Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

No one north of Dundas will walk to Queen? Not one person? Zero? You don't think that anyone walks 500 m to get to a subway station? The truth, of course, is that people walk that distance to the subway all the time.

As I said when I first mentioned it, College was a maybe in terms of being served by a Queen line, as in being in the fringe of the area that a Queen subway might serve. Just as it's in the fringe of the area that the Bloor line serves - there aren't huge numbers walking to Bloor from College, but some do. And lots of people take streetcars and buses from College to Bloor and then transfer onto a Line 2 train. The Queen subway would be exactly the same.

No one sane would do that if they're going short distances in the range of 2-4km because it wastes time and takes longer. One of the fairy tales the planners talk about is serving Regent Park with this. Any one living at Dundas and Sumach would be 650m or more away from the closest station. These people are going to take Dundas transit which stops right at their own door and won't eat up all of their time in extra transfers and/or long walks at both ends of their trip and this especially true for core bounders.

The only reason they don't compete for the same customers is because GO and the TTC work in silos, pretending the other doesn't exist. Once fares are integrated and RER is up and running, they will serve the same market in many areas. If you're going from Gerrard station to Liberty Village you'd probably be likely to take an RER train because it will get you there faster than a subway+streetcar trip.

In cities that plan transit properly there's no "two silo" effect. Local trains and regional trains are all coordinated and passengers don't care which is which, they just take the one that gets them where they're going. That's the way we're headed in Toronto.

Interesting example that probably applies to nearly no one. Moot anyway because ScamTrack is TTC fares. But let's say it isn't... even with fares integrated, explain how having a station straddling the Don and at Union serves the same market as the destinations on King. That Unilever station is 1.5km/20 min walk away from offices along narrow sidewalks with dying street trees. Sidewalk congestion is bad isn't it? That's why subway should go on Queen right? Integrated fares and King subway would actually create more synergies and open up more major destinations to the GO system and serve all of those commuters filling the office buildings. For the few destinations that exist on Queen, the minority can walk. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
 
According to Google Maps, my daily walk to the subway for my commute is 650 m.
That's no particularly far - looking at my old (12-minute) commute, it's about 1.1 km to the subway. I always figure I live conveniently near a subway station. Sure, I'll catch a bus if I see one or if it's torrenting - but the short walk was good exercise for me (which is why I started doing it, instead of sitting in my car).
 
The only reason they don't compete for the same customers is because GO and the TTC work in silos, pretending the other doesn't exist. Once fares are integrated and RER is up and running, they will serve the same market in many areas. If you're going from Gerrard station to Liberty Village you'd probably be likely to take an RER train because it will get you there faster than a subway+streetcar trip.

In cities that plan transit properly there's no "two silo" effect. Local trains and regional trains are all coordinated and passengers don't care which is which, they just take the one that gets them where they're going. That's the way we're headed in Toronto.

Judging by the current two system, it is not unreasonable for them to pretend the other doesn't exist. They don't overlap much in terms of service. For example, I live downtown, and I have not take the GO even once. I mean, for what purpose? It doesn't really stop anywhere that is worth going unless someone lives here (maybe with 1 or 2 exceptions). The problem with GO is it has too few stops in central Toronto. My friend moved to Mississauga two years ago and one of the greatest thing according to him is that he never has to take the hated TTC any more. The two system in reality don't have much overlapping.

It is vastly different from RER Paris, where you hardly notice you are not on the subway, because it is a criss-cross system and RER does stop at many locations in central Paris, not just a few farflung stops which scream "suburbs".

Will TTC/Go function like the metro/RER in Paris in the future? Not a chance. Besides Union, will there be any GO station in the downtown/midtown Toronto? (Exhibition is not in downtown so that's out, nor is Liberty village). I see probably two. And other than Union, I don't see any interchange with any of the central TTC stations.

No one sane would do that if they're going short distances in the range of 2-4km because it wastes time and takes longer. One of the fairy tales the planners talk about is serving Regent Park with this. Any one living at Dundas and Sumach would be 650m or more away from the closest station. These people are going to take Dundas transit which stops right at their own door and won't eat up all of their time in extra transfers and/or long walks at both ends of their trip and this especially true for core bounders.

That's because DRL is too short. Of course one would definitely jump on a 505 and transfer at Yonge/Dundas to go to wherever their destination is.

DRL should at least go to Eglinton to join the Crosswtown. Now I don't know what it will do. Probably almost empty outside a few hush hours. yet we have the money to extend to Vaughan and Richmond Hill. Jesus.
 
