Railization
Active Member
Network Scope Considerations
My take:
1. There have, in the past, been many calls for improvements of some form or another to the Queen and King streetcar services, but except for a few failed pilot projects, nothing ever really happens with these. There's always too much fear of disruption and/or of the actual results of the improvements on the streetscape in the more radical proposals such as the King St. "Semi-Mall" (which had the alternating one-way streets... I find that idea rather interesting). King is bursting at the seams and is absolutely incapable of keeping up with demand. New LRVs will help, but won't be a permanent solution. Queen, particular when you include the Queen East Kingston Road services, has more complicated issues to resolve and is currently a disaster.
2. Queen's Quay W. has gotten a dedicated ROW streetcar service along it since the DRL was last studied. Another is also proposed for Bremner, and the line is proposed to extend along Queen's Quay E. as part of the master planning for the East Bayfront and Lower Don Lands, which will see branching routes down Cherry and Commissioners, of which service should be consistent on both since this ties into the services coming from Cherry north of the railway in the West Don Lands project. Given how narrow the Queen's Quay and Lakeshore corridors' catchment area is between the railway and the lake, LRT services here are the best-fit for servicing these areas, especially when combined with the expanded services of GO Transit in the area. The Cherry LRT will inevitably become a connecting route to the DRL to provide high-quality access and service to the Portlands well-suited to the level of demand that can be expected to originate from it.
3. GO Transit is talking with the City, at the City's request, about getting stations added at Liberty Village and at Cherry St. There's the potential for another GO Station somewhere around Pape, but depends on what DRL alignment does get selected. The Liberty Village station has the ability to intercept GO Rail traffic from Barrie, Bolton, Georgetown, and Milton corridors, and would also be a short walk from the Exhibition station (but the Ex is going to have at least 3 LRT connections later as well, including a dedicated ROW to north of Front/Bathurst when the bridge is reconstructed), offering potentially massive alleviation of Union Station pedestrian congestion by intercepting GO Commuters before they get to Union. The same can be done around Pape with a new station intercepting Stouffville and Lakeshore East traffic.
If the DRL is extended north towards Eglinton, it becomes possible to intercept ridership from the Richmond Hill and Seaton lines as well.
4. The PATH currently heads north from Union, in a variety of directions, but all to the north of Union. The large volumes of people, which are not only in the PATH but also on the surface along streets like Bay (I've tried to walk north against this crowd in the PM peak when they're heading south, it's surreal), are all heading north of Union station, suggesting that their final destinations are all north of Union, typically (but not exclusively) towards the King St. area. If this traffic can be intercepted from the GO lines east and west of Union Station, the pedestrian demands will be much better distributed and much easier to manage and navigate, with good, moderate flows in both directions.
5. The point of a network is to provide travel options, not to have every line converge on a common point, which inevitably becomes a choke point or pinch point. Taking a DRL to Union is going to increase pedestrian congestion and make a complicated situation worse than an alternative alignment further north.
6. The ROI would not be maximized by running one corridor directly along another. A higher ROI would be yeilded by the network branching more for a wider coverage and offering more choices and destinations. Adding more GO Stations with higher frequency GO Train Service will yeild results comparable to adding a subway station in the same spot, if well-designed.
7. As a Relief Line, the priority should be to follow as closely as possible the corridor or corridors that are not capable of meeting the demand levels today. This approach is what made the Bloor-Danforth and Yonge lines so successful (as well as what made the Spadina line less successful north of St.Clair W.).
While there are significant large-scale developments in large quantity along the waterfront, LRT services in dedicated ROWs with diverse streetscapes designed to serve the projected levels of demand from these developments and distributed across various modes (ped., bike, transit, car (in that order of priority IIRC)) are already included in the plan and shouldn't be over-capacity anytime in the foreseeable future. By contrast, King and Queen are already overcapacity and cannot even be put into dedicated ROWs since there is no room, and have far lower capacity compared to the waterfront lines proposed as a result. As a relief line, the priority should be about servicing the existing areas more than the new areas. While King is clearly the most urgent, and has (by a wide margin) more development, Queen should not be considered insignifant either.
