"Downtown Core Line" - Possible Alignments?

[cacruden]

No

How did you do on the logic test

 

[Whoaccio]

One question I'll bring up is which alignment will have the most new ridership? Anybody wanna take a stab at this one?

I would suggest Adelaide/Richmond. Not so much because the route itself would have tons more ridership in the long run, but because it would be more logical to build more stations. Most of the plans I have seen for a rail corridor alignment just have 2 stations between Union and the Don River. Even if both of those stations start drawing down 50k riders off of the bat, overall ridership wouldn't really be as high as it could be if you stuffed 4-5 stations.

Plus, for the E/W portion of a DRL, a few hundred million in GO station upgrades could basically do everything a rail corridor DRL could do.

 

[afransen]

One question I'll bring up is which alignment will have the most new ridership? Anybody wanna take a stab at this one?

I bring this up because I get the sense looking at provincial and federal transit dollars that are unlikely to help pay for a line that does not attract any new ridership but simply makes existing ones more comfortable. That could be a problem where we want to relieve a streetcar line obviously. And that could be a problem for the whole DRL if the higher levels of government don't believe that new ridership will come from relieving Yonge/Bloor. Regardless of my preference, I think the one that'll actually sell is the alignment with the most new ridership. I'd be hard pressed to guess which alignment that would be right now.

It may indirectly attract new riders by taking existing riders from other routes, freeing capacity.

 

[andomano]

No

How did you do on the logic test

Very well I'd say...
The question the poll is asking is "What is your prefere alignment for a new E/W subway through Downtown" <- taken verbatim
A person's preference would in part be chosen by taking ridership levels into account I would think.

 

[Dan416]

Very well I'd say...
The question the poll is asking is "What is your prefere alignment for a new E/W subway through Downtown" <- taken verbatim
A person's preference would in part be chosen by taking ridership levels into account I would think.

I don't think that follows, no.

If we built a Queen Street Subway to replace the Queen Streetcar, we'd just be giving existing riders a more comfortable ride, hence, not much improved ridership levels. Yes it'll encourage growth, but not so much as a totally different alignment serving an underserved corridor such as the DRL.

 

[andomano]

I wasn't thinking Queen necessarily or any route in particular, I was thinking back to what KeithZ had said in a previous post, where the majority believes the alignment to be between Front and Wellington? Something like that anyhow.

 

[Darren B]

I don't think that follows, no.

If we built a Queen Street Subway to replace the Queen Streetcar, we'd just be giving existing riders a more comfortable ride, hence, not much improved ridership levels. Yes it'll encourage growth, but not so much as a totally different alignment serving an underserved corridor such as the DRL.

I disagree somewhat, and I'll get to that in a second.

First, I think new ridership in terms of getting brand new ridership to the TTC depends heavily if the DRL will go north of Danforth, and west of Yonge. If it goes north of Danforth, then it may attract new ridership from key areas of the city where citizens are well off enough to choose to drive instead of riding public transit. This is the key demographic who the DRL should attract. If these potential rider see the conveniance and the newly created space on a subway, instead of the usual craziness at say Y&B, then they make the TTC part of their daily routine.....in other words new transit is always good transit.

Second, the DRL as a whole might create new employment centres. We have employment centres now emerging on Yonge as far north as North York Centre or Finch. The same may happen along certain parts of the DRL.

And finally, back to replacing the Queen car. The Queen car currently attracts riders from a certain geographic distance along its route. One might choose not to walk more then two blocks to get to a packed streetcar, but they might walk that distance or more to get to a subway. Many people dont know that Dundas from Broadview to its end at Kingston Road is not serviced by public transit. Its geographically in between Gerrard and Queen, with numerous schools in the area. Those residents can walk to either the Queen or Carlton streetcar, but they can also choose to drive. While most residents are not high net-worth, those who are may choose to avoid public transit. Having a new subway just a few blocks away may make them give public transit a try, and hopefully choose to commit to using it more often. These are existing neighborhoods, and while I can accept development is being planned on Lakeshore, as usual I tend to believe that we should cater to existing and not potential residents.

