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Rainforest said:
Well, that calculation does not take into account:

1) Ridership growth beoynd the target date. The ridership forecast was for a 15-20 year period. It is conceivable that the ridership of such a central route will continue to grow after that, and will reach a level unsuitable for BRT much sooner than in 400 years :)

2) Land value and property taxes; many people assume that LRT increases the land value and promotes highrise development more effectively than BRT.

3) Inflation; at 2% yearly, operating expenses will cost twice as much in nominal dollars 40 years down the road.
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The point of that exercise was to show that it would take so long to see the benefits of the cheaper LRT operating costs to materialize, that it's irrelevant to the discussion. You can bring all of those factors you mentioned into account and probably get 100 to 200 years to wait for the amortized savings of the LRT to materialize. Regardless it's well beyond the lifespan of either option. An LRT or BRT there probably won't last 75 years at the location, let alone 150 to 200 years+.
 
andrewpmk said:
The ridership "projection" seems insanely low relative to the large amount of employment in the airport area (hundreds of thousands of jobs) and traffic problems on Highway 401.

The only reason that the UP Express is underused is because it has very high fares.
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The EA only evaluated peak hour demand. We must remember that work hours of the Airport Corporate Centre are different than any other employment centre. This is because the Airport never sleeps. A significant number of staff are needed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

A typical employment centre might have nearly all their employees travelling to work between the hours of 7 AM and 9 AM. But the Airport corporate centre has this ridership distributed over 24 hours. Thus, this centre will have significantly lower peak hour demand than typical employment centres.

Metrolinx studied this and actually found that Airport employees typically travel to the airport before AM rush hour. Probably between 4 and 6 AM.

Some rough math: The airport will employ 56,000 people in 2031. Current modal share is 17%. Metrolinx expects modal share to grow 2.5% per year, resulting in 25.25% modal share in 2031. The majority of these employees don't live in Toronto, but lets say that Toronto accounts for 50% of these trips, because of better quality transit. That is 7,000 trips per day. That means average hourly ridership to the airport by airport employees per day would be 291 employees per hour.

This calculation is assuming that all Pearson-bound airport employees with points of origin in Toronto would use the ECLRT, which obviously won't be the case. So actual average hourly demand by airport-bound employees on ECLRT would be significantly lower, perhaps less than half of that 291 employee-trips/hour estimate.

Transit City's EA found that the airport had 500 people travelling towards it at peak hour. Obviously we don't have the data necessary needed to make a granular estimate on UT, but operating on the basic premise that ridership at Pearson is distributed relatively evenly across 24 hours, the estimate in the EA appears reasonable.
 
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The 401 to and from Mississauga has severe congestion problems in rush hour. I think that a lot of the employees who work in the area around the airport (not the airport itself) do work 9-5 hours, particularly people who work in office buildings. The roads in that area are severely congested in rush hour and tend to be deserted on weekends.
 
The employment in the airport area is diffuse - it doesn't matter whether they work 9 to 5 or not if you don't have a good, competitive solution to the last mile problem vs the car.

AoD
 
andrewpmk said:
The 401 to and from Mississauga has severe congestion problems in rush hour. I think that a lot of the employees who work in the area around the airport (not the airport itself) do work 9-5 hours, particularly people who work in office buildings. The roads in that area are severely congested in rush hour and tend to be deserted on weekends.
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Congestion on the 401 isn't an indicator for demand on Eglinton between Jane and Pearson. People also used congestion on the 401 as justification to build the Sheppard Subway, but we all know how that turned out.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
The employment in the airport area is diffuse - it doesn't matter whether they work 9 to 5 or not if you don't have a good, competitive solution to the last mile problem vs the car.

AoD
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Exactly. The last mile problem is very challenging here. The only way to make transit to this location desirable is to have a robust network of frequent busses serving the Airport Corporate Centre. But given the large size of the centre, about the size of Downtown Toronto, if I recall correctly , I can't ever see this area effectively served by busses or any other transit. Frequently and dense service would be too expensive to operate and have too little ridership.

The other issue is the night time network elsewhere in the GTA. Like I mentioned in my last post, airport employees come to work 24 hours a day. If someone is a shift worker who regularly has night shifts, they're going to buy a car and make all their commutes (even daytime) with that car. That's because the nighttime surface network is too infrequent to be used to commute to the airport.

Anecdotally, my experience travelling to the airport at early morning (5 to 6 AM) is that few employees take the TTC to get to work at that time. Last time I saw between 5 and 10 employees get off the night bus that comes hourly. This time is apparently around peak time for employee travel to Pearson.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Exactly. The last mile problem is very challenging here. The only way to make transit to this location desirable is to have a robust network of frequent busses serving the Airport Corporate Centre. But given the large size of the centre, about the size of Downtown Toronto, if I recall correctly , I can't ever see this area effectively served by busses or any other transit. Frequently and dense service would be too expensive to operate and have too little ridership.

The other issue is the night time network elsewhere in the GTA. Like I mentioned in my last post, airport employees come to work 24 hours a day. If someone is a shift worker who regularly has night shifts, they're going to buy a car and make all their commutes (even daytime) with that car. That's because the nighttime surface network is too infrequent to be used to commute to the airport.

Anecdotally, my experience travelling to the airport at early morning (5 to 6 AM) is that few employees take the TTC to get to work at that time. Last time I saw between 5 and 10 employees get off the night bus that comes hourly. This time is apparently around peak time for employee travel to Pearson.
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If the size of the centre is about the same size as downtown Toronto, does that mean the same ooo's worker? If that's the case then why would it have too low ridership!
 
Palma said:
If the size of the centre is about the same size as downtown Toronto, does that mean the same ooo's worker? If that's the case then why would it have too low ridership!
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Downtown Toronto is 17 square kilometres. The Airport centre is, very roughly measured, 140 square kilometres. So the airport centre's geographic area is 8 time bigger than Downtown Toronto.

The Centre hosts 245,000 jobs and is the second largest employment centre in the GTHA. In contrast, Downtown Toronto hosts about 500,000 jobs (about twice as many). This large size and low density makes serving with transit a challenge.

Transit modal share here is very small; only 7%. The majority of these workers don't live in Toronto, and the Crosstown extension would only cover a few hundred meters of this 17 square kilometre centre. There are plenty of better options for travelling here, including the Mississauga Transitway and various RER stations in the area.
 
It's official:
eglintonlrt-map-final-jan2016.png


From: http://thecrosstown.ca/news-media/w...ical-tests-scheduled-for-the-future-caledonia
 
Nice knowing I have been annexed by the Leasiders.

I think in time Keelsedale, Fairbank, Cerdarville will become colloquial. Leaside is annoying but at least it is unique and one-quarter accurate. Eglinton should still be Eglinton-Yonge and I will continue to refer to it as such.

The only real insult is Hakimi Lebovic.
 
WislaHD said:
I think in time Keelsedale, Fairbank, Cerdarville will become colloquial.
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I agree. We may have been a bit anal with the quest for wayfinding purity.

Using district names may force us to learn some new geography, but with time that will feel natural. I never heard the terms "Distillery District" "Liberty Village" or "Corktown" until pretty recently. 'Dufferin Bloor" "Dufferin Eglinton" and Dufferin Finch" doesn't help me know my city.

Besides, Mr Silverthorne deserved more profile. Hakimi and Lebovic, not so much.

- Paul
 
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