Ontario Line North of Eglinton (was Relief Line North) (Speculation)

[Bureaucromancer]

I don't know about the best design yet, but it does come the closest to making it sensible to through route the Sheppard line somewhere.

 

[BurlOak]

I don't know about the best design yet, but it does come the closest to making it sensible to through route the Sheppard line somewhere.

I still prefer to interline Sheppard with the Vaughan subway.
Sheppard subway goes from Don Mills (maybe extend east in future) to Vaughan, and also from Don Mills to Downtown (via Downsview).

DRL should continue North - the farther north is goes, the better it intercepts riders from Finch, Steeles, etc.

 

[Hopkins123]

I'm still skeptical.

I think there is a logical transition of destinations along the Don Mills corridor that explain its ridership. Going from north to south, you have, Seneca College, the Peanut, Fairview Mall (and Sheppard Subway), employment lands at York Mills, Shops at Don Mills, employment lands at Wynford, Eglinton & Don Mills (and Aga Khan), Ontario Science Centre, Flemingdon Park, Thorncliffe Park, Pape Village/Old East York, and finally, the Pape Station (and Danforth subway). With tons of (high density) residential, multiple large secondary schools, and community amenities spread throughout the corridor. The development of the Celestica site at Eglinton and Don Mills will add thousands of residents too and another major node.

Victoria Park isn't a bad corridor by any means, but it just doesn't seem to have that continuity of important anchors and destinations along its corridor compared to Don Mills. I appreciate that Consumers Road is an important node, but it is also an auto-centric one, with vast amounts of parking lots and the majority of the employment lands outside the comfortable 600m walking distance of the prospective station at Sheppard and Victoria Park.

Option 6 (Victoria Park) alignment also hits the Wynford/Concorde Pl business park area en route though and VP/Lawrence is also a densely populated apartment community with VP/Parkwoods/Ellesmere ripe for redevelopment and proximal to several apartment communities as well.

It's a winnable compromise to divert the DRL away from Don Mills if it means extending the Sheppard Line to meet this line at VP. After all, you always could also have a further extension to Finch/VP and then a terminus swinging the line slightly west to a station in the heart of Seneca College.

 

[micheal_can]

I still prefer to interline Sheppard with the Vaughan subway.
Sheppard subway goes from Don Mills (maybe extend east in future) to Vaughan, and also from Don Mills to Downtown (via Downsview).

DRL should continue North - the farther north is goes, the better it intercepts riders from Finch, Steeles, etc.

View attachment 166116

This is why I advocate against it going to RH centre/Langstaff. It should swing into Markham.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

I'll just leave my latest crayon scratching's here.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

This is why I advocate against it going to RH centre/Langstaff. It should swing into Markham.

Not to rehash the debates from previous pages, but after Steeles, exactly what riders that go to the Yonge line would a DRL that swings to Markham intercept?

This point always confuses me. Woodbine Avenue is suburban employment lands that don't lend to ridership generation until you get to Hwy-7. If you travel 3km to the east, you have the Stouffville Line, which the Metrolinx Business Case report that came out recently, shows will service Markham very well once electrified and 15 minute headways are attained. Some of the surface transit routes in the area you want the DRL to swing to, fail to reach 1,000 daily riders.

If the goal is intercepting riders from the Yonge line, the VIVA Blue Yonge bus generates 18,000 weekday riders, in addition to the collection of other YRT and VIVA routes that are intercepted at Yonge and Hwy-7.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

f you travel 3km to the east, you have the Stouffville Line, which the Metrolinx Business Case report that came out recently, shows will service Markham very well once electrified and 15 minute headways are attained.

This is the big issue with taking a DRL north too far east to me. Stouffville is already a line to Markham, and already slated for frequent service. It's closer in that doesn't have an existing corridor.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

This is the big issue with taking a DRL north too far east to me. Stouffville is already a line to Markham, and already slated for frequent service. It's closer in that doesn't have an existing corridor.

Really, if you have the RER on Stouffville line, a DRL ending somewhere in the Leslie/7 employment node, the Yonge subway and the Spadina subway (AND the Barrie line), you have a pretty darned good series of options; a multi-pronged fork that, in particular, gives people coming from the east and west several options before they pile onto the Yonge line.

Plus, it's in limbo now but there is very substantial development envisioned for the Buttonville airport site. If you're coming north up to Highway 7, you want stop(s) that serve the Beaver Creek area on the west side of the 404 and then I think you would cross under to the Seneca/Allstate area and maybe end up in Buttonville, probably not even getting as far east as Woodbine. But there's no intensification to speak of further east on 7 that couldn't be captured by RER and/or (as others have mentioned) feeding people into the subway(s) with Viva (and maybe even the 407 Transitway, one day) and I see no point having another subway converge at Yonge either. (So, my dashed line here shows very roughly where I think a north-of-Steeles DRL could/should go...)

 

[Bureaucromancer]

Buttonville is a decent point, but I'd argue there's a large interest in getting wider connectivity at Richmond Hill Centre. In combination. With the costs of a new corridor I'm comfortable with he idea that the area between Yonge and the Stouffville line is to be served primarily by Viva on Highway 7... I would argue for better Viva connectivity to Unionville station though. Ideally I'd out in an underground BRT station as part of a new underpass allowing through running from Enterprise Blvd to stop directly at the station without backtracking.

