"Downtown Core Line" - Possible Alignments?

[Second_in_pie]

^^ I agree. The people who support a Queen subway have seen an opportunity for a downtown subway, then make it run along Queen St. to serve Queen. Queen and the DRL are both needed, but they're two different things. You take one, you kill the other.

Front/Railway is the prime alignment for the DRL. Queen is (obviously) the best alignment for Queen, but people are trying to make a compromise between Queen and the DRL, which will either make both routes not the best they could be, or just totally kill the point of the DRL in the first place.

I personally think that the best thing for Queen is a LRT, pretty much just like Eglinton's getting. Make some nice ROWs and medium station spacing, then tunnel underground through downtown to go faster and make room for more cars. If you ask me, it'd work phenomenally well on Queen, much better than it would on Eglinton.

 

[Fresh Start]

^^ I agree. The people who support a Queen subway have seen an opportunity for a downtown subway, then make it run along Queen St. to serve Queen. Queen and the DRL are both needed, but they're two different things. You take one, you kill the other.

Front/Railway is the prime alignment for the DRL. Queen is (obviously) the best alignment for Queen, but people are trying to make a compromise between Queen and the DRL, which will either make both routes not the best they could be, or just totally kill the point of the DRL in the first place.

I personally think that the best thing for Queen is a LRT, pretty much just like Eglinton's getting. Make some nice ROWs and medium station spacing, then tunnel underground through downtown to go faster and make room for more cars. If you ask me, it'd work phenomenally well on Queen, much better than it would on Eglinton.

Which is why I'm proposing the map in my image. Making the DRL a true U-line gives us the oppurtunity to build a Queen Line in the future. If the DRL goes completely along King, Wellington or Front/CNR for its east-west west jaunt, the case for Queen subway out to Parkdale and the Beaches becomes a closed issue. And more importantly places like Chinatown, a backdoor connection to Ryerson University and other important residential-commercail centres through the downtown continue to be neglected.

I'm a Queen supporter and a DRL supporter, but see the wisdom in not marrying the two concepts.

 

[Northern Magus]

Queen and the DRL are both needed, but they're two different things. You take one, you kill the other.

I think you're making a false dichotomy here. There will be a limited number of funds available, so whatever's built will have to do both jobs reasonably well for at least 20-40 years. Transit City's waterfront LRT would make a Front St alignment redundant, so the decision on whether or not to fund this LRT will probably be the key turning point for the subway alignment.

Front/Railway is the prime alignment for the DRL. Queen is (obviously) the best alignment for Queen, but people are trying to make a compromise between Queen and the DRL, which will either make both routes not the best they could be, or just totally kill the point of the DRL in the first place.

Just bear in mind that the Front St alignment plan is from the days of neon colours and feathered hair. Its assumptions and models are now almost three decades out of whack. That's why they're going right back to the drawing board for everything. It's not impossible that the Front alignment will survive, but we're probably going to see a fair number of changes. And compromises.

I personally think that the best thing for Queen is a LRT.

For now, Metrolinx would appear to disagree (and they'd be footing the bills). But it'll be interesting to see what the alignment studies report back.

 

[Northern Magus]

^ The city has declared most of the neighbourhoods along Queen as stable neighbourhoods not open to development. As long as the city maintains that stance and as long as most new development is occurring south of Queen (especially along the Waterfront) the new line should not be on Queen.

Your point is moot. As a designated Avenue, the City's official plan calls for intensification along Queen. Metrolinx would appear to disagree with you, its chair having expressly called for a "Queen Line". And they're the ones who would ultimately decide.

A more pertinent question might be: without a subway, could Queen's neighbourhoods handle further intensification and development?

 

[drum118]

Your point is moot. As a designated Avenue, the City's official plan calls for intensification along Queen. Metrolinx would appear to disagree with you, its chair having expressly called for a "Queen Line". And they're the ones who would ultimately decide.

A more pertinent question might be: without a subway, could Queen's neighbourhoods handle further intensification and development?

It could if no cars were allow for it and TTC put more streetcars on it. Otherwise, ""no""

The Queen Line and DRL are the same thing if the right connection point with the BD line up.