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I agree with your other points, but I don't think this last part is that cut-and-dry. I was under the impression that it's a unanimous agreement on these boards that RER will be a premium service, which naturally will cost the transit-using public more than generic public transit.

Not that I don't support premium service, nor believe it to be an integral component to compete with slower medium or longer-haul alternatives. But won't these trains be carpeted, bilevel, and have washrooms? Having a bathroom on board doesn't sound like a service on par with typical public transit (i.e bus, subway, lrt, streetcar). This is why I think it's unfair at this point for "SmartTrack" to be presented as if it were a subway - i.e flat low fare and high frequencies. This will (and is) screwing with projections for projects that share its catchment (particularly SSE, SRT, and DRL).

If RER does somehow end up costing the exact same per km as typical public transit (something I find doubtful), I'd imagine the core sections would become overcrowded; but the outer sections would see a steep drop in projected ridership. Reasons may be that wealthier non-Torontonian riders would prefer the comfort of less crowded higher tier services (or their car).
I don't think that more people will switch to driving, because that would mean sitting in the same traffic jams that they take the train to avoid. Do we know for sure that RER trains will cost more than a subway train of the same distance? I haven't followed the fare integration thread very closely. As for how nice the trains are, I've only been on a couple RER-style systems and the trains were just as nice as a GO train, but that doesn't stop them from acting as de facto subways in certain areas. True, if fares between the subways and regional lines are equal across equal distances it will mean more people taking GO - which is what I've been saying. Meeting that demand is the whole point of the RER upgrades.

As far as I know we don't know how all this will end up. Like whether Smarttrack will be a separate service or rolled into RER, if the TTC will adopt a distance based fare model, etc. But whatever the final fare structure, I can't see any system that doesn't raise demand for RER trains significantly, sometimes at the expense of subway ridership. And that's not a bad thing; the subway lines need all the relief they can get.

No one sane would do that if they're going short distances in the range of 2-4km because it wastes time and takes longer. One of the fairy tales the planners talk about is serving Regent Park with this. Any one living at Dundas and Sumach would be 650m or more away from the closest station. These people are going to take Dundas transit which stops right at their own door and won't eat up all of their time in extra transfers and/or long walks at both ends of their trip and this especially true for core bounders.
Well have a look at the recent posts by Tulse and nfitz, who have had daily walks of 650 m and 1.1 km to get to the subway. Those kinds of walks aren't as rare as you think. And the 2-4 km thing is a bit of a red herring - the relief line will be longer than that, significantly so when it's fully built out. There's no reason to think that people will walk shorter distances to the RL than to any other subway line.

Interesting example that probably applies to nearly no one. Moot anyway because ScamTrack is TTC fares. But let's say it isn't... even with fares integrated, explain how having a station straddling the Don and at Union serves the same market as the destinations on King. That Unilever station is 1.5km/20 min walk away from offices along narrow sidewalks with dying street trees. Sidewalk congestion is bad isn't it? That's why subway should go on Queen right? Integrated fares and King subway would actually create more synergies and open up more major destinations to the GO system and serve all of those commuters filling the office buildings. For the few destinations that exist on Queen, the minority can walk. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Of course few if any would use Unilever station to get to offices on King Street on the other side of the Don; that's not what I was getting at. People would, however, use it to transfer to the subway and get to their offices to the west. It would also serve the redevelopment on the Unilever lands, Queen Street East and surrounding residential neighbourhoods. And people who live and work in that area would no doubt often take RER from there to get across downtown or to Union.

Yes, your Spock reference is true. That's why, to use the Unilever/Riverdale example, RER will get people to Union, Southcore, the central waterfront, and the southern part of the financial district while a Queen subway will get people to the northern part of the financial district, Eaton Centre, City Hall, University Avenue corridor, etc. That combination covers a wider area and hits more destinations than a King alignment/RER combination.

Judging by the current two system, it is not unreasonable for them to pretend the other doesn't exist. They don't overlap much in terms of service. For example, I live downtown, and I have not take the GO even once. I mean, for what purpose? It doesn't really stop anywhere that is worth going unless someone lives here (maybe with 1 or 2 exceptions). The problem with GO is it has too few stops in central Toronto. My friend moved to Mississauga two years ago and one of the greatest thing according to him is that he never has to take the hated TTC any more. The two system in reality don't have much overlapping.

It is vastly different from RER Paris, where you hardly notice you are not on the subway, because it is a criss-cross system and RER does stop at many locations in central Paris, not just a few farflung stops which scream "suburbs".

Will TTC/Go function like the metro/RER in Paris in the future? Not a chance. Besides Union, will there be any GO station in the downtown/midtown Toronto? (Exhibition is not in downtown so that's out, nor is Liberty village). I see probably two. And other than Union, I don't see any interchange with any of the central TTC stations.



