Comparing DRL Plans for Toronto

In my previous blog post, I mentioned that I was setting up some simulations to see if I could learn some insights into some of the proposals for downtown relief lines for Toronto. I've now finished running the simulations.

Baseline

Here is the baseline map from the previous blog post. It shows what the fastest route to King and Bay is from various points in the city. Yellow dots show that the fastest route involves taking the Yonge subway. Green dots show that the fastest route involves taking the Bloor-Danforth subway and then transferring to the Yonge subway at the Bloor-Yonge subway station. Orange dots show that the fastest route doesn't require the use of the Yonge subway or Bloor-Danforth subway on its busiest sections. A good plan for relieving pressure from the Yonge subway should involve turning as many yellow and green dots into orange dots as possible.

Downtown Relief Line

For the downtown relief line, I modeled the shortest possible line. It runs from Danforth and Pape southwards, then travels west until it hits Wellington and Bay. The simulation assumes six minute headways. Although the DRL will probably come less often than the Yonge subway, it is expected that people who would normally take the Bloor subway and then transfer onto the Yonge subway will prefer to take the DRL because it will be slightly faster due it having fewer stops than the Yonge subway. It will also be less crowded. As can be seen from the simulation results, the DRL does seem like it can intercept people who ride the Bloor subway to the financial district and redirect them away from the Yonge subway. Pretty much all the green dots become orange.

Regional Express Rail - Lakeshore

The provincial government has recently expressed an interest in upgrading its GO train service to a faster and more frequent regional express rail service. It seems that they are looking primarily at upgrading the Lakeshore and Weston lines initially. In theory, the provincial government has been working on this plan for more than a decade already, but they've recently implied that they're going to prioritize this improvement much higher than before. I modeled this improvement by taking the existing schedule of the Lakeshore GO train line and adding new trips so that it would come every 15 minutes instead of every 30 minutes like it currently does. The simulation shows that increased frequency of the Lakeshore line won't draw any riders away from the Yonge subway line. This might be due to a limitation of the simulation. With more frequent Lakeshore GO train service, the TTC might offer more frequent and better bus connections to the Lakeshore line's stations, which might alter the simulations results somewhat.

Regional Express Rail - Stouffville

The provincial government could potentially build a regional express rail on the Stouffville GO train line. I think this is unlikely because it requires double-tracking and other expensive track upgrades. Despite many small improvements to this track by previous governments over the years, I don't think any accommodation was made to make it easy to upgrade to a much higher capacity line. Also, current ridership on this line is poor, so it would be hard to justify increased frequency on the line. I modeled this improvement by taking the schedule of the Stouffville GO train line and adding new trips so that it would come every 15 minutes. The simulation results show that anyone who normally rides down to Kennedy station to take the Bloor subway to downtown would benefit from upgrading the Stouffville line to a regional express rail. One effect that I did not model was that of a possible extension of the Bloor subway to Sheppard. This change might affect the relative benefits of taking the subway vs. taking a less frequent regional train line, causing people to still prefer taking the subway.

SmartTrack

I don't quite understand the SmartTrack plan, so I wasn't sure how to model it. It's probably best understood as being equivalent to the Regional Express Rail - Stouffville plan shown above. Although the plan does seem very intriguing, I'm not actually sure it's within the power of the City of Toronto to actually build it. The plan seems to involve convincing the federal and provincial governments to pay for upgrades to a provincial regional train service that runs on track owned by private companies. I don't really see how the City of Toronto would have any power to actually get the thing built. The plan is also premised on the idea that there is room to add large numbers of trains onto existing track running through the city. It's not clear if that's actually the case. Those lines might already be packed with other trains. The province has already expressed an interest in building a new downtown train station or new downtown train tunnels due to bottlenecks in moving trains through downtown. And running frequent local train service through the city would impede fast, frequent regional GO train service, so the province might not be willing to make that sacrifice. As far as I can tell, the SmartTrack plan might not involve building anything at all. One possible interpretation of the SmartTrack plan is that Toronto will do absolutely nothing for 10 years, wait for the provincial government to build a Regional Express Rail, and then the city will retroactively call the Regional Express Rail as being "SmartTrack."

Compromise? Downtown Tunnel (DRL-lite?)

