Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

As I stated a trial on the current UPX line would happen way before the games. As far as relieving the Yonge/Bloor exchange and traffic south of Yonge, I completely agree no one in their right mind would wait for a GO train as opposed to take the BD subway. I was talking more about getting more people thru complete fare integration to take GO BEFORE Kennedy. Fewer people getting on at Kennedy would mean fewer people on BD before it hits roughly Pape where all the people from Don Mills get on the train.

I just don't see the issue with a trial period to see what happens. If it is a failure then no harm done and if GO sees a large increase in ridership and a slight decline in BD traffic coming in from Kennedy and more people getting on at stations like Weston or Etib North then that tells the city that GO has huge potential for Torontonians themselves. A trial like this would not mean that the DRL shouldn't be built. The worse thing that could happen is that Torontonians in the suburbs could actually get a faster trip downtown at less than half the price of the current GO/TTC.

If they see a ridership increase that doesn't mean DRL isn't needed but would push a movement for complete fare compatibility or something like a Enhanced Metropass. Where, for example, every GO trip in the city itself costs 50 cents extra ontop of standard TTC fare or a a $10 extra Enhanced Metropass per month.

Toronto has great rail infrastructure if only Metrolinx would let them use it.
 
On the news the Liberty Village people interviewed were irritated that they have to take that crappy packed streetcar whilst there's this UPX in their backyard passing them by.
 
Hipster Duck said:
While I think that a HRT subway, and not an underground LRT or some GO-substitution is warranted for the DRL, I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. We should build it as a subway, but there's no reason that a 'budget' subway - whatever that might entail - shouldn't be considered. I also would hesitate to extend the DRL north of Eglinton and Don Mills, and I think a real BRT, as opposed to a B-line (aka: Express, all-door boarding with artics) service would probably suffice north of there for the forseeable future.
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Yea, there's no way demand along Don Mills would support a DRL within the next half century. I believe using the CPR tracks for a North-Easterly route would be fairly affordable though, and could provide good connecting stations at Lawrence & Victoria Park (24, 54, 67), Warden & Ellesmere (95, 68) and around Agincourt GO (85, 43). From there you could have a small spur to STC, a branch to Malvern and a branch up along the Stouffville corridor to at least Steeles.

That would need no extended tunnelling and ought to be comparable in cost per km to LRT.


Hipster Duck said:
Would there be cost savings associated with building a stacked tunnel as cut and cover, as opposed to tunnel boring? That was the approach Vancouver tried with the Canada line along Cambie between Broadway and King Edward (which is very urban). This might be feasible on urban streets within the old city of Toronto, where you would only have to carve up half of the road. Having narrower trains allows an even skinnier stacked tunnel or the aforementioned single bore TBM, if needed.
- I think that most stations could be a rudimentary design with only one entrance and exit - sort of like Chester. At least in the residential neighbourhoods of the old city of Toronto, the stations won't have to funnel in a dozen surface bus routes so there's no need to build an expansive terminal. This would cut costs dramatically.
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It depends on the route. If there are tons of utilities that would have to be relocated, it may not be much cheaper. In general though, yeah, there's no reason why we shouldn't consider stacked tunnelling.

I'm not sure a single entrance would be allowed... If the DRL was built as a Canada Line scale thing then probably, but if we're talking about ~>150m platforms then I think two exits is pretty much required.

As far as I'm concerned stations should have direct platform access to street level. In Barcelona they've cut costs by essentially scratching out stations then just sinking escalator shafts directly to platform level, thereby avoiding having to build giant cut-cover station boxes. I'm not sure if it would be geologically possible to scratch out an island platform between two tunnel bores, but it could be an option

Hipster Duck said:
That said, at least three stations would have to be complex: Don Mills-Eglinton (transfer to Crosstown), Pape (transfer to BD) and "Union Station-Financial District". The latter station would be built almost to Hong Kong MRT standards, with multiple entrances and exits to the PATH system and a gigantic mezzanine. It would have to be deep, and the fare-paid connection to Union wouldn't be cheap. I would expect this station to cost $1B alone.
- If there is to be a connection to the Y-U-S, it should be at Union and only Union. Having two connections at St. Andrew and King (or Queen and Osgoode) is redundant and doesn't tie into the regional network.
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Yes, the Y-U-S connection would be difficult. I wonder if it would be simpler to abandon the idea of a fare-paid connection and just have DRL interface with the YUS through the PATH Network. Given the scale of capital costs involved, and the likelihood that Presto/POP will precede the DRL, the resulting fare evasion losses would probably be way less than the potential construction costs.

Certainly if we ever went with a rail corridor DRL alignment I'd say just convert platforms 1-5 to dedicated DRL platform area and just use the existing Union concourse to interface with the Union TTC station. That should save a ton of money.

Another alternative would be to build a mega station under Nathan Phillip's front lawn/parking garage and have tunnels linking to Osgoode and Queen. This ought to be cheaper than building a mega station underneath Union without shutting down the financial district.
 
