Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

ssiguy2 said:
One thing I think is imperative is too build the stations atleast 200 meters in length and make sure that all trains have leather bucket seats and at least one of the movie channels on big screen TVs so as to enhance everyone's travel experience.

A bit over the top? perhaps, but then the chances of Toronto getting any DRL built by 2050 are between zero and nil so if you are going to dream then you might as well dream big.
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I think your past few postings are borderline trolling.

AoD
 
ssiguy2 said:
One thing I think is imperative is too build the stations atleast 200 meters in length and make sure that all trains have leather bucket seats and at least one of the movie channels on big screen TVs so as to enhance everyone's travel experience.

A bit over the top? perhaps, but then the chances of Toronto getting any DRL built by 2050 are between zero and nil so if you are going to dream then you might as well dream big.
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Right-on.

The chances are much better to get approval and buy-in for a $200M /km transit line with a capacity of 20k to 25k (as Vancouver did) - than to get an HRT with super deep and long 4 track stations and fully underground under the Don River (twice) for $500M /km. If the 20k is not enough capacity, then build a Parliament, Queen Bathurst line as well when it is needed.

The best chance any DRL has of being built is to reduce the cost (per km) as much as possible and extend it as far north as possible. Spadina to Seneca seems about right to me - in one big contract (a bit longer than the Canada Line) with opening to Pape within 5 years, Eglinton within 8 years and Seneca within 10 years.
 
BurlOak:

Except that by default building a line in downtown with significant number of interchange stations will incur set costs that wouldn't change significantly regardless. It makes no sense to choose the cheapest option for infrastructure that will be most heavily used (and will be in areas that will see significant growth) and the most expensive option for where it won't be, but that's exactly what we're doing here with the subways for the burbs, Canada-esque line for downtown. By the time you're done, you'd be building relief line for the relief line.

As to the bit about the "best chance", well, let's put it this way, DRL isn't a "choice"

AoD
 
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BurlOak said:
Right-on.

The chances are much better to get approval and buy-in for a $200M /km transit line with a capacity of 20k to 25k (as Vancouver did) - than to get an HRT with super deep and long 4 track stations and fully underground under the Don River (twice) for $500M /km. If the 20k is not enough capacity, then build a Parliament, Queen Bathurst line as well when it is needed.

The best chance any DRL has of being built is to reduce the cost (per km) as much as possible and extend it as far north as possible. Spadina to Seneca seems about right to me - in one big contract (a bit longer than the Canada Line) with opening to Pape within 5 years, Eglinton within 8 years and Seneca within 10 years.
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I still have some hope. We're a year away from having a new mayor and I have a feeling that the campaign will come down to who can have the biggest and most visionary transit plan for the city. Mrs. Stintz, who is a frontrunner in the race, will likely be bringing a slightly modified version of her almost universally supported OneCity plan to the table. I expect Chow (she's expected to win the race) to follow up with her own transit mega plan. Both will probably be campaigning on Toronto dedicated funding tools. Stintz will probably be in the ballpark of $30B.

On a slightly unrelated note, the $28.8 Billion OneCity plan will now only cost Toronto $23.4 Billion since Metrolinx has committed $7 Billion to the DRL. This leaves a surplus of $5 Billion that is more than enough to pay for the "full" (Steeles @ Don Mills - Dundas West @ Bloor) DRL. It would be politically savvy for Stintz to remove the Don Mills LRT from the plan and replace it with the subway. Also, it means that if a Con government were to be elected their hands would be tied with the DRL. Cancelling the Downtown portion also means scrapping the suburban Don Mills portion as well.
 
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To save on costs for a Relief Line, the less stations the better. Stations are one of the biggest costs of any rapid transit line, light rail or heavy rail. That is why I would keep the Relief Line as an express line only, wherever it has to go underground. Wherever it goes above ground, it could become local, depending upon if it is light or heavy rail.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
BurlOak:

Except that by default building a line in downtown with significant number of interchange stations will incur set costs that wouldn't change significantly regardless. It makes no sense to choose the cheapest option for infrastructure that will be most heavily used (and will be in areas that will see significant growth) and the most expensive option for where it won't be, but that's exactly what we're doing here with the subways for the burbs, Canada-esque line for downtown. By the time you're done, you'd be building relief line for the relief line.
AoD
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It's hard to be specific without concrete numbers but as a general rule we should always try to minimize costs as much as possible without compromising the central goal of the project.

Just because the DRL is seen to be very important doesn't mean it's a good idea to spend ~400m/km if we could get away with ~300m/km.

There's obviously a sentiment out there which thinks 'if we're spending 400m/km to build subways into nowheresville/York Region, the far busier downtown ought to deserve as much.' It's understandable but not necessarily very constructive.

I'd also add that, quite directly, opting for more expensive construction methods will directly reduce potential ridership since what you can afford will be proportionately shorter. Longer routs obviously attract more riders. If the DRL never goes past the Dundas West- Eglinton route, which is even itself unlikely, there's no way it'll ever significantly exceed Canada Line-esque capacities.

