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Considerations for New Subway Construction
Posted on September 29, 2008 at 9:09 am by Karl Junkin
Jason Paris unleashed a firestorm in raising the now-decades old DRL theme for discussion here, and among other comments was the issue of subway alignment, as there are now several to evaluate for the DRL. So what influences alignment for new subways to be constructed?
Historically, while alignments would generally follow streets, as often as possible they tried to avoid going directly under the street, as service relocations and temporary decking for existing streetcar services, not to mention road replacement when the decking was removed, were huge hassles that came at great cost. Expropriating properties was far cheaper, easier, and timely. This was why the Yonge subway was not built beneath Yonge between Alexander (just north of College) and, I believe, Orchard View (just north of Eglinton), except for the part where it crosses to the other side of Yonge around Glen Elm (just north of St. Clair). Apart from the portion between Church and Sherbourne bored directly beneath Bloor St., the Prince Edward Viaduct, and Sherbourne station, the Bloor-Danforth subway was kept entirely north of Bloor and Danforth proper (excluding the extension to Kipling).
However, attitudes of both property owners and those of and towards labourers changed, which in turn impacted what subway construction methods became acceptable.
The first subway to go directly beneath the street was of course the original Yonge subway south of Alexander, since buildings there were too large or valuable for any cost-benefit to be gained through expropriation. Queen had the same issue in its subway proposal (approved together with Yonge) between McCaul and Mutual, but was to run north of Queen proper outside that span. The first subway to have its expropriation option blocked by public opposition was Yonge’s extension north of Eglinton. James Bow explains how the TTC’s study recommended it travel west of Yonge and cross the Don Valley as a bridge, but local opposition forced them to rake up higher construction costs by tunneling beneath Yonge… and beneath the Don River, too. Subways were becoming more expensive than the City had bargained for.
Subways are over 10m wide for the two-track running structure, 12m if using bored tunnels (6m each direction). The width is less than two lanes of road per direction, but slightly over when under construction in the cut-and-cover method. The width includes vehicle width (3134mm), vehicle lateral sway (400mm on each side), walkway space for mainenance, which is also used for signal equipment and wiring/piping, and structural walls, which are usually ~500mm (sometimes more). Excluded are shafts and turbines that ventilate tunnels, emergency exits, and other larger utilities or maintenance spaces.
Subway stations would be at least 16m wide. This doesn’t include stairs that recess into platform walls, assuming flanking platforms as opposed to islands (cut-and-cover tends to favour flanking platforms, while bored tunnels tend to favour islands, but this isn’t a rule). This poses potential challenges for selecting an alignment for a DRL or other subway proposal south of St. Clair, as most of downtown’s roads are only 20m wide, leaving only 2m or less of sidewalk on each side of the street while under construction for a few years. In the densest areas, finding a place to situate an exit stair or elevator or fare gate becomes challenging, and the use of existing buildings’ basement levels comes into play in such cases.
The Sheppard corridor, by contrast, is 36m wide, so building a subway directly beneath it (except Leslie station, an exception to cross the Don River) was easy; the two tunnels are even 13m apart. For further contrast, University is usually over 45m wide. Yonge is 36m between Ivor Rd. and Sheppard, and 33m north of there, including the new extension, which will also be bored directly beneath the street, except around Richmond Hill Centre (most likely, not finalized).
Stations along the alignment cannot be on curves, as it causes one or two part(s) of each subway car to have a significant gap, an example of which is available on the north (Spadina-bound) track at Union. The TTC has avoided repeating this mistake since.
Speaking of curves, that’s another reason not to go directly beneath the street. A classic example is at Bloor and Parliament (above image), where a provision existed for a streetcar-railway below the paved surface crossing the Rosedale Valley, but the curve was too tight for a subway.
Most curves visible on a map at a far-zoomed scale are potential for trouble. The minimum curve possible is a radius of 116m, about 10 times that of streetcars, while the minimum for TBMs is ~300m. Ideally they’re 700m to avoid any need to brake due to curvature (but I find this a little unrealistic to expect throughout an alignment). There’s also rider-comfort benefits to gentler curves. To Queen’s credit, unlike Bloor, Queen is actually a straight street.
With the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, all stations must be accessible, meaning ramps or elevators must connect the street, fare collection, and platform areas. The TTC is currently still renovating the existing system, and to their credit, the TTC started that voluntarily, the legislation came later.
Perhaps most important is the protection of local service during construction. This was pretty easy for Bloor, as Sherbourne would have been the only real point of service disruption, but more complicated for Yonge. Yonge’s method of temporary decking wouldn’t be acceptable today for a variety of reasons. While tunnels can be bored, stations will ultimately be done cut-and-cover to access the surface. This means on-street disruption if a station is directly below the street, a potentially big problem for routes that run streetcars, which, in the core, tend to carry more passengers than buses are capable of.
Front might have been viable for a DRL, but a subway runs along it between Yonge and York already. Unlike St. George and Bay, built as bi-level stations from the start, a “Lower Union” is likely unrealistic, as it’s significantly more problematic to add a parallel alignment beneath an existing station than a perpendicular one like Bloor-Yonge. A southern by-pass of the existing station encounters interference from the LRT tunnel, plus from other proposals for Union Station.
Also of high importance is station spacing, and the cost-benefits associated with it. When it came to constructing Yonge’s north extension from Eglinton, the TTC opted to save money by eliminating “mid-block” stations, which, while many may not realize or recognize, was probably an unfortunate decision that has harmed the effectiveness of the Yonge subway to those that live along Yonge St. itself, and possibly the transit culture of the city’s north half (assuming Eglinton as the border). Curiously, that didn’t happen with the Spadina subway, as Glencairn and Yorkdale are its “mid-block” stations, even though nobody lives along an expressway in the same way people live along Yonge St.
Stations not only are among the most expensive single components of subway infrastructure, but also have a high degree of influence of how much service the infrastructure can provide, thereby having a significant impact on its R.O.I. Each station’s capital cost ranges ~$70-$120+ million (the differences are generally in whether or not it includes a bus/streetcar terminal (especially if underground like Don Mills) and parking lots, etc.). While there’s no doubt about the ridership potential of a DRL, it will only reach that potential if enough stops are included to make it convenient enough for as many riders as possible.
It must be highlighted that any subway will only reach its potential if the neighbourhoods are not devastated during construction. The health of both the current network ridership and the existing neighbourhoods being served depends on the execution of a careful, considerate, and well-planned wholistic approach when we build a new subway. In the past, expropriation facilitated that, but now our culture has changed, requiring new strategies.
Karl Junkin is an architectural technology graduate from Sheridan College, born and raised in Toronto, and has spent over 4 years working and living in Tokyo.
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Very interesting article. I’m curious why temporary decking wouldn’t be acceptable today? I can think of a few possible reasons, but am curious what somebody more informed thinks?
I did notice that in downtown Vancouver the ‘Canada Line’ construction has ripped up much of downtown, with only narrow sidewalks on either side of the street. I wonder if they had the same opposition from businesses that we saw up on the (much shorter) St. Clair West ROW disruption.
Curiously, that didn’t happen with the Spadina subway, as Glencairn and Yorkdale are its “mid-block” stations, even though nobody lives along an expressway in the same way people live along Yonge St.
I suspect that the mid-block stations (especially Glencairn, as Yorkdale was tied to the shopping centre from the outset) were put there to mollify concerns about the Spadina Expressway. Trying to make it look transit friendly, and all that. It still gets way more passengers than Bessarion, and even Leslie I believe.
Karl said … “It must be highlighted that any subway will only reach its potential if the neighbourhoods are not devastated during construction”.
Wrong Karl! — I guess you’re too young to remember the wide swath of DEVASTATION the Bloor subway caused when it was built. We knew people whose houses were simply taken away from them just like that — “here’s your money, now get the f— out”, and they weren’t given much in the way of $$$, just market value.
Countless houses, and they were beautiful, were demolished. Part of Christie Pits had to be covered up — the whole cloverleaf at Avenue Rd. made a mess there as well.
My point is … the neighbourhood recovered, and the line was successful. The north-of-Bloor alignment was chosen for a number of reasons, and a similar Queen line also proposed using a ROW north or south of Queen (can’t remember which right now though) for bus-transfer facilities.
A city is not a static entity – in fact, attempts to make it static cause it to stagnate and eventually decline.
Any type of construction will be disruptive of the existing residents and businesses. The TTC/City representatives at the Sheppard LRT presentation told me that the line would take 4 years to build. This would mean 4 years of chaos – no different than the chaos of underground construction. The question is what is left behind.
If we leave behind an LRT, we leave behind a line that has to be rebuilt from largely from scratch every few decades – this means that the disruption is a recurring problem for residents and businesses. If we leave behind a tunnel, we have an asset that has a lifespan – if properly maintained – or several hundred year.
De Maisonneuve in Montreal is a street that did not exist downtown before the 1st Metro line was built. Now it is street that people walk on, shop on, bike along.
@Mimmo: I have to wonder if you read the post, as I clearly stated that Bloor-Danforth proper was left mostly in tact because the construction was mostly taking place to the north of it, behind the shops. In some parts it wasn’t behind anything (Sherbourne, Castle Frank, Broadview), but those are exceptions. This resulted in both the streetcar service and the shops along Bloor-Danforth being left in good health during the construction period, until the streetcars disappeared, after which the businesses farthest from subway stations suffered.
Was I there? No, I wasn’t even alive, but I know exactly where the subway alignment runs, and it is behind the shops on B-D.
Yes, many homes were destroyed, that is true, but these homes were up the side streets, behind the shops on Bloor-Danforth, and that’s how Bloor-Danforth proper was not devastated during construction.
You can argue that the people that lived in the neighbourhoods behind Bloor-Danforth proper were devasted, but the commercial activity on Bloor-Danforth wasn’t. You also missed the point about the cultural shift that has taken place since, and this shift is evident in Sheppard and St.Clair in particular. This isn’t a post in support of expropriation, it’s about how times have changed and the need to adapt to the current times. Sometimes your arguments sound like you’re still in the 1960s.
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@Ian: Some of the reasons that I can think of include the worker’s right to refuse work they don’t think is safe. I have a strong suspicion that few are going to feel safe working beneath a temporary deck with tanks (CLRVs) rolling overtop. Another reason is simply that with the CLRVs being the tanks that they are, this requires a much stronger temporary deck than what the Yonge line saw, which would be outrageously expensive. I believe there could be other engineering concerns with regards to the safety of riders disembarking on a temporary deck as well. The streetcar operating speed restrictions on the deck would also be hideous, I imagine.
Karl, so because it didn’t devastate Bloor St. itself, somehow that’s better? Lots of people lived in those Victorian houses and a relative of mine … her house on the Danforth was expropriated. It would have been far better if it had gone directly under Bloor.
As for the 1960s, Toronto was progressive and going places back then. New City Hall, the highway system, the subway system — can you imagine a project as ambitious and sophisticated as the entire B-D-U subway system (built in 8 years) going forward today? It would never happen. Why, we can’t even build a proper Eglinton line without people screaming murder.
So, instead of moving forward, we’ve moved back. If we told people in 1967 that streetcars were the better way, we’d have been laughed right out of town.
The Queen line was proposed to go north of Queen from just west of University and from (roughly) east of Jarvis. Whether the existing buildings on Queen itself would have survived is hard to say, although contemporary plans refer to these areas as run down and therefore not a big problem if the subway construction demolished them.
Similarly, when BD was built, inner city housing wasn’t seen in the same light. The Annex, Riverdale and the “Upper Beach” were not as pricy as they are today, and the TTC could get away with massive expropriation in the name of “progress”. This wouldn’t happen today (a) because the attitudes to these neighbourhoods have changed and (b) the property is worth a lot more.
There are considerations for all options for supplying the needed urban rapid transit to the southern end of downtown. I think we need to be creative and open in the potential routes and solutions.
In terms of tunnel width, the Montreal Metro is in a single bore – at 7.1 metres of width to hold both tracks – possible because of the Metro trains being narrower and longer. This a far cry from the 12 metres – and there is a tremendous cost savings by drilling one hole.
It’s interesting that the TTC presentation material for the Eglington line suggests that the central section will be bored and the flanks will be cut and cover. Yet – the diagram cleary show two holes being drilled. Is there no way be can avail ourselves from lessons fro other places!!!!
In terms of appropriating land – it isn’t ideal. However, let’s be a bit creative.
First, the city owns huge amounts of land that it could swap with current owners.
On St. Clair, the expectations (according to the plans) is that most of the existing building stock will be replaced by larger buildings as developers flcok to the street. Frankly, this is pipe dream on St. Clair past walking distance from the St. Clair West statiion- but it shows the city’s expectations that transit projects will see neighburhoods transformed. To say this can’t happen for a subway project makes no sense whatsoever. (With a surface LRT line, the pain comes back every couple of decades.)
The view that the city should be in stasis does not serve us. All over the place, buildings are being torn down and replaced. For the most, the new building are better. On a recent walk around the neighbourhood, I saw there were almost a dozen houses completely rebuilt. We must have at least two or three hundred in the last decade.
Most houses in Toronto were not built to last more than 100 years. They are wood-frame. Over the course of time, they burn down, simply become too expensive to maintain, or are no longer economical for the land they sit on.
The city could build a set of accomodation for owners whose houses had to be torn down. After the tunnelling was complete, they could rebuld the houses and people would move back in. The tunnel could be under the road – and the appropriated homes simply used to carry traffic during construction. People on the other side could stay in their homes if there were room enough for an access lane. This would be staged/staggered so that people were only out of their homes for a couple of years. (People wait as long for some condos to be built.)
The moral of the story is that if people don’t like an idea – they reject it out of hand and don’t try to find solutions. It’s too bad, the city needs creative people with new ideas.
“we leave behind a line that has to be rebuilt from largely from scratch every few decades”
You mean like… roads?
Yes, absolutely it is. From a purely business persepective, it is better by immeasurable bounds. From an engineering perspective, too, this is by far preferred.
Obviously people live or work in a property if it is expropriated. If the building is abandoned, then expropriation wouldn’t be necessary. Yes, your relative’s story isn’t the happiest of experiences, but your argument is rather selfish here, lacking substance. They had the value of the property returned to them, and I’ve heard stories where that doesn’t happen, so your relative was luckier than you think, as some governments are actually cruel. It doesn’t make it a pleasant experience, but it is fair. That said, I would have liked to see the TTC rebuild above the alignment after the subway was put in, similar to what J Albert suggests (although I disagree with using the demolished housing properties as the temporary traffic surface, that’s more complicated than it sounds on the surface, not worth the hassle, put the subway through those lands and leave traffic unmolested instead, better for businesses across the street). Certainly a missed opportunity to shove parking lots and the like overtop the subway when done.
I’m not convinced you have a substantive argument to back up the claim that it would have been better if it had gone directly under Bloor beyond your relative’s residence (no disrespect to your relative, but it’s a weak argument when you look at the wider context), while I have many arguments to support the contrary. Going directly under Bloor likely would have devastated business along the corridor, killed ridership along the corridor (as it would have given much more leverage to the auto if Bloor was disrupted to great extents), and been hugely more expensive, which would have hurt the financial position of the city for a long time – kiss the Yonge extension good-bye had they done that, there’d be no money.
The recent media coverage of the poor dealings the City made in the wake of the B-D line (like the McDonalds which pays a pittance for its lease opposite the ROM) should be a cautionary tale for those who assume the City would do any better the next time.
Karl, you weren’t there — I was. They could have just tunnelled under Bloor St. instead of building it on the cheap. After the subway opened, that whole alleyway/ROW was barren for years. It looked like a surgeon had just cut a neat line across the city … so please, spare us all your theoretical nonsense. Bloor St. in 1962 was not 5th Avenue. The businesses could have taken it. It would have been no worse than what’s happening on St. Clair right now.
