The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[miketoronto]

Originally Posted by VIce

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'.

Park & Ride lots account for a small number of passengers in most Canadian cities. The feeder bus networks are much more important.

[Chadillaccc]

One of Calgary's new(ish?) natural gas powered busses.


NatGas by Chadillaccc, on Flickr

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by 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.

And those people are going the way STO wants them to. Trying to travel in the reverse direction is annoying to say the least.

[dleung]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

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

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

It is completely different. None of the other cities are building gold-plated subways through the most isolated parts of the region, with stations completely disconnected from the community, that will never see transit oriented development nearby due to stranded highway/hydro-corridor locations, with ridership projections that cannibalize existing ridership by merely moving desperate hard-core commuters willing to make bus transfers in the middle of nowhere...

The Millenium line carries Spadina Extension's 2031 ridership today for 1/3 the cost, and the Canada Line at 2/3 the cost will double that ridership in a couple years at the current pace.

This white elephant you're trying to justify, with its enormous stations and high cost, should be moving at least 150,000 people a day, on opening day

[Chadillaccc]

Agreed with Dleung. All of Calgary's Ctrain extensions go through residential areas currently. Only one future line is being considered to go through industrial areas (Southeast Line) and that is only to get through it to the residential neighbourhoods in the southeast and the major business centres currently under construction at Quarry Park and Seton.


All of Vancouver's Skytrain lines go through residential areas and none planned for the future are expected to go through industrial parks or non-populated hydro corridors, or anything comparable.

[WhipperSnapper]

The Gardiner Expressway is wider than the hydro corridor. There's a fair amount of high density residential feeding into the line on top of the employment lands which has been earmarked for mass intensification.

Crossing out Pioneer Station is ignoring the 10000 apartments within a 15 minute bus ride. All those dark shadows on the map are highrises average 250 units.



To suggest this intensification won't ever come to pass is ignorant and insulting to the development of York Region and the 905 as a whole.

[dleung]

"Crossing out Pioneer Station is ignoring the 10000 apartments within a 15 minute bus ride"

LOL. With the flexibility in alignment of their $230million/km bored tunnel, they could have easily put stations anywhere, ie: within walking distance of those "10,000 apartments". People should streetview any of these station locations, they're hilarious... "Highway 407 Station" with its tell-tale namesake sits on farmland and is over half a km from the nearest street intersection.

Justifying this extension, as someone who is supposedly well-informed, in an insult to the dozens of other transit corridors within the city alone - let alone in smaller Canadian cities - that actually have a chance of producing meaningful ridership with mass transit.

[logan5]

Wasn't the subway to Vaughn Rob Ford's idea. Never the less, it does seem insane. I haven't really examined it, but for that type of money you could probly build an at grade commuter route (traffic separated) that is much longer.

[Beedok]

I notice no one from Ottawa in involved in this conversation. Ottawa's transitway stops are probably 90% in the middle of nowhere. Seems to work fairly well though.

[logan5]

Not quite the same as what amounts to a 230 million per km commuter service.

[Ramako]

I was bored.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by 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.

The Vaughn line might have some merits, but not passed the University. Either way, I would certainly not compare TO's subway plans to Calgary, Vancouver or even Ottawa; we build are lines in the most efficient way possible; i.e. a mix of surface/elevated and we go underground only where necessary. TO seems to go straight underground (there is no reason why the Scarborough replacement should not have used the same right-of-way as the RT). Furthermore, TO probably keeps building full length stations in these low density areas. The rest of us are building much simpler, much shorter stations for the anticipated needs.

Originally Posted by Beedok

I notice no one from Ottawa in involved in this conversation. Ottawa's transitway stops are probably 90% in the middle of nowhere. Seems to work fairly well though.

I never supported the Transitway's concept. I believe a city should invest in a dense urban rapid transit in the central city (subway) and serve the suburbs with cheap, yet efficient commuter rail.

That said, we've seen and should continue to see some development in fields served by transit. Think Bayview, LeBreton (Pimisi), Train (Tremblay).

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Ramako

I was bored.

Are these all the actual planned extensions? Brilliant!! Keep feeding suburban subway lines into the one and only, already overcrowded line heading downtown!!

[Innsertnamehere]

lots of capacity improvements coming to yonge. The spadina line brings 8% of the pressure on yonge away from it, and yonge itself is going to get a huge capacity increase once the new signalling system comes online. (they will be capable of running at 90 second frequencies compared to todays minimum of 135. Trains right now run at 148 second frequencies)

Plenty of room for Yonge to grow still, and 1 of those 3 lines doesn't even touch Yonge, with Eglinton feeding roughly half to yonge and half to the University Spadina line.

and if you want an underused transit service, try commuter rail in ottawa. talk about big money for little return.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

lots of capacity improvements coming to yonge. The spadina line brings 8% of the pressure on yonge away from it, and yonge itself is going to get a huge capacity increase once the new signalling system comes online. (they will be capable of running at 90 second frequencies compared to todays minimum of 135. Trains right now run at 148 second frequencies)

Plenty of room for Yonge to grow still, and 1 of those 3 lines doesn't even touch Yonge, with Eglinton feeding roughly half to yonge and half to the University Spadina line.

and if you want an underused transit service, try commuter rail in ottawa. talk about big money for little return.

