TORONTO: Tunnel Under 401 Freeway

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Doady

mhays explained it quite well above.

A tunnel would also be unfathomably disruptive. This isn't a tunnel the size of a subway after all, and obviously there would also need to be staging areas to store the tunnel material, a TBM launch and extraction site, and unless it ran express for most or all of the distance then there would need to be entrance and exit ramps as well.

Originally Posted by Gresto

In addition to the disruption during construction, for aesthetic reasons. The 401 is ugly enough; a massive scar across the city. A double-decker 401 would be twice as ugly.

I personally think a double deck highway would look cooler and more urban than a flat sprawled monstrosity. But regardless, it takes a lot more than one option being better than another to justify spending as much on one option as it would to build several of the alternative. I'd be happy spending up to 1/3 more to make the process less disruptive and another 1/3 more to make it more attractive. But to spend 300-500% more would take a heck of a lot more benefits than that.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Gresto

You make a good point, but the Harris boondoggle that increased public transit usage north of the city (great!) has been disastrous for Toronto traffic. Because of the high tolls, the 407 isn't used nearly as much as it could be. Imagine if it had remained public and untolled or low-tolled. It would be, now that it is more or less finished (though it could arguably use a diagonal connection on the east end from Kirby to, say, Port Hope), a perfect Toronto by-pass. It almost certainly wouldn't have enough lanes for the on-rush of traffic, but the corridor has plenty of room to expand. All of this is highway expansion is undesired, of course, but necessary.

Yeah, I can see both pros and cons. The 401 within Toronto isn't really an industrial corridor, so you have trucks going through the city that really shouldn't be in the city.

On the other hand, you have to think, would pro-car, anti-LRT premier Doug Ford still have allowed an LRT to go ahead and take away car lanes through his riding if he had control over the 407?

People should look at this streetview of Finch Ave in 2017. Three articulated buses travelling together east along a suburban arterial in Toronto right between the 401 and 407. It is obviously a corridor that needs light rail. Would there be such a need for transit in the suburbs if the 407 had remained public?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9sAHBEjZH6iLebSD8

And we are talking about increasing capacity of the 401 even before the opening of Finch and Eglinton LRTs, both of which are east-west corridors very close and running parallel to the 401. I say let's wait and see the effect, both short term and long term, that these upcoming light rail lines have before we rush to solve the problem of congestion along the 401. Because if you asked me 20 years ago what is the solution to this problem, I would have said build rail along Finch and Eglinton. Mississauga is also studying LRT along another corridor between the 401 and 407, Derry Road.

[yaletown_fella]

Express articulated BRT buses in their own dedicated lane in a tunnel under the 401 sounds like it could be a less costly and much faster to build alternative to LRT.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

Express articulated BRT buses in their own dedicated lane in a tunnel under the 401 sounds like it could be a less costly and much faster to build alternative to LRT.

That's true but there's no reason transit would need to be under the 401 since it would better connect to other transit routes and serve destinations if it was under a regular road like Sheppard. And if you were going through the cost and effort of a long transit tunnel, it would be significantly better to build rail transit. While the tracks and electrification would be costlier, the tunnel could be smaller, require less ventilation, and be better at attracting riders since most people prefer rail vehicles to buses. You could also build LRT, RT or commuter rail on the Finch Hydro corridor for fast across-town connection roughly parallel to the 401 at a fraction of the cost of tunneling.

But any transit tunnel, bus or rail, is going to have a higher capacity to cost ratio than a highway tunnel.

[Doady]

Somehow I doubt that a BRT tunnel would be less costly and faster to build than a normal on-street LRT. Certainly it would not be less costly to operate.

[Nouvellecosse]

Yeah I didn't notice the cost part. It's always pretty unlikely that doing anything on the surface would be costlier than anything similar underground.

[niwell]

The idea of transit along the 401 corridor comes up on occasion but I can't see that as being a particularly good idea. It's by and large a through-route where destinations are considerably further than walking distance from the highway itself. As noted above a northern "crosstown" transit route would better follow existing arterial streets. Even the hydro corridor North of Finch (connecting to the soon to come LRT) would be more useful.

I don't think an elevated structure would need to follow the entire route of the highway, but rather make key connections such as between the 409/427 which is almost entirely industrial.

[mhays]

A BRT tunnel has a lot of interesting aspects. We had one in Downtown Seattle (five stations, 1.4 miles) for a while until it became dual bus/rail and then rail only.

We added a third lane at each station for passing and breakdowns. This also meant side platforms instead of a center platform (possible with buses using reversed directions). That meant stations needed every bit of the 60-foot street width, vs. rail which can do nicely with maybe 45 feet.

There will be bunching. The ability to pass helps, but some drivers are slow, and a wheelchair can gum things up, and there are generally more moving parts with a million buses. If I recall we didn't allow bike rack use in the tunnel.

If it's a combo tunnel for express routes that don't stop and local routes that do, you might need four lanes at stations. In a tight ROW, you now need 75' or so just for the pit, plus a safety and logistics perimeter around it. (If you've ever worked with a shored hole like that, there are strict load limits around it to prevent cave-in.)

Alternatively you can do a through-tunnel with the stations requiring buses to exit to a different level, side areas, or the surface.