If the line comes down Coxwell, it will solve a lot of problems in the east for the 501.

Anything south of front St is in land fill and the water table that will cost more to build than north of front. Front was the water edge back in the 1800's.

 

[gweed123]

I think you're making a false dichotomy here. There will be a limited number of funds available, so whatever's built will have to do both jobs reasonably well for at least 20-40 years. Transit City's waterfront LRT would make a Front St alignment redundant, so the decision on whether or not to fund this LRT will probably be the key turning point for the subway alignment.

You're also assuming that a DRL placed somewhere other than Queen won't reduce the number of people using the Queen streetcar, and that it will continue to be over capacity. I believe this is a false assumption, for these 2 reasons:

1) A DRL intersecting (not duplicating) the Queen line will offer passengers a chance to transfer onto it, reducing the load into downtown (in both the East and West).

2) The majority of the people from West of Roncesvalles will be taking the Waterfront West LRT into downtown, not the Queen streetcar as it is currently.

These two factors combined will turn the Queen streetcar into a feeder/local line, instead of the long haul line that it is today. That should hold up for 20-40 years until the Metrolinx RTP is complete, and more lines can be looked at. In the meantime, things such as transit signal priority could be used to increase the efficiency of flow.

Also, just for the record, you stated that a Front St DRL alignment would make the Waterfront West LRT redundant (or vice versa). I would like to point out that at Spadina (and it stays the same for much of the downtown portion), that the distance between Queen's Quay (where the Waterfront West LRT is) and Front, and Queen and Front is only 100m difference (I looked on Google Earth, 0.6km vs 0.7km). So by that logic, a subway placed under Front would make BOTH the Waterfront West LRT and a Queen LRT redundant.

 

[EnviroTO]

If Queen has an LRT subway then there is no need for a DRL subway when GO runs trains Bloor West - Union - Danforth. LRT would serve the local traffic and DRL would serve Exhibition which already has a GO stop, Queen which would have an LRT subway, connect to the Bloor line where Roncesvalles LRTs already connect as well as where GO already has a stop, connect to Pape only a few stations from Danforth GO, etc. What a waste of money for very little benefit.

 

[kEiThZ]

Since Miller and Giambrone apparently think that Eglinton is getting a subway, I'd like to suggest the same approach for Queen Street. Underground LRT = Subway.

If Queen has such demand for an HRT subway, what does that say about Eglinton? What Queen needs is some passengers diverted off it (by an intersecting DRL), larger capacity vehicles (a la the new LRVs) and a proper ROW (like St. Clair). Try all that first before clamouring for Queen to get it's own subway. Though I would suggest that a LRT subway is probably appropriate through the core.

At the heart of this project though is the need to relieve Yonge-Bloor. I stand by original assertion that is the most important aspect of the DRL. Relieving Queen is a distant second. If we get the DRL, it'll only be built because we want to avoid spending hundreds of millions or even billions to reconstruct Yonge-Bloor. Now what would be the point of building a DRL that barely provides any relief to Yonge-Bloor and will force use to spend hundreds of million reconstructing the station anyway? If the Queen street alignment provides the most relief to Yonge-Bloor, it'll have my vote. Nothing I've seen in the ridership stats so far shows that.

 

[kEiThZ]

Your point is moot. As a designated Avenue, the City's official plan calls for intensification along Queen. Metrolinx would appear to disagree with you, its chair having expressly called for a "Queen Line". And they're the ones who would ultimately decide.

Would that be the same chair who is on his way out? I am a firm believer in the truism that no plan survives first contact with reality.

Also, it would appear to me that the city's designation of Queen as an "Avenue" conflicts with its designation of several adjacent neighbourhoods as stable. That most certainly limits its potential compared to such fresh slates as the East Bayfront and the Don Lands.

A more pertinent question might be: without a subway, could Queen's neighbourhoods handle further intensification and development?