I was wondering about the “temporary decking” not being accepted today was going, but forgot about the weight issue with CLRVs and ALRVs that would exist on Queen Street. Then again, by the time a DLR becomes a reality, we will likely be into a new generation of vehicles that won’t be so overbuilt. Even if not all of the fleet were replaced, enough replacements would allow Queen to operate only using new vehicles. As for the decking itself, it was used during many recent projects (parts of the Sheppard Line, the Downsview extension, and North York Centre).
I have to laugh at the plans that YRT has been showing at recent open houses for the Yonge North Extension. They are proposing SIX stations north of Finch. That all sounds nice to have stations just under 1000 metres apart, but I strongly suspect that this will be cut down to three stations, maybe four. The “Subway Now” people had been promoting the idea that there will be little disruption on the surface as tunnelling is so non-disruptive, but this goes out the window with so many stations proposed.
Mark my words, people will be bitching and complaining when this opens up and there are fewer stations than are talked about now, not to mention all those ’seamless’ trips north that involve being bumped off a train that turns back at Finch or Steeles.
That’s your assumption, Mimmo. You should be advised, as enough people have given me the same advice in the past, that assumptions are dangerous. I’m not making assumptions, I understand how these things are built.
You have a major historical oversight: TBMs weren’t reliable, and therefore not viable, before the late 1960s, after B-D was in-service! That means no tunnelling, it would have been cut-and-cover just like Yonge, and doing that for a streetcar line as long as Bloor-Danforth would have bankrupted the city, among other negative impacts!
To say that it wouldn’t have been worse that St.Clair magnifies your lack of understanding here. First, St.Clair is a complete failure and utter disaster in execution, to act like St.Clair isn’t that bad is naive. Second, you’re trying to say that well over 10km of commercial streetscapes would be fine if subjected to years of continuous cut-and-cover, hampering one of the busiest transit routes, during a period of the automobile’s fastest rise in the city?! What was that you were saying about sparing all of us theoretical nonsense?
What I’m talking about is not theory, it’s the reality of engineering/construction in the 1960s; TBMs haven’t always been around, but you never thought about that. Your being there doesn’t mean much to this discussion if you don’t understand what the options were of the day.
If Madrid can do it, there is NO REASON Toronto can’t.
If they have the demand, we have the demand.
If they have the money, we have the money.
If they have the skill, we have the skill.
In fact, the only thing Madrid has that Toronto does not is VISION. They imagine a future better than the present, and understand that success tomorrow demands sacrifice today.
Why do we lack such imagination? What are we afraid of?
In reading this thread, I’m reminded that I read earlier today that the city has “real estate holdings (conservatively valued at $17.9 billion)”.
This was in Royson James’s column today. Would it be so hard to sell 20% of this to fund the new downtown subway?
Royson James.
The Star’s Sue Ann Levy. I am surprised he still has a job.
@Justin Bernard
Being open-minded today? What kind of comment is that young man?
Actually James’s is one of the few writers in The Star who summons up something original once in a while.
The figures in James’s column are from city reports – and yes, they are online if you care to look.
N Clawson — the downtown subway won’t happen in our lifetimes. If we hadn’t kept the streetcars, it may have been built by now. Besides, who needs a downtown subway when we get to enjoy the DING DING of them charming 2 km/hr streetcars?
There is a major difference between the Yonge and Bloor subways that is missing in this thread. South of College, where the line runs under Yonge Street, the streetcars did not run on the decking, they diverted to nearby streets, most of which already had streetcar track on them.
Bloor/Danforth has no parallel street system on which such a diversion could be mounted, and much of Queen is in the same situation.
North of College Station, the Yonge line cut a strip through neighbourhoods all the way to Eglinton just like the BD subway.
The billions in city property is an asset, but it cannot all be liquidated overnight. Moreover, transit expansion is not the only portfolio with a call on those funds.
Meanwhile in Madrid, they had not only a “vision” but billions of Euros lavished on Spain when that country joined the EU. Now that Canada is musing about free trade with Europe, maybe the solution to our transit funding is to look across the pond.
Finally, the downtown relief line / Queen Subway was torpedoed not by the streetcar system, but by anti-downtown development politics.
That process started with the decision to build the first east-west subway under Bloor, not Queen, a decision taken long before transit activism existed in any form.
It continued with the Spadina subway whose route was dictated by an expressway and a shopping mall, not by the street grid.
It concluded with the Sheppard line that somehow would create “downtown North York” and similtaneously prevent the overdevelopment of the core area.
We all know how successful those policies were.
@Steve Munro
The property doesn’t need to be liquidated overnight – because the cash to build the line isn’t needed in one chunk. Lease income could be devoted to
In terms of the development of the North York center – for better or worse, this appears to be happenning – as someone documented in an article on here a few weeks back. Personally, I don’t think a city core can be overdeveloped – wheover came up with such a notion should be run out of town.
Guys – can we look at real facts and figures instead of throwing out these old lines all the time. Tx.
@Steve Munro
This is something that I should have covered in the original post, but streetcars did run on the decking once the decking was in place according to this article, however Steve’s point remains valid; Victoria, Bay, and Church were readily available diversions at the time, and I’ve read that additional routes down tiny streets like Alexander (the point where the tunnel is officially off Yonge St.) had streetcars run along them for the subway construction diversions.
My understanding is that this was done while the decking was under construction – which wasn’t an overnight job, there’s obviously going to be an usuable period while the street is torn up and the decking constructed. Once the decking was in place, then the streetcars could run on them.
I apologize for not articulating this earlier, as it is a critical point for this topic.
@N Clawson
We can’t sell the real estate all at once – but I agree that there is a significant cash flow that can be used to fund capital projects.
The problem is that the powers that be don’t believe in selling land. For example, the city only recently came to own Union Station. Yet to some, even the thought of leasing is out for 99 years is something they wont consider – hence the demise of the Union – Pearson project.
It’s the same crowd that was anti-downtown development that’s essentially running the city today. Old habits die hard. (Yes – I’d love to run them all out of town.)
Another problem is that the city’s operating expenses are growing at about $0.5 billion a year. Most of this is going straight into staffing and wage increases. Miller essentially raided $60 million from capital a couple of year back when he sold Toronto Hydro the light poles. This essentially depleted capital to pay the increasing wage costs. (This is just an example.)
Unfortunately, I see little hope that city wont use the real estate cash stream to fund still more staff and higher wages.
@Steve Munro
There seem to be a number of parallel routes (Richmond, Adelaide) to Queen – what city are you talking about?
That’s the same as saying Bloor had Harbord and Dupont. It’s only for part of the route… what about the rest?
@Karl Junkin
Do Victoria, Bay and Church go all the way up parallel to Yonge? Construction is staged on these types of projects. If we didn’t live will a little disruption, there would be no projects done.
Bay used to have streetcars all along it, but they’ve been torn up now, apart from the College-Dundas portion. Church still does go all the way to College from Wellington.
Adelaide and Richmond are parallel to Queen only between Bathurst and Parliament. Yes, they exist, sort of, west of Bathurst, but running streetcars along them would be challenging.
I raised the issue because, depending on what extent of Queen Street subway someone is talking about, there is not an available parallel street from one end to the other.
Church had track from Bloor to Wellington. Victoria still has track from Dundas down to Adelaide. Bay had track from Davenport to the Lake.
@Steve Munro
“Meanwhile in Madrid, they had not only a “vision” but billions of Euros lavished on Spain when that country joined the EU.”
Exactly. Vision gets the dollars (or Euros). Just ask China.
So how come Toronto didn’t get the dollars with the Expo bid? Simple: Intergovernmental affairs. Transit is actually politically acceptable to spend money on in the EU.
In Toronto, “vision” for some people is a subway to a shopping mall. For others, it is a connected network of transit services. Sadly, the former is funded far more often than the latter, mainly because one-time projects (a) make specific people happy who will vote for you and (b) create no lasting requirement for capital subsidies.
“In fact, the only thing Madrid has that Toronto does not is VISION.”
… and urban density, and built form, and sustainable travel patterns…
Vision is also building a $300 Million dollar express line with no intermediate stops, using refurbished Rail Diesel Cars.
*sigh*
@Triceratops and @ Steve Munro
The assertions you make about Madrid and its Metro (Subway) are wrong.
Most of Madrid’s subway system was built before Spain joined the EU (1986):
Line 1 – 1919
Line 2 – 1924
Line 3 – 1936
Line 4 – 1944
Line 5 – 1968
Line 6 – 1979
Line 9 – 1980
Line 10 – 1980 – comnbined 2 older lines
There have been post 1986 extensions – but most of these got underway in 1995 – when the socialist government was replaced by a right leaning one!
In terms of desnity, Madrid (city) has a population of 3.3 million in 607 sq km – for 5198 per Sq km. Toronto is less dense – 2.5 million in 633 sq km – or a density of 3972 per Sq km. So Madrid is more dense – but not by that much. Given the population projections in the official plan, Toronto will be almost as dense as Madrid by 2031.
I don’t know about “vision”, but you have to hand it to the Transit City folks: they were on the spot with a plan and an advocacy structure when the government was looking around for a big project to throw money at. DRL advocates, take note.
Please have a look at the Wikipedia article on the subject
Madrid_Metro
The “miracle” everyone talks about with huge expansion of the subway network (and now a move to high-end LRT) happened after the dates listed above.
That’s where the data is from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Metro
(and detailed pages on each line. Some of the line links are not correct and you need to look them up directly.)
There is no mention of the EU or a miracle. Madrid metro construction has been more or less continuous with some quieter times and busier times. It seems that the 80’s were a quiet time as only projects in process were complete – other plans were abandoned. (In fact, the late 80’s seem to be the low point.)
Replacement of old rolling stock is documented as being started in 1995 and a great deal of new construction (mainly Metro Sur and some line extensions) in the 2000’s.
Mimmo – I have to mainly agree with Andrew E.
However, I also have to take Steve Munro to task for the comment about the ’shopping centers’. People want transit to go to places where they need to get to – and yes guys – this includes getting to shopping. The vision is transit that meets our needs – not what somethings prefers to give us.
The Madrid situation needs context. Madrid already had many subway lines decades ago, but expansion had stopped. The “Madrid Miracle” followed Spain’s membership in the EU, and consisted mainly of extensions to existing lines. That’s an important distinction because extensions tend to perpetuate an existing technology, often for good reason.
My remark about subways to shopping centres was in reference to:
Spadina — to Yorkdale
Scarborough — to STC
In both cases, the destinations were driven much more by land development (as was the route of the Spadina expressway) than by considerations of serving existing riders. Current plans within the 416 attempt to address the backlog of capacity required in already-built areas on routes that don’t have existing rapid transit lines.
With respect to new developments, a shopping centre could act as a “Mobility Hub” in Metrolinx terminology, but the typical built form with acres of parking does not lend itself to the “hub” growing outward into neighbouring areas and they will, therefore, be dependent on feeder routes to get people to the hub itself.
The question is one of urban design. Yes, people want and need to go to the shopping centres, but we have allowed them to dominate the planning of our region in a way that stifles transit growth.
As for my “influence”, first I am not a lobbyist as I have nothing to gain personally or for my employer (who happens to be the school board) in advocating various transit alternatives. Second, the TTC was looking at LRT back in the mid-60s and would have built a network of suburban routes were it not for the arrival of the “GO Urban” scheme that led eventually to the Skytrain technology. The line to Scarborough Town Centre was originally going to be LRT.
By the late 1980s, the TTC had come to recognize that subway construction was not economically feasible and once again started looking at alternatives. However, David Peterson, desperate to be re-elected, announced a network of new subway lines (and the WWLRT) with funding to match (or so it seemed).
Peterson was defeated, but Bob Rae thought all this construction would make a great job stimulus during the recession of the 1990s. In fact, the large-scale boost wouldn’t come for years until the TTC could start digging holes in the ground, but most of that was stopped by Mike Harris.
The question of expensive subway costs and the need for alternatives predates the period where I had any significant influence by decades. There is a predictable cycle of big announcement, less money, cutbacks, finding alternatives and then someone needs to win an election and we start all over again while actually building very little.
My role has been to say “wait a minute, we have been here before”.
The TTC’s move away from subways itself had an intriguing history. When the Ridership Growth Strategy came out, it did not include any subway construction because it was supposed to be for short-term, low cost initiatives. The TTC subway fraternity went ballistic with the support of the then-Chief General Manager, and one month later there was a report at TTC to confirm the Spadina and Sheppard extensions.
Howard Moscoe told me he wasn’t willing to fight staff on this because “there was no money and they would never be built”. The problem is that lines on a map take on a life of their own, and this vote was used to show the TTC’s “support” for rapid transit construction. What he didn’t mention was that it would have been politically impossible for him to oppose the Spadina extension to York University.
In any event, the TTC’s shift to supporting LRT is not my doing by a long shot.
@Steve Munro
When I google on ‘Madrid Miracle’, the only transit related hits in the first twenty pages of hits related to transit are on your website and in this discussion. There are many other Madrid miracles – related to soccer, the civil war, religion, surviving plane crashes – but not transit. This seems to be an invention of a small cabal of people in Toronto!
Yes, Madrid built more subways since they joined the EU. They built all of their subways since the birth of Christ too. Did the miracle of the immaculate conception lead to the miraculous Madrid subway system?
The less said about Howard Moscoe the better. In my experience, he is dishonest. (I have an email chain from him with a series of outright lies and half-truths.) [Now that IS a personnal attack - and I hope Howard will come on the board so that I can expose this further.]
In fact, Madrid has a wonderful transit system – and size wise and density-wise Madrid comparable to Toronto as a CMA.
Relating the political history of how and what was built irrelevant to the future. We are looking at plans that will shape transportation many many decades into the future.
Two clarifications and then I refuse to participate in this thread any further. The term “Madrid Miracle” is used by subway proponents in Toronto in saying “why can’t we do this here”. I am using the term in that context only. I agree that it’s a local invention, but it’s not my invention.
The political history is important — I have been accused of having undue influence on what is going on in this town, a claim that is laughably untrue. No stacks of unmarked bills have appeared on my doorstep from lobbyists eager to recruit me to their cause.
The history is there to show in brief how we got where we are, and how decisions were made, or not made. We may follow exactly the same path again, and I fear that is exactly what will happen in these challenging economic times.
Steve, you’re far too modest. You have influence. If you hadn’t convinced the TTC to retain streetcars in 1972, the resulting conversion to buses downtown would have absolutely necessitated a Queen/downtown east-west subway by the 1980s. In fact, this was official TTC policy in the late 60s/early 70s before you came along — to eliminate streetcars completely and convert the heaviest routes to subway operation.
And, for the millionth time, this city is simply too big from a geographical standpoint for light rail. The mode is too slow for long distances and now, with the 905, we’re much bigger than the old upside-down T-shaped City of Toronto.
I admit, I didn’t “get it” until I started driving in my early 20s. As a motorist, I now understand what’s needed to get cars off the road. Since you don’t drive and don’t own a car, you can’t possibly understand the emotional and psychological attachment to having your own wheels. To get motorists to leave their cars behind, we need strong deterrents (ie. road tolls), and faster modes of transit that can compete with the convenience of cars.
Humans always choose the path of least resistance, and we’re not going to shove our cars in the gargage and hop on streetcars that move at a snail’s pace.
Madrid got it right. We’re getting it wrong.
@M Briganti @Steve Munro
I grew up in London and Montreal – and didn’t lean to drive until after university. I’m not sure how much the emotional attachment is the real ‘driver’. Commuting by car loses it’s appeal pretty quick. For shopping, errands and weekend trips – certainly.