 

[kEiThZ]

It may indirectly attract new riders by taking existing riders from other routes, freeing capacity.

Regardless of alignment that would still have to be quantified I would think. ie. system wide ridership increase.

I think this is important because it played a part in the political freakshow that became Ottawa's light rail cancellation. The new mayor argued that the new LRT would not attract enough new riders while saddling the city with the extra cost of enhanced rail operations (over and above the O-train). The feds agreed and withheld funding till Ottawa agreed to come up with a better plan. I foresee the same situation for the DRL. If the TTC can't show that there will be a significant boost to net ridership than there is no way the feds are going to be pitching in and there might not even be provincial buy-in (Queen's Park backed the feds in Ottawa).

 

[nfitz]

If we built a Queen Street Subway to replace the Queen Streetcar, we'd just be giving existing riders a more comfortable ride, hence, not much improved ridership levels. Yes it'll encourage growth, but not so much as a totally different alignment serving an underserved corridor such as the DRL.

Perhaps true, but the objective of the relief line isn't to improve ridership levels. It's to relieve the Yonge line, as ridership there can't increase otherwise.

Ideally there needs to be both; good connections from downtown to the Portlands and Liberty, as well as a good connection from the Danforth to downtown - and I'm not sure that the objective of relieving Bloor-Yonge will be served by the same project that is trying to service areas such as the Portlands.

 

[afransen]

Regardless of alignment that would still have to be quantified I would think. ie. system wide ridership increase.

I think this is important because it played a part in the political freakshow that became Ottawa's light rail cancellation. The new mayor argued that the new LRT would not attract enough new riders while saddling the city with the extra cost of enhanced rail operations (over and above the O-train). The feds agreed and withheld funding till Ottawa agreed to come up with a better plan. I foresee the same situation for the DRL. If the TTC can't show that there will be a significant boost to net ridership than there is no way the feds are going to be pitching in and there might not even be provincial buy-in (Queen's Park backed the feds in Ottawa).

Is that test applied to the Yonge or York U extensions, especially net new riders including GO Transit, etc.?

 

[Railization]

The only reason I'd prefer wellington is because of the that option to build pathways to three subway stations.

Yet you don't like the idea of it hitting 4 stations through the Richmond-Adelaide alignment.

As for Railization's points, while I agree that he/she makes a good case for a subway on Queen (and I don't dispute the need for some improvement on Queen), I simply disagree that a Queen line should be shoehorned into a DRL. ......What's the point of building a relief line if it provides no relief to Yonge/Bloor? Neither you nor Railization has yet demonstrated how moving the line that far north will relieve Yonge/Bloor. Instead, yours and his/her case is based on the busyness of the Queen and King streetcars and Railization's assertion that Union needs relief. I don't buy that a line specifically meant to relieve Yonge/Bloor should now have priorities refocused to important but lesser priority issues.

1. I've lost count of how many times I've told you that I don't support a subway on Queen (not physically practical), I support Richmond/Adelaide... there's a difference, please recognize it's a difference and stop misrepresenting my position.

2. My arguments are not focused on Queen, it's the whole span between Queen and King, treated as one compound-corridor by routing the subway between the two. This means that King plays just as much, probably more, of a role as Queen.

3. You're talking about shoehorning as if the various purposes are incompatible, yet haven't offered anything to support that the various benefits are incompatible. I've gone into significant detail of how they are all compatible, and if your position is supposed to be stronger, you should defend it with some real facts. Waterfront development projects, which will have significant residential components, don't apply in the re-directed ridership of Bloor-Yonge alleviation angle.

4. You have provided no evidence to support this bizzarre assertion that a R/A alignment wouldn't alleviate Bloor-Yonge. Yet it actually would alleviate more existing riders than Wellington, as you fail to interpret the Union ridership figure properly: Union is not a typical station, and Union's travel patterns also are not typical, as was well-described in a recent post by Chuck (I mentioned it weeks ago, too). Yonge South-of-Bloor is still the main fish to fry, however, because there are no mutually exclusive objectives, there is no reason to not have the line serve as many objectives as possible. This idea that it can only serve one and only one objective is silly.

