to Union Stn and back to Spadina Stn) of 60 minutes!!

The schedule is not worth the paper it is printed on.

So the inability to maintain service reliability in this case has nothing to do with "traffic" (whatever that word means) and everything to do with bad scheduling

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Meanwhile, in Toronto: wanting to avoid the rush hour crowds at Bloor or St. George, I made the mistake of taking the streetcar from Harbord & Spadina to Union Station.

Trip time: 41 minutes on a dedicated row (on a new streetcar, so the times for loading and off-loading passengers at various stops were supposedly kept at a minimum). There were no accidents, blockages or other unusual events on the route, so this is clearly a regular occurence.

Meanwhile, the service summary indicates a round-trip time (so going from Spadina Stn to Union Stn and back to Spadina Stn) of 60 minutes!!

The schedule is not worth the paper it is printed on.

So the inability to maintain service reliability in this case has nothing to do with "traffic" (whatever that word means) and everything to do with bad scheduling

The Spadina Slowcar is never worth taking from end to end. Now that the 510 is POP, it's also questionable if a transfer at Spadina Station is even valid for fare inspection at Union Station. Given that it can take 45 minutes to get from end to end, using that transfer would make it look like you stopped over plus going the wrong way thus invalid. Imagine getting written up for a ticket for just doing that. It would be worst than getting denied entry. (Transfers do have the rule that the most direct path must be taken.)

The 510 really needs transit priority, especially the side streets.

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Traffic is certainly a problem. Definitely not on Spadina, but definitely on the other streets. A couple of weeks back I had the misfortune of being in a (personal) car on Bathurst. The portion south of Bloor Street was absolutely atrocious - I believe it was at King that we waited 4!!! minutes while the person in the car ahead of us waited to make a turn. I feel bad for the tram ops on that route. The scheduled headways at that time (Saturday afternoon) are supposed to be 4 minutes... I'll be damned if I saw more than 2 streetcars on the entire journey down to Queen's Quay going the other way.

I also have multiple experiences with sitting on a streetcar on Queen and slowly crawling along. Most recently was back in June, on a weekday afternoon, when I took the 501 west from University, until an accident required us to divert via Shaw to King. I'd heard many horror stories about traffic on King, but things went quite well, it was Queen that was the nightmarish portion. Suffice to say, on my way back to Union station later in the evening I opted for the King car instead!!!

The Prague/Bratislava model of dedicated lanes is definitely an appealing one.

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Wow, ok. Maybe because I'm submerged in the real world of how ATC works and how 24 hours has been discussed here with an ATC system means that I'm not in the real world? Ok... It's people like on this subforum that are the reason Toronto will get a dumb LRT system since they think they know what they are talking about. I dare you all to go to the world class cities that have the mix of TRAMS and subways and ask them to extend a subway line with LRT and see what they say.

No, because the only thing you have your head submerged in is your ass. Do you really and truly think that just because Vancouver can or can't do something that no one else can either? Are you really that daft?

I dare you to do a bit of travelling - or hell, even just a bit of reading - and see what other cities have done. Because newsflash - "extending a subway line with an LRT" is a pretty common situation where the ridership or cost doesn't justify extending the subway in the first place.

And please, loose the "world class cities" bullshit. It really makes you look even more clueless.

Dan

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Which always makes me laugh because allowing cars to park on streets is one of the worst things you can do towards the movement of cars.

Apparently in a computer model simulation they had for Melbourne, they discovered that removing parking allowed faster car movements which queued up at the next intersection and impeding tram operation.

Of course Toronto is different and wouldn't have the same results. There is just too many cars here.

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This is pretty much my point. But then the savings of using LRT ends up going into tunnelling/elevating which might as well have been subway then.

I disagree. LRT vs Subway isn't just speed. It's also about flexibility, urban development, future planning and urban realm.

Most people think speed is important but we also need to develop our city for economically benefits.

Flexibility- LRT allows certain the line to be grade separated like the Eglinton central tunnel and also on surface. Don Mills/Eglinton Station is a good example how the LRT can dodge traffic for $150-200m more.