8. The potential for the DRL to run at the surface in the rail corridor is limited. It was more realistic in the 1980s but now the network and core has changed. The maximum subway slope is 3.5%. There happens to be an LRT tunnel underneath Bay St., at about the same depth as the Union subway platform. A DRL would have to go under that tunnel. The change in elevation required is about 20m. This would require the DRL to plough down at a full 3.5% slope immediately from Jarvis to make it under that tunnel, which would make a Jarvis station impossible because the subway alignment would have to go up a bit and then slope down in advance of hitting Jarvis in order to descend as quickly as possible (subways can't go from a 0% slope to a 3.5% slope on a dime). If the subway is also expected to be in a tunnel east of Cherry (this is to get under the yard as I understand it?), then this stretch from roughly Cherry to Jarvis is about 1.2km at grade. This would also suggest the alignment would go under the Don River? I would think a short bridge across the Don River would be much more preferable (and much cheaper), and I think that such can be done if it cuts across the West Don Lands north of the railway (but understandably not realistic if crossing the yards). As for the west side, another 1.25km can probably be squeezed out at-grade between Spadina and Strachan, but there's developments in the way beyond that on either side (or if the alignment goes to the Exhibition, such a station must be underground, or at least in an open cut, to swing under Dufferin immediately after). So while 3.5km might have been possible in the 1980s, it's max 2.5km now. When one considers that roughly 1.5km or so is being added to the route length by going further south, plus the reality that a new DRL Union Subway Station would be an extremely deep and expensive station, plus the costs of going under the Don instead of over, there isn't necessarily a cost savings for this option anymore.
9. Crowd control is much easier when the connections between GO, Yonge Subway, and University-Spadina subway are separated, and this improves network reliability, too, as a common point at Union would see a problem at Union potentially cause problems across the entire network.
Contrary to previous posts about the necessity of expanding stations connecting to a DRL in the core, this is not necessary because the existing loads on the Yonge and University lines will drop substantially since traffic has been diverted to the new line, meaning that the capacity expansion needed is already included in the construction of the new DRL station's platform area. Just include additional exits to the new platform that don't go through the existing station (which is required by code nowadays anyway).
10. King and Queen alignments would cause intolerable levels of disruption due to construction, even if only at stations, likely with severe adverse impacts on the streetlife that makes these places what they are today. Furthermore, King Station and St.Andrew Station are technical nightmares that would require stations as deep as an alignment through Union.
CONCLUSION:
Richmond-Adelaide alignment provides best service to the existing and overstrained core, the best crowd-control and diversionary performance from TTC, GO, and PATH traffic, with the least adverse impacts to streetlife from construction. If a shallow alignment is possible, it has other further advantages.
My take:
1. There have, in the past, been many calls for improvements of some form or another to the Queen and King streetcar services, but except for a few failed pilot projects, nothing ever really happens with these. There's always too much fear of disruption and/or of the actual results of the improvements on the streetscape in the more radical proposals such as the King St. "Semi-Mall" (which had the alternating one-way streets... I find that idea rather interesting). King is bursting at the seams and is absolutely incapable of keeping up with demand. New LRVs will help, but won't be a permanent solution. Queen, particular when you include the Queen East Kingston Road services, has more complicated issues to resolve and is currently a disaster.
2. Queen's Quay W. has gotten a dedicated ROW streetcar service along it since the DRL was last studied. Another is also proposed for Bremner, and the line is proposed to extend along Queen's Quay E. as part of the master planning for the East Bayfront and Lower Don Lands, which will see branching routes down Cherry and Commissioners, of which service should be consistent on both since this ties into the services coming from Cherry north of the railway in the West Don Lands project. Given how narrow the Queen's Quay and Lakeshore corridors' catchment area is between the railway and the lake, LRT services here are the best-fit for servicing these areas, especially when combined with the expanded services of GO Transit in the area. The Cherry LRT will inevitably become a connecting route to the DRL to provide high-quality access and service to the Portlands well-suited to the level of demand that can be expected to originate from it.
3. GO Transit is talking with the City, at the City's request, about getting stations added at Liberty Village and at Cherry St. There's the potential for another GO Station somewhere around Pape, but depends on what DRL alignment does get selected. The Liberty Village station has the ability to intercept GO Rail traffic from Barrie, Bolton, Georgetown, and Milton corridors, and would also be a short walk from the Exhibition station (but the Ex is going to have at least 3 LRT connections later as well, including a dedicated ROW to north of Front/Bathurst when the bridge is reconstructed), offering potentially massive alleviation of Union Station pedestrian congestion by intercepting GO Commuters before they get to Union. The same can be done around Pape with a new station intercepting Stouffville and Lakeshore East traffic.
If the DRL is extended north towards Eglinton, it becomes possible to intercept ridership from the Richmond Hill and Seaton lines as well.
