Eglinton Crosstown line

[smallspy]

5 hours ago, Turtle said:

Just to let you guys know...line5 eglinton LRT is scheduled to open in July 2023, training of operators is scheduled to start for Jan 2023, but there hasn't been any notices of such.

There's absolutely been notices. I have two friends who have received notices about their impending training in January.

 

Of course, they also received the first notices back in August or so for the first round of training, and look where that got them.

Dan

[Turtle]

1 hour ago, smallspy said:

There's absolutely been notices. I have two friends who have received notices about their impending training in January.

 

Of course, they also received the first notices back in August or so for the first round of training, and look where that got them.

Dan

Notices of what? They did pretests back in May 2022. How could your friends get notices of training in August when ttc OTC rail wasn't even started their training then? OTC just recently finished up their training for it, which started at the end of Sept 2022.

 

ttc OTC rail wasn't even allowed to operate in the central portion either, Metrolinx didn't allow them there.

[Turtle]

I might as well break it to you guys right now...they are adopting some operating rules from streetcar to the lrt(s). Specifically the ones I know of have to do with speeds through intersections, speeds passing a stopped lrv, and platform bypass speeds...all "less than 25km/h"

 

Sorry

[Wayside Observer]

1 hour ago, Turtle said:

I might as well break it to you guys right now...they are adopting some operating rules from streetcar to the lrt(s). Specifically the ones I know of have to do with speeds through intersections, speeds passing a stopped lrv, and platform bypass speeds...all "less than 25km/h"

 

Sorry

So much for having a fast European style LRT and take advantage of all that infrastructure and private right of way to blow by the road traffic.  The idea was nice while it lasted.

[T3G]

Honestly, the more of this lunacy we see, the more I sympathize, if not agree, with the folk pushing for subways deep into suburbia. When you see a system that's as slow and scared of its own shadow as the TTC's streetcar network is is, why in your right mind would you advocate to have that in your neighbourhood? Especially a line like Eglinton, we've spent how many billions on tunneling it and the eastern fringes are going to be as slow and unpleasant as the legacy streetcar network?

We are spending billions on subways to Scarborough because the TTC does an intolerably awful job of promoting streetcars as a viable form of travel. If we had a streetcar network like untold cities in Europe, with private lanes and transit priority, maybe people wouldn't have been so taken in by the Ford nation subways subways subways kool-aid.

[Wayside Observer]

1 hour ago, T3G said:

Honestly, the more of this lunacy we see, the more I sympathize, if not agree, with the folk pushing for subways deep into suburbia. When you see a system that's as slow and scared of its own shadow as the TTC's streetcar network is is, why in your right mind would you advocate to have that in your neighbourhood? Especially a line like Eglinton, we've spent how many billions on tunneling it and the eastern fringes are going to be as slow and unpleasant as the legacy streetcar network?

We are spending billions on subways to Scarborough because the TTC does an intolerably awful job of promoting streetcars as a viable form of travel. If we had a streetcar network like untold cities in Europe, with private lanes and transit priority, maybe people wouldn't have been so taken in by the Ford nation subways subways subways kool-aid.

The Toronto Star had an op-ed to that effect yesterday:

Queen and King streetcars show Toronto why the subway is the better way: it works  (cached version)

The first line:  "It’s tough being a supporter of public transit right now."  That pretty much captures the current situation with the TTC in a nutshell.

I was thinking about the Eglinton Crosstown line importing practices from streetcar operations when I stepped outside a little bit ago and got blasted with the cold.  Are they going to be opening all doors at every stop on the surface as well?  And let all the heat/air conditioning out every time the way they do on the streetcars?

[Xtrazsteve]

I really don't get this rule. They could slow down a bit when proceed through an intersection but once the cab is in the intersection, it wouldn't be as unsafe to speed up. They better not have the entire 60m (or 90m) train to crawl through the intersection would be dreadful. Time for ML to revoke TTC's operating agreement!

I don't know if I support TTC operating these LRT anymore, management have gone downhill enough I don't care if they privatize it. It might actually get better knowing they have an obligations to meet certain quotas to get their contracts renewed. The TTC however can do what they want and have all the vehicles at one end cause the managers aren't getting fired and TTC will still operate them tomorrow.

