The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

its not like the entire YUS line ever fails. whenever part of it fails, they just turn trains back at the nearest crossovers. The once a decade event (if that) of the entire line shutting down is probably well worth the extra connectivity of having trains through run. Many people ride the "hump" around union to get to their destination. I.E. people going to Ryerson University from the University line won't get off at St Patrick, but instead ride the loop and get off at Dundas.

You must not ride it often. The line being double length essentially means any issue on the "University Line" causes problems on the "Yonge Line" and vice-versa. If the lines were separated you wouldn't have twice the issues on the line you currently have.

As it stands to day there is ALWAYS something going wrong on the line (obvious hyperbole but it's frequent). I ride the line nearly every day, King to Bloor, and the amount of times the subway is heavily delayed because of an incident at Lawrence West or something like that is infuriating. It's only going to get worse with the Vaughan extension.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

You must not ride it often. The line being double length essentially means any issue on the "University Line" causes problems on the "Yonge Line" and vice-versa. If the lines were separated you wouldn't have twice the issues on the line you currently have.

As it stands to day there is ALWAYS something going wrong on the line (obvious hyperbole but it's frequent). I ride the line nearly every day, King to Bloor, and the amount of times the subway is heavily delayed because of an incident at Lawrence West or something like that is infuriating.

You may be aware of this but the SkyTrain routes were rejigged a bit when the Evergreen extension opened. Millennium line trains now run back and forth between VCC and the Evergreen terminus. Expo and Millennium routes are now mostly separated on different tracks. One of TransLink's stated goals behind this plan was to make the lines more independent in order to make the overall system more resilient to problems.

There are a lot more Expo line problems. The other day a serious problem happened and trains couldn't pass through one of the stations. In the past, both lines would have been disrupted but this time because of the new routes only one line was affected. The new routing has already paid off a bunch of times. I'd be surprised if Toronto's system experiences these problems less frequently, since it is busier, older, and not automated (it's been a long time since I commuted on the Toronto subway but I definitely did the 1-1.5 hour walk a few times in order to get home faster). Toronto and Vancouver also have topologically similar systems; the number of routes and their connectivity is similar even though they look quite different when you look at a map that arranges the systems geographically.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

No,no, no. Queen is even further south and more on the southern fringe of the city. Bus trips from the north would be even longer. Local densities along Queen aren't any higher than Bloor either. You just have to compare the stats between the Bloor streetcar and Queen streetcar to see why Bloor was chosen. The Bloor Peter Witt's were pulling freak'n trailers.

Yes. Not to mention that the geography of the city (Humber Bay and High Park in the West and Lake Ontario in the East) would make Queen a really poor crosstown line. The mistake wasn't building Bloor instead of Queen; we should have built both.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

Yes. Not to mention that the geography of the city (Humber Bay and High Park in the West and Lake Ontario in the East) would make Queen a really poor crosstown line. The mistake wasn't building Bloor instead of Queen; we should have built both.

The contention is if Queen was built, another cross town would have been later. And then another. Not a zero sum.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The contention is if Queen was built, another cross town would have been later. And then another. Not a zero sum.

This might be a bit off topic but the major transit problem in Toronto is political. Canada does not spend enough on infrastructure. It spends too much on entitlements like pensions for public sector workers. Toronto might have gotten a somewhat better transit system by rearranging how money was spent but if the whole country and Ontario had spent more sensibly over past decades there would have been a lot more money allocated to transit and other infrastructure.

The housing market shows just how much people value saving commuting time. People will pay a very significant portion of their total income to save 30 minutes of commuting each way. That makes sense when we are talking about adding an hour onto an 8-hour day.

[lubicon]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

Any chance we get DRL funding in today's budget?

Not unless Ontario and Toronto pony up their share of the case too, which I don't see happening. There would be hell to pay politically otherwise.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by someone123

This might be a bit off topic but the major transit problem in Toronto is political. Canada does not spend enough on infrastructure. It spends too much on entitlements like pensions for public sector workers. Toronto might have gotten a somewhat better transit system by rearranging how money was spent but if the whole country and Ontario had spent more sensibly over past decades there would have been a lot more money allocated to transit and other infrastructure.