5. You still haven't explained how Union is going to expand the number of tracks/platforms available for GO. If it's a non-issue, please share GO's solution to this, I'd love to hear it.

As for debates on development and such....to me it's just bonus if a DRL serves new development

Yet this has been the focus of your argument, since, according to you, all existing ridership on Yonge at College, Dundas, and Queen, are all unrelated to Bloor-Yonge's high activity and so would provide no relief.

what about the Ex, Skydome, CN Tower, ACC, St. Lawrence market, Fort York, Roy Thompson Hall, the Hockey Hall of Fame, Sony Centre,

You've got to be kidding.
Ex: Has it's own GO station, has it's own LRT terminal, serviced by 2 routes, soon to be 3.
Fort York: As above minus GO.
ACC: Has GO and subway service already.
Roy Thompson Hall: Already next door to a subway station
Hockey Hall of Fame: Already next door to a subway station
Sony Centre: Immediately across from Union bus terminal.
Skydome/CN Tower: Going to be on WWLRT

So all commuters travelling east of Pape to King and points south would use the DRL while all the rest would travel via Yonge/Bloor. Shift the subway north to Queen and folks going to King and Union actually need to get off and change at Queen. They won't. They'll ride to Yonge/Bloor defeating the whole purpose of this multi-billion dollar investment.

This isn't how ridership patterns work. Part of the point is that people want to avoid Bloor-Yonge and would be willing to transfer to the reverse-peak direction for some stations like Dundas or College. And R/A alignment provides direct access to both King and Queen at Yonge, so no transfer to either of those would happen anyway.

The peak period peak direction Union-bound crowd is actually far smaller than you think, as per afore-mentioned flawed interpretation of the daily ridership figure (it'd be nice if we had the ppdph between each pair of downtown stations, but we don't), and many of those that do use Union today would in fact use a R/A-aligned DRL for destinations further east or west of Union along Front St./Wellington.

But don't forget that many of those folks also work north of Queen and south of king. In building the DRL to relieve Y/B you'd have to end up prioritizing one of those sets....either you end up running it along Queen or King or you end up with that hybrid Richmond/Adelaide deal where you only help out half the commuters with their preferred alignment (presuming we are splitting the tracks here).

You don't "only help out half" with R/A, you hit both equally, and that's the point of it. R/A would be well-used by anybody travelling between Front St. (or Esplanade) and Shuter (or Dundas).

Looking strictly at the ridership numbers though I would submit that King or further south is the best alignment is probably best:

King + St. Andrew is approximately 112k riders.

Osgoode + Queen is approximately 77k riders.

Union is approximately 81k riders.

So King's probably the best by the numbers.

King St. alone if you only target one corridor, yes, but why target only one when you can target two well-used corridors? The ridership base is there, I posted the projection several pages ago, and we should follow the logical and tried-tested-and-true method of progressively upgrading technologies as required, and not gamble with new developments, especially transit-first designed developments that will offer great transit service without a subway (and designed to work without a subway) - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If we are talking about the future, most of the CIPs Railization put up still put Queen at the northern edge while King runs right through those neighbourhoods, with Front as the southern edge…and of course some of the CIPs are entirely south of Front (Portlands). That's why I didn't buy that there was a CIP for Queen….it's simply the boundary for most of the plans with most development scheduled to take place south of it.

You can't say there are no CIPs that relate to Queen when Queen is a boundary. You can't just ignore information you find inconvenient. Furthermore, in the east, Front and King are so close together that Richmond/Adelaide becomes the mid-point of the zone, and would thereby be serving these zones best with such an alignment. You ignore this, just like you ignore the LRT networks for the Portlands and surrounding areas, passing it off as "a dog's breakfast" without proof.

Indeed if the TTC was that worried about Queen today, don't you think we'd have a Queen subway higher up on the list instead of falling in the 25 year plan with the hope of it being grafted on to a DRL?