What I’ve learned about Toronto over the last few years is that it’s a very divided place. Montrealers will tell you they’re from Montreal even if they live in Laval or the South Shore. I always remember ‘Torontonians’ saying they were from Etibicoke or Mississauga’. It always seemed odd.
Now having lived here for a decade, I can see the divisions are starting to disolve somewhat. However, there is still a big crew of what I refer to as ‘downtown dinosaurs’ – if you read John Barber in the Globe, you’ll know what I’m talkng about.
The mentality is that the “‘burbs” can’t be allowed to influence things. I see Transit City as an attempt by the downtown dino’s to remake the “suburbs” in the image of some of the inner city streets: slow streetcar lines for local travel.
A cynic would see this as a way to keep those suburbanites out of the core – trap them into slowly travelling up and down their suburban street, without really helping them ‘join’ the city as a whole.
I don’t think this is the the case – at least not intentionally. It’s more a failure to put themselves in others’ shoes.
J Albert — that’s an interesting point. It reminds me of the whole Spadina expressway fiasco (suburbs vs. downtown). I was against Spadina because I didn’t want to see my old downtown neighbourhood decimated, but I now realize it set a terrible precedent. It marked the end of all expressway expansion in the 416. It wouldn’t have been so bad if our subway network had expanded to compensate, but unfortunately, it didn’t.
Madrid is very different to Toronto. There has been no sprawl in Madrid since the early 1980s. Imagine how much smaller in size Toronto would be if we stopped then too.
Guess how far Madrid’s “Oakville” equivalent is from the city centre? 7 km. If we had that kind of city, then subways would be a much more attractive option.
The reality is that Toronto lost the chance of being subway capable decades ago, when the suburbs sprang out 50 km in every direction. Nobody wants to sit (stand, actually) in a subway for those kinds of hours. Express rail is the answer for Toronto’s crosstown trips. It would be cool if we were built like Madrid, but we’re not.
@Triceratops … what we built in underground transit 40 years ago determined the development patterns downtown today. If the University line had not been built and the Bloor-Queen-U subway had been constructed instead, the downtown core, its skyscrapers, and general intensification would have followed an E-W pattern instead of the N-S pattern between Yonge and University.
If we had continued building, we would have become more like Madrid. I firmly believe that streetcar retention held us back.
Gentlemen: I am not being modest. I was only one member among about a dozen in the original Streetcars for Toronto Committee, and did not become its chair until after the decision to retain streetcars had been taken. I later took over the reins when Andrew Biemiller, the first chair, retired.
We had a lot of help from many members of Toronto Council including William Kilbourn and Paul Pickett. With support from both the left and the right, we succeeded.
The decision to build the Bloor subway before Queen was taken over a decade before the decision to retain streetcars. You are mangling the timeline to prop up your argument, and you are still ascribing to me powers that I could only dream of.
@M. Briganti, if you think the streetcars held us back, then why is it that not one of the many many North American cities that removed streetcars in the 1950s turn into Madrids? They went quite in the opposite direction, and Toronto’s system is well above the North American standard in terms of ridership and efficiency.
Toronto is not comparable to Madrid, it really isn’t. Madrid was never a car heavy city. Yes their subway expansion removed a certain amount of car dependency, but nothing groundbreaking. The preference throughout the last 50 years was walking, all while Toronto was getting more and more car dependant.
Everyone who complains that Madrid is proof that there should be a subway along Eglinton, please. Not a single metro line in Madrid resembles Eglinton in any form. Never has. Tell me one street in Madrid that has any equivalency to Eglinton.
Thanks in advance.
Tric — I’m not talking about the burbs, I’m talking about downtown. The key difference is we were removing streetcars with the intent of building a subway network to replace the heaviest car lines downtown (this includes BLOOR and QUEEN). The American cities, on the other hand, were just replacing streetcars with buses.
The 1972 decision was a pivotal moment in our transit history that forever changed the downtown transitscape. A $400M Queen Subway (1973 dollars) was on the books to start as soon as work on Spadina wrapped up, but the retention of streetcars effectively killed the need for that line until it was too late. It was our last chance to get a badly needed piece of transit infrastructure downtown while the project was still affordable and politically viable — and before traffic on Queen and King became a nightmare.
I’m a railfan, I own several model PCC cars, and I like hearing streetcars go DING DING, but from an objective, cost, and operational point of view, THEY SUCK!
Every single member of Streetcars for Toronto was a railfan, and they convinced the TTC to keep streetcars by disguising their true motivation with “objective” reasons. I’m sorry, but a smoother ride and not having to merge back into traffic are not strong enough reasons to keep them!
The result of our streetcar retention policy has been a complete disaster. The system has drained and strained the TTC severely, costing us hundreds of millions over the years for service that is not much better than buses, and the surface rail lines stunted the growth of the subway network south of Bloor. And now, they want to do it again, with Transit City!
Mimmo, you are making an historical error again. You forget that the same political structural shift in 1967 that allowed Spadina to leap frog Queen in the first place would have also seen that Queen never got off the ground after Spadina either. It became evident around 1972 that subways were escalating in cost at a rate the city and province could not keep up with. That has nothing to do with the streetcars being kept.
I’d have to counter that your argument is actually unobjective as you are ignoring key facts: The Yonge subway extension incurred far higher costs than expected when forced to tunnel instead of use cut-and-cover and bridges like originally favoured by TTC engineers. Spadina was cheaper because it was at-grade north of Eglinton, so that wasn’t as expensive. Queen would have been all underground though, with many more stations than Yonge had north of Eglinton.
Streetcars hardly suck from an operational and cost point of view. Streetcars, per passenger, cost less to operate than buses if the ridership along the route is high enough. Streetcars carry more people per vehicle, and require less operators per passenger carried. Electric motors are also cheaper in upkeep than combustion engines. Streetcars are cheaper to operate than buses on high demand routes, that is an undeniable fact. You can argue that the capital investment is higher than a bus, that’s true, but the operational savings and service quality improvement is worth it.
As for operations, streetcars often run on streets where only one lane of traffic is available due to parking. In these corridors, the operational nature of a streetcar is far superior to a bus, because a bus is required to pull up to the curb even in the one-lane per-direction conditions. This greatly slows down the bus compared to the streetcar since streetcars never have to re-merge with traffic. The bus, just like the streetcar, would be incapable of going around turning vehicles due to being boxed in by parking. Your arguments simply don’t hold up to the reality of the nature of the routes that streetcars operate on.
St.Clair, Spadina, Queensway, Queen’s Quay, Kingston, and Lake Shore are exceptions, but these either already are dedicated ROW, some were even built as dedicated ROW from the outset, and the others are in the process of being transformed to dedicated ROW (currently either under construction or in planning/design phase).
To say “THEY [streetcars] SUCK!” is a display of ignorance on the nature of transit operations. More often people think buses suck more than streetcars, going back to the old “rails good, wheels bad” post.
It is obvious that we’d have far lower ridership in the city without the streetcars due to the political restructuring that occurred in 1967 in addition to the cost realities that materialized around 1972, because we’d have no subway even if the streetcars disappeared! You act like the subway would have materialized without the streetcars “in the way”, and that’s just outright false. The money for such was not available, regardless of streetcar presence. If anything, the streetcars save us money by requiring less operators on the routes. The biggest problem right now is a dwindling fleet struggling to meet demand.
Had the streetcars been abandoned, downtown would be trying to cope with bus service on all the current streetcar corridors, and that is where the complete disaster would occur. We’d be nowhere near breaking ridership records today without the streetcars, since bus routes would never accomplish what the 504 King and 510 Spadina do. Indeed, the development we see in the city would not be what it is now in downtown farther away from the subway lines without the streetcars. Did you know there’s a developer called “Streetcar Developments Inc.?”
Transit City is what should have started in 1985, and will save the TTC a lot of money in operations costs along the routes, (except maybe Morningside north of Lawrence). This expectation that subways will come if only we get rid of LRT/streetcars is far-fetched, to put it lightly.
Karl, to address your points:
- the operational cost savings of streetcars are marginal
- the increased capital costs are enormous
- one articulated bus is equivalent to a CLRV in capacity
- motorists must now yield to buses merging back in from a curb lane (it’s the law)
- countless passengers (about one per week) are hit and injured by motorists as they leave/board streetcars
The Spadina subway was always on the books to proceed before Queen. Spadina was actually on the table with the BDU system in 1958. The “Queen after BDU” proposal came later — mid 60s.
You seem to be forgetting that in the 20th century, subways weren’t exactly the forbearer of skyscrapers you seem to think. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Yonge street was pretty much a slum, despite the subway beneath it.
Karl, you use the word “obviously” several times in your post, referring to the cost of streetcar lines, streetcar speeds, and the relationship of stretcars to ridership. It’s not obvious to me — do you have anything to back up your claims?
Concerning the operational cost of streetcars, they require track replacement every 30 years or so, which is not only a very long and very expensive project, but also has a large economic cost as a result of basically closing major thoroughfares, impacting local business, overall traffic delays, and so on. If you know of a study comparing the true cost of buses to streetcars, I would be happy to read it.
On the other hand, the only point where I’m aware of data, it rebuts your claim: the Spadina streetcar line is slower, on average, than the buses it replaced (source: Globe and Mail, “Rapid Transit? Not on Spadina”, May 7, 2005). This is in spite of the line sitting in a ROW.
Personally, I don’t necessarily think streetcars are either great or terrible. But I do think claims should be based on data.
@Andrew E – I used the word “obvious” only once in my last comment… so I must dispute your claim I used it “several times.” That once instance I did use it was in reference to the ridership through downtown, which I’d argue is obvious because King does in fact carry a ppdph greater than the bus is capable. At peak, King carries over 3,000ppdph, which a bus route cannot do in mixed traffic.
The Spadina 77 was faster because the buses on it would leapfrog each other to service stops. Even Dr. Richard Soberman and the TTC agree that the Spadina 510 LRT is no faster or better than the 77 bus it replaced — despite the millions spent on the underground tunnel and the ROW.
One thing I forgot to mention was that the Queen line was TIED to the abandonment of all streetcar routes south of Bloor. Along came the rail enthusiasts who couldn’t let go of the fond memories they had of riding the PCCs in their childhoods with their folks in the late 50s, and that was the end of that.
Tric — I’m just saying our downtown developed inside the Yonge-University loop because of the subway.
@Mimmo:
Not when ridership is above a certain threshold, then the savings go up fast.
Which I already acknowledged previously, but that’s a one-time cost. Track replacement is only needed every 30 years, but the quality of the tracks has far greater endurance than that of asphalt.
The TTC doesn’t use artics much, but more importantly, the TTC can’t use artics downtown! The turns in downtown’s narrow streets would be too difficult to be safe for an articulated bus.
Enforcement is difficult, this law is not followed often enough to be effective.
But Mimmo, motorists must stop to allow passengers off the streetcar (it’s the law). This where platform islands in the road serve a great purpose, and use of these should be expanded whereever space can be created for them.
Not true. Queen was supposed to come after Bloor, but then the political structure changed in 1967, as I referred to previously, which resulted in Spadina getting more support than Queen. Check your history.
Yes, the provision was made for Spadina with BDU as it was in the city’s growth plans from the 50s… but so was the Queen subway. Greenwood Yard was part of the Queen subway plan in the 60s, which was being pushed by the TTC in 1968 (I have a copy of the report).
@Andrew E – Spadina suffers from some bad design and technological conflict issues.
Yeah, I’m having a very difficult time picturing an articulated bus even finding enough room near a curb to pull over, on a street like King. That would involve a whole block of manoeuvring room. In other words, no parking anywhere on the street.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a supporter of on-street parking on King, but if we were to get rid of parking, it would only make the streetcar’s potential better, in contrast to the bus.
Could you cite any examples of streets like King in the world that has a bus service any better than Toronto’s 504 car?
Also, you’re claiming that any downtown subways were held back as a result of streetcars is pure revisionist history. The initiative to remove streetcars was based on replacing them all with buses. Just like countless American cities.
“countless passengers (about one per week) are hit and injured by motorists as they leave/board streetcars”
I love this one. Perhaps we should remove all crosswalks in town to prevent pedestrians being killed by red-light running drivers. Some drivers can’t follow the rules of the road, they should not be driving. I really don’t think accommodating these law breakers is the solution.
@Triceratops
I am wondering if you would take the time to actually read the earlier portions of this thread. As I have already pointed out – and you might wish to take a moment to look – Madrid’s density is comparable to Toronto – and especially so when we look at 2031 projections.
Just little basic geometry: the core of Mardid is about 607 sq km (Toronto is 633 sq km). This means the that the radius of the official core of Madrid is about 14 km. [Radius = Square Root (Area / Pi)]. Now outside of the official core, there are 2.4 million residents as of 2005.
So where on earth did you get this 7 km figure?
@Ticeratops
The original EA for Spadina describes the alternative to use articulated buses. (II think the engineers at the TTc wanted to build something with rail – that’s why the LRT was chosen.)
Nowhere does it mention that they are not able to maneuvre. In fact, as we see now, the problem is in getting a reliable streetcar design that will be able to use the downtown network that is the real isuse.
@Karl and @ Mimmo
Actually, the operating costs of streetcars are WAY HIGHER than buses. This is mainly due to maintenance requirements being higher. Buses are mass produced and hence proper reliability engineering is possible.
In fact, in the latest comparison I have (from a City of Toronto report “Review of TTC Performance Measures – 2003″)
Streetcar operating cost per service hour = $133.78
Bus operating cost per service hour = $85.98
The streetcars require MASSIVE amounts of vehicle and plant maintenance.
The transportation costs are roughly the same – mostly the operators wages and benefits.
(The report is in the Metro Hall branch – not online. I have a photocopy of most of it. I think Moscoe and co. suppressed it because of the St. Clair debate.)
Yes I did read that. You explained the difference in density between Madrid and Toronto. Your numbers state that Madrid is roughly 30 % more dense than Toronto is. Perhaps you think 30 % is negligible. I don’t.
If you look at the City of Toronto as a whole (i.e. the 416 area), the downtown core and a few other spots have ultra high density, while the great majority of the land is low density.
Madrid, in contrast is a medium to medium-high density throughout. This makes a huge difference to travel patterns as I am sure you know.
The contiunuity of Madrid’s urban area is surrounded by something of a grenbelt. This urban area is roughly a circle with a radius of 6 to 10 km from the city centre. There also exist several satellite towns, which one might loosely relate to as Brampton in the context of Toronto.
The most distant satellite town from Madrid which recieves Metro service is called Fuenlabrada. Fluenlabrada is 16 km from the city centre. So in distance terms it is like North York, but when you look at it in the map, it isn’t even part of Madrids urban continuity.
Lets contrast that with the Toronto urban area. Toronto’s urban sprawl goes continuously north from Lake Ontario, ending at the Oak Ridges Morraine (roughly 30 KM from the CBD). The western sprawl goes roughly 50 km from the CBD out to Oakville.
And throughout this sprawl, the density, as you know, is generally very very low. These kinds of distances aren’t best serviced by subways, they are a textbook case for Express Rail.
The fundamental preference in Madrid for travel has never been the car as it is in Toronto. Walking has always taken precedence. That’s just what it’s like in a city built at the consistent medium density that Madrid has. When you say “we have to build subways to get people out of their cars!!” you are hunting a completely different animal than the one hunted in Madrid.
@J Albert – I never stated per service hour, I stated per rider. Yes, it is absolutely true that the ridership of a streetcar route must be above a certain threshold if there is going to be a cost-benefit, I stated such previously.
