[Thunderhawk]

Toronto has a mixed transit system. Buses, Heavy Rail underground Subways (aka "metro" and "tube" to Euros) and streetcars (aka trams).

The streetcars are old and slow.

The city has launched a new initiative: Transit city
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_City


The basic plan is to add new fast(er) Light Rail Transit lines. Faster then our existing streetcars but not as fast as Subways. Most will have dedicated right of Way lanes, some underground. They will be phasing them in to replace/augment the existing slow Streetcar lines.


http://www.thestreetcarredefined.ca/
http://www3.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Projec ... /index.jsp
http://lrt.daxack.ca/ - good information, tacky page layout.



Green, yellow and purple are the heavy subway lines. Blue is a light subway line.

Red: proposed routes (often overlapping with existing streetcar lines). The implementation will cost 6-8 billion (current) dollars and take 1-2 decades.



The current front runner for the new LRT vehicles is by Bombardier (Canadian company).

ex: (operating in Turkey)




BTW:
Cost of Building a Subway Line:
Underground: $200 million to $250 million per kilometre
At grade: $150 million to $200 million per kilometre

Cost of Building an LRT Line:
Underground: $130 million to $160 million per kilometre
At grade: $30 million to $50 million per kilometre

Toronto Subway capacity would carry about 5-7x as many people as the prposed LRT system. If you ever traveled our system you would know that the capacity is NOT enough during rush hours and far FAR too much during non-peak times.

source: http://lrt.daxack.ca/




Thoughts on the new development plan?
Routes that are being missed or should be removed?


Do YOU live in a city with a LRT system?
If so, what is your experiance with them?

[guzzipat]

There is already a LR system in London, runs to East London and goes South to Greenwich and Lewisham also. It was built about 20 years ago.
I have travelled on it several times, seem to work OK.

[Dr House]

There's a light rail going from South Lake Union to Downtown Seattle. Never ridden it.

There's another one being opened to the public in 2009 that crosses Downtown Seattle through the transit tunnel South to Chinatown, and then on to Sea-Tac International.

[Abood]

I fucking hate light-rail. It's so slow and looks so ugly, with all the wires and tracks.

[Dave]

It's better than the bus though, which in addition to being slower is the most embarrassing form of transit in existence. And it's much cheaper than subway systems. Since it tends to be built at-grade it often fucks up traffic and is also more dangerous to ride than other forms of rail, which sucks. Monorail seems to be a nice compromise between the two.

[Kiroff]

Sigh, if only the ALVERY(Altoona & Logan Valley Electric Railway) wasn't dismantled for no apparent reason...

Fucked the whole downtown over. Bustitution sucks.

[Dave]

Why don't you own a car? Just because you're from Russia doesn't mean you have to live like one.

[Kiroff]

Dave, is there something you want from me?

Anyway, I have neither the need nor the finances for one. Also, because I am a PSU student, I can ride any bus in Altoona for free. Plus the whole city is like 3 miles long and 2 miles wide anyway so it doesn't matter.

What I'm unhappy about is that they dismantled the ALVERY and replaced it with Amtran, which just dubs all the routes that the ALVERY ran 50 years ago, but because it's less reliable shifts business away from downtown, which followed nicely when I-99 was built and Walmart, and all the other stores sprang up, making downtown completely deserted.

And really, tell me that this doesn't look awesome:

[timel]

I hope this project won't go like thing go in Quebec.
You decide for a project they tell you a price and than when half of it is done they find out that no money is left and the project still need money to get finished.