The housing market shows just how much people value saving commuting time. People will pay a very significant portion of their total income to save 30 minutes of commuting each way. That makes sense when we are talking about adding an hour onto an 8-hour day.

The average Ontarian's taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s iirc, with a lot more services covered by them.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The average Ontarian's taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s iirc, with a lot more services covered by them.

Yeah, tax rates are the other side of that. My earlier point was just that, economically, if governments were to make trade-offs in terms of existing expenses based on social benefit rather than politics I think a lot of infrastructure projects would come out on top.

I think you could probably find similar trade-offs when you look at examples like the one I mentioned about people paying to get housing with shorter commute times (and therefore growing the housing supply to the extent that they raise prices and developers are allowed to build new stuff to meet the demand). An alternative is for the government to pay for infrastructure to improve the speed of transportation. Commutes are so slow in Canada that it seems likely there are a lot of projects that have a good payoff in terms of saving time per dollar spent.

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

No,no, no. Queen is even further south and more on the southern fringe of the city. Bus trips from the north would be even longer. Local densities along Queen aren't any higher than Bloor either. You just have to compare the stats between the Bloor streetcar and Queen streetcar to see why Bloor was chosen. The Bloor Peter Witt's were pulling freak'n trailers.

Most of the early transit planners (from the 50's on) agree that building on Bloor was their biggest mistake. This is not coming from me, I'm basing it on what they said, apparently Queen was identified as the better alignment.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toro...-age-of-toronto-transit/article34321708/


“We did very good things – on time, on budget – but we made big politically driven errors back then, too. Building a subway [Spadina] on an expressway median was a huge one. Putting the Queen subway on Bloor has turned out to be a mistake.”

“Precisely,” says Mr. Levy, jumping in. Mr. Levy, a planner, engineer and author of Rapid Transit in Toronto, A Century of Plans, Projects, Politics and Paralysis, says that great cities that have been able to sustainably expand subways kept building from the middle out (and they didn’t tunnel in low-density areas).

By not doing Queen right after Yonge, “we missed a crucial starting point for network-building. We’ve never been able to get back to a logical order,” Mr. Levy says. “Call it the Queen line, relief line, whatever, the whole GTA has needed this piece of infrastructure for decades, but politicians keep wasting scarce capital on frills and vote buying.”

“Toronto’s biggest transit problem,” says Mr. Crowley, who specializes in data analysis, travel market research and demand forecasting, “is we’ve overloaded core parts of the subway. We’d basically done that on lower Yonge 30 years ago, when I was still at the TTC. We have to relearn the importance of downtown to the whole region, the whole country. We’re in danger of killing the golden goose.”

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

You must not ride it often. The line being double length essentially means any issue on the "University Line" causes problems on the "Yonge Line" and vice-versa. If the lines were separated you wouldn't have twice the issues on the line you currently have.

As it stands to day there is ALWAYS something going wrong on the line (obvious hyperbole but it's frequent). I ride the line nearly every day, King to Bloor, and the amount of times the subway is heavily delayed because of an incident at Lawrence West or something like that is infuriating. It's only going to get worse with the Vaughan extension.

I ride daily, albeit only a stop or two. (King or Queen to Dundas)

I find reliability is much better than most people make it out to be. And when there is a delay at Lawrence west, it has to be pretty major for the issues to ripple all the way around to the Yonge line.

[caltrane74]

Anything that causes disruption from Lawrence West, so major to cause an issue downtown.


They will turn the subways at St. Clair West.

