The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[dleung]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

... Toronto could get 50 billion in funding and it's network would still be inaquadate. There is greater need in Toronto, it's a bigger city with bigger issues...

Yes, if Toronto spends its billions on building more subways and palatial stations in remote areas of the 905, its network will always remain inadequate. If Vancouver got 20 billion in transit, based on the city's track record, it would go way further than 50 billion in Toronto.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

So, mothball Downsview which is see large intensification for a new tunnel and new station and continue with an elevated subway to York University. No thanks.

Of course we'd keep Downsview. The portion marked as "tunneled" is existing that goes through the station; the transition to elevated is after. That should have been clear enough

Originally Posted by Echowinds

It is head-scratching why the TTC did not choose to build a much cheaper elevated option in an area that has the space to do so. It's as if Vancouver decided to make a gold-plated subway to Port Coquitlam, which makes absolutely no sense, when the Broadway line is far more needed.

Exactly

[Innsertnamehere]

you specifically cross off Downsview..


as for the 50 billion, I was referencing the Big Move which is full of LRTs, BRTs, and commuter rail. Sure there are some subways, but they consists of a small portion of the proposed network. (DRL and Yonge extension)

as for your comment about palatial stations, they cost relatively little. subway stations have to be fairly large no matter what to meet modern building codes, so making those stations look good is the least we can do. It may add $150 million to spadina to build the nice stations rather than the shitty ones. Look at Sheppard, it was built on a budget and its stations are "minimum" quality, but yet they are still rather large simply for fire and building code regulations.

and before you bring up the Canada line, they use 40 meter trains. 40 meters. that is less than a third of the length of Toronto's trains, and given that stations account for roughly 1/2 the cost of a subway, that is significant cost savings.

also, building elevated for subway trains isn't that much cheaper than tunneling and produces more serious maintenance issues down the road. its generally more economically viable long term to run it at grade or underground. Again, just for Toronto subway trains as the elevated structures have to be so large and overbuilt to support the heavy rail trains. They looked at doing it for Scarborough (replacing the LRT directly with a subway instead of running it on another route) and it ended up being the exact same price as building the current underground alignment.

[dleung]

Any city can come up with an 11-figure wish-list of good-to-haves, but the reality is that even the major cities can scrap together only 1 to 3 billion every few years for transit, so prioritizing is absolutely necessary.

Re: stations... both the Canada Line (40m) and Evergreen line stations (80m) are roughly $30 million each. A platform that that is twice as long doesn't make the station twice as costly, let alone 5 times as costly. And most of the ones on the spadina extension look hideous despite their huge cost. Subway stations are supposed to be slick minimal and efficient structures to be enveloped by the density around it, not wacky pavilions in the middle of farmland.

Re: tracks... excluding stations, a bored tunnel is roughly $200 million per km ($230 million/km for Spadina Extension). The Canada Line, which is heavy rail just like TTC, averaged $90 million per km, even though half of it is tunneled. Obviously a underground LRT in Scarborough will cost the same as an underground subway; the cost is in the route alignment, not the rolling stock.

[Innsertnamehere]

...

Yes, a platform over 3 times as long will cost roughly 3 times as much. Its 3 times larger. you have to excavate 3 times the area, pour 3 times the concrete, etc. Stations in Toronto cost around 100 million. Most Vancouver stations don't have extensive bus terminals like Toronto as well. The only station without a bus terminal is Downsview Park and York University. Finch West will have 4 bus bays, Pioneer village will have over 20, Highway 407 will have 17, and Vaughan centre will have around 10.

The LRT in Scarborough would have largely run elevated and on the surface. only 800 meters of the 10. km line was underground. Metrolinx looked at replacing it line for line with a subway, and it cost just as much to build a 10km line that is elevated, on the surface, and less than a km underground as it did to build the completely underground version.

architecture is subjective.


Toronto's subway system is also rather unique in the fact that it is completely built off of feeder bus networks, immediate density around the stations serves little purpose for ridership but rather the ridership of the buses feeding it, of which the spadina and scarborough extensions have plenty.

http://www.urbantoronto.ca/news/2013/11/...washington-san-francisco-bay-and-toronto

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

...

Toronto's subway system is also rather unique in the fact that it is completely built off of feeder bus networks, immediate density around the stations serves little purpose for ridership but rather the ridership of the buses feeding it, of which the spadina and scarborough extensions have plenty.

http://www.urbantoronto.ca/news/2013/11/...washington-san-francisco-bay-and-toronto

I'd consider Vancouver to be similar. While we do love TOD, feeder buses are huge for the Skytrain. I'd say most people taking the Skytrain get there from the bus. We only have 3 Park and Rides I believe, and there's no way that stations get 30,000 riders a day only from TOD.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

...

Yes, a platform over 3 times as long will cost roughly 3 times as much. Its 3 times larger. you have to excavate 3 times the area, pour 3 times the concrete, etc. Stations in Toronto cost around 100 million. Most Vancouver stations don't have extensive bus terminals like Toronto as well. The only station without a bus terminal is Downsview Park and York University. Finch West will have 4 bus bays, Pioneer village will have over 20, Highway 407 will have 17, and Vaughan centre will have around 10.