Why would LRT (particularly if it's buried along the core) not support the same amount of development? If it's fine for the rest of the 416, it's good enough for Queen. The rest of the "Avenues" are all getting LRT. What makes Queen so special? Or do we now have two-tiered transit service: multi-billion dollar subways for trendy neighbourhoods, LRT for the rest of the plebes?

 

[Paleo]

Queen is not a neighbourhood. If your point is to say that it will never change, you can look at the new buildings going up near downtown and the parking lots waiting to be filled. Heading east you can see the new Regent Park south/Corktown and the new developments at River. Just a little more and you run into Don Mount and those nice new buildings that have gone up around Broadview, entire new blocks up on the old Colgate and Wrigley lands and further east you see what they've done with the old racetrack lands. I see plenty of 4-5 storey buildings on Queen East, many that have gone up in the past decade.

On the matter of density:
http://www.urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=7238

Looks to me like any heavy development around suburban nodes quickly gives way to low density. Walk 5 minutes away from the vaunted high density development around Yonge or Sheppard and you're looking at typical suburbia. Looking at that I find it kinda funny having people call parts of East York and Riverdale (or even Leslieville) "low density". You wouldn't need massive nodal development because continuous density already exists in most of the old city.

Run it along Queen Street east of the Don and King Street west of it. Phase 1 can run from Don Mills & Eglinton to King & Spadina. Bisects the CBD perfectly.

Why would LRT (particularly if it's buried along the core) not support the same amount of development? If it's fine for the rest of the 416, it's good enough for Queen. The rest of the "Avenues" are all getting LRT. What makes Queen so special? Or do we now have two-tiered transit service: multi-billion dollar subways for trendy neighbourhoods, LRT for the rest of the plebes?

Don't be dense. If there were to be 17,000 people using Sheppard or Eglinton per hour, they'd be subway. Same reason why a standalone subway to the Beaches would never make sense.

 

[kEiThZ]

Queen is not a neighbourhood. If your point is to say that it will never change, you can look at the new buildings going up near downtown and the parking lots waiting to be filled. Heading east you can see the new Regent Park south/Corktown and the new developments at River. Just a little more and you run into Don Mount and those nice new buildings that have gone up around Broadview, entire new blocks up on the old Colgate and Wrigley lands and further east you see what they've done with the old racetrack lands. I see plenty of 4-5 storey buildings on Queen East, many that have gone up in the past decade.

There's some neighbourhoods with low rises along Queen. Who knew?

I don't deny that there are some very dense and medium density neighbourhoods along Queen. However, many of those could be served equally well by a King Street alignment for example (ie Corktown). What says it has to be Queen? Even Regent Park would not be all that bad off if there were proper bus services to connect quickly to the DRL if its on King.

On the matter of density:
http://www.urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=7238

First off, using a map that goes from 11 000 - 60 000 does not provide the granularity required to place a subway line. Next, there's no inclusion of jobs in that map....a must for when your planning a subway based on peak loads. This map puts the Financial District on par with Clubland.

Second, we have been through this argument several times in this thread. It's not what it looks like now that matter. It's what it'll look like in a decade when several of those emerging neighbourhoods and built up, the WWLRT is in place, new streetcars are in service, etc. Show me what that map will look like in a decade or two and you'll have my vote.

Looks to me like any heavy development around suburban nodes quickly gives way to low density. Walk 5 minutes away from the vaunted high density development around Yonge or Sheppard and you're looking at typical suburbia. Looking at that I find it kinda funny having people call parts of East York and Riverdale (or even Leslieville) "low density". You wouldn't need massive nodal development because continuous density already exists in most of the old city.

Who said Riverdale was low density? I certainly didn't. But I challenge the fact that Riverdale needs a subway running through it instead of just a stop on the DRL (which regardless of alignment Riverdale would get). In fact, regardless of alignment, Riverdale could get several stops through it (I would say at least 2 minimum). East of downtown, I see the choice as essentially limited to Queen or the Rail corridor and either way the DRL won't be running for anything more than a few km on it's way to eastern terminus.

