[Northern Light]

‘We’ll have flying cars before any of that’s built’: Could there be a monorail, gondola or light rail train in Oshawa’s future?

Try to imagine a monorail or aerial gondola riding over Simcoe Street from Lake Ontario to Highway 407.

www.durhamregion.com

The website for the project; if one can call it that at this stage:

Simcoe Street Rapid Transit

www.simcoestreetrapidtransit.ca

According to the FAQ, the earliest construction on 'something' might start is 2030.

Which, to my mind, makes the whole exercise more of a consultant enrichment scheme than anything else..........

What's needed now is simply to build up the robustness of DRT in general, and the Simcoe Route in particular. To seriously consider upgrading to some form of rapid transit (BRT/LRT/Subway etc.); you need to be seeing full buses w/service every 5M or less in off-peak and service every 2M or less in peak.

We're nowhere near that.

How about we just bump up service levels, maybe amenitize a few high-volume stops (over-sized shelter w/heater, outdoor bench, LCD next vehicle screen) and see where that goes. IF ridership rockets upward then lets come back to a then more
realistic conservation about what's next.

 

[Allandale25]

 

[ARG1]

https://durham.insauga.com/elevated...on-to-serve-simcoe-street-corridor-in-oshawa/

You... have got... to be kidding me...

 

[Adjei]

https://durham.insauga.com/elevated...on-to-serve-simcoe-street-corridor-in-oshawa/

You... have got... to be kidding me...

Is this a joke ? I thought it was April Fools.

 

[nfitz]

Is this a joke ? I thought it was April Fools.

With a site name like "insuaga.com", I think we can safely assume this is either spam or a parody site.

I can't imagine any municipality is either as stupid or incompetent that is necessary to suggest such a farcical thing. The only place I can see something like this working is where surface is not an option - like over a shipping channel (hello eastern gap). This is far beyond Via's Toronto to Montreal train with stops in Peterborough and Ottawa fantasy map!

 

[ARG1]

With a site name like "insuaga.com", I think we can safely assume this is either spam or a parody site.

I can't imagine any municipality is either as stupid or incompetent that is necessary to suggest such a farcical thing. The only place I can see something like this working is where surface is not an option - like over a shipping channel (hello eastern gap). This is far beyond Via's Toronto to Montreal train with stops in Peterborough and Ottawa fantasy map!

insauga is a legit local mississauga based newspaper.

 

[nfitz]

insauga is a legit local mississauga based newspaper.

I guess they are just trolling the folks east of Toronto then! Which would make it a Mississauga biased newspaper!

 

[ARG1]

Is this a joke ? I thought it was April Fools.

I'm afraid it isn't

 

[Northern Light]

https://durham.insauga.com/elevated...on-to-serve-simcoe-street-corridor-in-oshawa/

You... have got... to be kidding me...

For the preview deprived and the click-averse we need to bring forward the headline and associated picture:

There is a case for technology of this type in certain applications.............but I don't think Simcoe St. in Oshawa is that case.

 

[Sunnyside]

For the preview deprived and the click-averse we need to bring forward the headline and associated picture:

View attachment 617165

There is a case for technology of this type in certain applications.............but I don't think Simcoe St. in Oshawa is that case.

I don’t really think gondolas fit for singular urban corridors at all, honestly.

They do best where there is a grade that cannot be climbed reasonably by any other mode. Flying over hilly neighbourhoods in South American cities, or wherever else. They are essentially in lieu of a funicular- “connectors” really.

The Hamilton escarpment could make better use of this tech, or to connect a hypothetical GO station in the Don valley to Broadview or Castle Frank station. But as either case would demonstrate, the tech couldn’t really be true rapid transit for the actual, identified corridors.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

Repeated sales attempts aside are there ANY examples of line of haul gondolas with multiple stations that aren't dealing with terrain issues? ANYWHERE?

 

[Northern Light]

Repeated sales attempts aside are there ANY examples of line of haul gondolas with multiple stations that aren't dealing with terrain issues? ANYWHERE?

One is being built in the suburb of Paris, France:

The first cable car in the Île-de-France region of Paris is nearing completion - Urban Transport Magazine

Flying over a motorway, a railway line and a park to school, work or the station at a height of over 50 metres? This will soon be a reality between Créteil and Limeil-Brévannes in the south-east of Paris. With the construction of the first urban cable car in the entire Paris conurbation...

www.urban-transport-magazine.com

While the reasoning there is a bit less topographic than most systems in South America, there are nonetheless overt reasons for the choice in this application. Its not just a follow the road line.