The LRT in Scarborough would have largely run elevated and on the surface. only 800 meters of the 10. km line was underground. Metrolinx looked at replacing it line for line with a subway, and it cost just as much to build a 10km line that is elevated, on the surface, and less than a km underground as it did to build the completely underground version.

architecture is subjective.


Toronto's subway system is also rather unique in the fact that it is completely built off of feeder bus networks, immediate density around the stations serves little purpose for ridership but rather the ridership of the buses feeding it, of which the spadina and scarborough extensions have plenty.

http://www.urbantoronto.ca/news/2013/11/...washington-san-francisco-bay-and-toronto

Where are you getting the numbers for Scarborough? My understanding is that the two options were a $2.5-3B subway with 3 stops, or a $1.5 billion LRT with 7 stops.

Relying solely on feeder bus routes means that the Spadina Extension is relying on existing ridership to support it, rather than generating new ridership. It doesn't get people out of their cars. Neither will the 3000 parking spaces being built on acres of asphalt surrounding the stations get people out of their cars.

There are economies of scale in longer stations. Skytrain's 80m stations and TTC's 120m stations have the same minimum number of elevators and escalators, and vary only due to different levels of ridership. To build $150M stations on a subway extension that will see next to no ridership beyond York U (whose ridership base is mostly from the north rather than from the south) is like cutting cheese with a chainsaw. Saying "bigger cities have bigger needs" is disingenuous. Only politicians and skyscraper fanboys can defend this.

[Innsertnamehere]

Metrolinx did a study looking at running the subway along the RT corridor, I can't find a link right now, but it is the one where they came up with the 1.4 billion pricetag to get it to STC, the version that the province was promising to build if the city didn't give more money. In that study they drew it out on costs of running it to Sheppard, and it cost $2.8 billion.

Elevators are set sure, but they are maybe $1 million of a $100 million dollar pricetag. As for escalators, not really. Again, building codes require that you be capable of unloading a full capacity train on the platform in a given time frame, which means more escalators and stairs for larger trains. Never mind the fact that it would just be horrible station design to have a single escalator and staircase for a 150 meter platform. Toronto's stations typically have 3-4 access points to the platform, with 2 of them being escalator banks.

Also, Metrolinx was seriously looking at removing 2 of the stops on the LRT as they would be extremely low ridership. One of them currently gets less than 1,500 trips a day, low for even an LRT stop. Regardless, both the 3 stop version and the 7 stop version cover the same corridor, and the 3 stop version gets considerably higher ridership. (9,500 PPHD peak compared to 7,000 PPHD peak, the current RT is capped at maximum capacity currently around 4,000 PPHD)


The spadina line will absolutely get people out of their cars. The feeder routes will get increased ridership as they will now have significantly shorter travel times. Currently, Finch west bus passengers must travel across to Finch station on the Yonge line to get downtown, while once this line opens they will be able to get downtown from Finch West. This will probably cut 20 minutes off the commute, which is huge in making transit more attractive for this part of the city, and it will get even better once the Finch west LRT is built. Likewise, YRT is looking at jumping bus frequency in Vaughan to TTC like levels to deal with the projected demand of travelling via the subway. current ridership levels in vaughan are rather abysmal, but that is set to change. there are already 4 condo buildings and an office building going up in VMC, and another office building going up at Finch West. Lots more in the approvals process at VMC currently as well. there are 44,00 daily trips made on the Finch west bus every day alone. Steeles west has 30,000, VIVA purple 15,000, YRT Jane 6,000 (actually their highest ridership non VIVA service), as well as dozens of other smaller feeder bus routes.

[J.OT13]

I understand that Toronto's needs outweigh Ottawa's, but OT and every other municipality in Ontario should get its fair share, i.e. proportional amounts. That's not what's happening.

Furthermore, Toronto keeps building lines that aren't even kind of necessary; the Yonge line extension to Vaughn and the Scarborough subway are huge wastes if money!! I'll give you the Crosstown, that one was probably necessary, but I'm pissed that its 100% provincially funded.

Throw in Metrolinx and GO Transit, another huge network fully funded by the province while everyone else outside the GTA gets nothing.

Again, not blaming Toronto for its special treatment, but Queen's park. That said, I do blame TO for bad transit planning. Maybe they should concentrate on the DRL instead of continuing to inject billions in serving low density suburbs.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

That might not be such a bad idea, considering that both Gatineau and Ottawa are rather ignored by their respective provinces. I don't think Québec or Ontario would actually notice the secession for several weeks at the earliest.

They'll notice pretty quickly when they see billions missing from their coffers!

[Innsertnamehere]

GO is sort of hard to be funded municipally due to its regional activities, same with Metrolinx. GOs subsidy is insanely low anyway, 85% of their operations are covered by fares, higher than any other transit agency in the western world.

