[zang]

That's probably for the truncated. But 11 million isn't even coming close to 15 million?

Personally, I wouldn't call just slightly under ¾ close. Is a B close to an A+? To each their own I guess.

It would be interesting to find what the original year 1 and year 2 Sheppard ridership was. The earliest I can find is 47,700 in the 2009/2010 report.

I do know I've seen numbers elsewhere. Will look again in the morning.

Then TTC Chair Josh Colle said this in 2015:

"Extending the Sheppard line east to the Scarborough Town Centre or drawing it west to close the subway loop at Downsview appear to make sense. But given the existing Sheppard subway’s performance, Colle says he can’t rationalize pouring more money into a tunnel. The existing four stops are already underperforming. While the rest of the TTC is bursting at the seams, Sheppard’s ridership remains flat.

In its first decade — from its opening in late 2002 to 2011 — it showed gains, from about 10.7 million riders annually to a peak of 15.9 million. Since then, the counts show a slight drop — to 15.1 million last year.

The TTC doesn’t consider that a statistically significant decline. Still, says Colle, you could put those riders in taxis for about the same cost as the $10-plus per ride subsidy he figures Sheppard requires.

The TTC doesn’t plan service based on profitability, although some lines, the King streetcar for example, are clearly more than pulling their weight.

“But when you’re so massively subsidizing an existing subway line — higher order transit that’s supposed to bring all those riders — it does make it more difficult to envision seeing a day when you would be investing more above and beyond that,” he said."

I dunno, when the TTC Chair is saying the line is underperforming, I defer to their knowledge. Higher ridership would justify the cost and lower overall subsidy, right?. I'll also point out the most recent ridership numbers of 38,705/day September 2023 to August 2024 roughly equals 14m a year. And that period was not improved over the 2022 numbers. That means it's slightly declined, while Line 1 and 2 are rising and proportionally closer to their pre-pandemic numbers.

Now, I don't believe that there shouldn't be subsidized transit. Far from it. But there are times when poor choices are made in the name of politics and we end up with something that doesn't fit and only costs us the ability to do more in the future.

 

[zang]

As a side note to the above discussion, Sheppard Subway Daily ridership peaked at 50.4M in 2011-2012:

Thousands, not millions.

 

[T3G]

It's nice to be an optimist. We need some realists as well.

Ha! I've never been called an optimist before.

The most recent example we have is the St Clair streetcar ROW. Opened in stages between 2007 and 2010. Shut down for maintenance from September 2023 to June 2024.

Only a very small portion of the work involved work to the ROW, replacement of worn rails at certain stops. The bulk of the work from the TTC's side was rebuilding of the loop at St. Clair West, which wasn't done when the ROW conversion was on going (a project coordination failure), and overhead work to convert it to be only compatible with pantographs, something that could not have possibly been foreseen in years when we had no pantograph equipped cars in the city. Then there were various third party projects which took advantage of the closure.

512 St. Clair Converts to Bus Operation Until Summer 2024

From September 3, 2023 until summer 2024 (the exact date is not specified), the TTC will operate buses on route 512 St. Clair during several overlapping construction projects. Updated August 28 at …

stevemunro.ca

There are no conclusions to be drawn here as regarding new rail projects.

 

[jmi22]

You think that the Bloor-Danforth or Yonge subways just sprang up overnight?

No, they spent decades as street-running, hyper frequent, local transit routes which were then substituted for the highest capacity form of rapid transit possible. Which is precisely the opposite of what this Russian nesting doll model of transit construction would have us do, inching forward decades at a time.

And before you start with "oh the streetcars have rails thus they're LRT", just don't, we both know that's ridiculous.

Sidenote: I am pleasantly surprised to have stumbled upon the one thing @NorthernLight and I are in agreement on

 

[Rainforest]

Boiling down the building of a BRT in place of a rail rapid transit line by reducing it to buying a can of paint doesn't tell the whole story. Yes, your start up costs will be much lower, but you need more vehicles, and more drivers to operate those vehicles, to provide the same level of capacity that those LRTs would (especially if they are coupled), and you need to replace those buses more often than an LRV, which has a lifespan of 30-40 years without a rebuild, and 50-60 years if it receives a sufficiently comprehensive rebuild.

That's correct of course. But, to add more context: the personnel advantage of LRT only works for several hours per day, not for the whole service day.

Say, during the AM and PM rush, we replace 4 buses that run every 1.5 min with one LRT train that runs every 6 minutes. Same capacity, lower labour cost.