That's because DRL is too short. Of course one would definitely jump on a 505 and transfer at Yonge/Dundas to go to wherever their destination is.

DRL should at least go to Eglinton to join the Crosswtown. Now I don't know what it will do. Probably almost empty outside a few hush hours. yet we have the money to extend to Vaughan and Richmond Hill. Jesus.
Can't say I disagree about the RL being a higher priority than Vaughan and Richmond Hill. I never could quite figure out why downtown businesses haven't lobbied for it more. As for RER/GO, people who live downtown don't take it because it's currently not designed to meet their needs. But that's changing. More stations are being added, service is being electrified and upgraded, and fares will (hopefully) be integrated with local transit. The current plan for the first phase of the RL and Smarttrack has two stations where they would connect with each other, Gerrard and Unilever. And another station where the rail corridor meets an LRT-ized King streetcar. There's talk about the RL meeting up with GO somewhere in the west end, but that's preliminary still. That's at least another four stations in the central part of the city, which would make the system much more interconnected than it is now. Plus upgrading Dundas West to a true intermodal hub, which it really isn't now. My points aren't so much about where we are, but where we're going.
 
I live exactly halfway between Old Mill station and the Humber Loop in terms of walking distance: 1.7 km. That's the equivalent of walking south from Bloor to College or north from Queen to College while adding in a few east-west blocks as well.

I don't see too many other people doing the walk from around my place to the Humber Loop (a lot of that parallels the 66A, so there's sometimes a chance of catching that bus to the Queen streetcar), but there are quite a number who walk through the Humber Valley parks up to Old Mill on a regular basis. It helps that it's beautiful of course. When the weather is poor, most everyone changes their walk to head to the nearest 66 bus stop instead. That stop is often closer to where they live than Old Mill is, but because some people would rather get the exercise in, they choose to walk.

There have got to be lots of other similar examples in the city, with more of them piling up the less extreme the instance gets. No, not everyone can walk long distances, (although a lot who haven't bothered to try would be pleasantly surprised if they did give longer walks a try), but we are talking about shorter distances than that for the Relief Line Queen alignment stations. The King & Sumach station will be fine for Regent Park dwellers for whom the Relief Line's destinations make sense. The longer the line gets, of course, the more useful it gets and the more it will draw traffic off the Dundas streetcar or Parliament or Sherbourne buses. People won't necessarily hop on the TTC at the nearest surface route stop if walking a little further to a subway station will get them on to a fast, frequent train, as long as that train is heading somewhere helpful to them.

I think the difference between King and Queen (or Richmond, Adelaide, Front/Wellington)—all closely place streets—is pretty negligible in comparison to the benefit many will derive from being within a reasonable waling distance to rapid transit, and that reasonable distance is further than those streets are apart.

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There could also be an additional shuttle subway service from Gerrard Square to St. Patrick. Would also scoop up GO riders as well.
 
I don't think that more people will switch to driving, because that would mean sitting in the same traffic jams that they take the train to avoid. Do we know for sure that RER trains will cost more than a subway train of the same distance? I haven't followed the fare integration thread very closely. As for how nice the trains are, I've only been on a couple RER-style systems and the trains were just as nice as a GO train, but that doesn't stop them from acting as de facto subways in certain areas. True, if fares between the subways and regional lines are equal across equal distances it will mean more people taking GO - which is what I've been saying. Meeting that demand is the whole point of the RER upgrades.

As far as I know we don't know how all this will end up. Like whether Smarttrack will be a separate service or rolled into RER, if the TTC will adopt a distance based fare model, etc. But whatever the final fare structure, I can't see any system that doesn't raise demand for RER trains significantly, sometimes at the expense of subway ridership. And that's not a bad thing; the subway lines need all the relief they can get.

I think few know anything about how fare integration will work, and that includes the gambit of us UTers, unbiased experts like Steve Munro, TTC, and Metrolinx. Naturally the loudest people in the thread you mention claim it's as simple as flicking a switch: all we need to do is tap-on/tap-off and it's fait accompli (and if you don't agree you live in 1980 or something). Apparently. But these people bring little to the table in terms of facts or evidence, and seemingly skew the argument to make Toronto out to be the baddie. Seldom will we hear about the Prov/Mlinx not willing to answer questions on the matter, that they don't have an answer, or that they're possibly withholding decisions so as to improve chances of reelection.

