Toronto Eglinton Line 5 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | Arcadis

[smallspy]

History.

• Many transit people said that in-median was a placeholder and they were sure it would switch to south side alignment in detail design.

This is absolutely, positively not how it happened.

The line was always planned to be put into the middle of the street. There were other small changes between the EA and built form, but they were minor enough that they did not materially affect the construction and operation of the line.

I was there. I went to all of the presentations. I spoke to the people at them. I knew people involved in the design of the line during the EA process, and in the tendering process. There never, ever was a plan to build the line anywhere other than in the middle of the street. To suggest otherwise is conflating your memories at best, and outright lying at worst.

• I think it was after Ford was defeated in his transit plans (2012?) that somehow Metrolinx (e.g. Liberal provincial gov't) decided to make Eglinton underground under Don River and Leslie (2013).
• They said they'd drop the Leslie station because underground it would add $80M to build it.
• Locals protested the loss of the station. Metrolinx decided instead of doing the south side alignment or adding $80M (<1% of total) to build the station - they would revert to the in-median option.

Changing it to the south side would have required reopening the EA. And with Rob Ford in power at the time, there was a fear (rational or not) that doing so would delay the project to the point of not being able to save it.

The cost of the station was part of the problem. The delay to construction if any other option than the original EA was chosen was a far bigger issue, however.

Dan

 

[Bojaxs]

Regarding Sunnybrook: in the long term, there’s an opportunity to move the station/track alignment to the south side of the street and make it interchange with GO 2.0 (whenever that proposal moves past the back-of-the-napkin stage…).

Can you post any links that suggests this has been discussed, or is this just an assumption?

Judging by the work the city recently completed at WIlkit Creek Park, just north of Eglinton, I doubt there is any appetite to rip all this up and add another span to the bridge so to shift Eglinton northwards.

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[Adjei]

I noticed there was static with the station announcements. Is that going to be fixed ?

 

[ThenWhat]

Regarding Sunnybrook: in the long term, there’s an opportunity to move the station/track alignment to the south side of the street and make it interchange with GO 2.0 (whenever that proposal moves past the back-of-the-napkin stage…).

I think you can keep the portals where they are and move all traffic to the north of them. Only major constraints I see are the bridge over the river (can add a span) and the tunnel under the rail bridge that might need more complex modifications.

In the long term, anything is possible, as long as it is a very long term (say 50 or 80 years).
In the short term (i.e. in our lifetimes) there are easier solutions for the Leslie intersection. Such as, close down the two left turns and replace them by U-turns on Eglinton. And close the pedestrian crossing on the west side of the intersection. The only remaining conflict with LRT would then be the pedestrian crossing on the east side, and that can easily coexist even with trains passing by every 90 seconds.

 

[CapitalSeven]

Lots of folks on UT wanted the Leslie stop on the south side. Of course, all of the ridership is on the north side, so getting there would not necessarily be a picnic. At one time there was a proposal to keep the route underground and simply eliminate the station, because building it as a subway station would cost 100 million-ish. Found this in a 13-year-old Reddit page.

 

[Westey]

Lots of folks on UT wanted the Leslie stop on the south side. Of course, all of the ridership is on the north side, so getting there would not necessarily be a picnic. At one time there was a proposal to keep the route underground and simply eliminate the station, because building it as a subway station would cost 100 million-ish. Found this in a 13-year-old Reddit page.

View attachment 717485

National Post
"It suggests moving the launch site to the southwest corner of Don Mills Road. Doing so would mean moving the Leslie stop underground, at a cost of $80-million, which Metrolinx says it can’t justify with ridership projections."
note the 80.

 

[Westey]

History.

• Many transit people said that in-median was a placeholder and they were sure it would switch to south side alignment in detail design.

This is absolutely, positively not how it happened.