The current streetcar fleet is not a standard example of costs though, as the current fleet has exceeded its lifespan, and as such requires excessive maintenance raking up above-average costs. Costs were different in 1985, when the CLRV/ALRV fleets were relatively new. Once the new fleet starts to roll in after a few years, costs should steadily decline to a competitive figure.
It shouldn’t be ignored that the current fleet is on its dying legs… or dying trucks, I should say. That means very frequent breakdowns.
J Albert — excellent points.
Tric — that crosswalks comment is not the same thing and you know it. If buses dropped passengers off at the curb, they wouldn’t get hit.
The artics that used to run on Islington (a two-lane road) had no trouble making manoeuvres, even in and out of bus curb bays designed for standard buses (where the bus’ back end would stick out).
And, I don’t have to check my history books about the Queen subway … I was there.
This is getting tiresome — Karl, you can freeze your butt off waiting for a reduced frequency Finch Transit City train while I zoom by in my cozy comfy hybrid.
DING DING !!
Mimmo, you definately have to check your history. When it comes to the Queen subway, it doesn’t matter whether or not you were there, as the Queen subway was never even built. All that’s left are records from meetings and plans that tell the whole story.
If you want to sit in traffic while LRTs overtake you in a dedicated ROW, feel free.
@Karl
The actual capacity achieved by the TTC streetcars is about the same as buses. The 2003 report I aluded to also gives statistics on the ridership per hour.
As of 2001 (most recent figure in the report), the TTC’s boarding per hour were:
Streetcar: 81
Bus 76
Of course, the streetcar figure is a blend of CLRV and ALRV – fact, I have already published an estimated of the prorated achieved capacity of the CLRV. See:
http://hogtown.blogspot.com/2004/10/analysis-of-ttc-streetcars-part-i.html
in which you’ll see that CLRV’s really only get about 74 boardings per hour based on the proration. This is lower than the buses.
You can see post:
http://hogtown.blogspot.com/2004/10/ttc-streetcars-part-iia-capacity.html
for an analysis of where the streetcar advetised capacity is not actually delivered.
@Karl
Sorry – as of the report (2003), the streetcar average age was about the same as the average fleet age of the C-train equipment. The problem with the CRLV/ALRV is not age – but the fact they are highly customized. We’ll have the same problem with the next generation. Highly customized equipment has low reliability and high maintenance costs – it’s as simple as that.
@Everyone – there is a woman in critical condition with an injury from being hit by a streetcar yesterday. We don’t have statistics – but if you listen to the news and traffic reports, this is not infrequent. People get hit by buses too – but I don’t hear about it as much. If anyone has statistics, it would be useful.
“The artics that used to run on Islington (a two-lane road) had no trouble making manoeuvres, even in and out of bus curb bays designed for standard buses (where the bus’ back end would stick out).”
I’m not very familiar with the conditions of Islington, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe Islington has on-street parking, the frequency of stops, and definitely not the ridership which King does. Those are THE determining factors when it comes to transit mode.
@Triceratops
Think what you may – by 2031 – Toronto will be as dense as Madrid per the official plan. Areas in the contiguous suburbs are getting denser too. Toronto does not sprawl all the way to the O.R. Moraine. In fact, it’s about 22 km from Toronto CBD to the north end of Richmond Hill (Major Mac) – the developed area peters out just north of there. I have it as about 17 km for your example.
Of course, Toronto’s CBD is at the south end – instead of at the middle. So in reality, the differences are not nearly as great as you posted.
Furthermore, Madrid long and practically continuous history since the early 1900’s) of building subways has helped it become denser. Now we’re in a catch 22 – we have a greater need for subways (real rapid transit) because we’re slightly more spread out. People have longer commutes.
@J Albert –
Yes, the custom equipment argument is true for the CLRVs/ALRVs, and related to that their weight probably results in extra daily wear and tear, but age still cannot be excluded either, as newer/younger equipment requires less maintenance/replacement/rebuilding – it’s as simple as that.
If the fleets had been replaced already in 2003, the costs would be much lower. Today, the CLRVs are about 30 years old. The ALRVs are about 25 years old this year. We’re behind on replacing the fleet to the point that the fleet has been shrinking and service has been reduced as a consequence.
Also, note the running conditions (almost entirely dedicated ROW) for C-Train, its geometry (over twice the average turning radius) and the age of the C-Train network as a whole (which is about the same as the ALRVs, the CLRVs are a few years older than the first C-Train line). I’m sorry, but when this is taken into consideration, it really doesn’t make for a fair comparison against Toronto. Prague would make a better comparison, since the networks have comparable age and geometry. If something should be compared against C-Train from Toronto, compare the SRT.
The new fleet will be much closer to standard than the CLRVs/ALRVs, since the province is not desperately trying to salvage a failed venture into maglev technology this time. The only reason the new fleet is going to be partially custom is due to the 100% low-floor condition, which is a bit silly given the hassle it has resulted in, even though I would have otherwised agree with the principle if there wasn’t that engineering issue. Since it’s not the protoge of OTDC/UTDC, it is going to be much closer to standard LRT, but adjusted for Toronto’s network geometry.
“Of course, Toronto’s CBD is at the south end – instead of at the middle. So in reality, the differences are not nearly as great as you posted.”
Indeed you are correct, not many GTA residents live underwater. That’s one of the reasons Toronto is so incomparable to Madrid. The average GTA resident is, due to this geographic fact, living roughly twice the distance from the CBD when compared to the average Madrid resident. This kind of factor is paramount in the world of travel patterns my friend.
“Furthermore, Madrid long and practically continuous history since the early 1900’s) of building subways has helped it become denser. Now we’re in a catch 22 – we have a greater need for subways (real rapid transit) because we’re slightly more spread out. People have longer commutes.”
No, Madrid has a history of high density that long predates the very first subway being built there. In fact, the density shrank in the 20th century. I can say with absolute certainty that Madrid did not become more dense as a result of subways because the urban density has gone down!
Now that’s not to say a subway will have a density lowering effect on Toronto. It probably won’t, but it just goes to show why we are comparing apples to oranges.
@J Albert
We’re talking about different figures here.
The point I was getting at is that the streetcars can, per vehicle, carry more passengers than a bus can, per vehicle. This is a fact, and there’s a reason your numbers aren’t reflecting this: TTC has been expanding streetcar service without expanding the fleet (in fact, the fleet has been shrinking while new lines are added).
A large number of streetcars are on Spadina, but the fleet was never expanded for that service to operate, thus service goes down on other routes. This hurts the overall performance of the network since there aren’t enough cars to go around. It goes back to the fleet argument.
If a bus runs more frequently on a route than a streetcar, than the bus route can get more boardings since it runs more service. If the bus runs at twice the frequency of the streetcar, the capacity is close to equal on both routes. For example, if a bus runs every 3 minutes, it has a capacity of around 1,200ppdph, and if a streetcar runs every 5 minutes, it has a capacity also around 1,200ppdph.
So your figures don’t mean that the bus has a higher capacity than the streetcar – it doesn’t. It just means the TTC has failed to acquire enough vehicles to serve its network, resulting in an underperforming streetcar network due to stretched resources.
Buses run into problems if demand above 1,800ppdph is placed on them (2,400ppdph if articulated buses are used). Meanwhile, King is currently carrying over 3,000ppdph at peak. This is its max with CLRVs, but it would be 4,650ppdph if it were all ALRVs along the route, well over twice that of the bus, and close to twice that of articulated buses. However, the TTC doesn’t have the fleet for such service right now. Doesn’t change the fact that streetcar routes do have higher capacity than bus routes, if the fleet to service it is available… and once-upon-a-time, the fleet was available, but that changed during the early 90s.
The new fleet will be able to provide 3,900ppdph on King… or more if vehicles are coupled.
I will leave it to the noble band of writers here to continue this debate, but a few points need to be injected:
The high cost of the CLRV/ALRV fleet is also due to the aged nature of the electronics and the fact that parts are hard to come by. These cars suffered from not being an “off the shelf” design, and Toronto has paid for it ever since. They are very heavy because they were designed for high speed suburban operation at well in excess of 50 mph even though such a top speed implies very widely spaced stations. We suffer from horrendously high costs on our streetcar network because only a “made in Ontario” solution was acceptable.
Track maintenance costs went way up because the TTC stopped building robust track in the late 1960s. By the early 90s, new track on a busy route had a lifespan of maybe 15 years, and this track cost considerably more to install than the much improved design now in use that will last 25-30 years.
To put it bluntly, streetcars cost a lot of money to run here at least in part because of the pigheadedness both at the UTDC and the TTC. Once inefficiencies like this are built into a system, they take a long time to remove.
With respect to boardings per hour, you have to be careful to look at the character of routes. Some routes carry a lot of passengers a very small distance — they have good turnover — and the boardings per hour (and hence the cost per boarding) look wonderful. The Main bus achieves this feat even though it has infrequent service simply due to the layout of the route. Coxwell is spectacular, but it’s only handling short trips mainly between Queen, Gerrard and Danforth. The Queen car handles a lot of long trips, and its demand is relatively speaking more unidirectional. Both of these contribute to a lower boardings per hour.
Well Mr. Junkin, after we’re through spending a billion dollars and reducing our streetcar fleet size to 204 super-long light rail vehicles, you’ll have, on average, a much longer wait, than if, say, three buses were bought for each streetcar. So, if I were you, I’d stock up on long underwear now. Three buses running every 4 minutes is a lot better than one longer-than-hell streetcar running every 12.
Briganti, we’d all love it if the TTC ordered 300 streetcars rather than 204, nobody is advocating infrequent service.
What we are advocating is that the heavily used downtown routes would indeed be better served by a long LRV coming by every 2 minutes, rather than a bus running at a frequency of 45 seconds. This is due to the nature of our downtown streets, where passing is hardly an option to begin with.
Keep in mind that the capital costs for the vehicles is comparable to a bus in the long term. A LRV might cost more than a bus but it carries more passengers (as discussed earlier) and they last more than twice as long as a bus does.
Yeah, but is the TTC ordering 300? … no.
Steve — you’re always making flimsy excuses when the facts don’t support your claims, and to the outside observer, it’s wearing a little thin. Bad track construction, tank-like CLRVs, outdated electronics, Spadina and St. Clair done wrong, etc. etc. etc.
And, you’re always quoting some hypothetical theoretical ideal streetcar service that we’ve never seen. Well, when are we going to see it?
There is no off-the-shelf model that will run on our tracks. Just look at the trouble they’re having trying to find replacements for Pete’s sake — that’s why the fleet was never augmented after the ALRVs.
With the new fleet, the headways will be wider and the waits will be longer because we’ll have 50 less cars on the road. How can you keep tilting the scale to support ideal conditions that have never and will never happen, and not weigh the pros and cons objectively?
Keep in mind that frequencies less than 2 minutes are very problematic due to the reality of traffic lights, so you can’t run buses nor streetcars every 45 seconds. Finch East claims to run 52 buses between Yonge and Seneca, but that’s a combination of various branches and express services creating a misleading figure that looks great on paper (but only on paper).
Also, when it comes to a dedicated ROW, frequency is (under proper management, which the TTC needs to do some work on) more reliable than mixed-traffic operations (bus or streetcar). You can load up as many buses or streetcars on a route as you want, but if they all travel as a motorcade, service will be deplorable. “Bunching” is more likely to happen in mixed traffic, and buses are just as prone to this as streetcars. I’ve seen 3 buses travel together along Don Mills, for example… after waiting 15-20 minutes at Don Mills station. This is around peak, no less. Frequent Service? Yeah, right.
You don’t know how many vehicles are actually used in peak service Mimmo. Only 177 cars are actually on the rails carrying passengers at the heaviest peak period. This because so much of the fleet breaks down so often due to age. When 204 cars are brand new, the entire fleet can be put into service, meaning service will go up. Crowding would go down without an increase in frequency anyway, except on Queen, where frequency must go up to keep current capacity levels with the new fleet.
That said, more should have been ordered, especially since East Waterfront projects are in the pipe.
I’m pretty sure the discussion took the turn to pure hypothetical when you hypothesized that there would be a subways all over the place in the alternate reality where streetcars were removed.
I know it’s not the reality that 300 streetcars are on order, but I can hope it will become true, and I will advocate for that as I feel it would be the best for our city.
Saying “Yeah, but is the TTC ordering 300? … no.” doesn’t help. I hypothesize that if we always responded to you with “Yeah, but is the TTC removing the streetcar network? … no.” it wouldn’t lead to a very productive discussion.
@Ticeratops
First you flunk geometry – now number theory. The population of Madrid (core) increased steadily until 1970 – after which the growth moved outside the official boundaries.
There will always have to be spares on hand at the carhouse, so the entire fleet will not be scheduled to run during all at once. Talk practical, not some ideal theoretical. It’s almost impossible to dispute that better more frequent service could be run with 600 buses instead of 200 streetcars. And now, you’re going to ignore that and say we need to hire and pay 400 more drivers.
And, I never said every route downtown would have had a subway on it … just Queen — the others would have been converted to buses.
@Karl
From what I can tell, the Park Avenue bus service in Montreal gets about 2800 ppphpd with standard LF buses. (STM reported about 9800 during rush hour.) (The Montreal LF buses are a much better design that ours. Montreal will be putting some articulated buses on the route.)
The trouble with your argument is that you have to flood the street with expensive LRVs to force feed capacity onto a few streets. It’s not economical and it doesn’t serve the riders any better.
Here’s a list of E-W streets in downtown TO that have no or minimal transit service:
Lakeshore
Front
Adelaide
Wellington
Richmond
Even a brand new fleet will have a spare factor. LRVs will need to be taken offline for heavier maintenance. I believe this has been the case even with the CLRVs and ALRVs when new – heavy maintenance takes the equipment out of service for extended period every four years. In fact, without the careful heavier maintenance, the vehicles will not last as expected.
The new LRVs would be delivered over five or six years or so. By the time the last ones would be delivered, the earlier delivered ones would be into the heavy maintenance cycle. Expect a spare factor of 15% over most of the operating lifespan.
There are only 2 spares at peak according to service summaries. If the rest of the fleet is in working condition, which, as a new fleet, should be the case, but even if you assume that 5 have been in accidents or some other mishap, that’s still 199 cars on the rails, 2 of which are spares, so 197, up from 177, 20 more cars. Service goes up.
However, your argument is still irrelevant, because in cases like King, it is outright impossible to satisfy the demand realistically by bus – far too unreliable, and far too expensive. Streetcars are cheaper and more efficient on such routes. You also continue to ignore the fact that 2 minutes are the tightest headways reasonably practical due to traffic signals. Buses will not be more frequent than streetcars if streetcars are already at 2 minute frequencies. It can’t be done.
One has to question your ideology on why you would replace Queen with a subway and make King a bus route when King has higher ridership than Queen. This is why I prefer the Richmond-Adelaide option – serves both Queen and King.
@J Albert
I don’t recall saying anything about force feeding demand (I’m assuming you meant demand, not capacity, otherwise I don’t understand the argument)?
What’s your point about the E-W streets? All of them except Lake Shore are one-way streets that cannot run bi-directional service… that’s why they don’t get much if any service.
If spares are calculated at 15%, then service will probably be relatively unchanged as the same number of LRVs would be in service… almost. 174 vs. the 177 today. This would still result in an overall capacity increase across the network since each LRV holds 28 more people than the current CLRVs, except Queen, as the new vehicles hold 25 less people than the ALRVs. What I think the TTC might do, then, is try to stretch the ALRVs lifespan as much as they can and replace the ALRVs last, since they’re slightly younger than the CLRVs anyway. They’ll have to place a second order of the new LRVs anyway as new routes along Cherry and Kingston Road (Victoria Park – Scarborough Village) and Bremner start to come online, which should include enough LRVs to also allow expansion into the East Waterfront.