During the late evening and during wekeend mornings, one bus running every 10 min is sufficient to handle the demand. When switching to LRT, we do not replace it with one LRT train every 40 min, for the obvious reasons. We run the LRTs with roughly the same frequency, one every 10 min or so. No labour cost saving during these periods, and we have a slightly higher energy cost to run a bigger vehicle.

The overall balance may still be favorable for the LRT if the peak-period and shoulder-period demand is high enough; but the outcome will vary dependent on the route.

 

[T3G]

No, they spent decades as street-running, hyper frequent, local transit routes which were then substituted for the highest capacity form of rapid transit possible. Which is precisely the opposite of what this Russian nesting doll model of transit construction would have us do, inching forward decades at a time.

You are viewing this through far too inflexible of a lens. NO ONE is saying that inching forward decades at a time is necessary. What I have been arguing all along is that buses are not, and never will be, a replacement for a flexible, scalable intermediate capacity transit solution like LRT, and from certain financial aspects would be a much worse implementation.

And before you bring up the projected population of the new condo projects on Eglinton East decades from now which is supposed to overload the Crosstown, how about we simply don't overload one corridor? This is a problem that is entirely preventable, and if we do nothing about it we have no one to blame but ourselves. Building subways everywhere because we don't have enough imagination to spread the population out throughout the city is like burning down your house because you found a spider in it.

And before you start with "oh the streetcars have rails thus they're LRT", just don't, we both know that's ridiculous.

Ridiculous according to whom? "LRT" is just marketing wank, the vehicles are physically the exact same thing as streetcars, and can be run in various configurations, including coupled and non-coupled, just like streetcars, and in mixed traffic, private rights-of-way and even full grade separation, just like streetcars. Would you like to quantify what actual differences exist between these two modes, other than a desire to distance from the dubious reputation the downtown streetcars have for being slow?

That's correct of course. But, to add more context: the personnel advantage of LRT only works for several hours per day, not for the whole service day.

Say, during the AM and PM rush, we replace 4 buses that run every 1.5 min with one LRT train that runs every 6 minutes. Same capacity, lower labour cost.

During the late evening and during wekeend mornings, one bus running every 10 min is sufficient to handle the demand. When switching to LRT, we do not replace it with one LRT train every 40 min, for the obvious reasons. We run the LRTs with roughly the same frequency, one every 10 min or so. No labour cost saving during these periods, and we have a slightly higher energy cost to run a bigger vehicle.

The overall balance may still be favorable for the LRT if the peak-period and shoulder-period demand is high enough; but the outcome will vary dependent on the route.

Fair, but really, this is the case for all forms of transit, no? We buy enough vehicles to service the peak rush hour frequencies, even though a lot of vehicles may be out of service during the off-peak hours (depending on the service design).

 

[Thaboss]

Is this still an eglinton crosstown thread ? Or is this a line 2/line 4 thread ? Lol


Anyway, has anyone noticed cross town activities? Do we have any insider scoops on how things are going.

 

[nfitz]

Anyway, has anyone noticed cross town activities?

What kind of activities? With regular running going on, I'd think only an absence of regular operation would be reported.

 

[Thaboss]

What kind of activities? With regular running going on, I'd think only an absence of regular operation would be reported.

With how metrolinx communicates about line 5, we might stumble across that info. 10 months after the fact, which is why I ask.

I also, haven't been down there to see for my self in some time so I was just wondering.

 

[nfitz]

With how metrolinx communicates about line 5, we might stumble across that info. 10 months after the fact, which is why I ask.

In this thread? The news will be quick.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Today is August 22, 2025. We have 11 days till September 2, 2025. Watching the chimney, just black smoke at the moment.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Does the TTC have a record of how many of the legacy streetcar operators requested a transfer to the Eglinton Maintenance and Storage Facility for training on the light rail vehicles on Line 5? Probably would be easier to operate than in mixed traffic.

 

[robmausser]

Does the TTC have a record of how many of the legacy streetcar operators requested a transfer to the Eglinton Maintenance and Storage Facility for training on the light rail vehicles on Line 5? Probably would be easier to operate than in mixed traffic.

Not to mention you get a nice break every time the train goes underground and into ATC.

That information would not be publically available though, id imagine. But I agree that internally the employees would be trying to get moved to the LRT.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Some testing footage from today. Train frequency timestamps in the video description.

 

[Transportfan]

Is the significance in this video the train frequencies, as in pre-opening ghost service? There's been a lot of them the past few years.