AlvinofDiaspar said:
As to the bit about the "best chance", well, let's put it this way, DRL isn't a "choice"
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Yes, it is a choice. I'm as in favour of a DRL as anyone else here, but it's flat out wrong to think that it's somehow 'neccesary' or that, someday, a political leader will come to his or her senses and see that the DRL is the keystone to Toronto transit. It's not.

I could list a half a dozen transit lines in half a dozen cities which have FAR more severe overcrowding than anything Yonge could ever have, and for far longer portions of the day. When I lived in London I'd routinely have to wait 4-5 trains to go from Mile End to St. Pauls. Even in Toronto we can all think of streets which are constantly overcapacity.

Yonge will not get to a point where politicians somehow have no choice but to build the DRL. Peak-hour congestion is just an inevitable fact of life. We should do what we can to ameliorate it but it's simply not cost efficient to build our entire transit system around AM peak. All that will do is make sure everything's under-utilized ~95% of the week!
 
I got thinking about moving my "plan" for the DRL to donlands station.. (which for some reason I had always dismissed out of hand previously), and decided to switch my preferred route to it.

This is my new plan;

coming from the west, it is 13 stops to reach St. Andrew currently, it will be 10 with the DRL.

coming from the east, it is 12 stops to reach King currently, it will be 7 with the DRL.

Coming from Eglinton, it will be 16 stops using the ECLRT, and 11 with the DRL

It runs along King, with a purposely close stopping distance (around 600m) to allow for the elimination of the King streetcar. The 504 would continue to exist as a shortened route along Roncasvalles, and the King street tracks would be maintained to allow for detours from Queen.

I plan for Underground Streetcar stops at "parkdale" and "carlaw" stops. 501 service would have to be rerouted to King street to the next street (where new temporary tracks would be installed) for a significant amount of time to allow for the construction of the ramp (as well as a small rerouting of the streetcar tracks to move around the construction site), and Carlaw would have to have a streetcar bypass route for the Queen streetcar as the street would be closed for a significant amount of time (around 1km of track)

Double stops through the CBD, with King station working as the main stop. (there would be an exit onto King + Bay) St. Andrew will be on the western side of University, so it will act as more of the "entertainment district" stop. (I think some neat architecture could be integrated with the PATH through Roy Thompson Hall, maybe make the concourse visible from outside)

Stop list goes like this;

Don Mills (Current Don Mills would be renamed "Fairview')[INTERCHANGE]
Flemingdon
Throncliffe Park
Cosburn
Donlands [INTERCHANGE]
Gerrard
Carlaw
Canary
Parliament
Jarvis
King [INTERCHANGE]
St. Andrew [INTERCHANGE]
Spadina South
Bathurst South
Strachan
Liberty Village
Dufferin South
Jameson
Parkdale
Howard Park
Dundas West [INTERCHANGE]

Map:
kXYeKb0.jpg
 
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I'm liking this Donlands Station interchange idea more and more. One thing that's occurred to me is that between O'Connor and Eglinton, the most optimal routing seems to be more or less under Don Mills Rd. The curve is gentle, and rather than traversing two valleys, it does one...with the benefit that the valley walls are less steep and the line can maintain a similar below-ground depth.

A drawback is that this routing will not serve the remote area of Thorncliffe Park. However, my opinion of the DRL is that it would've skipped either Thorncliffe or Flemingdon regardless, considering they are close together and the DRL is a semi-express line to begin with.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
I think your past few postings are borderline trolling.

AoD
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Is it, is it really?

Stintz has come out and said that a subway isn't a subway unless it's underground. There is talk of Metrolinx helping fund it except there is only one problem with that..............no one but the province is actually funding Metrolinx. The province is completely broke and has given Toronto gobs of money and it still can't even figure out what to do with it.

Now a DRL? This is fantasy land. The city & province do not nor will ever have enough money to build a DRL at Toronto prices. This DRL under the King St area is going to cost a fortune because of the route and the massive depth it would have to be built to due to PATH. Telling someone to go to hell and taking the DRL are going to be synonamous. The ONLY and I do mean ONLY option Toronto has is to run the GO system in the city as the same fare as the TTC, electrify the lines, and run them so frequently that anything coming from the east relieves traffic on the Yonge line.

The DRL may make for interesting conversation and pretty maps but will NEVER get built for one very simple reason.......money.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Is it, is it really?
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ssiguy2 said:
One thing I think is imperative is too build the stations atleast 200 meters in length and make sure that all trains have leather bucket seats and at least one of the movie channels on big screen TVs so as to enhance everyone's travel experience.

A bit over the top? perhaps, but then the chances of Toronto getting any DRL built by 2050 are between zero and nil so if you are going to dream then you might as well dream big.
Click to expand...

Trolling
- No trolling, which is to say that a post or an ongoing series of posts of an antagonistic and disruptive nature, including borderline pathological attention to certain threads, which add little new perspective or information, and those which will only serve to needlessly and baselessly provoke a particular member or a group of members, are prohibited. An occasional harsh but fair comment would not be considered trolling.
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seems like trolling to me.
 
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