Man oh man oh man — Karl, and one has to question your reasoning abilities. Queen was busier than King in the 60s/70s when the subway was planned there. And you’re telling me to go read my history books?!
Mimmo, what the ridership was in the 60s/70s is less important than what ridership is today. Common sense, there. What do you think you’re doing questioning others’ reasoning abilities when you are talking about putting a subway tomorrow on Queen when it has lower ridership than King today? That’s pretty poor reasoning abilities. You need to know which part of history is relevant to what context. There’s a part of more recent history where King St. went under a lot of redevelopment and lead to higher demand. I guess you weren’t there for that.
Karl … are you for real? I am saying the TTC planned to put a subway under Queen in the 1970s to coincide with, and compensate for, the abandonment of streetcars THEN, not now. It was the busiest route THEN, not now. What part of this do you not understand?
I am telling you what the TTC’s plans were THEN, in 1970. I am NOT telling you what my plans were then, or are now. My God, your arguments could turn a saint into a devil.
The TTC wants to rebuild half of their current CLRV fleet. The first one appeared last year with air-conditioning.
However, while rebuilding, it means they will not be available for service. It is hoped that as each brand new LFLRV’s appear from whatever manufacture wins the contract, they will be able to send an old CLRV in for rebuilding.
Eventually once we have all new LFLRV’s, the rebuilt old CLRV’s will be used for rush hour and extra service. The 1920’s Peter Witts were used for rush hour service in the 1950’s and early 1960’s in similar situations. Same with the PCC’s as the CLRV’s came on the scene.
@Karl
Montreal has many paired one-way streets where transit service runs (e.g. Main/St. Urbain: NDG/Cote St Antoine, St Catherine/De Maisonneuve etc.). Where did you get the idea that buses cant run on one-way streets?
@WK Lis – how many years will we have CLRVs *and* a full fleet of LFLRVs before the requirements of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act require the CLRVs to be finally retired? Unless someone’s going to build a streetcar line with highfloor platforms and eliminate the steps that day is inevitably coming.
@Mark
So all historic vehicles should be disposed of? Couldn’t they still be used to supplement service when needed, as extra only?
If we got rid of them, it would be like destroying all the Yorkville stores or the Uptown theater because it conflicts with the Disabilities Act.
CLRVs are historic? Now I’m feeling old.
CLRVs are a historic failure.
@Mimmo: You really don’t seem to be following the conversation. This blog post was about what considerations are for subway construction today, and you’ve been talking about Transit City here, too, which is coming soon, unless you have your way, in which case it would never come, all because you refuse to believe that the money for subways is not available, nevermind the other complications they entail. Yes, I’m for real, and you are unrealistic since you don’t have enough understanding of the challenges, your arguments speak for themselves.
This is all about where do we go from here, that’s why I’m talking about what construction challenges we’re currently stuck with, what needs to be considered. Then here you are still arguing that we should discontinue the use of streetcars at our earliest opportunity and replace them with buses while at the same time cancelling Transit City, and building a Queen subway directly beneath Queen, despite the higher ridership being on King… only to try and turn around and act like you weren’t making the arguments you were making.
@J Albert: Front street is difficult today because it is only one-way on a certain stretch, two-way at others. This is unusual and it makes it difficult to coherently serve by transit. Lake Shore is also fairly pointless today due to the hostile environment Lake Shore is beneath the Gardiner. However, all the streets you listed used to have streetcars on them way back when they were all still two-way streets. Now they just complicate things since they don’t really make opportunities for coherent routes, except possible Richmond and Adelaide, but that only works east of Spadina.
Karl, if you would actually take the time to read posts instead of shooting your mouth off foolishly, you’d realize I was talking about the past.
Now, if you want to talk about the present, my plans would be, in order, …
1) Cancel Transit City
2) Build the DRL under Queen first
3) Extend the Yonge and Spadina lines northward
3) Build the Eglinton line and extend the DRL to meet it on both ends
4) Disconnect and extend the Spadina subway south down Spadina Av.
5) Trash all the streetcars
6) Complete the Sheppard subway as intended
Which validates everything I just said.
@M.Briganti, thanks for publishing your platform for your election to the TTC commissioner position. I am against your points 1) and 5). Sorry, you lost my vote on those points.
Oh, wait a minute. Only city politicians can be on on the TTC. So it is a moot platform. Well, if they ever return to a civilian commission, I know who I don’t on it.
Building a HRT subway is more expensive than a LRT subway. When the Eglinton HRT Subway was proposed originally, it was from Black Creek to Eglinton West Station. For almost the same budget amount, an Eglinton LRT could go from YYZ to Kennedy Station. The LRT will serve more people, with subway connections at 3 points instead of one and in addition there would be 3 other LRT connections.
@WK Lis – there is scope to retain a number of CLRVs for historic charters and so on but the ODA is law for transit and future use of the CLRV fleet has to recognise that.
If you can find a way to use CLRVs post 2024 in compliance with ODA, be my guest but money used to re-retrofit items like lifts could be and should be used preferentially to acquire modern LRVs rather than pretend that 50 year old trams are a fleet backbone. I realise that in some jurisdictions that historic cars are just that and if Kenosha wants to take CLRVs from us like they took PCCs, good luck to them.
While I don’t ascribe this to you personally, I am shocked by how blase many transit fans in this province are about making transit vehicles as accessible as possible, manifested in remarks not just about the historic fleet but also items like all-stop-announcements, especially given the rapid demographic shifts that are coming over the next 40 years.
Well I just pulled out my ruler, and it turns out that the distance from Queen & Yonge to the edge of Richmond Hill’s suburbs is in fact 28 km. I guess 17 km is kinda close to 28, you know if you replace the 8 with a 7, and the 2 with a 1.
Madrid had it’s population boom in the days before suburbia existed, so naturally it was of a high density. And from the 1970s onward, the urban density in fact declined, not increased, in spite of so many wonderful subaways.
There something I don’t understand in all this — you guys really prefer slow streetcars over subways or driving? Why?
Personally, I’m a fan of the bike more than any of those options, but they all have their own set of advantages and drawbacks.
I like streetcars over subways IN SOME SITUATIONS because they have more potential to take me from door to door, rather than, in your Queen Subway world, walk from King & Sherbourne to the subway station at Queen & Jarvis then get off the subway again, climb the stairs and walk to my destination at Liberty Village. In the end there’s not always a speed advantage and quite often a convenience disadvantage.
Any surface vehicle will be slow because of all the sole occupant motor vehicles. It is the sole occupant driver that slows everyone down. Usually because the cars are making turns or looking for some real estate in which to set up residence or because of other cars are blocking them in turn.
No, surface vehicles are slow even in non-traffic situations because they stop frequently and have to contend with traffic lights slowing them down even further.
I find that the people who support streetcars over subways or driving …
a) are in their early/mid 20s
b) live downtown and travel very short distances (under 5 km)
c) have never driven a car (phobia maybe?)
d) aren’t married and don’t have any kids
As soon as they get older, get married, start driving, and have kids, they start singing a different tune.
I was born in 1951, which makes me over 30. I live in York South Weston and got my licence when I was 16, and currently drive and own a car. I am married with two adult children.
I support the streetcars ever since living on Sunnyside Avenue near the Roncesvalles carhouse when it had PCCs.
I now have to use either the Eglinton or Jane bus because that is what near me, but would use the Eglinton or Jane LRT even more once Transit City makes LRTs more available in Toronto.
I had no idea Steve Munro was so young.
I’m over 30, but in the decade I’ve lived in Toronto I’ve always lived downtown, never owned a car, am not married and have no kids. I own a metropass and use transit on my commute.
I don’t hate the streetcar necessarily, but I don’t really get it, either. It’s at least as bumpy and jerky as the bus, often overcrowded, brutally hot in the summer, and mind-numbingly slow (I live just east of Church Street, and during rush hour I can usually beat the streetcar from Church to Yonge on foot). I just can’t believe that Torontonians who think that way are a tiny minority.
… I can usually beat the streetcar from Church to Yonge on foot even if the streetcar beats me to Church.
He only looks old.
WK Lis … why bother with the bus at all then?
It’s like that episode of Bewitched when Samantha was learning how to drive … Endora pops in “really Samantha, why do you bother with this ridiculous contraption when we can fly?”
Similarly, why bother with the bus in Weston when you can drive? Unless you’re going downtown and parking is steep.
Mimmo: nobody is talking about building new mixed-traffic streetcar lines.
The main point about LRT is that it will run in its own lane, not that it runs on rail and has an overhead power collector.
For many routes, LRT in dedicated lanes will be a huge improvement over mixed-traffic bus. I used to live at Eglinton and Bathurst, and a few times during a snowfall, I managed to beat the Eglinton bus from Bathurst to Yonge (!) on foot (25-30 min).
A tunneled LRT would make that trip in 3 min, a surface ROW LRT (not possible for this particular section, but speaking generally) would cover such distance in 5-6 min.
And no, I do not belong to the demographics you mentioned, having failed on all 4 checkmarks. I prefer transit when I travel alone, but prefer to drive when I need to take my kid somewhere.
Michael — my objection to on street LRT can be summed up in two words … TRAFFIC LIGHTS. Transit needs to avoid them in order to compensate for the resulting slowdown in stopping and going to pick up and drop off passengers.
The TTC and the City aren’t interested in signal priority, and the farside stops for Transit City pose a double whammie — first you hit the red, and then you have to stop again at the stop. Farside stops are being used because left turn lanes must be preserved (as there simply would be no room for them if the stops were placed before the intersections).
I would support a surface light rail network that runs in a trench, or elevated, or with signalized barrier crossings and I don’t care what the technology is, but TC is a tremendous waste of money. The wider stops will be negated by the longer walks to them, and we’re not getting subway speed or dealing with the traffic lights.
When we drive, we automatically take a 400 series highway for the majority of the trip, and then switch to an arterial for the final leg of the journey. Transit needs to do the same thing. I’m not going to drive on a local road across town, so why do we expect transit users to do the same thing? The ones who say we should are the Steve Munros of the world who don’t live in the burbs, don’t have to traverse huge distances, and freak out every time a technology is proposed that uses a third rail.
Mimmo, your problem is you seem to think subways are the answer to everything. They’re not. Streetcars are also not the answer to everything. Quit acting like it’s one or the other.
Maybe you ought to stop playing like it’s a Toronto phenomenon. Many cities are building rail systems that are affected by TRAFFIC LIGHTS and these include London, Paris, Vancouver, and… wait for it… Madrid!!
But I guess those cities are also delusional too because LRT has no benefits over subways at all right?
There are modern technologies these days that can use GPS to predict the LRT vehicles arrival and make the TRAFFIC LIGHT green at the right time. I’m not saying that the TTC is definatley going to implement it, but I’ll advocate for it.
If it is indeed implemented, and it negates the awful TRAFFIC LIGHTS, I trust that M. Briganti will then be in favour of Transit City.
I’ve met the president of the company that outfitted the TTC’s station announcement system, which is GPS-based. I’d be willing to be that the TTC would be in a very favourable position, from a purely technological standpoint, to get that GPS-Traffic Light relationship implemented. Since the fleet is already outfitted the technology needed, it just needs to expand its network scope to bring the traffic signaling system into its fold.
There is one complication that may be difficult to address though: high frequencies/tight headways will inevitably cause the system to be less than optimum, simply due to the laws of physics.
I take it you’re one of those cyclists who disobeys reds then. You cannot give a TC vehicle a green every time without disrupting flows on the intersecting street.
This is like the subway Y junction at Avenue Road — the TTC only felt that it would be successful if a train never hit a red at the juntion — totally unrealistic.
Similarly, it’s unrealistic to say that priority will be such that a TC vehicle will see a string of greens along the whole route. It wasn’t done on Spadina or St. Clair, so what makes you think it will happen in the burbs? Again, the TC advocates all point to an ideal scenario that just isn’t going to happen.
No, the general public prefers rail over asphalt. Transportation consultants will tell you the same thing. I’ll just point to the previous “rails good, wheels bad” post for some of the supporting reasons. You are the one in the minority if you think a bus is better… and we also know for a fact that the bus isn’t better from when bus service has been run on the current downtown streetcar lines. The bus has a very hard time.
But we’ll get reliable service with sufficient capacity, and that is the point. Bus service isn’t any more reliable than mixed-traffic streetcars are, in fact buses are even less reliable generally, due to their having to engage in countless times more road maneuvers, which results in, among other delays, more red lights. With the capacity disadvantage of the bus, it is more prone to crowding, which at peak can result in people not being able to get on the bus… as has happened to the TTC Chair himself.
I agree that stops shouldn’t be too far apart.
We already have it, we just need to improve upon it. They’re called GO Trains, and they’re far closer to the 400-series transit equivalent than subways are. What need is frequent GO service, and much improved network connections (at both current and future stations). Why waste money on suburban subways when we can just add stations and increase frequency on GO Train lines?
Oh dear, oh dear, you folks have really been busy in the last day or so that I was out of town!
Let’s take the ODA first. It is not clear that every transit vehicle has to be accessible, only every service. By analogy, subway stations don’t have up and down escalators for every flight, and you have to be an intrepid explorer to find the platform to surface route via elevator in some stations. If all of the parts are working.
The larger problem if we do retain some of the CLRV/ALRV fleet will be the differences in capacity and loading time compared with the new larger low-floor cars. I wish to go on record that I am *not* a railfan yearning for the retention of high floor cars to the detriment of riders who need accessible vehicles.
Karl has already talked about Transit City, GO trains and subways and their appropriateness, so I won’t duplicate what he had to say.
Front Street: In any discussions of downtown streets, remember that there are plans to effectively convert the space between York and Bay into a with auto access mainly for taxis and buses. The coming volume of pedestrian traffic at Union Station (thanks to all those new GO services) requires more surface capacity for pedestrians who choose not to walk through the PATH system. This street is not available for use as a major transit street.
As for people who support streetcars, well, I am 60, but otherwise meet Mimmo’s criteria. However, I am very well aware of the needs of people who are older, travel long distances and have families. I could probably make some scathing remarks about people in love with subways and road widenings, question their motives and imply that they have no right to comment on public affairs, but the issue is how to improve our transit network, not to slag off people I don’t agree with.
What age I might look on any given day depends on which time-travelled version of me you meet.
Ooops … word missing
“… the space between York and Bay into a mall with auto access mainly for taxis and buses.”
Karl, and all those GO trains lead to one place … Emerald City. While you’re following the yellow brick road, I’m going to Scarborough from mid-Etobicoke, and I don’t want to get there by way of Kentucky.
Yes, the general public prefers streetcars over buses. Absolutely. Now poll those same people on streetcars vs. buses and see what answer you get. Hint — it’s not McCain.
I’m not trying to slag anyone — what I’m saying is the young single downtown demographic is trying to dictate a region-wide transit directives based on their short-distance travel patterns. When I talk to people in their 40s and 50s, they are simply bewildered at the prospect of more local streetcar lines as an effective way to reduce 400 series gridlock.
Meant to say streetcars vs. subways!!
Mimmo: I agree with your critisism of TTC over transit signal priority. At the same time, note that farside stops aren’t incompatible with transit priority.
Intersection X can get a signal from the previous intersection that a light-rail vehicle is coming, and extend the green light phase so the LRV can pass before it turns red. Or, if the LRV can’t make it anyway, the current green phase can be shortened a little, so the red phase starts sooner and ends sooner.
And, note that if the proper traffic priority is not implemented when the LRT line commences the service, it still can be added later if the public sentiment changes.