Some inside scoop for you: Metrolinx's DRL was supposed to be in the 15 year plan if Metrolinx staff had their way, but TTC and City Hall people insisted that it be pushed off so that "it doesn't suck away funds from Transit City." It's not Metrolinx staff's fault, and has little to do with priorities based on real needs, it's all about politics.

The only reason the DRL might get bumped up is to getting better use out of the half billion or so that we might have to spend relieving Yonge/Bloor.

It goes beyond that. There's a long list of pre-conditions that Metrolinx hasn't budgeted for, but being demanded by the City. The DRL's eastern leg is a cheaper alternative to these pre-conditions.

I disagree with using Union Station's high ridership numbers to justify a connection with the DRL. I travel south on Yonge during the morning rush, often to Union. Based purely on observation, King and Dundas are tied for having the greatest number of people getting off the southbound trains. For third place, I would say that Queen has a slight edge, and Union is fourth. Union easily has the most boardings, but by default, these trips are all in the reverse peak direction.

Union Station's high ridership can be attributed to the reverse direction commuting of GO passengers. As such, connecting the DRL to Union would provide a relatively small benefit to existing TTC customers, and even less a benefit to those who actually do board at Union (GO riders) because their destinations are not accessible by DRL.

Even if one disregards the presence of the 501 streetcar, a Queen alignment still offers the greatest potential to offer existing TTC riders a chance to walk to their destination rather than transfer back onto the YUS.

Well-said.

As keithz points out, it's to relieve Bloor-Yonge, NOT to relieve the Queen streetcar, NOT to relieve Union station.

Why can't it do all 3 (include the more important King car, too, and make it do all 4) when it is perfectly practical to design it so?

Union is still not the busiest that it could be. So it can handle more traffic.

GO Transit is going to keep Union extremely busy within 10 years from now and doesn't need a DRL to increase activity there. The DRL is actually the last thing Union needs.

 

[Dan416]

GO Transit is going to keep Union extremely busy within 10 years from now and doesn't need a DRL to increase activity there. The DRL is actually the last thing Union needs.

I think you're confusing Union Train Station with Union Subway Station. GO Transit doesn't actually dump a lot of riders on Union Subway Station. Having taken GO to school for 3 years, the vast majority of GO users walk right on past the subway station and into the PATH network. Some use the subway station, but it's really not that busy. Add the DRL through Union and then you give GO riders even more directions to go (4 choices rather than 2--North to Downsview, North to Finch, West to Dundas West, and East to Pape).

 

[kEiThZ]

Is that test applied to the Yonge or York U extensions, especially net new riders including GO Transit, etc.?

While most would agree that the extensions as conceived aren't perhaps optimal, I still think they'll bring in tons of new riders in the years to come by focusing high density development along that route. VCC is developing focused around the subway station and the development along Yonge is a no-brainer...albeit after Steeles is probably questionable (LRT up Yonge could have probably gone to Major Mac or something like that). My only tiff is that York was not forced to build in higher density. The city certainly goofed with the development around York.

 

[Chuck]

I don't think that follows, no.

If we built a Queen Street Subway to replace the Queen Streetcar, we'd just be giving existing riders a more comfortable ride, hence, not much improved ridership levels. Yes it'll encourage growth, but not so much as a totally different alignment serving an underserved corridor such as the DRL.

I can't say that I agree. Although I get what you're saying, the above statement puts the needs of the transit system above the needs of the riders - ie, it's better to bring more revenue to the TTC through new riders than it is to improve the commute of existing riders. Although the purpose of the DRL is to relieve Y+B, it will inevitably have enormous potential to improve east-west travel through downtown. It should therefore be located along a route that diverts as many people as possible off of streetcars.

Depending on where the DRL runs, it could tremendously increase the number of choice riders who live in an extremely transit friendly part of the city as it is. There are probably more choice riders staying away from transit today in the broad downtown area than there are in any one particular corridor which might on average have poorer service than surrounding areas.

 

[Dan416]

If we really want to run it along Queen I don't have too much problem with that, as long as it still goes through Union station. The only other good link for the DRL in my opinion is Dundas. I can picture Yonge and Dundas befitting a subway interchange, but not Yonge & Queen.