Tuesday’s Headlines

5 comments

1. I’ve blogged recently about the need for bicycle hook turns to avoid streetcar tracks in Toronto. (http://giddyuptoronto.ca/2010/05/26/hook-turns-for-bikes/ )

   Normal left turns force you to ride close to multiple tracks (which are especially dangerous in rain or winter).

   Hook turns keep you at a safe distance, and allow you to cross the tracks at the safest possible angle.

2. Nice to see Marcus Gee call out Smitherman on the Sheppard West subway extension to Downsview — looks great as a line on a map, until you realize how little it would be used.

3. While I agree with you Brent, there is some logic to the extension to Downsview. I would be happy to see the Sheppard line become a part of the York U extension — instead of having subways go from Union up to York U and Vauaghan City Cnetre, they would be turned back at Downsview. The subways from Vauaghan-York U would go east to the Sheppard line and terminate at Don Mills. This accomplishes a few things: the load going north to Vaughan can be handled by the smaller amount of trains on the Sheppard line and provides riders with an east-west option at the north end of the city.

   Or maybe have every other train go to Don Mills and the next goes to Union, etc.

   I’m just not sure if this is part of Smitherman’s logic.

4. The reason Smitherman is willing to extend Sheppard to Downsview is because it’s likely to be done anyway.

   If the Yonge line is extended to Richmond Hill, the TTC will need to store the extra cars somewhere, and the only place with space is Downsview. That means building a better connection to Downsview. The TTC already has plans to do so.

   Also, if work ever needs to be done on the Yonge line, it’ll be easier if there’s an alternate subway route that could take all those people from Richmond Hill to downtown.

5. Two points on Giddy Up’s post and one on MattB’s.

   1. The Sheppard line car storage/maintenance is planned for Greenwood at present. This does mean a lot of deadheading hours at the beginning of service and the end. As the Sheppard cars will not be refitted for ATO, movement during the service day is not possible.

   2. While storage at Wilson (not Downsview) via a service connection is an option which would massively reduce the deadheading mentioned, the Richmond Hill connection should be mandated to come with a yard on the Yonge Line with RH/York finding the land and money. Otherwise trains will have to go all the way round at start and end of service, and an accident or other closure at Wilson will leave the entire fleet with nowhere to go, since Davisville is likely to be either decommissioned and redeveloped or used to store maintenance cars.

   3. I think a Vaughan-Don Mills service would be a fantastic idea (“401 relief line”) – it would require either of the following though:
   * the purchase of a subfleet of four car ATO equipped Toronto Rocket trains to operate on the Spadina Line
   * the purchase of six car ATO-TR trains with platform extensions to the existing Sheppard line stations (the latter being unlikely given the TTC’s plan to ram the LRT into the back of Don Mills station rather than extend the subway to a properly designed interface at Consumers)

   This would leave 4 T1 4-car trains unused from Sheppard but if B-D was extended also, these would get reformed into six car trains anyway.