@Triceratops
I guess you didn’t read the history of the Metro system in Madrid – which grew rapidly with the population since the early 1900s.
However, if we follow your logic – if density is the desire – we should pull up the streetcar tracks immediately. Toronto (old city) population fell about 10 % in the 70’s – right after the TTC decided to keep streetcars. In addition, Calgary is very spread out – by your “logic” due to having the C-Train LRT system.
Maybe the extinction of the Triceratops caused the large asteroid impact, and not the other way around.
@Karl Junkin
By your logic (i.e. wrt to the dreaded convolution on bus routes) we should immediately pull of the 506 College (or is it the 506 College-Carlton-Sherbourne-Gerrard-Coxwell-Main.)
A Front St E bus could simply loop around via Wellington. Where’s your imagination?
@Karl
And – you should be aware – the maximum 2-direction peak ridership on the King streetcar is 3400 – or 1700 each direction. This is easily handled by buses.
I agree – farside stops get a bad wrap. They allow the vehicle to leave (and stay closer to schedule) without waiting for a continual dribble of passengers.
I agree with Steve Munro (believe it or not) mixing the old and new vehicles on a route will not work very well. The new ones – which would have much faster loading – will spend there whole day riding up the backside of the CLRV or ALRV.
Accessibility is not just important for the fully disabled. May people have trouble with steps – even though they aren’t in wheelchairs (elderly – i.e 61 and over:-) and moms with strollers.
In terms of streetcar/LRV boosters, it seems most are students from specific university planning departments. The person who starting the blog a few years back slagging St. Clair residents for opposing the right-of-way project, was as student from Edmonton who had never lived in Toronto.
@Karl
Transportation consultants will tell you what the agency they are working for wants them to tell you. If people preferred rails, residents in the Beach would take the 501 at regular far instead of paying double far to take the 143.
@Karl
This ‘GO Train’ alternative is now being pushed by LRT lobbyists since it became clear that the Transit City routes will be non Rapid Transit. (Let them take GO – sounds like something Marie Antoinette would write if she wer on this thread.)
Are we really going to boot the freight traffic off major trunk lines to make way for a rail service will very few stops in the city. Are we prepared for the tens of thousands of extra tractor trailers that will ride our highways?
@Transit Priority
From everything I’ve read, transit priority works down to a headway of about five minutes. Most LRT/tram systems have this is the minimum headway.
If the Spadina streetcars always saw green, the cross streets would essentialy be stopped 24 hours a day – including King, Queen etc.
@Traffic
Lats week, I drove up the DVP/404 about 9:45 am. Even at that time, the 404 south was completely stopped – and this is not unusual. There were probably 300 tractor trailer and dunp trucks just stopped. So how’s Transit City supposed to help this? Are we going to spend $10.1+++ billion and not solve this problem?
The “GO Train” alternative is not ‘being pushed’ by LRT advocates as a desperate counter-attack to shore up Transit City. (BTW, we are not lobbyists as nobody is paying me or the others here as far as I know to do this). I have been arguing for much improved GO service, including use of the east-west corridors that don’t go to “Emerald City” for a long time.
Freight traffic: The issue is to reroute it to free up the North Toronto subdivision. If anything this should keep the Annex folks happy as it would get the freight traffic out of their backyards.
People in the Beach pay double fare for the express bus because the 501 is so unreliable. I won’t repeat my arguments, well documented on my own site from the TTC’s own monitoring data, about how they can’t even run a decent morning rush hour service when there is no traffic to interfere with the streetcar service.
Few routes lend themselves to a separate premium fare service, and the Beachers are not paying the full cost of the additional peak vehicles their service requires.
The King car runs with a 2 minute headway, half of which is supposed to be ALRVs in a wave lasting about an hour eastbound from Dundas West Station in the AM peak. That’s the equivalent of about 37 CLRVs per hour, well above 1700 pph, and people complain that they can’t get on the service. Converted to buses, you would have a headway that would not fit in King Street, and that’s not allowing for growing riding thanks to all of the new developments.
In case nobody has noticed, the entire Metrolinx plan does almost nothing to reduce congestion. The amount of road trips will actually be higher in 25 years than it is today, just not as high as would occur with no transit building at all.
The freight sections of their report are laughably simplistic and are on a par with proposing that we could replace the subway with bicycle lanes. It’s so odd that they spend time talking about the small scale stuff like local deliveries when they refuse to address the quality of local transit.
[blockquote]I guess you didn’t read the history of the Metro system in Madrid – which grew rapidly with the population since the early 1900s.
However, if we follow your logic – if density is the desire – we should pull up the streetcar tracks immediately. Toronto (old city) population fell about 10 % in the 70’s – right after the TTC decided to keep streetcars. In addition, Calgary is very spread out – by your “logic” due to having the C-Train LRT system. [/blockquote]
Ah, yes, the great 1970s Toronto exodus. Thousands of residents were listening anxiously to CBC radio news for hours, waiting for the big announcement about the retention of streetcars, and immediately packed their suitcases and left once the news broke.
This is getting pathetic. I never said subways were the cause of lower density. I was just refuting your point that density can only exist where preemptive subways are built. Use some logic, please.
Ah, yes, the great 1970s Toronto exodus. Thousands of residents were listening anxiously to CBC radio news for hours, waiting for the big announcement about the retention of streetcars, and immediately packed their suitcases and left once the news broke.
This is getting pathetic. I never said subways were the cause of lower density. I was just refuting your point that density can only exist where preemptive subways are built. Use some logic, please.
Unless Metrolinx changes direction and comes up with a plan to alleviate 400 series highway congestion in the 416 during the AM and PM peaks, it’s in big trouble. That’s where the gridlock is, and their plan (and the TC plan) does nothing to tackle it.
And Steve, lobbyists don’t get paid — they do the paying. And we don’t mean ‘lobbyist’ in the strictest sense of the word. We simply mean those who try to influence government policy.
The ridership on any of the surface routes downtown could be handled by articulated buses at reduced capital and operational cost, and I don’t understand why the TTC doesn’t supplement its streetcar service with buses to handle those extra riders who can’t get on in the morning.
Let’s face it, our streetcars are now political hot potatoes that are only being kept around because of tradition.
@Steve Munro
The two-way ridership figures are from:
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2007/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-4543.pdf
TWO-WAY ridership between Parliamnt and Dufferin:
7-8 am: 2170
8-9 am: 3450 <==This is the high
9-10 am: 2680
3-4 pm: 1570
4-5 pm: 2860
5-6 pm: 3060
6-7 pm: 2510
This is exactly my point. Why is it that the supposed high capacity vehicles canot deliver high capacity service?
1700 one way could be handled with 28 buses per hour with 60 passenger each – very acheivable. That is without even adding some bus service to parallel routes that don’t have any today.
J Albert – because they are stuck in King Street traffic, that’s why. Until street improvements are done and vicious traffic enforcement comes to the downtown core that’s how it will stay.
Mimmo – how do you explain the cities around the world who are bringing light rail into their downtowns, many of which have no “tradition” to follow? Dublin is expanding light rail (at the demand of the population) having got rid of street trams 50 years previously.
Mark — that’s not a fair comparison. Give me one example of a North American city *our size* with an *established subway network* that NOW prefers building light rail to the complete exclusion of subways …
Let’s see …
Chicago … no
Brooklyn … no
Queens … no
San Fran … no
@ Mimmo Briganti
San Francisco has lots of light rail, their subway (BART) is an interregional system and largely useless for travel within the city itself.
Is San Fran building new streetcar routes, or did they just extend BART to the airport?
San Fransisco expanded their LRT just last year. Several NYC suburbs in NJ are too. Boston is in the process of extending their Green Line. Los Angeles has a growing LRT network, and Pittsburgh has an expansion set to open in 2011.
But it’s good to see we’re limiting ourselves to NA. Perhaps the comparisons to a certain European city can end now?
Oops, almost forgot, Vancouver is opening a new streetcar line in time for the 2010 Olympics.
The Vancouver “streetcar” line is a 60-day demonstration to be installed by Bombardier. Meanwhile, Vancouver has done some serious expansion of truly grade-separated rapid transit — including underground (!!!) — using the hated Bombardier ART technology (horrors!!!!)
Green Line expansions in Boston will not include the only “streetcar” branch (E). Also, the Green Line runs mostly underground in the city core.
So it’s like Eglinton LRT then.
Assuming you’re talking about the green line, pretty much. It’s not bad.
@J Albert: The report is wrong, and I’ll prove it for you. It only lists “two-way” once in the entire thing and this is, Murphy’s Law, where the error occurs.
If you understand the math involved, the error becomes very evident. Note also, to highlight how glaring the error is, the relatively extensive language in the report on the problems of serious crowding on the King car, at 2 minute headways, with vehicles that have a service load much larger than a bus does (102 (132 crush) vs. ~60… close to double).
The math works like this:
We have about 50,000 rides a day on King (available in regularly published charts by the TTC, including the costs associated with the route, on the city’s web site). King operates from either side of Yonge, from Broadview in the east and Ronces in the west, and as the route travels through downtown, instead of terminating/looping in it (short-turns excluded of course), this counts as 2 routes.
First the 50,000 figure should be divided by 2, as we have 2 peak directions each rush hour on the same line. Now we’re dealing with 25,000 rides a day on each side of Yonge.
The total riding during peak periods is considered to be about equal to the total riding during the more numerous off-peak periods (excluding weekends, of course). Thus, the now 25,000 figure gets divided by 2 again, to 12,500.
There are 2 peak periods per day, so now we have 6,250 per peak period (3 hours per peak).
The peak period consists of 3 hours, with the outer hours each equal to about half of each heaviest hour, meaning that when the outer hours are combined, they’re about equal to the heaviest hour. If we divide by 2 again, we get the peak travel ridership per hour, which is around 3,125ppdph for King.
Suggesting that King’s ridership is 1,700ppdph is a little dangerous. However, you end up making a good point about quality control at the TTC.
@J Albert: The loop around via Wellington and Bay in only a good idea if the bus is terminating at Bay. My understanding was you were talking about at least Bathurst-Parliament, in which case, I stand by my previous statement that it would confuse riders.
I have no idea what you’re getting at with the 506… which is Howard Park-Dundas-College-Carlton-Parliament-Lower Gerrard-Coxwell-Upper Gerrard-Main.
@Mimmo: Lobbyists do spend money, but the contracts they get from that spending (not to mention the lobbyist’s commissioning fee paid by the company he represents) are worth much more money. That’s how the business works, it wouldn’t be a “profession” (and I use the term loosely, I don’t like them any more than you do) if it didn’t turn a profit.
@Mimmo: Where does our entire subway network zero in on? Bay St!
What you (and many people) need is the Midtown corridor. Kipling(possibly with a new second platform to accept trains originating from Long Branch)->Lambton->Annex->Midtown Toronto(formerly North Toronto)->Leaside->Don Mills->Victoria Village->Agincourt->Malvern->Seaton(or Pickering if they’d build a new junction in the Rouge Valley). Coming soon (one hopes, GO’s been musing about it for decades already). We have to find a way to expand capacity here though, and that’s going to take some real money.
I do think, however, that Steve is being a little unrealistic to expect CN to share its York sub with CPR. That might have worked before the Crown sold off CN to Chicago, but not now. My understanding is that those two really don’t like each other.
Nobody’s arguing that streetcars are superior to subways – they aren’t, that was never the point. The point is that subways require a very high threshold be met before they become a sustainable transportation solution (they lose too much money otherwise). The only sustainable subway candidate that currently exists is the DRL – which is, in fact, very urgent, and we’ll suffer for it not being implemented sooner instead of later.
Even Eglinton doesn’t get close to the threshold (the threshold needed is 10,000ppdph). Sustainable transportation includes investing in transportation that can afford to be provided. We can’t build subways that nobody’s going to ride (that said, 407 is no place for a subway station).
However, since you now have been persuaded to change your mind and recognize that streetcars are superior to buses, one has to wonder why you still think Transit City isn’t an improvement from current bus service… because if I understand you correctly, you’re maintaining that Transit City is a waste of money.
I work in Thornhill, and live along Bloor East. If the Don Mills LRT was built all the way up to Hwy7 (as has been proposed now), my commmute would be vastly improved.
Streetcars have nothing to do with competing with 400 series highways. That’s your attempt to slander anybody in favour of light-rail by misrepresenting them taking such a ludicrous stance. The 400-series highway competition can only come from GO Trains. Subways can’t compete since they only run 80km/h vs. GO Trains that exceed 120km/h top speed.
@J Albert: Hopefully not quite that much, but yes, we should, because the problem we’re tackling is not the 400-series highways, but the congestion along our arterial roads… where bus service struggles. Transit City couldn’t care less about the 400-series highways. That’s not the TTC’s concern, I have more fingers than there are TTC bus routes on 400-series highways.
@Mimmo: If you’re going to participate in a discussion, it is common courtesy to actually read what others say. I told you that artics cannot be operated in downtown’s narrow streets, it is too difficult for them to turn safely. King cannot be handled by artics, it’s not comfortably safe, simple as that.
@Karl
The official number are always ‘wrong’ when they don’t agree with what you want them to be.
I would add, the ridership at a given point is probably less – because most riders don’t go all the way from Dufferin the Parliament.
OK – the cursh load of the CLRV is listed at 96 or so – but. in treality, once it gets above 75, people are standing on the back steps. This is in part due to the way the seats are arranged. The newer buses will load about 70 before people give up. The older buses will load about 90. (And yes – I’ve counted.) (Montreal Novabus LF will load about 80 – per a Transport Canada report.)
I understand the mat involved – I was in the top tenth of a percentile in the Waterloo math competition and have a degree in Applied Physics from Cornell. However, this problem doesn’t require that – it’s grade 5 math.
In terms of where buses should go – they should go where people want them to go. If people can learn that the 506 makes all those turns and ends up on College, they can learn that a bus makes a few turns. (It would be great to have a route from the Beach(es) that goes to the Distlliery, St. Lawrence Market and Union Station.)
The $10.1 billion is from the TTC capital budget.
@Dinosaur
The SF Muni is the very last system anyone would use as a reference for suggesting an LRT. If you look at the authority’s own reports, you’ll realise that no-one in their right minds would want to copy it.
@Mark Dowling
Your confusing speed with headway and capacity. If 30 vehicles pass a given point in an hour, the capacity is the same regardless of speed.
J Albert — I think we’re wasting our time. They simply can’t be converted. Where’s your blog?
“Your (sic) confusing speed with headway and capacity. If 30 vehicles pass a given point in an hour, the capacity is the same regardless of speed.”
That IS my point. Vehicles are not passing the same points 30/hr because they are being short-turned to make the schedule work, which wastes capacity while they are looping on side streets. If those 30 vehicles were moving freely, the schedule could be tightened – increasing capacity – with more end-end runs being made per car per day.
As for your point about streetcar capacity vs “newer” buses – you must have forgotten that the “new” Orion 7s had to have their rear seating configuration changed because nobody was using that area and the front area was being overpacked.
@Mark
Exactly – The buses – althoughly slightly smaller deliver flexibility and better capacity. That is why key bus routes in Montreal far outstrip the King St route which struggles to deliver a mere 1700 per hour (or less) despite being flooded with supposed “capacity”. Stand on Park, Dorchester etc. in Montreal and you’ll see the buses playing hop scotch to serve passenger. Streetcars can’t do that.
The TTC did mess up the initial LF bus seating configuration. As usual, they didn’t learn from all the trial the STM had done with the seating configuration. (I suggested to Howard Moscoe that he go and see what the STM are doing – but the obstinate, blowhard fool didn’t do so.)
