fiendishlibrarian
Active Member
Kind of a false question. The original Queen subway *was* a streetcar. It was actually going to act as a feeder line for other streetcar lines radiating from it, working in conjunction with the Yonge subway.
I was around in the late 60s/early 70s and the Queen subway (what you young whipper-snappers call the "DRL"), was on its way to becoming a reality. Its construction was considered absolutely necessary because the plan, at that time, was to abandon all streetcar service in Toronto ... FULL STOP.
The Queen subway had to be built because the combined ridership on King and Queen in those days could not be accommodated with buses. Queen would be the last car line to go, and the abandonment of that route would coincide with the opening of a new QUEEN subway by around 1980. The cost of the line was about $400M in 1970 dollars.
What happened? ... "Streetcars for Toronto". When they convinced the TTC to hold on to streetcars, the absolute need for a Queen subway vanished.
Don't believe the BS that Steve Munro sprouts about the shift in power in the Metropolitan level of gov't from downtown to the burbs, and how that pushed Spadina first and killed Queen. I was there, I remember, and I know better.
Spadina was always first. The plan for Spadina goes back to 1958. In fact, when the wye at St. George was designed in '58, it was built so that Spadina could feed in seamlessly.
Was keeping streetcars worth losing the Queen subway? You decide.
I thought Sheppard was under budget.
Miller and Giambrone have successfully labelled subway as "off limits" to Toronto based off it's greatly exaggerated cost, and I think somebody needs to be there to remind Toronto just how good subway can be.
Shouldn't take much more than a trip to the nearest subway city. New York is only a 90 minute flight away.
Kind of a false question. The original Queen subway *was* a streetcar. It was actually going to act as a feeder line for other streetcar lines radiating from it, working in conjunction with the Yonge subway.
Do I have to remind people again to discontinue the ignorant, anti-Munro remarks here? Munro strongly supports a DRL. His blog is much more than supporting LRT, and he's been critical as well of parts of Transit City, a plan that I don't have a lot of faith in. Giambrone is fairer game, but keep the criticisms relevant and substantiated.
Please, keep things on topic and lay off the ignorant attacks. Read the blog properly. You'd be amazed as to some of the things you'd read.
Now you're contradicting yourself. Why is Giambrone *fairer* game? ... because you don't like him but you like Steve Munro?
Anyone who is as vocal and influential as Steve Munro is fair game, whether you agree with him or not.
Two things happened in the early 70s that forever changed our transportation system -- Jane Jacobs, and Streetcars For Toronto. The death of Spadina killed all expressway expansion in Toronto, and Streetcars For Toronto indirectly killed the Queen/downtown subway.
Umm ... there's no bedrock anywhere near the tunnel. Virtually the only way you can have an underground river, is to have some kind of Karstic bedrock that has been slowly dissolved to form a cavern system. I'm not saying there wasn't issues with groundwater ... but it certainly wan't an unmapped underground river!!The flood from the disturbed (and unmapped) underground river put it slightly (under $3M from what I can remember) over budget. I think the accounting adjustment was made after Sheppard opened, so perhaps the 2003/2004 budget?
Umm ... there's no bedrock anywhere near the tunnel. Virtually the only way you can have an underground river, is to have some kind of Karstic bedrock that has been slowly dissolved to form a cavern system. I'm not saying there wasn't issues with groundwater ... but it certainly wan't an unmapped underground river!!