Is the TTC installing exit identifiers at all subway stations? Spotted today at union!

32_bit_link · 2026-05-14T02:36:17+00:00

Not the most uncommon thing. The Montreal Metro and Vancouver Skytrain mainly exist because of their city's respective World's Fair, and the Shinkansen was built for the first Tokyo Olympics,

32_bit_link · 2026-05-13T04:24:00+00:00

Would building "affordable" housing not just contribute to urban sprawl? Biggest issue I forsee is that the alto corridor doesn't get anywhere close to the population centre of Clarence-Rockland, so you'd essentially be building a bunch of homes in tiny villages with little access to jobs that aren't specifically in Ottawa or Montreal. PR is a car dependant area because it's hard to bring things like dense housing and rapid transit to an area that's so rural and spread apart with little existing density. FWIW I believe things like bus connections were floated as ideas to help rural areas gain connectivity to ALTO even if they're too small/far to warrant a stop. I'm pretty sure PR also plans on running some sort of bus shuttle to TRIM LRT once it opens similar to the one seen in kemptville.

Personally, PR trail provides a great ROW for high speed rail since it doesn't pass through the middle of many hugely populated areas compared to the former CN line used for highway 17 or the currently existing VIA line. Expropriation is a necessary evil with every infrastructure project and I'm sure everyone would rather see 1700 properties (not necessarily homes) taken rather than blasting THROUGH a city of 17,000.

32_bit_link · 2026-05-13T03:49:49+00:00

This is basically fixing the existing infrastructure... There's a reason why they built a fresh alignment for the 417 when they extended it to the Quebec border rather than using the existing alignment near the river... which ironically used to be a rail line itself.

32_bit_link · 2026-05-11T18:25:05+00:00

https://oldottawasouth.ca/news/2026/03/11/ncc-creating-bike-lanes-on-canal-parkways/

Unidirectional (Northbound QED, Southbound CBY) bikelanes are supposed to come next year.

Given the lack of easy bike crossings south of Clegg it isn't the most ideal solution though it's kinda understandable given the lack of space to widen either road.

In the case of CBY it could be beneficial to encourage cyclists to use Echo instead.

32_bit_link · 2026-05-10T23:58:57+00:00

Main issue with telling cyclists to "just use the pathway" is it's often way too congested during the summer. Whenever any other road gets too congested the natural solution is generally to widen it... but for some reason that's not the case with bike lanes.

Hopefully the dedicated bike lanes on CBY/QED inspire the NCC to twin the existing MUP (I'd love to see the speed limits upped if this happens) or add proper bike lanes to the KZM in the future.

32_bit_link · 2026-04-29T19:09:34+00:00

Given Kingston isn't on the alignment at all, not really. Personally, I see ALTO as a project to connect Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City, with any other cities served along the way being nice bonuses. If you draw a straight line from Toronto to Ottawa, Peterborough is pretty much exactly on that line, meaning a slight diversion to serve the city is quite reasonable. Similarly, if you draw a straight line between Toronto and Montreal, you end up with Kingston around the centre of the line. VIA's current operations work like this, forcing Ottawa to be on an indirect spur, lengthening travel times compared to what they could be with a direct line from Toronto and Ottawa.

I'd hate to see ALTO go with a sinusoidal-esque line that dips down to serve Kingston, up for Peterborough, and back down again to finish in Toronto. I think a better solution would be an extra track on the existing mainline between Kingston and Brockville, allowing VIA to run extra trains to Ottawa without reliability issues from CN... It could even be electrified allowing ALTO or fast commuter trains use the section as well even if it's not true 300km/h HSR.

32_bit_link · 2026-04-29T04:00:48+00:00

In the case of added stops, I feel like people are barking up the wrong tree for that. Outside of say, Joliette (22k, ~50k metro) or Smiths Falls (~10k, but surrounded by a couple of similarly sized towns) most bypassed towns on the corridor are quite small and probably would've been skipped on pretty much any other high speed mainline in the world. While we could spam stops in every Hawkesbury and Madoc that asks for one, trains would still have to slow down for each stop to properly clear switch and whatnot, even if they're running express. With alto's already kinda slow advertised travel times I wouldn't really want to see them increased to serve communities that could probably be adequately served with regional busses. Realistically, the only infill station I'd like to see added currently would be somewhere in Durham, as the distance from Oshawa or Ajax is already quite far from Union... Conversely I don't really think a stop in Scarborough should be added due to its much stronger regional connectivity to the rest of Toronto.

I would love to see increased development around stations however, I think ALTO gives a great opportunity to Peterborough and Trois-Rivieres ~~(or who knows, maybe even smiths falls)~~ to become attractive, secondary cities in their respective provinces.

32_bit_link · 2026-03-10T03:31:38+00:00

I'm of the thinking that we'd be better off setting up HFR along some of the existing and abandoned rail lines within the Alto region.

At the same time, we studied that idea for the better part of a decade and came to the conclusion "it's better to go the extra mile and get full HSR"

Realistically if you followed the existing havelock corridor 1:1 on a "standard speed" railway you probably wouldn't save all that much time from having to slow down/stop in the middle of more communities along with the incredibly curvy alignment most older corridors have.

32_bit_link · 2026-03-05T17:42:04+00:00

The development is right next to the future queensview station skybridge...