M II A II R II K said:
On the news the Liberty Village people interviewed were irritated that they have to take that crappy packed streetcar whilst there's this UPX in their backyard passing them by.
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Liberty Village can't be bothered to to walk to the Exhibition stop and pay one of the lowest GO fares as it is.
 
diminutive said:
Yea, there's no way demand along Don Mills would support a DRL within the next half century. I believe using the CPR tracks for a North-Easterly route would be fairly affordable though, and could provide good connecting stations at Lawrence & Victoria Park (24, 54, 67), Warden & Ellesmere (95, 68) and around Agincourt GO (85, 43). From there you could have a small spur to STC, a branch to Malvern and a branch up along the Stouffville corridor to at least Steeles.

That would need no extended tunnelling and ought to be comparable in cost per km to LRT.
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That's not a bad idea. There's certainly some redevelopment potential at Lawrence and VP as well as near Agincourt, but I think that this alignment would still be among the least used of all the rapid transit lines in the city. It would, however, be cheap to construct.

It depends on the route. If there are tons of utilities that would have to be relocated, it may not be much cheaper. In general though, yeah, there's no reason why we shouldn't consider stacked tunnelling.
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I thought a little bit about the construction methods, and I think that the downtown section between the east bank of the Don River and Spadina should be tunnel bored, while the eastern and, eventually, western legs could be cut and cover. I was thinking that maybe the launch shaft could be on Pape, between Gerrard and Langley (the railway would have to be suspended, sort of like Downsview Park station), and that this would be the "Gerrard Square" station with a future GO interchange. Meanwhile the western extraction site for the TBM would be at Clarence Square, with the entire block of Wellington between Blue Jays way and Spadina (and half of Clarence Square) cut up and closed for the better half of a decade. It's cumbersome and would piss a lot of people off, but I couldn't think of better launch sites that are properly aligned and realistically approximate the curvature of a subway ROW. It's also far less obstructive than cut and cover in the downtown core. On the eastern leg, the route would be primarily a cut and cover stacked tunnel along Pape (Pape being reduced to 2 lanes, no parking and only one sidewalk for the duration of construction).

At the Milwood bridge, I would widen the piers and then gradually replace the current truss with a subway deck. I would then build a transition structure to swing the ROW above ground and onto an elevated alignment along Overlea, making an elevated stop at Thorncliffe Park, continuing on its viaduct across the Don River (although at more of a NW alignment than Overlea Blvd. itself) and making two more elevated stops: one at Gateway Blvd (northern end) and another, just north of Eglinton, at the Superstore site, would be the last station and transfer to the Crosstown LRT.


Yes, the Y-U-S connection would be difficult. I wonder if it would be simpler to abandon the idea of a fare-paid connection and just have DRL interface with the YUS through the PATH Network. Given the scale of capital costs involved, and the likelihood that Presto/POP will precede the DRL, the resulting fare evasion losses would probably be way less than the potential construction costs.
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That's brilliant. I never even thought about that.
 
diminutive said:
Yea, there's no way demand along Don Mills would support a DRL within the next half century.
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I would agree with this. I take it that the numbers of people joining the Yonge line via Finch East and Steeles East buses, as well as via the Sheppard subway, are negligible.:D
 
BurlOak:

That's not demand originating along Don Mills - that's demand that happen to pass through Don Mills on the way to something else - and that demand could easily have been intercepted elsewhere.

Now that said, there are merits and drawbacks to extending the mode as is along that corridor. One'd wish for branching north of Eglinton.

AoD
 
Brad Ross said in a presentation that this is one of the top priorities, and I asked about routing, but that's still to be determined.

And platform doors of course is a pipe dream, at least for the existing lines.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I think I'm misunderstanding. Where else would it have been intercepted? The only two options are Spadina and Yonge.
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Anyone coming in from the east who lives north of Eglinton would travel to Yonge. Anyone coming in from the east who lives on Eglinton and all points south would transfer to the DRL. This makes sense since the Yonge line only becomes really crowded at peak times south of Eglinton.

Also note that the Spadina extension will eliminate a lot of Yonge line crowding from passengers originating in the northwest (eg. Finch west, Steeles west, etc.).
 
Hipster Duck said:
Anyone coming in from the east who lives north of Eglinton would travel to Yonge. Anyone coming in from the east who lives on Eglinton and all points south would transfer to the DRL. This makes sense since the Yonge line only becomes really crowded at peak times south of Eglinton.

Also note that the Spadina extension will eliminate a lot of Yonge line crowding from passengers originating in the northwest (eg. Finch west, Steeles west, etc.).
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I thought we were talking about the Don Mills Subway. In that case I'd expect anyone coming from east of Don Mills and even many west to take Don Mills rather than Yonge.
 
Not specified, they haven't done an EA yet, they just made it a priority for the next expansion and to also offset the extra crowding on the BD when it gets extended.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I thought we were talking about the Don Mills Subway. In that case I'd expect anyone coming from east of Don Mills and even many west to take Don Mills rather than Yonge.
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My scenario is based on the idea that the DRL only gets built as far north as Don Mills and Eglinton and that there's no rapid transit of any kind north along Don Mills from that point.
 
Hipster Duck said:
My scenario is based on the idea that the DRL only gets built as far north as Don Mills and Eglinton and that there's no rapid transit of any kind north along Don Mills from that point.
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There is a lot of parking in the DM-Eg area. A combination of DM subway and Eg LRT could allow some of this to be built on. Were the configuration of DM-EG to allow a reasonable connection to a GO station on the CP line 500m north of there in the 2025-2030 timeframe then maybe there are enough buses coming down Don Mills to that area to justify extension to Lawrence or further.
 
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