Hey guys welcome back to the channel. So today I was really questioning what topic I should
make a video on, I was thinking a bit about Ottawa, thinking a bit about Montreal but,
then came back to Toronto. Now one thing that I don't think gets talked a lot about enough
is Line 1, now of course Line 1 does get talked about in some ways. We often talk about how
it doesn't have enough capacity, how it's kind of . . . its the crown jewel of the TTC,
but theres a lot of negative connotation and I don't actually think we talk about the future.
When we talk about the Relief Line, we often talk about the Relief Line like it's going
to become the new premier line in Toronto and it's gonna solve every problem in the
TTC system and it's gonna become like the most critical subway line but, the reality
is thats really not the case. You see, while the Relief Line will definitely take a bunch
of people off Line 1 because people often get to Line 1 via a bus and so people coming
from the East and perhaps a few coming from the North will now be able to take the Relief
or Ontario Line instead of Line 1. Which means yes indeed there will be a lot less riders
coming onto Line 1. However, what people don't seem to understand is that this doesn't change
the reality that Line 1has been around for over 50 years and the entire city has been
shaped by it. I really recommend people to just go and walk up Yonge Street you can just
start at the lake and go all the way up to Finch and even go beyond Finch, it's a couple
hour walk but, it will really give you perspective on why Line 1 will never ever become this,
you know underutilized line or why no matter how powerful and how big the Relief Line is
Line 1 will still be very busy. It's because along the whole route there is a ton of very
high density development. The thing you will notice if you walk from the Lakeshore all
the way up to Finch and perhaps even beyond up to Richmond Hill Centre is that theres
just a ton of development and the reality is, knowing as I'm someone who's lived pretty
close to Line 1 before there's 0 chance that someone who lives close enough to just walk
or perhaps take a short bike ride to a subway station is ever going to get on a bus, kind
of jog out to the East and get on the Ontario Line. Which means that already these kind
of baseload people who are living near Line 1 are never going to get off Line 1 and get
on a bus and go head over to the Relief Line. That means that Line 1 is always going to
be busy, and Yonge Street has a TON of new developments coming online. Not to mention
that Eglinton and Sheppard etc. all feed into Line 1 so it's pretty critical that we continue
to upgrade it even after the Ontario Line opens. So I guess this video is about, what
do we do to take Line 1 and kind of build it out to it's fullest capacity. Many people
talk about Line 1 like we are anywhere near its total capacity but, I actually really
don't believe that's the case, of course, we will need to spend a lot of money in order
to upgrade different pieces of the line but, when you consider the cost and the fact that
Yonge Street is Toronto's most critical corridor and so beyond just building a new line underneath
the Yonge Line the best chance we have to kind of upgrade the capacity and improve the
experience is just to piecemeal slowly upgrade Line 1 up to the standards of some of the
greatest metros in the world. So here are some of the changes I think I'd propose in
order to bring that capacity up to the next level and when I say the next level I mean
I think that LIne 1 could do over 40,000 people per direction per hour, where it's currently
sitting at I think about 30,000 so thats a pretty significant increase let's talk about
that. So the first thing we can do is add additional cars to the Line 1 trains now this
alone will not give us that much more maybe another 2000 people per direction per hour,
however, there is room on the Line 1 platform for a little bit of a longer train. In addition,
once ATC's online that's of course not a problem because the train can be aligned perfectly
every time or . . . relatively perfectly. We can also consider trains that have a slight
overhang on both ends of the platform in which we can fit a piece of car that has a bunch
of seats in it that just adds to our overall capacity. Next up we can go to kind of longitudinal
seating i.e. the bench seating where you have people facing inwards on the train that will
allow for a lot more standees and increase capacity, even more, I believe that and the
longer train alone should add about 3000 people per direction per hour generally if we just
increase the amount of crowding on Line 1trains we could increase the people per direction
per hour but, I'm trying to keep the standard of how busy a train can get before people
just aren't willing to get on it the same. So beyond that platform screen doors is another
thing that we can not only seriously consider but, that will be required in the future on
Line 1 to handle all the patronage. So the first thing we've gotta do is decide where
do we want the doors on the trains once we've decided our final train configuration we can
install platform screen doors and then we're pretty much going to have to keep the door
arrangement the same because of course platform screen doors are designed around the door
arrangement on the train. Now once we have platform screen doors trains will be able
to enter and leave stations at full tilt acceleration their not going to have to slow down to enter
a crowded platform etc. and this will maximize our peak capacity, that's probably another
1 or 2 thousand people per direction per hour. Now beyond all this theres a lot of other
things we can consider to just improve the capacity on Line 1. Another thing we need
to consider is upgrading stations in the downtown core one thing you'll notice in other systems
especially the SkyTrain where I am from in Vancouver is that they've actually done extensive
renovations of the most critical stations, adding significant numbers of escalators and
the like. One thing that's crazy if you look at it is that most of Toronto's downtown stations
still have very limited vertical access. So adding things like two escalators per platform
and elevators and redundant elevators these are all critical things. If you look at a
station like Dundas that could use a whole other concourse area, as well as College could
also use that, in fact pretty much every downtown station on the Yonge Line could use significantly
more passenger waiting and access areas, plus given the fact that there are lots of developments
along Yonge Street it's not unreasonable to expect that some of them could incorporate
such areas. Now along with the train access improvements, I've mentioned before: the platform
screen doors, the increased train length, and the like . . . we can start to see a Line
1 that can carry 40,000 people per direction per hour and depending on how flexible we
are if we extend the platforms a little bit more we could potentially have even longer
trains and then have of course even more capacity. Anyways though guys I think thats it for today,
I hope you enjoyed this video, I was just trying to banter and tell you what my thoughts
were about Line 1 and how we can increase its capacity I don't know if the TTC has really
been creative enough with that given that when you look at a lot of systems around the
world you can do selective door opening, or an A-B shift where you have the first 6 cars
open at one station and then the last 6 cars open at the next station, something like that.
There's a lot of options for how to improve our capacity we just have to be willing to
try them. ANyways thanks for watching the video guys, and have a good night.