Except it isn’t the number itself that’s wrong, it’s the heading in the table that’s wrong.
I’ve proven how the number is impossible – the number I tabled using the formula such things are based on is far closer to 3,450 than half that figure as you try to argue. The difference between us here right now is that I have a mathetically credible foundation, you have yet to present such yourself. I would advise you try not to insist that King only has 1,725ppdph… it won’t go well for you.
The heaviest use part is between Dufferin and the Financial District. In the opposite direction, ridership between Parliament and the Fincancial District is also high, but not as high as its west-end counterpart. That’s why the figure in the report was in the Spadina area, rather than, say, Sherbourne, the load is higher on the west side, and is also why that figure is higher than 3,125 like I posted, the east and west halves of the route are not evenly distributed (which makes King’s problem even worse).
These two parts have their peak loads in opposite directions, so yes, most riders don’t go all the way to Parliament from Dufferin, but the majority of peak ridership is getting off in the Financial District from both directions, thus peak ridership exists on both sides of the Fincancial district between Dufferin and Parliament.
You are pulling numbers out of thin air, CLRVs have a regular service capacity of 102 (155 for ALRVs), their crush load is 132 (205 for ALRVs), not 96 (no idea where you got that number).
Bus capacities vary by model, and various models are employed in the TTC fleet, but general vary around 60-70 usually (that’s not crush load, but service levels should not be decided by crush loads anyway).
Artics tend to be around 80 in capacity, however, as I’ve stated several times now, artics cannot run in downtown due to the smaller street width and the artics larger turning radius… it’s physics, so you must know where I’m coming from here.
Double decker buses, which cannot be run in most of Toronto due to railway underpasses, can carry 100 or so, but these are not an available option.
So why do you fail to notice the obvious error in the TTC report?
You completely missed the point. On the 506, along the entire route the streetcars operate in both directions on the same street. Not a valid comparison. My whole argument is based on running the bus on different streets for different directions for only a small part in the middle (not the terminus) of the route being a bad idea due to resulting confusion it may cause. A meandering/jogged route is nothing new, that was never the point; stick to the subject, you are the one that brought one-way streets into this.
Yes, it is, but my point was that the plans and designs for TC are not finalized – thereby neither is the capital budget (the figure will change again, guaranteed). For all we know, Jane may be abandoned (I’d even consider it likely at this rate; if they require a tunnel from Wilson to Bloor, it won’t happen).
If you’re going to keep making false arguments based on incorrect interpretation of figures, you should surrender that degree in applied physics. Buses are not “slightly” smaller, the are much smaller than streetcars (20% in size (40ft. bus vs. 50ft. streetcar), and 40% in capacity (60 vs. 102)), especially compared to articulated streetcars, which have well over double the capacity of a bus (130 for the new yet-to-be-decided model was stated in the RFP). Buses do not offer better capacity, this is a long-established fact and part of the reason the streetcar network was kept in 1972.
There is no bus route in Montreal that sees as much stress as the 504, because it is physically impossible. King carries close to twice what a (non-articulated) bus is capable of, that’s an irrefutable fact (assuming 60 for the capacity of the bus model, 1,800ppdph for bus (3,600 if doubled) vs. 3,450ppdph current for King).
I have to hand it to the rail enthusiasts such as Karl Junkin who have managed to effectively brainwash us all into thinking buses on King St. could not handle “streetcar” loads.
Common sense has gone out the window here. If you line up buses back to back or streetcars back to back, they’re roughly the same width and occupy the same amount of floor/ground space.
Since we don’t get thinner when we board streetcars or fatter when we board buses, common sense reasoning would dictate that the same number of people will fit in both provided that extra buses are run to compensate for the difference length-wise.
This nonsense that buses or streetcars cannot run more frequently than every 2 minutes is a bunch of BS too. The headways may not be uniform or reliable, but it can still be done.
Of course, Karl wasn’t around in the 60s (which he criticizes) when the Bloor streetcar ran on a 45-second headway. Gee Karl, how did we do that in ancient 1965? Answer … we fed the streetcars LSD and played psychedelic rock — no wait, that came 2 years later.
Traffic was a lot different in the 60s Mimmo… you were there, you should know that. You should also know that the reliability of the Bloor car was dropping badly at the time.
Buses and streetcars are the same width, but they are not the same length and do not have the same interior floor space. For example, wheels and related parts don’t intrude into the streetcar floor area like they do on buses, this allows more passenger space. Then combine that with the increased length, and that streetcars don’t have engine-related components and such consuming space at the back like a bus does (that’s why many (not all, but increasingly common) bus models don’t have back windows), allowing passengers to use that space, too.
You’re making non-arguments because they have no facts attached to them. Even when you try to bring facts into it, you don’t understand the facts… probably because you don’t want to since they go against your position.
Compare apples to apples Karl. High-floor buses and the CLRVs are the same capacity-wise (standing room and seated combined) if you run three buses for every two streetcars. They consume the same road footprint.
Streetcars on Bloor in those days would bunch and come and go in packs, but the scheduled headway was 45 seconds at the peak of the line’s popularity. And, car traffic on Danforth was heavy as it was the only way to get into Scarborough in those days.
When the subway opened, it immediately attracted an additional 100,000 passenger rides per day over and above what the streetcar carried the week before. So keep this in mind when people say that the ridership for an Eglinton subway “isn’t there”.
You aren’t using any numbers to back up this argument. This is probably because you don’t have the necessary numbers, so your argument isn’t based on anything.
I have been comparing apples to apples, Mimmo, and your argument is, again, false. They do not consume the same footprint, and they do not have the same capacity. The HF buses don’t have much higher capacity, it is around 65 (80 crush) for a 12.2m long bus. The LRVs are 15.5m and carry 102 (132 crush). If we actually apply numbers to your 3 buses to 2 streetcars theory, we can prove it is false because 2 streetcars have a length of 31m for 204 passengers (264 crush) while 3 buses have 36.6m for 195 passengers (240 crush), meaning less passengers yet a wider footprint when using buses.
It’s 6.6 passengers per linear metre of vehicle for streetcars while buses only carry 5.3 passengers per linear metre of vehicle.
The new LRVs, however, will consume a larger footprint per passenger… that’s true. 4.3 passengers per linear metre of vehicle, since these are LF. The crush load is not yet known since it cannot be determined prior to a design being finalized. LF buses have a max capacity of 54, so they’re 4.4 passengers per linear metre of vehicle, about the same. Given that this is for 100% LF for LRVs vs. the 70% LF for buses, plus the LRVs’ advantage with the ability of coupling vehicles (especially in narrow corridors where buses cannot go), as well as the greater rider comfort they provide, LRVs still clearly have the edge.
Yes, that was the bad drop in reliability I mentioned previously. As I said, it is common courtesy to actually read other people’s comments in a discussion.
You’re being very unobjective again. Sure, some of them were new riders, but there were popular routes that took pressure off of Bloor-Danforth at Dundas, Broadview, Coxwell, and Main among others that ran directly into downtown via Carlton, Queen, or King. A significant number of them shifted to B-D when the subway opened. Eglinton doesn’t have that situation to prop it up. So people are right when they say the ridership isn’t there. Sorry, you’re not being realistic.
You’re splitting hairs Karl — 204 vs. 195 ? Come on. The capacity is roughly the same.
It’s not 204 to 195 for the same length – which is what your argument was based on. It is 204/31 and 195/36.6. Or 6.6 vs. 5.3 per 1m of a 2.6m wide vehicle – read others’ comments, Mimmo, your responses clearly imply you’re not reading anything here. It’s 20% less capacity by footprint for the bus compared to the streetcar. 20% is a sizable difference that is not “roughly the same.”
Now now children. Let’s stop making the Metronauts site the Karl and Mimmo show, entertaining as it is.
People come to this site for a broader discussion of transit issues. We know that there are a few people who will never give up their positions, and it just wastes everyone’s time covering the same ground over and over again.
My thanks to Karl for his spirited and extensive defense, but I think it’s time to talk about something else.
@Karl
Sorry – your numbers are completely unfounded and unrealistic.
The TTC uses 74 as the peak capacity load for the CLRVs. There are 46 seats and room for about 30 standees. As the TTC own studies of the King 504 operations show, when busy, the standing space at the back is often unused. The length of the vehicles itself makes it difficult for passengers to access the standing space at the back. When the load get slightly above 75, people start standing in the exit steps.
The CLRV is longer – but is tapered so as to be narrower at the rear. The length of space at the front (i.e. in front of the white line) is longer that on a bus.
I challenge you to go and make observtaions if you believe that the TTC PUBLISHED REPORTS ARE SO WRONG – and that we should be belive your dubious theoretical calculations instead.
Every piece of published data on actual ridership says your wrong.
As I corrected you earlier, this is false. You have no references besides an IBI study in 2003, which had to do with boarding averages, not capacity, and has already been discussed in earlier comments. Then you had a CGM report, which you misinterpreted; dividing the number of cancelations by the number of routes does not produce any useful information because you are not understanding anything about the nature of the cancelations (which are more likely to be confined to between 1-3 routes if it is construction based or based on some form of obstruction like a fire or a road accident), and applying that as some form of capacity adjustment value is misleading and extremely poor practice. You do not understand the data.
Also, you have not given a reference for your CLRV capacity figure of 74 to challenge mine with, so why should anybody beleive this? My figure’s reference is Ray Corley (a transit historian).
CLRVs do have 46 seats, but there’s more standing space than seating space, unless people have baby-strollers or luggage on board. The figure is 102, and you have nothing to refute this with other than your own blog posts on other sites, with no references. Use some actual references. This page cites Corley for the info on CLRV specs.
If you aren’t going to argue with actual figures, then there isn’t much point making any arguments. My figures are verifiable, so you’re clearly the one with unfounded numbers.
How do you explain the ridership of 50,000 a day if peak ridership is only 1,725? Everything about your argument says that the consistently published ~50,000 a day published figure is wrong.
Also, planned and actual vehicle capacities are not the same thing.
It should be noted that there is still an anti-streetcar sentiment among some (not all) ranks at the TTC.
This is a great piece of reading highly relevant to the discussion at hand.
@Karl
I’ve been to the library at Metro Hall and gone through all materials numerous times. The original technical specs from the manufacturer aren’t for real service.
Try this link:
http://www.ttc.ca/postings/gso-comrpt/documents/report/f2016/_conv.htm
You might also find:
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/reports/opportunities_for_new_streetcar_routes.pdf
elucidating. See Appendix B:
This shows the highest customers in peak hour per direction for existing routes as:
King (504+ 508) = 1100
St. Clair = 1250
These figures were likely from 1996 (when Toronto and Ontarion were just beginning to recover from the calamity of the Rae-depression). Number are going to be 20%-25% or so higher now.
This report discusses the differences between theoritical and real world loading.
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_rpt_13-a.pdf
@Karl
Sinple – the ridership figures (50,000) are for the whole route. Many people ride only two or three kilometers – and are never actually in the core.
@J Albert
Those riders are already accounted for in the previous math formula I showed you. That was what the second step was all about.
@Karl
Let me help you out a bit – let’s take the 50,000 (a very rough number) and do some guesstimating:
50,000 – total weekday ridership
Let’s assume that 55% of the todal is in peak – remember King has good all day ridership due to the restaurants, theatres, people working off hours etc.
This gives:
27,500
Now let’s say that 75% of the riders in peak go through the core (Dufferin to Parliament.) Remember, the 504 goes to the subway at each terminus – so riders could be going either way. Some have short rides – or transfer to bus services.
This gives:
20,625
Now, we have 6 or 7 peak hours. For argument’s sake, let’s say it’s 6. Times 2 directions gives 12.
20,625 / 12 = 1718
Which – presto – is pretty close to the 1700 for the overall core. At any given point in the core, the ridership is lower than that. From the TTC reports, I think this makes out at about 1300 per direction at a given point. Overall point count at Spadina is given as about 2600 from the 2001 figures – or about 1300 per direction.
@J Albert
You assumed that peak demand is distributed evenly across the 6 peak hours. In contrast, in a earlier post Karl assumed that each 3-hour peak (morning and evening alike) consists of 2 “shoulder” hours, and 1 hour in the middle when the demand is highest (equal to that during the two “shoulder” hours combined).
If your calculations are amended with that assumptions, we get (1718 x 3) / 2 = 2577 per hour per direction during the highest point of a peak. This is not far from Karl’s number (3125) calculated in that earlier post.
@Michael – the TTC’s own figures show max 3450 peak hour in the core both direction.
Again, I put these in:
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2007/te/bgrd/backgroundfile-4543.pdf
7-8 am: 2170
8-9 am: 3450 <==This is the high
9-10 am: 2680
3-4 pm: 1570
4-5 pm: 2860
5-6 pm: 3060
6-7 pm: 2510
Mr Junkin’s was asserting that the 3450 figure was for one direction. You can sqeeze three hours in two if you like – the 3450 is actually about 41% of the am peak from the table – it isn’t 50%!
This is irrelevant because it is clear that the TTC did not make a mistake – the 3450 IS for both directions combined. The figures from the other report I linked to corroborate this.
The formula I used has been around for a long time, the 41% to 50% can easily be accounted for by the introduction of flex-time, a comparatively recent development specifically promoted for helping mitigate the impacts of congestion.
The 3450 is for one direction, because the TTC is only interested in the direction that is overcrowed. There is no point in including the reverse-peak figure in the study because it is not facing a capacity problem in that direction, and the capacity/service quality problems are what the study is all about, so they’d only be interested in peak-direction figures. Let me phrase this in the simplest possible way: A combined both-directions figure would be useless in relation to the content/objective of the report.
Also note that between John and Jarvis, there isn’t much residential development (although there’s a lot of construction right now around John that will change that soon) – people getting off between these streets generally don’t live there. While I’m sure a small number will, most do not pass through downtown on the 504, they get off somewhere in the middle.
By contrast, there’s a large amount of residential concentration in the Parkdale South area that floods the King car to its capacity problems it sees today. This may get worse when the John and Spadina area construction projects finish.
On the east side, not as bad but also going to get worse when the West Don Lands are developed among some other projects in the Broadview/Queen area that are along the 504’s route.
I’ll also add (repeat?) that, considering the span is from Parliament to Dufferin, that “two directions” can mean Dufferin -> Uni/York/Bay/Yonge and Parliament -> Yonge/Bay/York/Uni.
Actually, the service summaries are not available on the TTC site because they broke the Service Planning page when they moved to the new site.
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@Karl
Your repeating repeating repeating things over and over and over doesn’t make them correct.
St. Clair has in some cases been the busiest streetcar route by length. It also has most passengers from W of St. Clair West going to and from the subway. This means that the ‘at a point’ ridership at the subway is very high. King has destinations well distributed in the core.
King is two lanes each way in peak. Bus service would run in the reserved lane at the curb – instead of the middle lanes.
*** BUSES CAN PASS EACH OTHER TO CLEAR UP BUNCHING AND PICK UP PASSENGERS. THIS IS CALLED FLEXIBILITY. ****
If you look at this link (from Steve Munro’s Website no less!)
http://www.stevemunro.ca/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/stats0506c.pdf
Dufferin Bus (29) – on a 4-lane street no different than King:
Daily riders: 43,600
Hours of service: 440
Boarding per service hour: 99.09
King/Lake shore (504/508)
Daily riders: 47,900
Hours of service 510
Boarding per service hour: 93.92
If the streetcars provided so much more capacity per vehicle than the buses, there would be a noticeable difference in favour of the streetcar. In fact, the buses are carrying more passengers!
You are misreading the Service Summary. (I can only find the Sept 2007 online – and my home computer has had disk crash so I don’t seem to have the latest.)