Proportional transit funding is insane, rural regions don't really need any transit funding, and if we were to go proportionately Ottawa would be building LRT lines with almost no ridership while Toronto was building lines that handle 2/3rds of the daily ridership of Ottawa's entire transit system.

Spadina and Scarborough are going to carry more people than Eglinton.

The reality is that transit need escalates as population increases. It costs almost nothing for a city of 100,000 to provide transit, essentially just a downtown bus terminal. A city of 500,000 would probably want a singular LRT line, a city of 1,000,000 would want an underground through the downtown LRT with several lines or branches, and a city of 6,000,000 would need a complex network of commuter rail, subways, and LRT. Transit need doesn't expand linearly, as car use cannot continue linearly as population grows. A small town can easily handle 100% movement by car, a city like Ottawa can't, probably closer to 80%, but a city like Toronto should be looking at only 50-60% travel by car. Looking at super huge cities like Tokyo or NYC and you want closer to 20-30% car use.

you also have to remember that when all the money was doled out for Eglinton and Spadina 5-10 years ago the DRL was but a speck on the radar. Bringing Spadina to Steeles had been a TTC priority for a decade and a half (Downsview station built in the 1990's was actually intended to simply be the first phase of the extension to York U and Steeles), and capacity increases on Yonge were used to deal with the future demand required from the Crosstown feeding into Yonge. Now that the Yonge extension is getting serious they need to find a way to make space on Yonge once again, and that means the DRL.

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I'd consider Vancouver to be similar. While we do love TOD, feeder buses are huge for the Skytrain. I'd say most people taking the Skytrain get there from the bus. We only have 3 Park and Rides I believe, and there's no way that stations get 30,000 riders a day only from TOD.

Calgary can also attest to this. The Ctrain would be nothing without the bus system, regardless of how lacklustre our bus system is for the time being.

[feepa]

^ Edmonton as well. Well we do have some park n rides at a few LRT stations, the majority of the people are transferring from bus routes. Most LRT stations are also major bus transit centres/transfer stations too.

[Beedok]

Ottawa and Gatineau have a large number of park and rides, and that's for a bus network.

[Aylmer]

Yes, but that's because our local bus system is pretty shifty and people would rather fight for parking than put up with the infrequent and circuitous bus routes.

Just as having a lot of Band-aids is not a sign of health, full Park-and-Rides are not a sign of a successful system, but rather a deficient one. But it's amazing how convinced our transit agencies are that it's a good thing and how willingly they invest millions on new parking whiled cutting back local lines.

[Daveography]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Just as having a lot of Band-aids is not a sign of health, full Park-and-Rides are not a sign of a successful system, but rather a deficient one. But it's amazing how convinced our transit agencies are that it's a good thing and how willingly they invest millions on new parking whiled cutting back local lines.

I have been saying this for years. Park-and-Rides are terrible and do virtually nothing to ease traffic issues, they simply shift traffic from commuter roads to local ones.

[Boris2k7]

Pretty sure that if you got rid of park n' rides, Calgary's transit ridership would collapse overnight.

[VIce]

Originally Posted by Boris2k7

Pretty sure that if you got rid of park n' rides, Calgary's transit ridership would collapse overnight.

There are only about 16,000 park-and-ride spots for LRT in Calgary, of which 8600 are free. The CTrain handles about 300,000 daily trips (assume around 150,000 daily riders?). That's a sizeable chunk, 10%, but it wouldn't be a 'collapse'.

Frankly, the large park-and-ride lots exist in large part because of the end-of-line extensions. Line terminuses have always had large park-and-rides, but if you look at the NW line for example, everything outside of University was at one point an end-of-the-line, and therefore had a large park-and-ride built with it. However, Brentwood could tear up its parking lots for re-development, and probably see a jump in ridership in the long term. I would wager that this might be true for some stations on the South and NE lines as well.

[Innsertnamehere]

With the exception of Highway 407, the park and rides are in hydro corridors where nothing can be built regardless. we may as well utilize that space.

[miketoronto]

Concerning the hating on the Vaughan subway extension, some things to think about.

1: 80,000 riders a day is great for such a short subway extension through a suburban area. Similar extensions in other world cities would not even carry half of that, and if you think that is low ridership. Then half the subway extensions in European cities would be closed down.

2: The Vaughan subway extension is not going to nowhere. It is being extended to a large university campus, where buses must operate every 2 minutes to carry the loads of passengers traveling from Downsview Station.

The extension is going into one of the fastest growing outer suburban areas in the GTA, with a ton of redevelopment potential. The extension will bring quality rapid transit to a large number of GTA residents via feeder bus services.

3: This extension is no different than C-Train extensions in Calgary, or Skytrain extensions in suburban Vancouver.

Transit in Canada has had great success, because we did not decide that the suburbs don't require quality transit services, including rapid transit services.
The thinking of the past 5 or so years in thinking our suburban areas don't require good transit is very concerning. If Canada had this kind of thinking in the period from the 60's to the 80's, our cities would have just as poor transit as American cities.