[T3G]

Why would they need to slow down at all through an intersection? Other traffic doesn't, including the TTC's own buses! If you painted bus lanes on Eglinton East you'd get a faster riding experience for much less than what we ended up spending on the Crosstown.

The TTC is deeply incompetent, but don't go taking the idea too far the other way either. Stupidity, laziness, lack of accountability, corruption, etc. are all hallmarks of many private sector institutions too. Remember that this whole boondoggle (*gestures vaguely at everything*) happened under the watch of a P3 consortium. There is a lot of blame to go around.

[lip]

5 hours ago, Turtle said:

I might as well break it to you guys right now...they are adopting some operating rules from streetcar to the lrt(s). Specifically the ones I know of have to do with speeds through intersections, speeds passing a stopped lrv, and platform bypass speeds...all "less than 25km/h"

 

Sorry

If this is indeed true, i'm in full support of not having the TTC operating this line when the initial agreement expires and Metrolinx can go hand it over to whomever. This ass-backwards organization cant get one damn thing right when it comes to operations can they?

Let me guess, are they going to stop and proceed in front of special trackwork on the above ground section as well? Or maybe 2 LRV trains wont be able to pass each other at the same time around special trackwork either.

Wish I could get my hands on the SOP handbook to see what other idiocy is in there.

[Xtrazsteve]

2 hours ago, T3G said:

Why would they need to slow down at all through an intersection? Other traffic doesn't, including the TTC's own buses! If you painted bus lanes on Eglinton East you'd get a faster riding experience for much less than what we ended up spending on the Crosstown.

They operate left of the left turn lane. They try to avoid this: 

The line have so many excess LRVs, they could just let it happen, sue the drivers for all the damage and repair them in time. 

 

[IRT_BMT_IND]

It seems obvious to me that the TTC has become gun-shy regarding the streetcars at least partially due to a string of serious (and mostly well publicized) collisions, either streetcar-streetcar or streetcar-auto (even though most streetcar-auto collisions are not the TTC's fault AFAIK and instead mostly caused by drivers either ignoring signs or jumping lights). Is this because the TTC is self insured and sick of dealing with ever increasing insurance costs?

And given typical GTA driving habits I can't imagine there won't be frequent auto-LRV collisions on the surface section, it really should have been designed like the LRT lines in Calgary and Edmonton with crossing gates at intersections.

[T3G]

8 hours ago, Xtrazsteve said:

They operate left of the left turn lane. They try to avoid this: 

If they are so afraid of this happening that they kneecapped their own operations because of it, maybe we should be asking ourselves why this was built as a non grade separated LRT instead of subway.

If there were actual standards for getting a license in this region and sufficient enforcement to catch the bozos that slip through the cracks there would be so few cars on the road we wouldn't need transit only lanes.

[Turtle]

Speculation:

 

They are going to limit the speed through switches on an alternate route to 10km/h and other sharp turns (portal in the east end?)

 

[M. Parsons]

On 12/13/2022 at 6:17 AM, IRT_BMT_IND said:

And given typical GTA driving habits I can't imagine there won't be frequent auto-LRV collisions on the surface section, it really should have been designed like the LRT lines in Calgary and Edmonton with crossing gates at intersections.

Careful with Edmonton! The Valley Line is still under construction. It doesn't have crossing gates at intersections and it has already had 1 reported collision. 

[WoodbineSecondExit]

On 12/12/2022 at 5:47 PM, Turtle said:

I might as well break it to you guys right now...they are adopting some operating rules from streetcar to the lrt(s). Specifically the ones I know of have to do with speeds through intersections, speeds passing a stopped lrv, and platform bypass speeds...all "less than 25km/h"

 

Sorry

Hah! And I was asked by another member if I needed a hug when I made my latest post last month blasting the idiots at streetcar management. The people running the system are complete morons who are out of touch with the people on the street. Put them in the firing line with Rick Leary.

[Bus_Medic]

13 hours ago, WoodbineSecondExit said:

Hah! And I was asked by another member if I needed a hug when I made my latest post last month blasting the idiots at streetcar management. The people running the system are complete morons who are out of touch with the people on the street. Put them in the firing line with Rick Leary.

