What Megaproject(s) Would you like to see built next? (wackiness encouraged

This is your chance to get wacky, so propose whatever kind of infrastructure you think you can make a case for (please stay away from discussion of the central Gardiner, we have other threads for that)

I have a few favourites:

300km/h Windsor-Quebec City High Speed Rail with a high speed spur to Hamilton/Niagara/Empire Corridor

An immersed tube/submerged floating hybrid tunnel using electrified rail to connect Belfast, Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland to Great Britain and Europe across the North Channel. The submerged floating tunnel would bridge Beaufort's Dyke, which is a 500km long 300m deep underwater canyon in the straight separating Ireland from Scotland. A fixed link here (45km) would be roughly equivalent to the Channel Tunnel.

I'd also like to see a submerged floating tunnel connecting Spain to Morocco across the 900m deep, 14km wide strait of Gibraltar. For a length comparison, the confederation bridge is only 1km shorter.

Near-term projects/Local:
1. Crosstown LRT
2. Hurontario LRT
3. the ARL

Nuts mode/National:
1. Windsor-QC High Speed Rail with 4 alignments: (italics means optional station in this alignment)
a. local via Kitchener, Ottawa, and Trois-Rivieres:
Stopping at Windsor, Chatham-Kent, London, Woodstock, Kitchener, Mississauga, Toronto, Oshawa, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec City, Saguenay
b. express via Kitchener, Ottawa, and Trois-Rivieres:
Stopping at Windsor, London, Kitchener, Mississauga, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City
c. local via Hamilton, Cornwall, and Drummondville:
Stopping at Windsor, Chatham-Kent, London, Woodstock, Brantford, Hamilton, Mississauga, Toronto, Oshawa, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall, Montreal, Drummondville, Quebec City, Saguenay
d. express via Hamilton, Cornwall, and Drummondville:
Stopping at Windsor, London, Hamilton, Mississauga, Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, Quebec City

rationales for these additions:
Woodstock: where the two lines will split...
Mississauga: a direct line between Kitchener's train station and Union Station will hit the City Centre...
Brockville: where the two lines will split again...
Saguenay: pretty populated area which is close enough from Quebec City for a northerly extension of the line...

2. Alberta High Speed Rail with 2 alignments:
a. Local: Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton
b. Express: Calgary, Edmonton

3. Highway expansion throughout rural areas (such as Mackenzie Valley Highway completion from Wrigley to the Dempster, Manitoba-Nunavut highway, etc.)

Downtown GO Tunnel for massive capacity boost at Union Station.

A tunnel starting at Bathurst/Rail corridor, going under Wellington, with two major underground rail stations at John/Wellington and Front/Wellington then connecting back to the rail corridor around the Distillery District.

Filip said:

Downtown GO Tunnel for massive capacity boost at Union Station.

A tunnel starting at Bathurst/Rail corridor, going under Wellington, with two major underground rail stations at John/Wellington and Front/Wellington then connecting back to the rail corridor around the Distillery District.

Click to expand...

Double deck it and you've got your DRL.

dunkalunk said:

Double deck it and you've got your DRL.

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That was my part two!

Filip said:

Downtown GO Tunnel for massive capacity boost at Union Station.

A tunnel starting at Bathurst/Rail corridor, going under Wellington, with two major underground rail stations at John/Wellington and Front/Wellington then connecting back to the rail corridor around the Distillery District.

Click to expand...

My sources tell me GO is already considering this for far off in the future. Think of the Plaza del Sol train station in spain.

Burying both the Gardiner and the rail corridor in the same double-decker tunnel structure (rail on top, highway underneath). Frees up both the Gardiner lands and the rail corridor lands for redevelopment, and removes two major barriers between the City and the waterfront. In fact, I wonder how much both of those lands combined are worth...

gweed123 said:

Burying both the Gardiner and the rail corridor in the same double-decker tunnel structure (rail on top, highway underneath). Frees up both the Gardiner lands and the rail corridor lands for redevelopment, and removes two major barriers between the City and the waterfront. In fact, I wonder how much both of those lands combined are worth...

Click to expand...

