Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
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Have questions about the TTC? Rocket Talk is a regular Torontoist column, featuring TTC Chair Adam Giambrone and Director of Communications Brad Ross's answers to Torontoist readers' questions. Submit your questions to rockettalk@torontoist.com!
Reader Greg Sainsbury asks:
Here's my question—since the rush-hour crowding at St. George is verging on the very dangerous, why not put the moving sidewalks back in at Spadina and promote the use of Spadina as a transfer station?
As I doubt that St. George is going to be renovated/expanded any time soon, the (much lower cost) Spadina solution could at least alleviate some of the pressure on St. George.
TTC Chair Adam Giambrone says:
Actually, just a note first that St. George is currently being partially renovated. [Greg's question was submitted back in March, making it seem a bit anachronistic now.—Ed.] If you look carefully the tiles are being replaced and the floor is being repaired. The last and most needed stage is the trackside tiles where the damage was the worst, and it is expected to be complete by the end of this year. This team will then move onto other stations.
Expansion of St. George would be very difficult and could easily cost over $100 million. TTC continues to monitor the passenger levels at St. George (and other stations) and the new CCTV cameras at platform level allow Transit Control to monitor the platforms in real time.
In the long run, the Automatic Train Control project—which will be complete by 2015 on the Yonge/University/Spadina line—along with the new subway cars and other improvements will allow the handling of upwards of thirty percent more passengers, and this will help clear passengers off platforms more quickly. It will also allow platform screen doors, which involve a physical barrier between the tracks and the platform and therefore are safer.
The reason the moving sidewalks were removed in the first place was that they had to be replaced at a cost of $4 million (around $5 million in today's dollars). While more people used Spadina with the moving sidewalks, the number was too tiny for the sidewalks to be the solution to overcrowding. As a frequent transit rider, I am not prepared to do the transfer at Spadina as it is too inconvenient, and our market research studies suggest that most transit riders, by far, share the same thinking.
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The somewhat disused tunnel at Spadina Station is still useful to Spadina Streetcar users who are transferring. But I agree that spending millions on the moving sidewalk will not really be an efficient use of money. The walk isn't really very far: it is just the tunnel looks long in that context.
It's downright short compared to some of the stations in Seoul.
Can't speak for Seoul, but anybody who tries to transfer between the Jubilee and the Piccadilly line at Green Park tube in London is in for at least three times the length of walk.
To be honest I only use the Spadina tunnel to avoid the rain as I go north on Spadina Road.
Bit late now, but I really wish St. George was built with a cross-platform transfer.
A cross-platform transfer would take a lot more space and still only allow a cross-platform transfer for 2 out of the 4 combinations. The other 2 combinations would require going up (or down) to a mezzanine, then down (or up) to the desired platform.
There is a really nice one in Tokyo at Akasaka-Mitsuke Station, though, that I thankfully used when bound in the favourable direction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akasaka-mitsuke_Station
It'd take slightly more tunnel space/length, but platform size ought to be the same. And yeah, it doesn't optimize all transfers, but two out of four is better than the current zero out of four where everyone has to go up or down.
My specific experience is with Lionel-Groulx in Montreal as also mentioned by pman. The situation there is a bit easier as most transfers do go two out of four ways, and they're separated by only a single level. I don't know what the situation at St. George is, but I don't imagine there are that many people coming from the east looking to go northeast up Spadina.
So, continuing to make recommendations fifty years after the fact, I wish for a heading-Kennedy-and-Union (east to south) and heading-Kipling-and-Downsview (west to north) platforms.
Thanks for answering my question. I have seen the platform screen doors at work in London. There seems to be no question that they would be safer, however this does not really address the overcrowding issue.
I transfer twice a day, and about once a week in the morning (when I guess that St. George will be crowded) do so at Spadina instead of St. George.
How about a "switch at spadina" campaign, along with the rebirth of the movators? I don't recall any such effort being made in the past. I agree the walk is not that daunting, but I think the movators along with some kind of campaign might make a discernible difference.
I can already picture how half-assed the campaign would be.
Suasion definitely wouldn't work in this case. The proposition you are trying to sell is, "Inconvenience yourself for the benefit of others who don't have to do likewise."
When I board northbound at Spadina from Bloor St, I actually travel east one stop to make the transfer at St. George, instead of walking up the tunnel.
It seems to me to be more of a proposition of "inconvenience yourself slightly by walking to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with an overcrowded platform and, if you're going south, most likely not getting a seat."
It's a subjective value judgment which is more inconvenient but if, say, slightly less than half the TTC users prefer the former inconvenience when thinking of it that way, then everyone wins.
Couldn't agree more.
I've always wanted to ride my bike down that tunnel. What are the odds that I'd get in shit for doing so?
I rode my bike down it once not long ago - it was fun! And, back in the day, I used to regularly ride my skateboard down it. All those times, I'd only get blank stares.
I wish they'd just give the tunnel a bit of wash. Rent a pressure-sprayer, give me $100 and I'll do it in one night.
It's too late for the existing TTC stations but if Toronto ever builds any more subway lines the TTC might want to consider how Montreal does certain transfer stations like Lionel Groulx. There, they mix lines at the same level so for example, you exit a green line train and walk directly across the platform to an orange line train that runs in parallel in the station. Same level, same platform and tremedously efficient and convenient.
That might be a good idea for the DRL, but it is likely to have more perpendicular connections than parallel ones.
god, i miss that movator. it was, by far, my favourite thing about the TTC when i first moved here.