 

[gweed123]

This is the best design I have heard yet. This alignment still hits the Lawrence and Don Mills node, and the York Mills station would even be centrally located in the employment lands, allowing for intensification potential, as opposed to having 3/4 corners on a ravine/golf course.

Exactly. From The Donway to pretty much the 401 there's nothing worthwhile along Don Mills. By swinging it westward onto the RH corridor, you hit the middle of the York Mills/Leslie employment cluster, and you have a ready-made transfer station at Leslie & Sheppard.

I don't know about the best design yet, but it does come the closest to making it sensible to through route the Sheppard line somewhere.

What I envision is a Sheppard East LRT terminating at the station at Victoria Park & Sheppard. That way LRT passengers have the option of either continuing west along Sheppard to Yonge, or heading south along Victoria Park towards downtown. It eliminates the purely 'linear' aspect of that transfer location.

As for the utility of the Sheppard Line, I'm working on a map that will show how it can be integrated into the rest of the system. Basically, it involves swinging the DRL north under Spadina from Queen, and then connecting it with the Spadina Subway. By extending the Sheppard Line west as well, you would effectively end up with a Ring Line, and the existing line to Vaughan (making it a Richmond Hill-Vaughan Line via Downtown Toronto).

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Buttonville is a decent point, but I'd argue there's a large interest in getting wider connectivity at Richmond Hill Centre.

Maybe. I think if they actually built the YNSE and Transitway and improved service on the RH GO line, that centre would be very well connected, though. Frankly, I think the main advantage of bringing the DRL in that direction would be the opportunity to have a stop at either the east side (Bayview) of the Langstaff Gateway UGC or even in the middle, whereas the YNSE just grazes it's east end. There's something to be said for taking the pressure off of Yonge wherever possible - and I like the idea of redundancy if, for example Line 1 is shut down , but with both lines stopping at Yonge/7, I don't think there's much of an "audience" there for the DRL. Better to hit the employment node and college campus, IMHO (though, sure, they're not too far from the subway, via Viva).

In short (too late!) to make the transit viable, you need to connect to jobs, not just residential density and you are veering away from where they are. There should be some jobs at Yonge/7 but, even at full buildout, not enough to justify that massive level of service. The map below is from the Neptis Foundation, showing the GTA's employment mega-zones. Your proposed routing would take the subway directly BETWEEN the 404/7 zone and the 427 zone. The Yonge line is already doing that; better to take the eastern line right to the pink blob (which is, in their terminology, a Suburban Knowledge Intensive District). You could have 15 minutes (give or take) between Consumers Road and Beaver Creek/Allstate Parkway, which are 2 of the biggest job nodes outside downtown. Not bad.

 

[micheal_can]

Maybe we should be asking what exactly is the DRL supposed to relieve. Yes, the Yonge line, but is it the entire line, or just south of Bloor and Bloor-Yonge station?

I imagine as it goes north that it is to draw some ridership from the busy interchange stations.

As far as where on the Highway 7 it should go, I think that somewhere between Stoufville and Richmond Hill GO train lines, either Leslie or Woodbine, would be good. Going to RH centre/Langstaff GO would really be a disservice to the norther parts of Scarborough and North York. One could assume Bloor Line could be extended to Markham east of Stoufville Line while Sheppard could go east into Durham.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Maybe we should be asking what exactly is the DRL supposed to relieve. Yes, the Yonge line, but is it the entire line, or just south of Bloor and Bloor-Yonge station?

I imagine as it goes north that it is to draw some ridership from the busy interchange stations.

As far as where on the Highway 7 it should go, I think that somewhere between Stoufville and Richmond Hill GO train lines, either Leslie or Woodbine, would be good. Going to RH centre/Langstaff GO would really be a disservice to the norther parts of Scarborough and North York. One could assume Bloor Line could be extended to Markham east of Stoufville Line while Sheppard could go east into Durham.

It’s been discussed before that the RLS is the relieve Bloor-Yonge and the RLN is to relieve the Yonge Line south of Sheppard-Yonge. While both these descriptions are true, I think that the full Relief Line (ie. Mount Dennis to Highway 7) is not only to relieve Line 1 and Line 2, but to improve rapid transit access to the areas it serves (especially downtown) and to fill the the empty TTC “subway” map with a brand new line.

 

[micheal_can]

It’s been discussed before that the RLS is the relieve Bloor-Yonge and the RLN is to relieve the Yonge Line south of Sheppard-Yonge. While both these descriptions are true, I think that the full Relief Line (ie. Mount Dennis to Highway 7) is not only to relieve Line 1 and Line 2, but to improve rapid transit access to the areas it serves (especially downtown) and to fill the the empty TTC “subway” map with a brand new line.

Which is why the idea of it to go to Lngstaff GO is a bad idea. If they wanted something akin to that, the Spadina extension should have gone there. makes about as much sense.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Which is why the idea of it to go to Lngstaff GO is a bad idea. If they wanted something akin to that, the Spadina extension should have gone there. makes about as much sense.

Yeah, lines should diverge in the suburbs, not converge.

Also, after some thought, I changed my mind on the potential Line 2 Extension along McCowan into Markham, as it is redundant when you take into the Stouffville Line, even though 15 min Two Way All Day doesn’t reach Centennial Station but that’s another discussion. While unrealistic, a Line 2 extension to Highway 7 should really end at Cornell Terminal at Ninth Line.