Well, do you?

[nfitz]

4 hours ago, Bus_Medic said:

Well, do you?

Don't we all?

Heck, anyone using the streetcar and bus networks in recent months certainly needs a hug.

[Bus_Medic]

[Turtle]

On 12/27/2022 at 6:22 PM, WoodbineSecondExit said:

Hah! And I was asked by another member if I needed a hug when I made my latest post last month blasting the idiots at streetcar management. The people running the system are complete morons who are out of touch with the people on the street. Put them in the firing line with Rick Leary.

 

At least we won't have fires on line5 due to pantographs snagging span wires or special works in the overhead like what happened yesterday at Lansdowne/Dundas on the 505. At least we shouldn't I would hope. R. Leary has nothing to do with the decisions taken with anything to do with the current streetcar network in Toronto, but he might want to look into attending an inquest about an accident in Boston.

[Turtle]

The 25Km/h rule entering intersections, passing platforms, and passing the back of a stopped lrv is worse than streetcar in some ways, but better in one.

 

In streetcar, the rule for passing the back of a stopped streetcar is actually no more than 15km/h. 25km/h passing the back of a stopped lrv on line 5 is faster. But given the vehicle lengths of 200' minimum and 300' maximum, that means the platforms at the stops are much longer and will take much longer to travel through than a legacy network r.o.w. stop on the streetcar network.

 

Worst case, even though the rule is probably going to be max 25km/h entering, if you have a service stop farside, that means the lrv is going to do max 25km/h through the intersection, and then continue max 25km/h all the way through the platform if the stop isn't going to be serviced. 400' worth of 25km/h or so? 20-30 seconds per intersection with farside stop probably? Less than 10 seconds for smaller intersections with no stop.

 

If somebody wanted to estimate how much extra time this adds to the running time they could with basic calculations. I would guess 10 minutes. I would argue that 10 minute additional travel time is less than the time it takes to clear an accident if an accident could be avoided. Reliability and frequency are far more important than minimizing travel time, since most people are not going to be riding the line end to end.  Those people that need to ride end to end should be on a different mode like a GO Train that makes limited stops crosstown. That's where Metrolinx should be focusing on making improvements to service alternatives, integration, frequency and cost.

[T3G]

5 hours ago, Turtle said:

Reliability and frequency are far more important than minimizing travel time, since most people are not going to be riding the line end to end. 

Not if you want to entice people to use the service it's not. If people see that the service is not faster than driving (especially off peak), they are going to drive.

[Turtle]

10 hours ago, T3G said:

Not if you want to entice people to use the service it's not. If people see that the service is not faster than driving (especially off peak), they are going to drive.

Who cares about car drivers. Service improvements should be aimed at making it better and more convenient for the people who have to take the system, and for those who want to use it. What we are getting with line 5 is a compromise, but it will serve a greater number of people over a larger area than a fully tunneled line would have. It will give us some pretty good quality local service for short to moderate trips. What is lacking is frequent regional express and semi express service.

Worrying about appeasing car drivers and politicians gets us garbage like King Street and Spadina

[T3G]

I'm not sure how you got from my post that I'm worrying about appeasing car drivers.

The problem is two tiered. It's all well and good to turn our noses up at car drivers and tell them to stick it, but it's not a constructive solution to getting people out of their cars and reducing congestion and pollution. If you have a big sprawling borough of people who insist on taking their monster SUV or pick up with them everywhere they go, if you tell them that they should instead take a rapid transit line that is afraid of its own shadow, they are going to laugh in your face. And we will sit there and bemoan how congested our roads are, and how every additional car on the road increases the risk of the very thing that "requires" a 25 km/h speed limit intersections happening. Sowing discord and enmity may feel good, but it doesn't generate constructive solutions to our city's woes. And Toronto slips just a little more in its livability.

