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Ontario Liberals and Transit

nfitz said:
No reason? Pape to downtown is 6 km. Danforth to Eglinton is 4 km.

Your talking about 8 km of subway. That's a lot of $. Particularly in the west, with no major trip generators, and a parallel rail corridor. Pape to Eglinton is a better sell, given that it's going to be a challenge to do surface LRT south of O'Connor, a Don crossing will cost similar for subway or surface LRT, and there is a huge population at Thornecliffe/Flemingdon, and then a short distance to Eglinton. But I can't see anything in the West north of Bloor in my lifetime. I'm not even sure the numbers are there to justify Dundas West to Queen/King+Dufferin (they might be ... would be nice to see some numbers).

You don't want to waste the main artery of medium and long-distance transit (GO to Milton, Georgetown, Orangeville, Barrie, Bolton and High Speed Rail to Kitchener points west) with 2 dedicated tracks of subway line. Ultimately, you don't even want to parallel it. You'd want to go up another route. I suspect for now you just stop DRL at GO station in the Dufferin Street area.
Click to expand...

When looking at demand for the DRL there are 2 purposes. One is to move people from the far reaches of the East and West to downtown. Good to sell it to the 'burbs but this purpose can be served with creating transit nodes in the East and West around GO stations.

The bigger demand is the existing demand within the current city. This we can gather from 2 maps.

1. Employment. Currently the west end would be well served by a DRL in this respect. Liberty Village and King West have a fair concentration of employment lands (and not sprawling...dense mid-rise). The East will have the portlands (eventually) but this is 20+ years out for this growth. Building on future growth potential (cough...Sheppard...cough...once a subway is build will they just do the bait and switch to build condos instead).

Maps from the City here: http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/city_planning/sipa/files/pdf/2012_TES.pdf
http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/city_planning/sipa/files/pdf/2012_TES.pdf

2. Residential areas. King and Queen W streetcars are jammed more then Queen E. There is significant density in the west shoulders compared to the East. Residential demand from the East will come from Queen East (streetcar is at not over capacity compared to the west...they are overcapacity...just relative to the west) as well as people travelling from afar (which should be served by rail)

I think the intermediary stops will be busier on the West side than the East (south of Bloor). I'm not knowledgeable enough on what is North of Danforth but when I drive through there I don't see signfiicant density on the commercial side of things. \

Stops at Spadina, Bathurst and Liberty Village/Dufferin will be used by both residential and commercial traffic. Guessing they will be higher than most steps on the older lines outside of the city core. From there to the Bloor Line is 3 km and 1 or 2 stops. Adding this distance will add the benefit of relieving St George. With the number of people commuting to/from these areas, it being a stub-way will also create a choke-point at St Andrew (which is already pretty busy) or whichever station it connects too. Having a second connection will reduce this issue.

The Planners can create models that show whatever they want to show...its an art not a science. But looking at the current transit traffic, current employment land and current residential density around each stop will indicate what traffic will look like day 1. Add on growth (East and West side will have growth along the "Avenues"). It would be nice to see how the planners came up with the numbers to make sure the projections were not skewed to the political answer they wanted.
 
muller877 said:
When looking at demand for the DRL there are 2 purposes. One is to move people from the far reaches of the East and West to downtown. Good to sell it to the 'burbs but this purpose can be served with creating transit nodes in the East and West around GO stations.

The bigger demand is the existing demand within the current city.
Click to expand...

That's 2 purposes. But we talking about the Downtown Relief Line. I think your missing the third, and most important reason. And the reason that this line was conceived (or at least reconceived) back in the 1980s. To relieve Bloor-Yonge station and the Yonge line. The 2012 Conceptual Design Report for the Yonge North subway extension (from Finch to Richmond Hill)) forecasts that the ridership on the Yonge subway heading south from Finch will increase from 15,180 in the peak hour to 24,700 in 2031 if the extension is built.

So you say, provide GO service to Richmond Hill instead. However, if you dig into the details of the modelling from Appendix A of the Conceptual Design Report you'll see that that already assumes that there will be trains every 15 minutes from Richmond Hill to Union during AM peak! If you dig deeper into the numbers, only 2,100 of the 13,300 who will board at Richmond Hill would still be on at Union. Another 1,700 get off at King and 800 get off at Queen. Even with frequent GO service, Yonge at Bloor will be busier in 2031 than it is now.

While moving people from the far east/west into downtown and moving people within downtown are two worthy purposes of the DRL, the most important purpose of the DRL is to relieve the Yonge line, so that it can be extended further north.
 
denfromoakvillemilton said:
There's no Mt Dennis Station on the UPX. The UPX will also cost 20 dollars a ride. Different Markets.
Click to expand...

I'm not talking about UPX, there's GO tracks & service right beside it in the same corridor.

nfitz said:
You don't want to waste the main artery of medium and long-distance transit (GO to Milton, Georgetown, Orangeville, Barrie, Bolton and High Speed Rail to Kitchener points west) with 2 dedicated tracks of subway line. Ultimately, you don't even want to parallel it. You'd want to go up another route. I suspect for now you just stop DRL at GO station in the Dufferin Street area.
Click to expand...

What I mean is once they electrify the corridor and run all way two day at least every 15 min with EMUs, it's getting very close to a subway. If they push to say every 5-8 minutes or even less at peak, then you've already got a rapid transit line along the corridor.

You'd need the fares to be low and/or integrated, but that's not an infrastructure issue.
 
ehlow said:
What I mean is once they electrify the corridor and run all way two day at least every 15 min with EMUs, it's getting very close to a subway. If they push to say every 5-8 minutes or even less at peak, then you've already got a rapid transit line along the corridor.
Click to expand...
Yes you will! Though the context was where the DRL line will go in the west. Given that you can't relieve the Yonge line with frequent GO service, the DRL will have to be subway in the east, so if it continues west it would have to be subway, taking away 2 tracks from the corridor to Dundas West (if it were to go there).
 
BurlOak said:
Sizing the capacity had nothing to do with P3. The capacity was given to the Contractor and he delivered. What it does show is that an analysis needs to be done to determine the probabilities that demand will be exceeded, and how much marginal cost would be needed to provide the extra capacity.
Click to expand...

That's the point - if you are going to set a capacity with no eye on the future, you are going to get a project that is going to satisfy that bare minimum.


AoD
 
BurlOak said:
Some would say Eglinton East was done this way.
Click to expand...

Except converting Eglinton East into some sort of grade separated route isn't that implausible or even difficult an exercise. Try adapting something underground once it's built and you are facing a whole different ball of pain (think Union Station 2nd platform, or gawd forbid, Yonge-Bloor Interchange).

AoD
 
ehlow said:
I'm not talking about UPX, there's GO tracks & service right beside it in the same corridor.



What I mean is once they electrify the corridor and run all way two day at least every 15 min with EMUs, it's getting very close to a subway. If they push to say every 5-8 minutes or even less at peak, then you've already got a rapid transit line along the corridor.

You'd need the fares to be low and/or integrated, but that's not an infrastructure issue.
Click to expand...

nfitz said:
Yes you will! Though the context was where the DRL line will go in the west. Given that you can't relieve the Yonge line with frequent GO service, the DRL will have to be subway in the east, so if it continues west it would have to be subway, taking away 2 tracks from the corridor to Dundas West (if it were to go there).
Click to expand...
Nailed it nfitz!
 
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I'm wondering when we will see the first injection of the transit funds to a specific project? for example, X billions to DRL line, Y billions to Go electrification phase 1, Z billions to Yonge north extension in the news etc?
 
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