I don't have any concrete evidence that RER will cost more per km than subway, or that it will require a premium. It just seems like a logical deduction - i.e faster service on more comfortable trains with amenities vs slower and more crowded public transit. And yesterday at the DRL meeting I was told by a rep that "SmartTrack" is RER - just with the addition of some stations (no info given on pricing though). I was also told that the City/TTC is a bit in the dark about the Prov giving $150M to Metrolinx for DRL studies. Seems a bit odd. But at previous meetings I was also told that Metrolinx seldom meets with the City/TTC, and when they do it's very brief. So perhaps a lack of communication and transparency goes beyond mere "fare integration", but integration itself.

If GO does end up costing the same per km as subway, and the two services are deemed 1:1, then that might sully the business case for certain projects with political merit like SSE or YNSE. For the latter's business case and modeling it was explicitly stated that there would be no GO-TTC fare integration, nor any fare-by-distance. Even in 2031. But since 80% of that extension's projected peak ridership is long-haul and headed downtown, obviously a faster parallel service like GO would slash that number to shreds if it had the same fare as the subway. Just as it did when recently used against SSE's modeling. This may be another reason why we won't get answers for many years.

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On the issue of the DRL and Carlaw/Pape matter as discussed at yesterday's meeting, does anyone know if we ended up getting an answer? I though I heard the female speaker say that they are now considering using a portion of Carlaw. But I thought I also heard that it will require a vote at council in order for that to proceed. The Q&A started getting a bit raucous and lengthy so I left.
 
That's because DRL is too short. Of course one would definitely jump on a 505 and transfer at Yonge/Dundas to go to wherever their destination is.

DRL should at least go to Eglinton to join the Crosswtown. Now I don't know what it will do. Probably almost empty outside a few hush hours. yet we have the money to extend to Vaughan and Richmond Hill. Jesus.

The short line King section will have double the daily ridership as Queen section because there are twice as many destinations on south.

It would be such a Toronto thing to be faced with a choice of building a rapid transit line under multiple heritage conservation districts lined with low-rise buildings and stable unchangeable neighbourhoods on one side or a dense urban street with high rise offices and condos, major schools, and major tourist attractions that will attract double the ridership and still willingly choose the first option.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Except in Tory's Toronto.
 
The short line King section will have double the daily ridership as Queen section because there are twice as many destinations on south.

It would be such a Toronto thing to be faced with a choice of building a rapid transit line under multiple heritage conservation districts lined with low-rise buildings and stable unchangeable neighbourhoods on one side or a dense urban street with high rise offices and condos, major schools, and major tourist attractions that will attract double the ridership and still willingly choose the first option.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Except in Tory's Toronto.

The King route will not serve all of those destinations very well, because the DRL stops spacing will be too wide to address the local demand. The local demand will have to be served by surface transit with frequent stops. Of course, same goes for the Queen route.

I slightly prefer King (or even Wellington if it was not excluded from the short list), because then the Union hub would be within a walking distance from the closest DRL station.

However, it is much more important that DRL is built at all. Either route will do.
 
Similar to Crosstown - four TBM's, two starting at the west end of Phase I, two starting a year later at Eglinton. Meet at Pape.

That way you have some insurance that the Pape-Eglinton leg doesn't get deferred. It's a bit of a game of chicken..... force enough investment in the Eglinton leg so that politicians can't back out midway before the full capability is realised #SheppardSubway #HarrisonEglinton #McGintyonEglinton

- Paul
 
Similar to Crosstown - four TBM's, two starting at the west end of Phase I, two starting a year later at Eglinton. Meet at Pape.

That way you have some insurance that the Pape-Eglinton leg doesn't get deferred. It's a bit of a game of chicken..... force enough investment in the Eglinton leg so that politicians can't back out midway before the full capability is realised #SheppardSubway #HarrisonEglinton #McGintyonEglinton

- Paul

Two. Starting at the same time under Don Mills station.
 
I took the future ttc map image and overlayed it with a red line/etc in Adobe Illustrator. I'm currently working on another version to show crosstown extensions and the Yonge extension.

Don't forget Finch West is fully funded and under construction. That could show too.
 
The short line King section will have double the daily ridership as Queen section because there are twice as many destinations on south.

It would be such a Toronto thing to be faced with a choice of building a rapid transit line under multiple heritage conservation districts lined with low-rise buildings and stable unchangeable neighbourhoods on one side or a dense urban street with high rise offices and condos, major schools, and major tourist attractions that will attract double the ridership and still willingly choose the first option.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Except in Tory's Toronto.

And you will pay the cost difference due to the technical complications?
Queen is 350 meters from King. Get over it and stop sulking. There's is benefits associated with a Queen alignment also.
 

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