[Nouvellecosse]

I would 100% oppose any BRT tunnel for any reason other than bypassing a major obstacle like a river, lake mountain, etc. I don't even support surface level BRT except in very specific applications. Regular bus lanes are excellent, but BRT implies very high frequency with more robust stations and infrastructure including some type of traffic and signal priority. But in most cases if buses are that frequent then it's best to use electric buses to reduce operating cost, noise and pollution. But if you're going to spend that much to upgrade to battery or trolley buses, then it's usually better to spend a bit more and add rails which has even more benefits.

There are exceptions when it comes to surface BRT, but underground BRT? If there are exceptions when that is good, they're about as plentiful as winning lottery tickets.

[mhays]

The advantage of buses is they can spiderweb all over, and give more people one-seat rides. A bus lane or tunnel can carry dozens of routes, so you can have extremely frequent service in that section.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by mhays

The advantage of buses is they can spiderweb all over, and give more people one-seat rides. A bus lane or tunnel can carry dozens of routes, so you can have extremely frequent service in that section.

Yeah a short stretch like that such as through the city center is a good place for a dedicated bus corridor. I don't think of that as BRT though since that tends to no more than a few KM which is a small portion of most bus routes.

[Doady]

The main crosstown regional bus corridor is actually Highway 407, which is served primarily by GO route 41/47/48. That is GO's busiest bus route, where most of their double deckers are used:
https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/u...25/TABLE41.pdf

There is already a 407 Transitway being planned (proposed?) from Burlington to Pickering with 50+ stations. The 41/47/48 bus does use a small portion of the 401 in Scarborough, but it's mostly about the 407.

If you think about underground bus tunnel, it was needed in Ottawa. They built this grade separated BRT, but downtown, the busiest section of the system, where all routes converge, it was on-street, so it was a major chokepoint. The 401 is not such a major focus for GO, and the 401 is not exactly Albert and Slater.

Look at the GO Bus system map and you can see the 401 is served by multiple routes, but maximum combined frequency along any section is only 15 minutes. The 407 in comparison has 5 minute frequency in some sections.
https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/u...al-bus-map.pdf

[Mister F]

An elevated second deck would be almost as bad of an idea as Doug Ford's fantasy tunnel. And equally ineffective at fixing traffic. The only reason that the 401 is the busiest highway is because of induced demand. We built all that capacity and travel habits adjusted to fill it in no time. If traffic is at a standstill with a 12+ lane mega-highway then it won't be any better with even more lanes. The strategy of building bigger and bigger highways has failed.

The 401 is already a bigger highway than almost any other city has, including much bigger ones than Toronto. The last thing we need is to make it even bigger. Ontario has made real progress in mass transit in the last 15 years or so. That's the answer to better mobility in growing cities.

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by Doady

Somehow I doubt that a BRT tunnel would be less costly and faster to build than a normal on-street LRT. Certainly it would not be less costly to operate.

The difference is surface LRT has exponentially higher ongoing track maintenance costs (winter etc) as opposed to a simple BRT route.
Also, the whole system can come to a standstill if someone turning left gets into an accident and blocks the tracks.

As someone who commutes long distances , I can tell you regular bus routes in Toronto usually have way too many stops.

The answer may be some kind of small express shuttle van alternative to UBER (like UBER but with 6 or 8 people splitting the cost instead of 1 or 2), but only stopping at major intersections along set major roads. The TTC has proven itself to be too ineffecient and the monopoly should come to an end.

[mhays]

Or express buses with fewer stops, ideally in bus lanes.

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by mhays

Or express buses with fewer stops, ideally in bus lanes.

Yes, we sorely lack dedicated bus lanes unfortunately.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

The difference is surface LRT has exponentially higher ongoing track maintenance costs (winter etc) as opposed to a simple BRT route.
Also, the whole system can come to a standstill if someone turning left gets into an accident and blocks the tracks.

As someone who commutes long distances , I can tell you regular bus routes in Toronto usually have way too many stops.

The answer may be some kind of small express shuttle van alternative to UBER (like UBER but with 6 or 8 people splitting the cost instead of 1 or 2), but only stopping at major intersections along set major roads. The TTC has proven itself to be too ineffecient and the monopoly should come to an end.

Again, the main bus corridor across the GTA is the 407, not the 401. And what is "simple" about a bus tunnel under a 12-lane highway? And why would you build a bus tunnel under such a highway when you can finish the nearby Sheppard Subway instead?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

The difference is surface LRT has exponentially higher ongoing track maintenance costs (winter etc) as opposed to a simple BRT route.
Also, the whole system can come to a standstill if someone turning left gets into an accident and blocks the tracks.

Would definitely need to see a citation for the maintenance cost claim since large vehicles like buses are brutal on roads. So a road frequently used by such vehicles is going to get pulverized without frequent and expensive maintenance.

[GreatTallNorth2]

Originally Posted by Gresto

I dislike DoFo and his generally regressive ideas, but I would markedly favour a tunnel to a second deck above the 401, the only major considerations being cost and time to build. Raised highways are patently devolutive.

How about neither option? Can you imagine the rail system you could build for 1/2 that price? Imagine all the cars that could be removed from the 401 if there was a fast rail line built from London to KW to Pearson to DT Toronto and beyond?

[Gresto]

Ontario's premier is wasting $9.1 million on a feasibility study for this tunnel. It will be deemed not feasible, or at least not even approaching economically practicable.