 

[Sunnyside]

One is being built in the suburb of Paris, France:

The first cable car in the Île-de-France region of Paris is nearing completion - Urban Transport Magazine

Flying over a motorway, a railway line and a park to school, work or the station at a height of over 50 metres? This will soon be a reality between Créteil and Limeil-Brévannes in the south-east of Paris. With the construction of the first urban cable car in the entire Paris conurbation...

www.urban-transport-magazine.com

While the reasoning their is a bit less topographic than most systems in South America, there are nonetheless overt reasons for the choice in this application. Its not just a follow the road line.

Interesting. It does seem like it could be good for short stretches of demand. It is only 4.5km (con) but with only four stops (pro).

The most obvious difference is we don’t usually have transit corridors/demands that (need to) meander this much. For all the complications brought to RT on Eglinton, it’s still just a straight shot.

The best way to encapsulate the problem, imo, is the lack of scalability inherent to other modes. Buses, LRVs, or really anything else can carry enough people that frequency will never* exceed a vehicle per minute. From my very limited experience, gondolas seem basically at max frequency (/system capacity) once they open.

That’s all notwithstanding how people will feel actually riding in these. ie, train perception drives some riding behaviour- what about a gondola?

 

[Northern Light]

Interesting. It does seem like it could be good for short stretches of demand. It is only 4.5km (con) but with only four stops (pro).

The most obvious difference is we don’t usually have transit corridors/demands that (need to) meander this much. For all the complications brought to RT on Eglinton, it’s still just a straight shot.

The best way to encapsulate the problem, imo, is the lack of scalability inherent to other modes. Buses, LRVs, or really anything else can carry enough people that frequency will never* exceed a vehicle per minute. From my very limited experience, gondolas seem basically at max frequency (/system capacity) once they open.

Adding stops to a Gondola system is not easy or cheap, once established the height of the wire is what it is to a large degree. (though poles could have multiple connection levels for wire, changing those will change wire length and various other things.)

Station construction will require a base of land at grade....as you have to get from the sky to the ground, and you will have to do that w/accessibility in mind, at minimum one high capacity elevator and a large stair case.

***

Capacity on a gondola can be changed by introducing additional vehicles............to a point......but this costs money, and has a time-factor (as it would under any mode), but likewise, may impact system performance.

That’s all notwithstanding how people will feel actually riding in these. ie, train perception drives some riding behaviour- what about a gondola?

While I expect many might appreciate the views.........I imagine for some, fear of heights may have an adverse impact.

 

[nfitz]

Interesting. It does seem like it could be good for short stretches of demand. It is only 4.5km (con) but with only four stops (pro).

The Wikipedia article for that short Paris line says that the projected travel time is 18 minutes, that's only 15 km/hr!

Looking at the article, it says this line runs along Simcoe Street from Lakeview Park to Highway 7. Which is surely incorrect as Highway 7 intersects Simcoe Street over 50 km north of the lake, in Manilla (north of Lake Scugog).

Perhaps they mean Winchester Road East - but that was never Highway 7 in it's many past lives, as far as I know.

Still, that's 13 km, and I'd guess at least 10 stations. That's not really comparable to this line in Paris. I know there's 6 lines in Medellín, but three of their lines are only 2 to 3 km long with 4 stations; while 2 are less than a mile long with 3 stations , and the longest is about 5 km long but with only 2 stations!

So what's a comparable line? It seems to be used elsewhere as a last mile solution (and the only Toronto proposal I've seen that sounds half-reasonable is a 1-km and 2-station connection from Broadview station to Brickworks). In Medellín it's very much driven by terrain.

And then there's the speed issue. Even the non-stop line (Line L) in Medellín only averages 19 km/hr. I've also seen that the maximum speed for that equipment is only 18 km/hr! Looking at the second-longest line (Line L - 2.7 km with 4 stations), it takes 12 minutes - a speed of only 13.5 km/hr. So about an hour from the lake to Winchester.

Surely a bus is faster. The route is slightly different, but the 13 km bus from Oshawa GO to Winchester takes 33 minutes - 23.6 km/hr.

Looking elsewhere, the 1.1 km line in London take 5 minutes - 13.2 km/hr. Le Pas in Bolivia (also very mountainous) has an extensive system, but even there the longest is 4.7 km and takes 17 minute for the 5 stations. That's still only 16.6 km/hr.

So why everywhere else are the lines so short? Most troubling, is that if you look at the Le Pas map - surely the biggest system there is, the lines seem to run not as one line, but the main east-west axis is actually 5 lines totalling 17.1 km and a travel time of 66.3 minutes (15.5 km/hr not including transfers!)

This is comical, surely someone is trolling.

Places that this might work are one-stop from Exhibition GO to the Doug Ford Memorial Ontario Place, and from Cherry Beach over the East Gap. And other last mile situations. Not last 5 miles!