You are in a round about way though, illustrating the challenge that I see in using Queen for its entire lenght. Neighbourhoods like Riverdale should get 1-2 stops at best if the DRL is truly to be an alternative going to downtown, or it would not make sense to use it. Now if you run it along Queen past Riverdale to say the Beaches, and added several stops per neighbourhod, you make it less attractive to those riders you want to divert from Yonge-Bloor.

Run it along Queen Street east of the Don and King Street west of it. Phase 1 can run from Don Mills & Eglinton to King & Spadina. Bisects the CBD perfectly.

We're finally coming to a practical suggestion. My issue with the Queen alignment does not have to do with where it is placed outside the core. I am skeptical of its value inside the core where it won't provide maximum relief to Yonge-Bloor. I can support an alignment that dips down to King in the core. What I can't support is some kind of blanket argument that Queen from one end of Toronto to the other is the absolute best alignment, with no supporting argument as to how that would relieve Yonge-Bloor. People forget what the Relief stands for in the DRL.

Don't be dense. If there were to be 17,000 people using Sheppard or Eglinton per hour, they'd be subway. Same reason why a standalone subway to the Beaches would never make sense.

If the current streetcar ridership counts, than we could use King the whole way or even replace the WWLRT with a subway. Can you guarantee the same level of ridership once the WWLRT is in place and if there were a DRL intersecting Queen in the east and the west?

Let's say someone works on Front and lives in Riverdale. Wouldn't they be served just fine by a subway that is built under the rail corridor and heads to Union? Why would they need a subway that runs the length of Queen? This is what several of us have been saying. The subway should intersect Queen and break up the current streetcar services. Riders should be getting off and heading directly into the core on a subway. Maintaining the subway along Queen only makes sense if most of the riders have both origins and destinations along Queen. I am willing to bet good money that when it comes to commuting, most of those riders are heading somewhere south of Queen in the core.

Either way, I am not all that partial to what happens outside the core. If people want a subway all the way along Queen East, I say go for it. Take it to the Beaches and then up Kingston and then up to Kennedy. That would be the ultimate relief line. Otherwise, I'd settle for any line that has less stops to the core than the combination of YUS and Bloor-Danforth for most riders. In the core, I'd say that this is probably King or further south. And here's where I want maximum bang for the buck. I would not support any alignment that does not provide maximum relief to Yonge-Bloor. If after spending billions to relieve Yonge-Bloor, we end up buying only a decade or two of time, I will truly believe that we picked the wrong alignment.

 

[Northern Magus]

Also, it would appear to me that the city's designation of Queen as an "Avenue" conflicts with its designation of several adjacent neighbourhoods as stable. That most certainly limits its potential compared to such fresh slates as the East Bayfront and the Don Lands.

Why would LRT (particularly if it's buried along the core) not support the same amount of development? If it's fine for the rest of the 416, it's good enough for Queen. The rest of the "Avenues" are all getting LRT. What makes Queen so special? Or do we now have two-tiered transit service: multi-billion dollar subways for trendy neighbourhoods, LRT for the rest of the plebes?

KEITHZ: I'll deal first with the points you raise here, and then later on today I'll respond to your other ones and those of Gweed.

Your two-tier claim looks to me to be a straw man, cloaked in language somewhat resembling class warfare. Transit City was built on the premise that a limited amount of money was available. It was a question of how to allocate it best. On top of that, usage figures were (sensibly) used to dictate whether to use LRT, LRT or BRT on the recommended lines. And those figures made a pretty one-sided case for LRT.

I think, though, that we can agree on something pretty basic: tunnels are tunnels. The principal difference between the HRT and LRT is passenger capacity. Whatever's built will have to make do for 20-30 years before any large-cost upgrades can be considered, so it's a question of what passenger volumes and usage patterns will support in that time. And if the Eglinton tunnels aren't built large enough to support a future upgrade (the difference in size doesn't appear to be that great) then I don't think that it will be money well spent.

I also think you may be over-valuing the designation and misperceiving its imperminence. Ultimate planning decisions rest with the province. More importantly, transit funding decisions rest with them too. Queen, and the rest of the city's major arteries, will be intensified -- with the city's blessing.