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/reports/service_summary_2007-09-02.pdf
This says that the King has (am peak)
108 minutes run time
8 inutes terminal time
=
116 total
29 CLRV regular
7 ALRVs to spot in – say = 11 CLRVs
9 CLRV to spot in
Total = 49
116 minutes / 49 = 2.37 minutes headway
(20 / 2.37) * 74 (TTCs peak loading factor for CLRVs =
drumrollllll
= 1873
WHich again corroborates by reading (in the plain English of the official reports).
If you weren’t so committed to the notion that you could never possibly be wrong, I wouldn’t have to repeat myself. You’re wrong, I’ve proven that, get over it.
And you accused me of making stuff up as I went along?
Look, I told you in the last post and I will tell you again (much as you wish I wouldn’t, I’m sure), buses cannot pass each other to clear up bunching when there’s cars parked in the curb lanes. Why is this such a difficult concept for an applied physics major like yourself to grasp?
King is not two lanes each way in peak, because there’s always people violating the rules of the road and parking illegally. Common offenders also include delivery trucks and, particularly along certain stretches of the route, taxis.
What you keep on missing is that this kills the ability to overtake. Furthermore, you also are not aware that buses are not allowed to let people off anywhere away from the curb. This restricts the bus, it does not increase flexibility. See, what you fail to take into consideration is that King sees passenger demand at all stops at peak – and yes, I can confirm this first hand. This isn’t a bus route loaded with stops that nobody uses, thus, there will virtually always be stop requests at every station during peak, killing not only any overtaking windows, but also slowing service further since cars will likely be parked 15m in from the curb, allowing only enough space for one bus at the corner, creating endless queues of buses! You are not weighing all factors, are ignorant of the conditions of the route and what goes into surface operations. You are merely trying to pick out selective arguments regardless of feasability.
Not pulling up to the curb every stop does increase speed.
If you think two streets are identical just because they have the same number of lanes, you really aren’t looking at the big picture. These two streets are very different environments.
However, note that Dufferin runs fewer buses than King runs streetcars: 32 to 45. Both run on similar headways (King’s is still tighter, by 12 seconds if you work it out (the TTC’s own figures I’ve often found don’t pass cross-referencing checks, remember that quality control point earlier?)), but the faster speed of farther-from-core operations allow less vehicles to be required to reach a similar headway, but also partly by being a shorter route on the 29A branch. This means that demand is not as high on Dufferin during peak periods, and this is why I told you to look at the service summary, because it breaks it down into the different periods of the day.
The capacity on Dufferin being provided is 21.5 buses an hour (average, I’ve blended the two branches here though) using the times listed in the service summary. That gives a capacity of around 1,400ppdph (assuming 65 capacity).
Your using an hourly boarding average tells us nothing about peak loading conditions, at all. It’s completely useless and worthless information, and here’s why: King’s hours are much longer than Dufferin’s – the 29’s figures do not include its 329 blue night counterpart. But King runs from 4:45am to 2:30am, which is unique among surface routes (King has no blue night counterpart). This affects the average you’re using, and misconstrues the reality. More people are not riding Dufferin at peak, there is, however, more riding on Dufferin during mid-day than on King (there are 31 buses on Dufferin mid-day while King is only running 23 streetcars), another reason your figure misconstrues things.
I think you mean 60/2.37 but whatever, 74, as I keep telling you, is not the actual capacity of the CLRVs, it is 102 (155 for ALRVs), and I’ve listed the other reasons why your argument doesn’t hold, and you continue to ignore them like a politician.
If you actually countered my points instead of insisting that incorrect figures should be used, then maybe I wouldn’t have to repeat myself. Your calculations are wrong, I’ve proven this with various sources and common sense. You likely haven’t read the renaissance paper I linked to above, but if you had read it, you’d have found the following:
Appropriate capacity ranges:
Bus: less than 5,000ppdph (this would include elaborate BRT in the high end).
LRT/streetcar: 2,000ppdph ~ 20,000ppdph (this would include light metros in the high end).
Heavy metros: 10,000 ~ whatever you can engineer.
Streetcars are the intercapacity mode. How would they be able to fill such a role without having capacity higher than a bus? Simple, they do have higher capacity than a bus.
Aha! I have nailed down where this 74 figure actually ties into all this. You’ve got a record on fact distortion and misinterpretation here. Check out this tete-a-tete a few years back with our local friend James Bow. James, I thank you for resolving this bit of confusion.
He went through the same bit 3 years ago and J. Albert, still doesn’t get it – unless he’s doing this on purpose, I noticed the blog admin was offended enough by J. Albert to remove his posts.
From James Bow in above link:
—-
—-
Cheers, James!
@Karl
74 is the TTC’s load factor in peak for the CLRVs – that’s where it comes from. Kitchener resident James Bow is on record as not supporting removal of streetcars period – he has an admitted bias.
Dufferin is very congested at many points. On Kingston Road (4 lane) buses pass streetcars during the peak. In the peak, the curb lanes are clear – the city has tow trucks out right at 4 pm – especially on King and Queen.
Your capacity table disproves what you are trying to assert.
In terms of the actual capacity of the CLRV, you seem to have latched on to figures from an obscure transit historian – while ignoring the TTC real life experience over the decades.
This is from the TTC analysis:
http://www.ttc.ca/postings/gso-comrpt/documents/report/f1159/_conv.htm
“Problem: Operating speeds on any busy transit route, including the 504 King streetcar route, are reduced when passengers crowd in the front half of the streetcar, making it difficult for people to board quickly. The time required for passenger boarding is increased when people have to squeeze in because the front door is crowded. This problem is particularly noticeable on streetcars where the rear half, or rear third in the case of articulated streetcars, contain double seats on both sides of the aisle, thus making the standing and walking space of the aisle very constrained. This, in turn, deters people from using the standing space in the rear sections of the streetcars.”
This is reality Karl – again, in the TTC own words in plain English.
If you look at the CLRV diagram (obviously you haven’t been on one) the fore section aisle is about 6 sq m. The reference I gave you the transit capacity says that 4 standees per sq metres is what is expected. Normally, this would give 24 standees for the front – however, because the space is narrow, there are usualy fewer. In reality, your get about 20 in the front aisle, 8 or 9 in the mid section and 3 or 4 max in the rear. The forward aisle isn’t wide anough for people to stand back to back on opposite sides without blocking passenger movement completely.
Part of the reason is that many King riders are carrying laptops, briefcases and backpacks and shopping. (I take my backpack off my back when I carry it in on the TTC – just a reminder to everyone to do this.)
You cannot calculate the capacity offered simply by dividing the number of cars into the round trip time to obtain a headway. The way the schedule actually works is that there is a base headway of 4 minutes into which a second set of cars is inserted also on a 4 minute headway giving a 2 minute headway.
The reason that this does not produce 118 / 2 = 59 vehicles is that the 2 minute headway exists only for about a 60 minute “wave” that passes eastbound through downtown at the peak. This gives 30 cars per hour for that one hour period in the peak direction.
However, in theory, at least 7 of these cars are ALRVs which count as 1.5 CLRVs. and hence we have another 3.5 cars worth of capacity for a total of 33.5 CLRV equivalents per hour. 33.5 times 74 = 2,479.
Finally, we know that this service is overcrowded and regularly leaves passengers at stops. This means that the actual loads are higher than the design figure. 3,000 per hour is quite easy to believe under the circumstances.
By the way, I have sent a query to TTC Service Planning to resolve this one way / two way count question and will pass on the response when I receive it.
Further to my previous post, the actual behaviour of the 504 is well documented in the series of posts I did about service operations on my own site. A major problem with the “inserted” cars is that they are quite reliably not on time and therefore the scheduled 2 minute headway is a bit of a mess with gaps and bunches.
Why are they not on time? They originate in the east end of the line, at Russell carhouse, and often don’t leave there on time probably because they are worked by spareboard staff or as overtime work. It’s pot luck whether they come east in their place.
If they were operated from Ronces, and were actually managed so that they went out on time, they could be inserted into the 4 minute headway southbound from Dundas West so that they provided the maximum benefit east through Parkdale and Liberty Village.
@Steve Munro @Karl
This morning I got up early and went to make observations on King at Spadina. Based on my counts, there were 785 passengers in 16 streetcars E-bound at the Spadina stop (i.e. arriving at the stop) between 7:50 am and 8:15 am.
This is an average of 49 per streetcar. I will be writing up the details for the board – maybe even with photos if they are clear enough.
On my ride back, the streetcar was full from Spadina to Bay – i.e. people were in the front of the white line – and there were 30-32 standees only.
There were no parked cars and no congestion on King at any point.
It would be, if nothing else, interesting to test out the bus vs. tram debate. Unless the TTC manages to stumble across a few hundred new trams next year, I imagine they wont have enough CLRV/ALRVs to handle service loads. Maybe try a week where the 504 is served by buses while CLRVs serve other routes. Keep on rotating buses on tram routes and compare service. It would finally put an end to the debate.
(I could be wrong, but I thought that the TTC was considering using buses for Bathurst in rushhour to transfer the CLRVs to other routes. If that is true, I hope people really examine the results.)
The TTC would like to start to receive new LRLRV’s by 2010 or 2011. About the time the St. Clair ROW should be finished. In the meantime, the CLRV’s that WOULD have been on St. Clair west of St. Clair West Station, are being used to supplement service on the other streetcar lines.
During 2009-2010, Roncesvalles will be under construction, but the numbers of CLRV’s deallocated from Roncesvalles will be small.
We could still be short of LRV’s needed to provide adequate service on the current lines, if we don’t get the replacement LRLRV’s in time.
No, it isn’t bias, it’s called the inside scoop – James has worked in the industry.
Have you ever heard of something called Specifications? It’s OK if you haven’t, and I know you haven’t because you wouldn’t be making the argument you’re making otherwise. I know what Specs are all about because my field (Architecture) uses them just like the engineering field.
Specifications are the most authorative contract document in a design project. If there’s a conflict between specs and any drawing, the spec overrules. They are responsible for ensuring performance of the finished design product by every measure. In a transit vehicle, passenger capacity would be included in there somewhere.
Now that I’ve introduced you to what a spec is, and how it is the epitome of authorative, you can drop your fantasy of CLRVs having only a capacity of 74. As I quoted James, and this makes perfect sense, 75 is the figure that streetcars have to hit to be considered for service increases. That’s far different from a maximum, and you are making a fool out of yourself by continuing to insist that it is its max.
See, you’re not in the industry J. Albert. James is or was, and I’m in a related industry. Yes, the TTC reports you are referring to are wrong to confuse their own figures, but like I’ve alluded to repeatedly… quality control isn’t the TTC’s strong suit.
And that’s why they managed to list a ppdph figure as a two-way figure.
Well, you sure backed up that claim with hard evidence. You’ll have to put a little more meat on your retorts.
Ray Corley now only was referring to the spec, but this was in a TTC publication from 1996 (not obscure J. Albert, his figures are from a TTC publication… if you don’t know, don’t guess). The TTC’s real life experience on King is that King is the highest demand route in the network… and has over 3,000ppdph…. as 3,430ppdph is currently provided in the peak morning hour.
That’s a joke. You deserve to be mocked for this one. I’ve seen the back flooded. Contrary to your assertion, I ride the streetcars regularly (excluding my time abroad, of course), and I’ve seen them crowded.
It is clear that you cannot be taken seriously at this rate. There is no way you are going to get a 3D-X-Ray shot of passing streetcars to get anything close to accurate counts. This is amateurish at best, total incompetence at worst. This is totally worthless for basing argument off of, and furthermore, you can doctor photos or use trick-photography to push your own argument/agenda. You’re not credible in your methods. Why should we listen to you when we have vehicle specifications? There is no good reason to discard the specifications just because you disagree with them, as I said, specs are authorative documents. You can’t compete with them, you’re wrong.
That’s funny, J. You weren’t called names. I’ve attacked your argument, and rightfully so, because your argument is false. Get used to it if you’re going to persist in defending falsehoods.
CLRVs are being well-used at 77, that’s why the TTC will consider putting additional streetcars into service on the route at such a point, but this is not their limit unless strollers and lots of backpacks are on board (these factors affect buses and even subways, too). It doesn’t matter whether or not you counted because your vision can only take in x amount of information from any given point in the vehicle, and even less than x from outside the vehicle. If a vehicle is actually full, not just well-used, you’d have a hard time walking through it anyway, with very poor vision to observe how many passengers are on board (because everybody is blocking everybody). This is why I charge your methods are not credible.
For the record, it should be noted that I _haven’t_ worked in the industry, and I apologize if I ever gave that misimpression. I am a citizen advocate like most people here. I do have a degree in urban and regional planning and a long passion for public transit, and I’ve managed the Transit Toronto website for over ten years, but the experience I have is the experience that most people here have in identifying our own political desires, and working towards them in the framework of our democracy.
All that said, I do believe that my own personal belief that Toronto’s streetcars are a valuable asset to the public transit picture makes me no more biased than anybody else here, and I don’t think that should disqualify me from having an opinion on the subject, and advocating my position as best I can.
@James
Sorry I misunderstood, it was based on this comment that I thought you were in the industry at some point.
Just in case anyone is interested, there is some information online about methodologies for counting ridership. Electronic and fare-collection based methodlogies aside, manual counts are either done as ‘ride counts’ (on board) or ‘point checks’ or ‘point counts’ (referred to specifically as ‘peak point counts/checks’ when done during peak.) ["Checks" and "counts" seem to be used interchangeably.]
The point check – used to determine peak ridership at a point – is done from outside the vehicle. This is also the procedure used for the ‘cordon counts’ made by various agencies in the GTA.
There is a write up on this on p. 24 of:
Public Transit Planning and Operation: Theory, Modelling and Practice
By Avishai Ceder
Published by Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007
ISBN 0750661666, 9780750661669
Which introduces the topic by stating:
“Point check is usually described as counts and measurements performed by a checker stationed at a transit stop.”
The TTC uses ‘point checks’ for determining peak point riderhsip. This TTC report explains (as an example) how the ‘peak point counts’ are used:
http://www.ttc.ca/postings/gso-comrpt/documents/report/f1906/_conv.htm
So contrary to what some may assert, the method appears to be in reaonably widespread use.
I also suggest ramping this down. This has passed the point where any reasonable agreement can be achieved, and since we all possess roughly the same level of political clout (meaning what’s decided here will be unlikely in and of itself to affect the result), then it’s time to agree to disagree.
This topic _is_ going to engender passion. Though I firmly believe that Toronto’s streetcars do contribute strongly to the city’s public transit picture and have a place in its future, I also note that there is a cultural factor, here. The streetcars are also, in my view, into the character of the city, and that Toronto would lose part of its distinctiveness, part of its culture if the streetcars vanished, and I have to admit that, for this and other reasons, it gets my back up to hear suggestions that the streetcars should be dispensed with.
Similar sentiments were raised in other American cities as the streetcars vanished, and I’m sure those advocates were dismissed as sentimentalists as well. However, it’s interesting that the streetcar is coming back in these cities in the form of LRTs. Now, you can make the point that these LRT networks, built from scratch, are built more to handle the conditions of today, rather than adapted from the conditions of yesterday, and that perhaps if Toronto is to benefit from LRTs, that this is the approach to take. I’m not sure if I agree with that, but that’s another argument for another day.
As of today, I still have received no reply from the TTC to my query about a clarification of their riding counts, but they have opened the email (I got a reply receipt).
Certainly, most people are not going to be persuaded one way or another by these postings – and it’s unlikely to change the political landscape.
I see LRT being useful as an arterial service – running above a threshold of speed that makes it useful for getting about the broader city. I think the Calgary system works very well.