Isn't the whole point of a relief line that we don't have absolutely every line touching the lakeshore? If absolutely necessary, you can get off at Queen-Yonge and take the PATH down to Union, or maybe even transfer at East Harbour instead. That's going to be a much higher capacity area than Roncesvalles anyways.
Connecting in Parkdale would not only be a lot cheaper (you know what's easier than cut and cover under Parkside? Not having to tunnel west of Dufferin at all), but it's more practical to serve the Roncesvalles area directly with LRT/streetcars than mainline rail. If we're trying to ease congestion at Union, why shouldn't we do something that actually diverts people away from Union?
Let's not put serving one neighbourhood ahead of serving entire GO corridors lest steveintoronto take to calling it the Roncesvalles Entitlement.
lol...and it would be an entitlement, because it would cost a bundle to be the fiefdom of a chosen few. I live right at the top of Roncy, btw,
What would make sense is to tie the Roncy streetcar into a station at either end, which it would automatically as is with Bloor (improved passenger connections are imminent in the next few years to the south of there and the west to Dundas West) and there would be another streetcar intersect on the east side of Parkdale, on the Georgetown Corridor via the Queen, King or both streetcar routes.
One of the only proposed divergence from the cross-core routings (either under Queen or King, Queen being much preferable since King will ostensibly be made a Transitway all the way to the Humber Loop) that I've seen in this string is the brilliant one by a poster of using the Barrie Corridor which is bog obvious, but I'd overlooked in my simple and fast connection as RER and/or Metro up the Georgetown Corridor to Bramalea. A split in the route in northern Parkdale would see alternate service from downtown in tunnel emerge onto the mainline to go every other train up each leg. The prime purpose of the Relief Line is...ta da: "Relief" and that means the present subway and Union Station, and secondarily, diverting the catchment areas north of the City
completely away from the subway! Passengers then get a one-seat ride from the hinterlands to the core, and vice versa, or even through the core to get to the other side, without have to use any TTC vehicle save for maybe the last mile.
A split (and on the eastern end too) would mean 15 min intervals of RER on the legs, and 7.5 min interval through the core.
This isn't rocket science, this is being done and done well in a number of "world cities". And it means that it can be built without interrupting the present subway service save for passenger interconnections at stations where the lines intersect. And that interruption would just be using alternate stairways or the like. Again, exactly as has been done in London, Paris, German and EU cities etc, etc, cities where they have vastly superior transit to what we have.
Example:
Vienna is called the City of Dreams for a reason: aside from it being the birthplace of Freud, Austria’s capital is voted one of the world’s most l...
www.blogto.com
Not mentioned in that article is this:
Vienna S-Bahn - Wikipedia
and
Vienna U-Bahn - Wikipedia
Trying to wind a "relief line" like a piece of spaghetti to as many places as possible completely defeats what the concept is all about. Serve those areas by all means...as
feeders to the 'Relief Trunk' with buses, streetcars, soap-box derbies, whatever.
This thing is going to cost a fortune, but it can make sound business sense and financed by Enterprise along with government subsidy
as long as it makes sense and does the bare minimum in terms of routing and tunnelling. Get it through the core in tunnel, and to the upper Don Valley, perhaps a leg up to Unionville too, make it do what RER is purported to be doing, and combine them, but don't try and make it 'local service'. Deep tunnel is expensive enough as it is. The fewer the stations, the better. And the fewer the diversions, the better. Serve the locals with local transit.
As a footnote Parkside Dr hosts a major sewer under it, and the area around Bloor has a powerful aquifer that feeds the pond on 'Spring Road' (the name give it away). The aquifer has an astounding pressure to it, some fifty feet of head or so.
If anyone thinks Parkside Drive, think surface route, not tunnel. And the load (including by-passing Roncy) is not enough to warrant subway. The way to do Parkside (and area) is with a bus express from the present streetcar station on the Parkside Bridge, up to Keele Station. Cheap, affordable, very quick to institute, and it should be running now! It's my view that the Queen car should be going up Roncy, and the King should be on the Queensway to the Humber Loop as the western extension of the King Transitway.
But that's described in another string.