One problem with all of these different plans is that politicians will end up arguing over them for years and nothing will get built. All of these plans do have a common element though in that they all probably require new train tunnels through downtown. One compromise might be to start building a tunnel through downtown as early as possible that can later be repurposed for a subway, regional express rail, SmartTrack or whatever once a final plan is agreed on in ten years time. The tunnel can run from near Exhibition (the possible second downtown train station) to just east of the Don Valley (where it could later be extended to the existing rail right of way or north as a DRL). Since a short tunnel is probably useless on its own, it can initially be outfitted for streetcar use, so that the tunnel could actually be used until the politicians secure funding for some bigger plan.

Setting up Simulations of the DRL

With all the talk this year of transit issues in Toronto and the importance of building some sort of downtown relief line (DRL), I thought I would try to grab some open data and see if it's possible for amateurs to gain some insight into the problem.

The current argument behind the downtown relief line is that most people want to go downtown for work. Also, the population of downtown is exploding in itself because both the millenial generation and the aging boomer generation are favouring the downtown lifestyle over the suburban lifestyle. This is supposedly causing a number of problems. The primary means for getting into downtown is the Yonge subway, and it's always full. It's so full that one of the main arguments against extending the subway system in the suburbs is that these extensions would simply feed more traffic onto the Yonge subway, which can't handle the additional load. Since the whole system relies on the Yonge subway line to move people into downtown, if there are any problems on that line (which happens often), the whole transit system grinds to a halt. There is very little redundancy in the system to provide riders with alternate ways to get downtown if the Yonge line has problems. A related problem is that the Bloor subway feeds riders onto the Yonge subway at the Bloor-Yonge station, and supposedly that station is also becoming a bottleneck in the system too in that it's becoming physically difficult to transfer all the people from the Bloor subway to the Yonge subway because there's just too many people. And then there's also a concern that the primary means of moving people east and west through downtown--the streetcar system--can no longer handle all the people who have now moved downtown.

The primary goal of the DRL is to build a new north-south subway line to relieve the pressure on the Yonge line. Since people primarily want to ride the subway into downtown, this DRL will also have to go into downtown somehow. If the DRL also happens to relieve pressure on the east-west streetcar system, that's a bonus.

To gain some insight into different DRL plans, I've started setting up a simulation that shows who is riding the Yonge subway now. I took the GO Transit and TTC schedules for September 24, 2014, and I calculated the optimal route for people who need to get to work at Bay and King at 8:55am and 9:00am. I tracked whether the route used the Yonge subway south between Queen and King as an indication that a particular route used the Yonge subway. I also tracked which routes used the Bloor line through Bloor-Yonge station and also use the Yonge subway between Queen and King as an indication of riders who transferred from the Bloor to the Yonge subways. Since I calculated routes for two different times, it's possible that different routes are optimal for those two times. Since the two times are only 5 minutes apart, I assumed that riders would take the route that avoided the Yonge subway, if possible, and if not, then one that avoided a transfer from the Bloor subway to the Yonge subway.

The result of the simulation is shown below. The red dots show areas where people can get to downtown without needing to use the Yonge subway. The yellow dots are areas where people's optimal route to downtown involves taking the Yonge subway. The green dots are areas where people's optimal route to downtown involves riding the Bloor subway to Bloor-Yonge station, and then taking the Yonge subway into downtown.

As can be seen on the map, everyone in the west of the city can take the University-Spadina subway line into downtown, so that area is all red. Surprisingly, it is often optimal for people just to the east of the University-Spadina subway to still travel further east to the Yonge subway line to get downtown.

In southern east York, the fastest way downtown seems to involve taking the streetcar. In south-east Scarborough, I think the fastest way downtown involves taking a bus down to the Lakeshore GO train possibly? Or possibly TTC express buses direct to downtown? Or GO buses? It's hard to tell.

There's an area around the DVP where I think it's fastest to use express buses from the TTC or GO to get downtown rather than travel east or west to a subway line. Those also sporadic red spots in places around GO bus stations and GO train stations. These stations offer quick ways to get downtown, but they don't come often enough to make it worthwhile to take them if you need to get somewhere by a certain time unless you live really near to the stations.

Anyway, that's just a preliminary map of what I can calculate using the readily available transit schedule information. I'll later try plugging in some suggested DRL plans to see what effect they have on the map.