4. The PATH currently heads north from Union, in a variety of directions, but all to the north of Union. The large volumes of people, which are not only in the PATH but also on the surface along streets like Bay (I've tried to walk north against this crowd in the PM peak when they're heading south, it's surreal), are all heading north of Union station, suggesting that their final destinations are all north of Union, typically (but not exclusively) towards the King St. area. If this traffic can be intercepted from the GO lines east and west of Union Station, the pedestrian demands will be much better distributed and much easier to manage and navigate, with good, moderate flows in both directions.
5. The point of a network is to provide travel options, not to have every line converge on a common point, which inevitably becomes a choke point or pinch point. Taking a DRL to Union is going to increase pedestrian congestion and make a complicated situation worse than an alternative alignment further north.
6. The ROI would not be maximized by running one corridor directly along another. A higher ROI would be yeilded by the network branching more for a wider coverage and offering more choices and destinations. Adding more GO Stations with higher frequency GO Train Service will yeild results comparable to adding a subway station in the same spot, if well-designed.
7. As a Relief Line, the priority should be to follow as closely as possible the corridor or corridors that are not capable of meeting the demand levels today. This approach is what made the Bloor-Danforth and Yonge lines so successful (as well as what made the Spadina line less successful north of St.Clair W.).
While there are significant large-scale developments in large quantity along the waterfront, LRT services in dedicated ROWs with diverse streetscapes designed to serve the projected levels of demand from these developments and distributed across various modes (ped., bike, transit, car (in that order of priority IIRC)) are already included in the plan and shouldn't be over-capacity anytime in the foreseeable future. By contrast, King and Queen are already overcapacity and cannot even be put into dedicated ROWs since there is no room, and have far lower capacity compared to the waterfront lines proposed as a result. As a relief line, the priority should be about servicing the existing areas more than the new areas. While King is clearly the most urgent, and has (by a wide margin) more development, Queen should not be considered insignifant either.
8. The potential for the DRL to run at the surface in the rail corridor is limited. It was more realistic in the 1980s but now the network and core has changed. The maximum subway slope is 3.5%. There happens to be an LRT tunnel underneath Bay St., at about the same depth as the Union subway platform. A DRL would have to go under that tunnel. The change in elevation required is about 20m. This would require the DRL to plough down at a full 3.5% slope immediately from Jarvis to make it under that tunnel, which would make a Jarvis station impossible because the subway alignment would have to go up a bit and then slope down in advance of hitting Jarvis in order to descend as quickly as possible (subways can't go from a 0% slope to a 3.5% slope on a dime). If the subway is also expected to be in a tunnel east of Cherry (this is to get under the yard as I understand it?), then this stretch from roughly Cherry to Jarvis is about 1.2km at grade. This would also suggest the alignment would go under the Don River? I would think a short bridge across the Don River would be much more preferable (and much cheaper), and I think that such can be done if it cuts across the West Don Lands north of the railway (but understandably not realistic if crossing the yards). As for the west side, another 1.25km can probably be squeezed out at-grade between Spadina and Strachan, but there's developments in the way beyond that on either side (or if the alignment goes to the Exhibition, such a station must be underground, or at least in an open cut, to swing under Dufferin immediately after). So while 3.5km might have been possible in the 1980s, it's max 2.5km now. When one considers that roughly 1.5km or so is being added to the route length by going further south, plus the reality that a new DRL Union Subway Station would be an extremely deep and expensive station, plus the costs of going under the Don instead of over, there isn't necessarily a cost savings for this option anymore.
9. Crowd control is much easier when the connections between GO, Yonge Subway, and University-Spadina subway are separated, and this improves network reliability, too, as a common point at Union would see a problem at Union potentially cause problems across the entire network.
Contrary to previous posts about the necessity of expanding stations connecting to a DRL in the core, this is not necessary because the existing loads on the Yonge and University lines will drop substantially since traffic has been diverted to the new line, meaning that the capacity expansion needed is already included in the construction of the new DRL station's platform area. Just include additional exits to the new platform that don't go through the existing station (which is required by code nowadays anyway).
10. King and Queen alignments would cause intolerable levels of disruption due to construction, even if only at stations, likely with severe adverse impacts on the streetlife that makes these places what they are today. Furthermore, King Station and St.Andrew Station are technical nightmares that would require stations as deep as an alignment through Union.
CONCLUSION:
Richmond-Adelaide alignment provides best service to the existing and overstrained core, the best crowd-control and diversionary performance from TTC, GO, and PATH traffic, with the least adverse impacts to streetlife from construction. If a shallow alignment is possible, it has other further advantages.
