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Aplus23 said:
Political will & the rest of Toronto is not going to let downtown get another subway line anytime soon, the backlash would be a lot
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Downtown will always get subway lines because that's where people want to go. I think the Ontario Line formula of having a line that serves downtown with a series of stations and then goes out into the suburbs is a recipe for success.

The Ontario Line will make people in a lot of different parts of the city happy and make getting around town much more efficient. I'll always take streetcars over buses, but downtown needs fewer streetcars and more subways nowadays.

As congestion gets extreme and more parts of the city reach density levels that can sustain rapid transit, streetcars will be an unfortunate casualty to the need to move people quickly.
 
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junctionist said:
As congestion gets extreme and more parts of the city reach density levels that can sustain rapid transit, streetcars will be an unfortunate casualty to the need to move people quickly.
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Bringing the streetcar network into the 21st century by allowing it to operate as a modern tram network would go much further toward the goal of moving people quickly than removing it.

A major appeal of the Ontario Line, which should be replicated for any future lines into downtown, is that it doesn't just follow arterials/corridors like the streetcar lines, instead connecting major nodes/destinations. It figures to intersect every streetcar line except the 507 and 512 without meaningfully duplicating any streetcar service. Actually having a network with a logical local/rapid/regional transit hierarchy working harmoniously is something to be built on; just "upgrading" one mode of transit to a higher-capacity one equipped for a different purpose doesn't help urban mobility in the way Toronto needs.
 
junctionist said:
Downtown will always get subway lines because that's where people want to go. I think the Ontario Line formula of having a line that serves downtown with a series of stations and then goes out into the suburbs is a recipe for success.

The Ontario Line will make people in a lot of different parts of the city happy and make getting around town much more efficient. I'll always take streetcars over buses, but downtown needs fewer streetcars and more subways nowadays.

As congestion gets extreme and more parts of the city reach density levels that can sustain rapid transit, streetcars will be an unfortunate casualty to the need to move people quickly.
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This doesn't make any sense. Even if there more downtown subway lines, how exactly does nixing more streetcar routes come into the picture? None of the streetcar routes, except for the 503, the Distillery branch of the 504, 509, and 510, end downtown, they just pass through. What do you propose for the passengers who are passing through? Terminate the streetcars outside downtown, transfer to the subway, and then transfer again on the other side of downtown to another route which terminates outside downtown?

I recommend you look to a city like Prague or Vienna to see how streetcars and subways can co-exist in a downtown area.
 
T3G said:
I recommend you look to a city like Prague or Vienna to see how streetcars and subways can co-exist in a downtown area.
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Subways take us downtown. Streetcars take us from place to place, once we're downtown. The two systems work together.
LRTs are a compromise between the two, but they function more like subways, including the abilty to run underground, or elevated, and not be confined to where the streets run.
 
A 6264 said:
Subways take us downtown. Streetcars take us from place to place, once we're downtown. The two systems work together.
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That's a bit reductionist. For one, it's not possible to have subways everywhere, so there will always be a certain subset of the populace that has to use streetcars to even get downtown. For another, cross-downtown travel, as I mentioned in my previous post. If you live at King and Bathurst and need to get to King and Yonge, chances are it will be quicker to take the streetcar across, rather than to descend into the deep stations of the OL, wait for a train to arrive, transfer at Queen, waiting for another train to arrive as you do so, and disembark at King.

I just don't see the false choice between having streetcars and subways downtown. The apostles of Ford Nation will certainly start braying about streetcars once more subways come to downtown, but we don't have to listen to them.
 
T3G said:
That's a bit reductionist. For one, it's not possible to have subways everywhere, so there will always be a certain subset of the populace that has to use streetcars to even get downtown. For another, cross-downtown travel, as I mentioned in my previous post. If you live at King and Bathurst and need to get to King and Yonge, chances are it will be quicker to take the streetcar across, rather than to descend into the deep stations of the OL, wait for a train to arrive, transfer at Queen, waiting for another train to arrive as you do so, and disembark at King.

I just don't see the false choice between having streetcars and subways downtown. The apostles of Ford Nation will certainly start braying about streetcars once more subways come to downtown, but we don't have to listen to them.
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With GO Trains with stations far apart, especially in the suburbs, where they should connect with light rail routes for the final kilometre for neighbourhood travel between shops, medical, schools, recreation, repair services, etc..
 
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T3G said:
That's a bit reductionist. For one, it's not possible to have subways everywhere, so there will always be a certain subset of the populace that has to use streetcars to even get downtown. For another, cross-downtown travel, as I mentioned in my previous post. If you live at King and Bathurst and need to get to King and Yonge, chances are it will be quicker to take the streetcar across, rather than to descend into the deep stations of the OL, wait for a train to arrive, transfer at Queen, waiting for another train to arrive as you do so, and disembark at King.

I just don't see the false choice between having streetcars and subways downtown. The apostles of Ford Nation will certainly start braying about streetcars once more subways come to downtown, but we don't have to listen to them.
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Of course I was making a broad generalization. It's not going to be the same for everyone. But for the huge population who live in North York, Etobicoke, or Scarborough, getting downtown means taking a bus to the subway, and once downtown, taking a bus or streetcar to where you want to go. Of course, if you live right on a subway on LRT line, it will be different for you, but most people don't. Having a streetcar or bus running parallel to a subway or underground LRT is nice (everyone likes to mention the Yonge bus here), but is usually not cost effecient, so when a rapid transit system comes in, the surface line that used to be there, gets removed. We can't have everything!
 
T3G said:
This doesn't make any sense. Even if there more downtown subway lines, how exactly does nixing more streetcar routes come into the picture? None of the streetcar routes, except for the 503, the Distillery branch of the 504, 509, and 510, end downtown, they just pass through. What do you propose for the passengers who are passing through? Terminate the streetcars outside downtown, transfer to the subway, and then transfer again on the other side of downtown to another route which terminates outside downtown?

I recommend you look to a city like Prague or Vienna to see how streetcars and subways can co-exist in a downtown area.
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It may be that he was thinking of what happened when they first put the subway down Yonge. There used to be a streetcar line and no discussions have ever been about bringing it back
 
The only issue I have ever had with LRTs, aside from terrible service times due to sharing the road with car traffic, is if anything goes wrong along the LRT, it's a full stop. This past winter, Dundas Street East LRT was out of commission for two weeks (if I recall) due to damage from that huge snow storm. Then there are fender benders in the same lane as the LRT, etc. Having an alternate route will be great.

Sounds a bit off topic but it's not. My point is...

I think people living along Dundas Street, Queen Street, King Street, especially where the OL intersects with King and Queen, it clearly would be faster and easier to just take the OL instead of streetcars. I would. Traffic is horrible during rush hour on Dundas, Queen, and King Street. All routes I take, frequently. Traffic can get so bad that I often literally beat the LRT by walking instead.

Using Canary Landing as an example, if I lived there, I would never take any of those streetcars again and just take the OL to the closest station and walk the rest of the way. It would be dramatically faster.

FYI: I'm not crapping on Streetcars either, just that they share the road with traffic instead of having a dedicated lane that only they use. I think they would be competitive with the OL if they were on a dedicated lane. Ah well. 🤷‍♂️
 
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