That is a huge undertaking in cost and time. The land is valuable, but too much burden on taxpayers. Compare this to the Big Dig (from wiki):

The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it will not be paid off until 2038

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I would go out on a limp and say that plan will cost more than the Big Dig. Sorry to be gloomy on the wacky idea.

gweed123 said:

Burying both the Gardiner and the rail corridor in the same double-decker tunnel structure (rail on top, highway underneath). Frees up both the Gardiner lands and the rail corridor lands for redevelopment, and removes two major barriers between the City and the waterfront. In fact, I wonder how much both of those lands combined are worth...

Click to expand...

I'm sure the land is worth quite a bit, but nowhere near enough to mitigate any substantial portion of doing such a project. This would do wonders for the harbourfront though, if anything from the aspect of improving the road configuration on Lakeshore which is quite convoluted due to highway on and off-ramps. Can someone tell me if there is much soil remediation required for land that was once used as a highway? I suppose there is, but i'm not sure.

Tying into this, maybe a good compromise might be to deck over the railway between Union and Dufferin st. create a park or maybe put in condominums. This, considering that the railway is below grade in a trench in this section. I might even go so far as to say this would re-naturalize Fort York and integrate it better with the city fabric?

BMO said:

I'm sure the land is worth quite a bit, but nowhere near enough to mitigate any substantial portion of doing such a project. This would do wonders for the harbourfront though, if anything from the aspect of improving the road configuration on Lakeshore which is quite convoluted due to highway on and off-ramps. Can someone tell me if there is much soil remediation required for land that was once used as a highway? I suppose there is, but i'm not sure.

Click to expand...

Oh I understand that the sale of the land on its own wouldn't come close to financing the project, but there are very few infrastructure projects where even part of the cost of the project can be recovered by selling the land. It would probably be more expensive than the Big Dig, but I think it would completely transform the area between the City and the lake.

BMO said:

Tying into this, maybe a good compromise might be to deck over the railway between Union and Dufferin st. create a park or maybe put in condominums. This, considering that the railway is below grade in a trench in this section. I might even go so far as to say this would re-naturalize Fort York and integrate it better with the city fabric?

Click to expand...

Definitely an idea. We'll see how the Strachan grade-separation project goes.

Okay, there are a couple of road gaps I'd like to connect up. Lansdowne btw/St Clair and Wingold; and Duplex via Jedburgh all the way to Finch

Wacky:
- Conversion of all railways and trams to standard gauge.
- Bering straight railway tunnel.
- Railway from Mexico to Brazil complete with a long underground tunnel under Darien National Park in Panama.

I like the Bering Strait tunnel idea, but I would pair that with road/rail projects to connect the Bering Strait tunnel with road/rail networks in both the US and Russia. Without that, a tunnel would not be particularly useful.

Other potential projects:
- extend the Allen Road south via tunnel to link to the Gardiner, continuing south with an exit on Toronto Island (access to airport/park) and then a bridge across the lake to Niagara-on-the-Lake.
- build a casino on the far side of Toronto Island
- bury the Gardiner under the lake, extending it to link with the 401 around the Rouge River (or possibly near Danforth/Kingston Road and then upgrade Kingston Road up to the 401)
- convince Bombardier to open up Downsview Airport to regional commercial flights to relieve congestion at Billy Bishop Airport.
- extend the runway at Billy Bishop Airport by 500-1000 feet
- build more ice roads in the north to provide access to remote communities and ensure that there are places for truckers to go on future seasons of Ice Road Truckers

Also, not exactly an infrastructure project, but I would amend the City of Toronto Act by deleting Section 395 which gives the TTC a monopoly on public transportation in Toronto.

sjc said:

- bury the Gardiner under the lake, extending it to link with the 401 around the Rouge River (or possibly near Danforth/Kingston Road and then upgrade Kingston Road up to the 401)

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This is very interesting. Maybe instead of burying the gardiner under the harbourfront land, we could just pre assemble a cylinder highway and let it rest/ lie on the bed of toronto harbour conencting underground with the DVP in the east, and connecting back underground in the west just past the humber river.

I wonder if this was actually considered, how much cheaper it would be? It's not like there's a lot of currents in the lake, or a lot of large fish that would pose a problem to a structure under water, on top of this, the water is fresh water so it would most likely last longer with less maintenance.

A tethered tube for trains in Lake Ontario linking Toronto and St. Catherines, and a branch to Hamilton so it would be a Y shaped tube tunnel.