The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[osmo]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I don't think the Relief Line is a good idea in how it is proposed.

Relief is certainly needed to ease congestion on the Bloor Line and particularly Y&B station, no question there. It will of course also offer far superior service to Toronto East and the burgeoning Waterfront/Portlands area. For me the issue is not the need but how it will be implemented.

I don't think standard 3rd rail TTC subways are the way to go and is shortsighted. They should use the same route but build it to accomodate RER catenary trains. It can still serve the exact same stations with the same capacity and frequency but it would allow other RER trains to use it so lines could be more easily interlined. It would relieve stress at Union which will quickly go over capacity and offer a vital alternative to Union in case of a problem at Union. Also a northern extension past Eglinton would be much easier and cheaper using RER trains as they could use the existing Richmond Hill GO route as opposed to having to build a totally new line from scratch if using standard TTC 3rd rail.

Bt using a RER tunnel you are effectively killing 2 birds with one stone for the same amount of money. RER could very easily overtake the subway in ridership in 30 years as is often the case with cities that have developed a RER system on top of a relatively small subway system and having 2 routes into the downtown core is a neccessity.

Once you have to build a tunnel all bets are off IMO, the cost is sky high that technology requirements are minor. Union station is already near capacity so feeding RER trains into it aren't wise (Originally 2nd downtown train station was planned for Wellington, it now looks like Spadina will get it). Also, using the current rail bed has been explored by the City and was not feasible.

Part of the rational to the DRL phase 1 is that you are chasing already established ridership points at Carlaw and future East Harbour site. Toronto needs to get past the pure spoke method of transportation planning as you have now mature areas that are built up with considerable growth in the near future that will benefit from rapid transit. These are the dense areas you build rapid transit for. Yes, in theory, using the current rail bed would make sense but where is space? With RER running every 10 minutes? There isn't much space left to run even more trains at 5 mins or fewer headways. RER is going to be well designed for what it is intended to do. If there is space then, of course, add in rapid transit and use the corridor but Toronto is tight for that flexibility.


There will have to be some sort of portal and crossing along the river to tread northwards but they don't know the exact point or the technology to make this happen as of yet which is part of the reason they have remained in the SE quadrant for this first phase. The eventual goal is to get this up Don Mills to Eglington and that is 100% part of the plan when they figure out how to do it. The Same issue is what cutoff the Eglinton Crosstown as they could not figure out how to continue the route westward while still feed and have access to the Yards at the old Kodak facility. The engineering challenge was great and the $$$ needed were skyhigh so they left it alone to revisit down the road.

[Doady]

The 25 Don Mills bus has much higher ridership than GO Richmond Hill corridor, which is located along Leslie St, which is also an extremely low ridership route.

Avg Weekday Boardings, 2012

25 Don Mills 39,066
51 Leslie 4,111
GO Richmond Hill 10,528

Point of DRL is to relieve Yonge. A third north-south subway route. I don't understand why prioritize Leslie St over Don Mills Rd. Toronto already made the mistake of chosing the cheaper above ground option along Allen Road Expressway instead of Bathurst. Ssiguy is basically asking them to repeat that mistake.

All the apartment buildings and stores are served by 25 Don Mills. Thorncliffe Park, Flemingdon Park, Don Mills, Fairview Mall... actual places and communities. Around 10 times more of them compared to Leslie St if we look at the TTC ridership numbers. There is nothing along Leslie St.

[ainvan]

Toronto’s Transit Chief Named to Lead New York’s Troubled Subway

With New York’s century-old subway system in crisis, plagued by delays and in need of major repairs, Andy Byford was brought in from Toronto on Tuesday to take over the agency that oversees the city’s buses and subways.

Mr. Byford will take control of an agency that has often proved intransigent and opaque and dominated by a political dynamic in which elected officials have often used the transportation authority to serve their political priorities at the expense of investing sufficiently on the nuts and bolts that could have averted the crisis that has engulfed the transit system.

“We are thrilled that Andy is going to lead NYC Transit during this time of great change,” Mr. Lhota said. “Our transit system is the backbone of the world’s greatest city and having someone of Andy’s caliber to lead it will help immensely, particularly when it comes to implementing the Subway Action Plan that we launched this summer. In order to truly stabilize, modernize and improve our transit system, we needed a leader who has done this work at world-class systems and Andy’s successes in Toronto are evidence that he is up to this critically important task.”

The New York Times

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by osmo

Union station is already near capacity

I certainly hope not considering GO ridership is projected to be 2.5x higher in 15 years. The DRL and new stations like at East Harbour and Spadina will help spread the load away from Union, but Union will still get much busier. The station has to be made more efficient to keep up. The new CEO of Metrolinx has some ideas of how to do that in this article.

If current plans get completed, GO Transit could become the busiest commuter system in North America (New York's combined systems would still be busier).

[Nouvellecosse]

Union has been expanded and renovated to increase capacity many times over its existence, so even if it were nearing its current capacity, improvements will continue to be made the expand that capacity further. Of course there will eventually be a limit at which point the cost, complexity, and disruption of further expansion will eventually be greater than the cost of building another complementary facility, but from what I've read, we're not quite at that point yet.

[WhipperSnapper]

Union is pretty much maxed out after this reno unless the Bush Shed were replaced which, for some "heritage preservation gone too far" reason , is being rebuilt for tens of millions of dollars.

[osmo]

RE: Union Station.

Yes, East Harbour and Spadina are fixing to ease constraints on Union, but plans are floating to build a tunnel and underground platform structure to add capacity. One of the many reasons why RER and Electrification improvements are necessary.