You, as well as other Front alignment afficionados, place a great deal of importance on "development potential" in your many posts. Unfortunately, you're relying a great deal on speculation as to what may or may not develop over the next 10-30 years. I think, however, you recognize that Queen offers much re-development potential, in addition to already offering "stable" mixed-use destinations.

I'd argue that stable in this context should be read as "guaranteed high ridership from Day One". I don't believe that Front can offer the same, or at least on the same scale. The downside of your tabula rasa argument is that it will take decades for the ridership to be fully flushed out, and there's no clear picture of what the finished areas will look like. That level of uncertainty always means a high degree of risk. And therefore the potential of being a white elephant then becomes uncomfortably real.

 

[kEiThZ]

NM,

Although I enjoy a great debate, I will assure you I am not ideologically committed to any particularly alignment. For me, I want the alignment that provides greatest relief to Yonge-Bloor. While I will debate the development potential of various areas and corridors, I consider that debate secondary to the principal motivation of building the DRL in the first place: to relieve peak traffic at Yonge-Bloor.

I see the greatest potential for relief with the line being at King or below (personally I prefer the Wellington alignment as laid out on the first page of this thread). If you can show me that greater relief would be achieved by placing the line on Queen, I'll back that alignment.

When it comes to development and how that will alter ridership, I only see more demand for travel to the stations on King or further south. I look at new mixed use nodes like Liberty Village, and the Waterfront lands as having the potential to draw in significant amounts of peak traffic (commuters coming in to work). I don't see that same potential elsewhere yet. But maybe you can convince me otherwise. I think jobs are an important issue routinely being ignored in this debate. 100 sqft cubicles attract many more subway riders than even high density 600 sqft condos.

When it comes to 10-30 years down the road, why are you so skeptical about development in that time period? I never understand how somebody can claim that Queen will develop over the next decade or three but the rest of the city won't? That's one hell of a real estate bet. For one, the waterfront lands are far more attractive to any developer than any site available along Queen Street. Large parcels of waterfront property, close to the core, with the full support of a dedicated city agency, and friendly city policies favouring high density can't compare to a tiny plot hemmed in by low/mid rises on both sides. As to what "may or may not" develop...again I don't buy the skepticism. These areas are already developing. In 30 years they'll be done. Indeed, in about 5 years, we should be getting solid data on what density is developing there and the ridership potential. And its not just waterfront by the way. It's places like Corktown, Cityplace, etc. They're all developing. Can you find an area along Queen that matches what's going on at CityPlace (which if we are assuming 1.5 residents per unit is at over 40k residents per square km and going up to 60k)? I sometimes think that Queen street proponents are opposed to waiting simply because their scared their case will be blown out of the water by what pops up elsewhere along the city.

Finally, the issue of day one ridership. We should be building subways to serve us for a century or more. Building them so that they have maxed out on their potential on Day One is bad public policy. That's why we should be looking at what the city will look like at least 2 decades from now. But beyond that, high ridership for this line will come not from the locals (that's why despite my paragraphs on development, I still consider it secondary to relief of Yonge-Bloor), but from the commuters diverted from Yonge-Bloor. You want high ridership? Place it right in the core so that most Bloor-Danforth riders choose the DRL over Yonge-Bloor. Place it too far north and most riders will simply avoid the hassle of two transfer and continue to Yonge-Bloor. Then we'll really have a problem. If you think the Sheppard stubway was a waste of cash, just imagine what people will say when you have to spend another billion to fix Yonge-Bloor a few years after the DRL opens.

 

[Whoaccio]

1.) We are never going to have both a Queen and DRL subway. I can't really stress enough how unlikely that is to happen. It is fairly rare to build parallel subways less than a km apart from each other in subway mad jurisdictions like Madrid. In Toronto, it simply wont happen. Ever.

2.) There are routing difficulties involved with building both a Queen & DRL subway. The DRL "U" makes sense. Once that is built, a Queen subway would likely turn into a strait line following the existing streetcar route. That would be overly expensive and unnecessary (Nevile Park does not need subway). The only part of Queen that justifies a subway is the central segment, roughly between Pape and High Park.