Furthermore, making the TTC attractive to use to those who do not currently use it is even more critical at this time as the TTC is in one of the worst PR crises of its existence, if not the worst. Hysterical journalists and politicians are portraying the TTC as some Mad Max hellscape where you'll be stabbed moments after boarding such a vehicle, and the problem has reached a massive scale, compounded by pre-existing conditions such as their inability to manage any kind of overland service, and the fact that in terms of speed it is just not competitive to the car in many areas outside of the downtown core. It is going to take a lot to try to entice people back onto transit, and while having speedy service is probably not the key priority for those who think they are gambling with their lives by going on the TTC, it is nevertheless not unimportant. And I'm not sure how artificially slowing down service because we're afraid of careless dickheads with more wheels on their car than brain cells constitutes a "service improvement". You are just trading off the risk of something (collision with a motorist not paying attention) with something that is a sure thing (the service being slower and less pleasant than it could be).

I find your use of the word "garbage" to describe King and Spadina to be confusing. If you believe that avoiding any kind of service disruption at all costs is important, then surely all those ludicrous rules they've implemented on the downtown network do the trick. And if those streets are "garbage", then why would Eglinton with a lot of those same inane rules not be? Because they only need to slow down to 25 and not 15 to pass a stopped car in the opposite direction? Not good enough. Not passable. And then we wonder why suburbanites insist on building subways to every random hole in the GTA instead of much cheaper light rail.

[Turtle]

39 minutes ago, T3G said:

And we will sit there and bemoan how congested our roads are, and how every additional car on the road increases the risk of the very thing that "requires" a 25 km/h speed limit intersections happening.

The "less than 25km/h" rule is for preventing collisions or minimizing injury and damage in collisions with more than just cars running red lights. It is for pedestrians and cyclists too. They have a permanent speed restriction on Spadina between Sullivan and Dundas of less than 20km/h because of pedestrians. Blame everybody for being selfish oblivious lazy careless narcissists, not just braindead car drivers running red lights.

 

39 minutes ago, T3G said:

I find your use of the word "garbage" to describe King and Spadina to be confusing. If you believe that avoiding any kind of service disruption at all costs is important, then surely all those ludicrous rules they've implemented on the downtown network do the trick. And if those streets are "garbage", then why would Eglinton with a lot of those same inane rules not be? Because they only need to slow down to 25 and not 15 to pass a stopped car in the opposite direction? Not good enough. Not passable. And then we wonder why suburbanites insist on building subways to every random hole in the GTA instead of much cheaper light rail.

 

Spadina is garbage because of the lack of transit signal priority. St Clair would be pretty good if it had transit signal priority. King Street is idiotic as soon as you get more than one streetcar approaching a major intersection. If you are unfortunate enough to be on the third car waiting to cross Yonge Street, it will take 5 minutes to get to the farside stop.

 

From what I understand, line 5 will have some limited form of transit signal priority which will hold for a lrv that is behind schedule. Seems logical, and should work fairly well since they will probably make the schedule too tight when it first opens (the vehicles will always run slightly behind schedule, so they will get transit signal priority).

[WoodbineSecondExit]

20 hours ago, Turtle said:

The 25Km/h rule entering intersections, passing platforms, and passing the back of a stopped lrv is worse than streetcar in some ways, but better in one.

 

In streetcar, the rule for passing the back of a stopped streetcar is actually no more than 15km/h. 25km/h passing the back of a stopped lrv on line 5 is faster. But given the vehicle lengths of 200' minimum and 300' maximum, that means the platforms at the stops are much longer and will take much longer to travel through than a legacy network r.o.w. stop on the streetcar network.

 

Worst case, even though the rule is probably going to be max 25km/h entering, if you have a service stop farside, that means the lrv is going to do max 25km/h through the intersection, and then continue max 25km/h all the way through the platform if the stop isn't going to be serviced. 400' worth of 25km/h or so? 20-30 seconds per intersection with farside stop probably? Less than 10 seconds for smaller intersections with no stop.

 

If somebody wanted to estimate how much extra time this adds to the running time they could with basic calculations. I would guess 10 minutes. I would argue that 10 minute additional travel time is less than the time it takes to clear an accident if an accident could be avoided. Reliability and frequency are far more important than minimizing travel time, since most people are not going to be riding the line end to end.  Those people that need to ride end to end should be on a different mode like a GO Train that makes limited stops crosstown. That's where Metrolinx should be focusing on making improvements to service alternatives, integration, frequency and cost.

I missed the part where it was better. In no way is this better for anyone other than the idiots in management who get monthly awards and reward points for sabotaging the system.