[Coldrsx]

Budget 2017: Edmonton poised to accelerate expansion of Metro Line and West LRT

http://www.metronews.ca/news/edmonton/20...ised-accelerate-metro-line-west-lrt.html

[p_xavier]

The Quebec government is not happy with the feds regarding lack of clarity on public transit funding.

http://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/f...-ottawa-over-lack-of-infrastructure-cash

[TorontoDrew]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

The Quebec government is not happy with the feds regarding lack of clarity on public transit funding.

http://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/f...-ottawa-over-lack-of-infrastructure-cash

Same with Toronto City Hall. Well our mayor is upset they are taking away the tax rebate on metro passes.


Also Montreal is getting the same as everybody else.
from: http://business.financialpost.com
Public transit is a key focus of the five-year, $11.9-billion infrastructure-spending plan outlined in the 2016 budget. A new public transit infrastructure fund will invest up to $3.4 billion in transit over three years, divvied up according to each province’s share of national ridership.

[swimmer_spe]

Maybe I am thinking naively, but what I would like to see is the federal and provincial and local governments get their hands off transit decisions. The politicians do not use it, so they should not be making decisions on it.

The transit operators and administration know where the money would make the most changes. Let them make the decision on changes.

But alas, the politicians need that photo op.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Maybe I am thinking naively, but what I would like to see is the federal and provincial and local governments get their hands off transit decisions. The politicians do not use it, so they should not be making decisions on it.

The transit operators and administration know where the money would make the most changes. Let them make the decision on changes.

But alas, the politicians need that photo op.

This is what's happening in Montreal with the new ARTM. Transit professionals will have the majority on the board. Transit companies will be paid the same km per user, so the most efficient project should be selected. Thus this is how you get the REM projet, which is financed mostly by the private sector.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

This is what's happening in Montreal with the new ARTM. Transit professionals will have the majority on the board. Transit companies will be paid the same km per user, so the most efficient project should be selected. Thus this is how you get the REM projet, which is financed mostly by the private sector.

Hopefully other governments get this and do this going forward.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Maybe I am thinking naively, but what I would like to see is the federal and provincial and local governments get their hands off transit decisions. The politicians do not use it, so they should not be making decisions on it.

The transit operators and administration know where the money would make the most changes. Let them make the decision on changes.

But alas, the politicians need that photo op.

A better balance needs to be struck between the technocrats and democratically elected community leaders, but to marginalize the role of the latter could have unintended consequences: Transit professionals may not have the same priorities or even be aware of the same issues as local communities and their representatives. In the Toronto context, a DRL planned solely by Metrolinx professionals is going to look very different from one with close political oversight and (hypothetically at least) local democratic accountability.

Multiple decades of under-investment have caused the politicization of transit planning. This isn't going to go away until the infrastructure catches up with the rapid population growth that's occurred in that period. Maybe it never will.

[SteelTown]

Hamilton council will vote tonight on the $1 billion LRT plans, meanwhile here's some conceptual renderings of the LRT plans


#HamOntLRT’s operations, maintenance & storage facility will be at Chatham & Frid Sts; Frid will be extended to build the facility. #HamOnt pic.twitter.com/FN8o051Vx1
https://twitter.com/hamiltonlrt


Here’s a conceptual rendering of how the #HamOntLRT operations, maintenance & storage facility could look. #HamOnt pic.twitter.com/bA2c5wSxD2
https://twitter.com/hamiltonlrt


Conceptual rendering of #HamOntLRT underpass @ CP Rail tracks on King @ Gage: LRVs will use underpass to avoid delays from trains. #HamOnt pic.twitter.com/EO66fqzjJY
https://twitter.com/hamiltonlrt


The #HamOntLRT will cross Hwy 403 on its own bridge. Here is a conceptual rendering of how it could look. #HamOnt pic.twitter.com/2jzNralkqW
https://twitter.com/hamiltonlrt


Here’s a glimpse of how a typical #HamOntLRT stop could look. #HamOnt pic.twitter.com/BEypOpQamL
https://twitter.com/hamiltonlrt

[SteelTown]

FYI, Hamilton council deferred a final vote on the B-Line LRT ETA until April 19th. The council session/debate went on for over 14 hours non-stop.