3,) Why not design a route to be compatible with branch lines? The reality is no matter how you cut it, no one line is going to achieve adequate coverage of the City. The best way to deal with this is to build the odd spur line to meet a specific objective, not holding out for a separate parallel subway to be built.

4.) You can't ignore other projects in the area. Queen's Quay will likely have a well functioning LRT no more than 300m from the rail corridor. Depending on execution, this should serve much of the waterfront development fairly well. Also, GO Train improvements should eventually bring headways of less than five minutes in between the Don River and Exhibition. With improvements to the Ex station (to serve Liberty Village) and a possible Cherry Station (to serve the WDL, EB ect...), a good deal of commuter traffic can be accommodated. It seems redundant to add another rapid transit line to the mix.

5.) Queen/King can't easily, and most likely wont, be converted to anything approaching LRT. Space is just too tight and local merchants seem totally against it. In the longterm, something will have to improve capacity on the downtown part of this corridor. The only realistic solution to that, in my mind, is a subway of sorts.

6.) Zoning can be changed. Subways are multi-billion dollar investments that last for centuries. It makes no sense to base them on completely flexible zoning policies.

7.) Adelaide or Richmond would be better than King or Queen. They have no revenue public transit service, relatively light street retail presence and therefore easier to build a subway along. Ideally we should cut/cover this for as much of its length as possible. Regardless, it would probably be cheaper to just temporarily shut down Adelaide/Richmond than trying to build a subway on Queen/King while keeping things business as usual.

8.) The North Eastern arm of the DRL (i.e. Pape-Eglinton) is more important than the western arm (i.e. Spadina-Dundas West).

9.) How much of the rail corridor is feasible to build in? It is cramped east of the Don River, cramped west of Union. That implies only like 2km of feasible ROW. That simply wouldn't have a noticeable affect on costs. The only leg I can see that really makes sense is in the West, up from Parkdale to Dundas West.

10.) Keeping those in mind, something like this would probably be the best alignment possible to minimize costs and maximize ridership. Really, if we ever did get both ends of the DRL "U" up to Eglinton, it would seem logical to then just close it off along Eglinton and make it a circle.

 

[kEiThZ]

Whoaccio,

Excellent points. You've raise some good points on the complexity of the various alignments. There are of course positives and negatives to each of the alignments. My concern comes from the fact that Queen Subway proponents seems to want to discard the primary purpose of the DRL (relieving Yonge-Bloor) in favour of improving local service because of their dissatisfaction with a poorly managed streetcar line. In essence they are throwing the commuters from Scarborough under the bus (metaphorically speaking) just because they are dissatisfied with their streetcar service. That's a problem that does not require a multi-billion dollar solution .If the studies show that the ridership is there (or rather will be there in two decades) for Queen then so be it. What I can't stand are blanket statements that Queen should be the preferred alignment just because it's been on the books for a while or because it's been mythologized for far too long in this city. Based on ridership alone, the line should be placed at King or lower. If somebody thinks I am misreading/misinterpreting the ridership stats, please show me where I am wrong.

My only quibbles with your post is the suggestion that we build on Adelaid or Richmond to avoid the construction disruptions. As you point out, we build subways for a century or more. If that's the case, then why should we care about the impact of a a few years? And we aren't using cut and cover here, so the impact will be significantly less. There might be other reasons to build on Adelaide or Richmond, I just don't know if the disruptiveness of construction should be one (but then I am heartless like that). My other quibble is the supposed unfeasibility of the rail corridor. For the life of me, I can't figure out why people keep saying that. Engineers have figured out ways to keep entire rail lines running while putting up bridges, or at-grade/above grade/below grade crossings, etc. I can't see why building under the rail corridor would be any more or less difficult that much of the work done on rail lines today, especially if they start work on the lines before they get 5 min GO REX service going. The argument I can accept is one of cost feasibility (though personally, I still think it'd be cheaper). But I am not one to doubt the technical feasability of the rail corridor. Even the cramped space issue is not that relevant below the deck.