Hey guys welcome back to the channel, so today we're going to be talking about
screen doors.
So one thing you guys know I like to complain about a lot
is the lack of the
little things in our Canadian Transit systems.
One thing that I think comes up a lot in
common discussion, especially when you talk to people from Europe
and Asia. Is the fact that basically none of
our transit systems have screen doors.
In fact when you think of like proper transit systems
not people movers and stuff.
As far as I can tell we only have
two stations with screen doors, in
the entire country.
The UP Express Station at Pearson and the UP Express Station
at
Union. When you think about that it's uh very dissapointing.
Screen doors have a lot
of awesome benefits. They improve safety
, they allow for A/C in stations (which is going to become
more and more important with the changing climate
and really extreme weather
especially in winter and summer).
And then finally they are just aesthetically better
having this kind of raw platform edge doesn't look
super good and it's just not pleasant
or nice, and plus
having screen doors means that people can actually line up right outside the door, and very
efficiently move onto the train once people have
cleared off it. It actually improves flow quite a bit.
So the question is: "Why don't we have screen doors?"
So I think if you asked a lot of people in Toronto they would say
"Oh, we don't have screen doors because . . .
our trains don't have ATC"
and since we don't have the automatic signalling, when the trains come
into the station, they can't align properly.
And so
that inconsistency would mean that the trains would not properly
line up with the doors. And so that makes sense
and it's reasonable. The TTC has done pilots
with door alignment stickers
on the ground in the past, and
it's never been super great because the trains never aligned very well with them.
But! I want to raise a point
The UP Express has platform screen doors
and the UP Express certainly does not have ATC.
Now yes the UP Express does come into the station
quite slowly on both ends
and because of the type of service being operated and because those are terminal
stations, that's a bit more acceptable.
But, it raises a very good point
you don't have to have full ATC signalling
to have platform screen doors. If your train already has the capability
of having Automatic Train Control
having those beacons or the
signal points; the yellow signal boxes.
Having those just placed within the stations mean that
trains could align within the stations. They wouldn't necessarily use ATC outside of
alignment within stations. But, that would allow you to use
the more modern rolling stock we have, to quickly deploy
platform screen doors in Toronto where we do not have ATC.
However we are getting ATC currently, so its maybe less of an issue.
I'd then point out the fact that
actually in Canada most of our major
systems do have ATC, you have the Montreal
Metro which has ATC / ATO
and the Vancouver Skytrain which has Automatic Train Operation.
Now the thing that would often get raised in Vancouvers case
is that since the train models are different.
You can't have screen doors because the door spacing is different.
I find that a little silly because as we all know there are models
of platform screen doors that move vertically.
They are a little less convenient and
maybe a little worse because they can't be made out of glass
so they don't aesthetically look as good.
But they still do offer more safety and
they allow trains to come in a bit quicker.
And the nice thing about those is that they don't even really require
any platform alignment at all since they don't have door openings,
they have an entire platform cover.
Seeing something like that deployed
across the country would be fantastic because
there are a lot of safety issues in our rail stations.
Now that being said there is hope, Montreal is
currently talking about adding
some platform screen doors to some of the
core Orange Line stations. That would be a big benefit
because the Orange Line is very crowded, its a very busy line
and having platform screen doors as I mentioned before
or at least
platform barriers, so something up to chest height or neck height
that just keeps the platform area separate
allows trains to come in much faster and decelerate
quite deep into the platform, they don't have to
slow down as early because there are people crowding the platform.
So its much safer, and it allows for faster operations
as well as more capacity.
So it's promising that we are seeing that potentially happening in Montreal.
However, as we know, Montreal makes
many transit plans and I'd actually say Montreal is worse
at executing on them than even Toronto.
That being said the REM project that's being built currently in Montreal
will feature platform screen doors or barriers
depending on if its an open
air system.
That influences whether it's going to be doors or barriers.
If you can't have a full seal theres no reason
for having full platform screen doors
like the FULL doors, is to allow air conditioning
within the station. However, since REM is getting those
what I expect will happen is that will become the new standard
for new "Metro-style" systems across Canada.
Of course, we might not see anything of that style in Toronto,
for a while. Perhaps, the Ontario Line
fingers crossed on that one.
However, maybe in Vancouver when a new Skytrain Line happens,
because we've been considering that
we've discussed it on the channel actually.
As well as perhaps in another city
that I can't think of. Ottawa, for example, is another city with
ATC on their train lines so
platform screen doors would be a possibility. Nonetheless,
it would be awesome to see more platform screen doors
we don't have them
because we just don't care enough about the little things. Hate to say it again
but, it's true.
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Thanks for watching guys, have a nice night.