First off, I'm glad to hear that they have a plan to increase Younge's capacity. Even if all lines don't feed into Younge, it is still the only one headed downtown, by far the most important destination in Toronto where office jobs are fairly central.

Quick comment on Sheppard East, same goes for the Scarborough Subway, why not just connect them the other line? Why force people to make one more transfer? Seems to me that people should not have to transfer more than once between two rapid transit lines when heading downtown.

Granted, commuter rail might not be all that successful in Ottawa because of several factors:

-lack of a downtown passenger station;
-large investments in BRT for the suburbs;
-population is now used to decent, frequent "rapid transit" service to downtown and would likely not stand for less frequent commuter rail that won't drop you within a stones throw of your workplace.

[caltrane74]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Are these all the actual planned extensions? Brilliant!! Keep feeding suburban subway lines into the one and only, already overcrowded line heading downtown!!

The downtown line is the next priority for Metrolinx. And the Air/Rail link has an indoor connection at Dundas West Subway, and there is a possibility of Electrification in the near future, both here and on Lakeshore.

[WhipperSnapper]

First off, It's Yonge and it should be quite evident there are two branches of the yellow line going into downtown. One is receiving an extension into the 905 which will take pressure off the busier end.

The transfer points are unavoidable as building suburban subways is such a waste.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

First off, I'm glad to hear that they have a plan to increase Younge's capacity. Even if all lines don't feed into Younge, it is still the only one headed downtown, by far the most important destination in Toronto where office jobs are fairly central.

Quick comment on Sheppard East, same goes for the Scarborough Subway, why not just connect them the other line? Why force people to make one more transfer? Seems to me that people should not have to transfer more than once between two rapid transit lines when heading downtown.

Granted, commuter rail might not be all that successful in Ottawa because of several factors:

-lack of a downtown passenger station;
-large investments in BRT for the suburbs;
-population is now used to decent, frequent "rapid transit" service to downtown and would likely not stand for less frequent commuter rail that won't drop you within a stones throw of your workplace.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

First off, It's Yonge and it should be quite evident there are two branches of the yellow line going into downtown. One is receiving an extension into the 905 which will take pressure off the busier end.

The transfer points are unavoidable as building suburban subways is such a waste.

Sorry, I often get confused the spelling of Yonge. I always Google it, yet I still manage to screw up.

I understand that the Yonge lines "U" shape helps the situation, but it still only goes in 2 directions as opposed to MTL where you have two separate downtown lines going 4 directions.

As for cutting down on transfers:

-the Scarborough line IS a subway, so there is no reason why it's not connected to the Blood-Danforth. Now I'm not sure if the platform length is shorter than the BD, but if so, they could have built it as an LRT line connected to the Crosstown;

-the Sheppard-East line could have been connected to the Sheppard Subway, which already has shorter platforms than the other two subway lines. Of course it would have eliminated the surface option, but it seems elevated would have been a plausible alternative. That said, it seems bus lanes would do as good a job as surface lrt in that area.

[1overcosc]

-Scarborough RT: Uses a very different track & rolling stock technology so it can't interline with the BD subway. It was built this way because it was thought to be much cheaper--it was expected that the SRT would have been the first of a huge number of similar lines all across the GTA (and interestingly enough, in Ottawa as well!) but it had cost overruns and ended up being not much cheaper than a subway. The current plan is to demolish the SRT and extend the BD subway on a similar (but different) route that would also interchange with the Sheppard LRT--the infamous Scarborough subway of recent controversy.

-Sheppard East LRT: Sheppard doesn't have the density or ridership numbers to support a full subway. (It's a suburban road). The Sheppard subway itself is kind of a mistake--it has very low ridership off-peak. Ideally they'd convert the Sheppard subway to LRT to eliminate the transfer.

Also the Yellow line has two halves--the eastern half (straight line from Finch to Union) is the Yonge section and the western half (curvy route from Union to Downsview being extended to Vaughan) is the University-Spadina section. The Yonge section is overcrowded but University-Spadina has room for more capacity. In fact extending the University-Spadina north from Downsview will actually help relieve Yonge because feeder buses in the area will be able to feed into that branch instead of the Yonge branch. Finch West also feeds into that branch as well. It's really just Sheppard East and Eglinton that will be problematic for Yonge, and capacity improvements should provide just enough wiggle room to last until the DRL is built.

From what I know (I may be wrong) these are the current timelines for all these projects:
-Spadina extension (Downsview->Vaughan): Currently U/C opening in 2016
-Eglinton line: Currently U/C opening in 2020 (no idea why it takes so long)
-Finch line: Construction starting next year opening in 2019
-Sheppard East line: Construction starting in 2017 opening in 2021

The undepicted Scarborough subway is supposed to open around 2023 I believe.

The DRL is expected around 2025 or so. It's only just started serious planning, and generally large scale RT projects take a decade to go from planning to completion. (Look at Confederation Line in Ottawa for example--2008 to 2018).

[Boris2k7]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

One of Calgary's new(ish?) natural gas powered busses.


NatGas by Chadillaccc, on Flickr

What is going on with the livery here? I believe I spotted one of the new buses running the #3 the other day, but it was in the standard red + white.