I mean honestly, this isn't surprising with either Toronto's geography or a budget.
My take is that at the end of the day, the next thing that approaches a downtown connection really is the GO Midtown. Beyond that, what further downtown transit could even be anticipated?
Realistically the possibilities would seem to be:
- some kind of enhanced surface service on Bay
- surface imrpovements on the streetcar lines
- a GO tunnel
- A second relief line would seem vaguely possible in the long term, being something of a mirror of the OL, entering from a northerly direction and dipping south, but the details are really very vague
- I wonder if this might actually be most appropriately done with creation of an underground streetcar corridor - a King tunnel inspired by the 1945 Queen plan would actually seem a very nice supplement to the OL
- Edit: some kind of surface lanes for accessing the Union Station Bus Terminal would seem possibly reasonable, but we probably are headed in the direction of limiting the number of busses going all the way there.
as far as what I could see as an enhanced streetcar network that actually fits with the OL, contemplate something like the below,with today's routes using it, and purely surface routes operating on the core segments only:
View attachment 427900