Cost - A full subway would cost a lot more. Subways also have very sparse stations requiring a parallel bus. Grade separated portion cost more but it will not be as much as a full subway. SmartTrack is esteimated to cost $5b for the western alignment along Eglinton and that doesn't even reach the subway. For $1.3b, the LRT can reach the airport. Metrolinx can throw more money to elevated the intersection near the 427 and that would cost half a billion more. Which is no where near a fully grade separated link.

Urban Development - We don't want towers and condos to go up at every station. This is exactly what subways bring. It really doesn't help the city when these expensive condos are being bought out as investment properties. LRT encourages more midrise and townhouses which are better for the burbs. People would be close to transit with equal development along the whole corridor instead or just around the stations. This has been the theme for Transit City.

Urban Realm - LRT fits better in the city. People can actually see transit along with its riders. They can have bike lanes and trails. Also the stops are easy to access without steps or the need or elevators. Subways are just too deep down. If youre going to take a few stops, all the time saved from a subway would be wasted climbing stairs considering TBMs put stations 3 stories under.

Future Planning - LRT are more easily to expand and branch off. A network of multiple LRTs provides more benefit than one single subway trunk line. With LRTs everywhere, the needs of driving would greatly reduce. With subways, no one want to ride a bus to the station. It doesn't drag people out of a car. The whole point is also to develop the burbs instead of creating high speed links to the downtown core.

One thing about Toronto is the city is just to sparse and large. Most world class city don't have subways running 30km+ from taking a full hour to get from Kipling to Kennedy. It's not efficient to commute on the subway for an hour. We should focus more on RER for burb to core travel and LRT for suburban trips. Subways in the burb makes no sense. Hence Sheppard has no growth specific to that line. Any growth we see is related to the increase to generate TTC ridership which is not specific to that line. (Which means if Sheppard Line wasn't built, the riders would still be there!)

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This debate is going nowhere.

The fact is that LRT - as a mode - has been given a horrible reputation, primarily by a former mayor whose only interest in transit was getting those 'damn streetcars' out of the way of his SUV.

The Sheppard LRT is not going to get built - despite all the fine words we're hearing from Metrolinx or others.

That is simply the political reality of the situation.

I would be astounded if the Finch LRT proceeds according to plan. Local political support for the line seems lukewarm at best.

The fact that construction is slated to begin in 2017, one year before the next round of provincial & municipal election also speaks volumes about the province's commitment to this project.

The case for extending the Sheppard subway further east is weak at best. Ridership is not there. It never was and never will. Once the Scarborough subway opens, I expect the demand on the 85/190 will drop, making the case for extending the Sheppard line even weaker.

Conclusion: no new LRTs for Toronto until at least the mid 2020's. I suppose if the Eglinton line (and especially the surface portion) performs well once it opens, political support for LRT may re-emerge at that point in time. Until then, we will continue to ride buses and debate where to put the next couple of kilometres of subway lines.

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This debate is going nowhere.

The fact is that LRT - as a mode - has been given a horrible reputation, primarily by a former mayor whose only interest in transit was getting those 'damn streetcars' out of the way of his SUV.

The Sheppard LRT is not going to get built - despite all the fine words we're hearing from Metrolinx or others.

That is simply the political reality of the situation.

I would be astounded if the Finch LRT proceeds according to plan. Local political support for the line seems lukewarm at best.

The fact that construction is slated to begin in 2017, one year before the next round of provincial & municipal election also speaks volumes about the province's commitment to this project.

The case for extending the Sheppard subway further east is weak at best. Ridership is not there. It never was and never will. Once the Scarborough subway opens, I expect the demand on the 85/190 will drop, making the case for extending the Sheppard line even weaker.

Conclusion: no new LRTs for Toronto until at least the mid 2020's. I suppose if the Eglinton line (and especially the surface portion) performs well once it opens, political support for LRT may re-emerge at that point in time. Until then, we will continue to ride buses and debate where to put the next couple of kilometres of subway lines.

They might as well extend the Subway to Consumer or VP and run artic buses with POP and transit priority. For trouble spots, build some bypass lanes. Essentially BRT-lite is good enough for Sheppard for the next 20 years. Once the Scarborough subway opens, run the 190 as Sheppard East Rocket to Morningside/UTSC with POP.

Problem solved. No LRT/Subway needed.

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