After years of frustration, Toronto’s major LRT projects — the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West lines — are finally taking shape. The infrastructure is largely in place, testing is active, and the city is on the verge of a real step forward in how people move across it.The Crosstown will finally link east and west through midtown, while Finch West is basically a super streetcar in a poor area of the city. Is light rail still a legitimate form of transit, or were Doug and Rob correct with their subways subways subways mantra?
>>2058715Light rail is fine so long as it's smartly combined with heavy rail. You need both, fine distribution and longer distances. Subway alone will often fall between two stools: not very practical for short trips, too slow for long trips. Better to have a dense LRT/tram network, and a less dense but high speed and high capacity heavy rail grid.
>>2058716This is our mixed traffic streetcar system. In the above pic, the Grey and Orange lines are a similar technology but on separated lanes and direct tunnels to the subway network.
>>2058718Better to save the Nuke for Israel
>>2058715>Is light rail still a legitimate form of transit, or were Doug and Rob correct with their subways subways subways mantra?The Kingsway Ratepayers Association would commit terrorism if the province tried to build subway-level density along Eglinton West, so that was never a serious option. They're already having a melty about Metrolinx building stuff on top of the station premises.I used to bitch that the project should have been at-grade, but the last few years of arguments downtown have made it clear that the city will never accept transit priority signals and so at-grade would have been mediocrity. I guess we'll see how Finch West turns out on that front.