What would make the most sense would be that the original idea for the DRL to go a bit southerly, down near Wellington where Metrolinx was originally going to build a "Union Station 2" as a Penn Station type underground terminal station.

[GeneralLea]

Yesterday,, along Yonge:
[IMG]TJ256320 by Josh Kenn Photographics, on Flickr[/IMG]
Eglinton Station site:
[IMG]TJ256309 by Josh Kenn Photographics, on Flickr[/IMG]
[IMG]TJ256306 by Josh Kenn Photographics, on Flickr[/IMG]
[IMG]TJ256308 by Josh Kenn Photographics, on Flickr[/IMG]
[IMG]TJ256327 by Josh Kenn Photographics, on Flickr[/IMG]
[IMG]TJ256326 by Josh Kenn Photographics, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Cirrus]

Hi everyone! I'm trying to build a list of the highest ridership bus line in each major US+Canadian city. I've got Toronto (Eglinton, 49k daily) and Vancouver (Broadway, 56k daily), but I'm hoping to add more. If you know any, please let me know. Citations appreciated but not required. Thanks!

[Laceoflight]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Hi everyone! I'm trying to build a list of the highest ridership bus line in each major US+Canadian city. I've got Toronto (Eglinton, 49k daily) and Vancouver (Broadway, 56k daily), but I'm hoping to add more. If you know any, please let me know. Citations appreciated but not required. Thanks!

Here's for Montréal (see the table, bottom left of the page). Source : STM / Annual report 2016, p. 11

[GreaterMontréal]

Philippe Couillard wants rapid transit link between Montreal and Quebec City

"I want a modern, new, comfortable, revolutionary way of going between Quebec and Montreal that will generate the envy of other people on the planet."

... he ruled out the idea of a light-rail train system.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/q...nsit-link-montreal-quebec-city-1.4420407

[vid]

Does any other place in the world have a light rail system between two cities located about 250km apart?

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by vid

Does any other place in the world have a light rail system between two cities located about 250km apart?

... he ruled out the idea of a light-rail train system.

[vid]

I know that, but why did it have to be ruled out? Is there some place in the world that does this that resulted in it being suggested and he had to rule it out or what?

Why not also rule out horse and buggy, teleportation and pneumatic tubing as well?

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

Philippe Couillard wants rapid transit link between Montreal and Quebec City




http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/q...nsit-link-montreal-quebec-city-1.4420407

Good. The current drive from Quebec to Montreal is a boring uneventful and frankly quite ugly ride.

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by vid

I know that, but why did it have to be ruled out? Is there some place in the world that does this that resulted in it being suggested and he had to rule it out or what?

Why not also rule out horse and buggy, teleportation and pneumatic tubing as well?

• Video Link

[ClaytonA]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Hi everyone! I'm trying to build a list of the highest ridership bus line in each major US+Canadian city. I've got Toronto (Eglinton, 49k daily) and Vancouver (Broadway, 56k daily), but I'm hoping to add more. If you know any, please let me know. Citations appreciated but not required. Thanks!

YMMV in the USA, but often more than one bus line runs on a street in Canadian Cities. For example on Broadway in Vancouver, there are more than 100,000 riders on several lines on Broadway itself. For the Broadway corridor, the number's 140,000-150,000. Should you be looking at corridor numbers or just individual lines? What are you trying to do/communicate? Will just one line on a street, or in a corridor, provide an accurate and precise base case?

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by ClaytonA

YMMV in the USA, but often more than one bus line runs on a street in Canadian Cities. For example on Broadway in Vancouver, there are more than 100,000 riders on several lines on Broadway itself. For the Broadway corridor, the number's 140,000-150,000. Should you be looking at corridor numbers or just individual lines? What are you trying to do/communicate? Will just one line on a street, or in a corridor, provide an accurate and precise base case?

Out of curiosity, where are you getting this number? I know that the 99 B-line is that 56,000, and then there's the 9 and some portions of the 14, 16 and 17. Maybe - if you're really stretching it - you can count that brief section where the 8 doglegs it from Kingsway to Fraser. I can't see those 5 trolley bus lines contributing 100,000 riders, at least not on just the Broadway parts of their routes.

[Cirrus]

That situation exists in many US cities too. I am willing to accept "route families" of services on a single corridor if they are legitimately minor variations on a single trunk line.

For example there are many streets with two routes, one local that makes all stops, and one limited that only makes a few stops; in those sorts of situations I'll happily take the combined number, since riders can more or less use them interchangeably. Another example is multiple routes that are totally interchangeable for 90% of their length, but branch slightly at one end. But I'm not taking routes that are substantially different and merely share a particular stretch of road for awhile.

The key for accepting route families is that riders should be able to use any route in the family more or less interchangeably.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

That situation exists in many US cities too. I am willing to accept "route families" of services on a single corridor if they are legitimately minor variations on a single trunk line.

For example there are many streets with two routes, one local that makes all stops, and one limited that only makes a few stops; in those sorts of situations I'll happily take the combined number, since riders can more or less use them interchangeably. Another example is multiple routes that are totally interchangeable for 90% of their length, but branch slightly at one end. But I'm not taking routes that are substantially different and merely share a particular stretch of road for awhile.

The key for accepting route families is that riders should be able to use any route in the family more or less interchangeably.

In that case, you can accept the 9 local and 99 express for Broadway in Vancouver, as they travel the exact same route. 22,200/weekday for the 9 and 55,700 for the 99, for 77,900 in total.

https://www.translink.ca/-/media/Documen...C6E768A5DE629AE7E6B6ED8E6B3459BC166527B2