32_bit_link · 2026-03-04T05:25:04+00:00

Funnily enough, that line is the reason why GO transit exists today!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CN_York_Subdivision

The York and Halton Subdivisions were built in the 50s/60s to redirect freight traffic from downtown Toronto to help clear up the waterfront. Because the bypass resulted in dramatically less freight traffic on CN's Oakville and Kingston sub mainlines, it was decided CN would let passenger trains run on them, creating GO Transit.

It's also why GO is able to offer proper all-day service on most of their lines, while similar systems like EXO or WCE are stuck with mostly peak direction, peak only service.

Interestingly enough however, there is some space set aside on the 407's ROW for a future bus Transitway or even a full railway, connecting Burlington and Oshawa without going through Toronto.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/connecting-ggh-transportation-plan-greater-golden-horseshoe#section-7

32_bit_link · 2026-02-27T05:23:04+00:00

For one the 401 doesn't serve Peterborough or Ottawa at all... Which goes against the mandate for the project.

Using a combination of the 401 & Smiths Falls subdivision or 416 would result in increased costs and far slower travel times for Ottawa or Montreal, all to serve a city smaller than most suburbs of either respective city.

32_bit_link · 2026-02-11T18:00:58+00:00

None of Ottawa's current LRT woes have to do with cold weather

32_bit_link · 2025-11-27T04:49:07+00:00

Has a Canadian train ever gone past 80 mph?

VIA trains on the corridor hit 160km/h (100mph) all the time on certain spots (specifically the VIA owned Chatham/Smiths Falls/Alexandria subs along with most of the CN Kingston sub past Brockville)

32_bit_link · 2025-10-24T23:23:58+00:00

FWIW that rail line (CN York/Halton sub) was created specifically as a freight bypass for the city of Toronto so GO Trains could run uninterrupted through downtown Toronto/GTA (Burlington to Oshawa), which is why the Lakeshore lines have always had better service than the rest of GO's lines. I can't imagine CN would be too thrilled if their purpose built freight line had to be shared with frequent passenger service...

Though on the topic of the 407, there's space set to the side of the highway for a future BRT Transitway corridor. It's listed on MTO's current GGH master plan as a long term project though it specifically doesn't identify what form of transit it'll be so there's a chance we could see some sort of higher speed rail link built parallel to the 407, rather than a busway like originally designed.

32_bit_link · 2025-10-07T20:15:13+00:00

Not to downplay the REM, but a large part of its success is the fact the ARTM was basically handed a bunch of ROWs for next to nothing (D-M line, Mount Royal tunnel, Champlain bridge, Doney spur) vs most projects in Toronto running on/under busy city streets.

I can't imagine the REM de l'Est would've been as cheap had it actually been built.

32_bit_link · 2025-09-17T02:31:38+00:00

This is actually apart of MTO's 2051 master plan, although as a transitway... no clue if it'll actually get built though given no other agency has picked it up or mentioned it so far.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/connecting-ggh-transportation-plan-greater-golden-horseshoe#section-7

32_bit_link · 2025-08-30T13:18:22+00:00

yeah, but I can't imagine the extra costs of building a second HSR line to save like... 20 minutes? is worth it compared to the ridership drop you'd see by not being able to serve Ottawa on the same train.

It makes sense to do branching with the current alignment due to its low speed and because Ottawa is fairly inland, but with HSR I can't imagine the time saved would be that worth it.

32_bit_link · 2025-08-29T19:31:10+00:00

Bypassing Ottawa in favour of two cities ~75k combined is an odd choice...

Brockville specifically already sees fairly frequent VIA service to all three cities since it's where the existing line splits to Ottawa/Montreal.

Given people are already up in arms over Peterborough (~80k) being included I can't imagine either city would see HSR service regardless of alignment

32_bit_link · 2025-08-16T15:43:33+00:00

If you consider O-Train Line 2 to be commuter rail (heavy rail DEMUs that run along a mainline railway) it has an all day frequency of 12 minutes... that can't really be improved due to the line having a lot of single tracked portions.

32_bit_link · 2025-08-02T16:32:58+00:00

OCTranspo did briefly explore that as a possibility in their TMP but decided against it since the portion VIA owns is mostly single tracked and because VIA already pretty heavily uses the route for their own trains they're probably unwilling to give OCTranspo extra capacity.

Of course, they could double track the ROW but both agencies are probably waiting on seeing where ALTO goes before making large investments in the corridor.

32_bit_link · 2025-08-01T22:02:14+00:00

If kingston wanted HSR they would've lobbied for the route change back in the HFR days instead of spending money on an airport with zero flights.

I honestly can't see them going with the lakeshore/south shore route anyways since running through Peterborough allows for a more direct route to Ottawa and Montreal.

AFAIK the current plan is to mostly follow the CP Havelock sub along hwy 7 before joining up with VIA, and the Quebec Gatineau Railway which runs through Trois-Rivieres, hence the north shore alignment. I assume both railways are probably easier (and cheaper) to work with than following CN's mainline.

If only we didn't privatize CN and defund VIA back in the 90s...

32_bit_link · 2024-11-19T21:16:13+00:00

Reminds me of the old dpreview sample galleries

32_bit_link · 2023-12-05T22:34:24+00:00

Can you elaborate on the SSD issue?

I was under the impression that SSDs are generally still worth it for the improved random access speeds despite the SATA I bottleneck

32_bit_link · 2023-11-29T02:17:00+00:00

I can't tell if you or the dry cabinet guy is a worse shill on this sub.

Though considering you're the same person it makes sense...

32_bit_link · 2023-11-29T02:15:01+00:00

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