Steve Munro. blog from 2011.
"A Random Transit Rider | November 9, 2011 at 11:24 pm
Curious, what would you change about the core Transit City projects, Steve? And by core, I mean Eglinton, Sheppard, Finch West and SRT.
Steve: This really deserves a post of its own, but in brief:
Eglinton: Stop screwing around and put the line underground through Weston. This was always a budget decision, not a technical one. Run on the south side of Eglinton from Laird Station at least to the west portal at Don Mills station."

 

[Westey]

If that was true sure, defeating him was about good transit, we would be much further ahead now with much less money spent if not for him,

Did you not mean "we would be much further ahead now with much less money spent if we only listened to him".

 

[A 6264]

Lots of folks on UT wanted the Leslie stop on the south side. Of course, all of the ridership is on the north side, so getting there would not necessarily be a picnic.

Well actually, being next to partkland, it's a good place to go for a picnic.

 

[81-717]

Because they use couplers. Each car is a discrete element. The diaphragm does not couple to each car, it is just held against the next by springs and friction.

To have open gangways, the diaphram needs to be a singular unit that attaches to both carbodies so that there are never any gaps and openings - meaning that you can't use couplers between cars. The TRs are drawbarred together, which is why they can use those types of gangway covers (and larger openings between them).

Perhaps it'll make sense for the new line 2 cars to use GO-style diaphragms between different pairs, where they'll need to be (un)coupled non-permanently, and TR-style gangways within each pair, where they'll be drawbarred together?

 

[A 6264]

I noticed there was static with the station announcements. Is that going to be fixed ?

I'm not sure if you mean announcements on the train, or the station platform, but it's probably both. I've seen videos of transit systems in other cities, and the same problem exists on their trains. It's also a problem on the Line 6 trains, and on the TR subway trains when we first got them, and these are different batches of trains from more than one manufacturer, over a long period of time..

Going by what I've heard on Line 5 since it opened, I think I'm hearing distortion coming from either a grill over the speaker, or the speaker itself, being loose, and vibrating. But I've also heard a completely different electrical noise along with the announcement. I notice that some speakers are mounted behind cheap plastic lighting strips (something more to vibrate), looking like a dark spot that shouldn't be there, almost as though they were retrofitted at the last minute.

Anyway, it appears to be an ongoing industry-wide problem, and when the trains are tested and fixed up prior to going in service, .this problem is not getting fixed. You wouldn't think it would be so hard for them to fix it.

 

[Steve X]

At Leslie?!? It's a park

The intersection is not a park. That's what is around it.

Being a slope, they can easily build retaining walls to keep the track in place leading to the intersection while the lower the grade to match the parking lot to the south. The tracks on the intersection itself can be converted to an overpass. Long ramps can be built beginning from the intersection (west end of the platform side) going all the way to the east end of the platform to allow accessibility and become the new entrance to the "station". This would roughly have the same footprint as the current intersection with the tracks being grade separated.

It'll look something similar to the 401 ramps in Ajax: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.848...try=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIyMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==

 

[Voltz]

Did you not mean "we would be much further ahead now with much less money spent if we only listened to him".

No not at all,

 

[narduch]

Rob Ford was an idiot.

He knew sfa about transit.

 

[PL1]

The intersection is not a park. That's what is around it.

Being a slope, they can easily build retaining walls to keep the track in place leading to the intersection while the lower the grade to match the parking lot to the south. The tracks on the intersection itself can be converted to an overpass. Long ramps can be built beginning from the intersection (west end of the platform side) going all the way to the east end of the platform to allow accessibility and become the new entrance to the "station". This would roughly have the same footprint as the current intersection with the tracks being grade separated.

It'll look something similar to the 401 ramps in Ajax: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.848723,-79.0406989,3a,75y,99.2h,80.57t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1scd099aywqMahsM98wpBMiQ!2e0!6shttps://streetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com/v1/thumbnail?cb_client=maps_sv.tactile&w=900&h=600&pitch=9.429317371614474&panoid=cd099aywqMahsM98wpBMiQ&yaw=99.20167403380128!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIyMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==

I understood this is what you meant. It is a flood zone, with a river right there. The park road under Eglinton floods to various degrees a couple of times a year. IMO, your vision is not buildable.