DRL routing. Where would you put it?

Fixed this one! Yay!

Just to keep a running tally of where UT is at on this. Cheers!

I'd say it should hit Queen at Yonge, and King on University.

IMO the DRL should not be planned so rigidly, or subjectively. The design needs to be fluid with a long arc, or large curving esses.

I voted Front/Wellington/Rail Corridor. Definitely not Queen though. King might be acceptable as well (but I didn't vote for it).

I like the idea of using the rail corridors in the West and East, and running double lines along Richmond & Adelaide. Ideally, express tracks along Richmond and local tracks along Adelaide.

queen.

wopchop said:

I like the idea of using the rail corridors in the West and East, and running double lines along Richmond & Adelaide. Ideally, express tracks along Richmond and local tracks along Adelaide.

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Under this scenario, if people wanted an express trip, why wouldn't they just take a GO EMU RER-style service? It would surely be cheaper than boring a new tunnel. Once lakeshore trains go underground, a few tracks would be freed up at union for such a service.

44 North said:

I'd say it should hit Queen at Yonge, and King on University.

IMO the DRL should not be planned so rigidly, or subjectively. The design needs to be fluid with a long arc, or large curving esses.

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Good luck finding room amongst highrise foundations to run that sort of routing.

Shades of this thread/poll from before.

Nice find paleo! Buried all the way back in 2007, I see you live up to your name!

No question............Queen.
King and the rail corridor/Union area already has the best transit of quite literally anywhere in the country.
Queen would serve a large residential, residential and commercial strip and is downtown's main east/west route.
Another reason I would choose Queen over King is the expense. Tunneling down King would take forever and cost a small fortune....more than anyother route. Why?.........it's called PATH.
The massive PATH and subterrean city in the King corridor would require very deep tunnels and be an enginnering nightmare. This is not the case with Queen and the underground Queen/Yonge streetcar station is already built. It would need to be upgraded/expanded but far cheaper than building a new one and would be far less disruptive.
If not Queen then the Pape/Union rail corridor but King should be written off from the start due to it's enginerring problems and horrid cost.

dunkalunk said:

Good luck finding room amongst highrise foundations to run that sort of routing.

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Hmm, I guess you're right. But my understanding was that the core sections of the DRL would be very deep anyways. This is because of foundations, but also buried rivers, storm sewers etc. Do you think it would still be possible to have an arcing DRL below the foundations, or is that too ridiculously deep and not worth the cost?

dunkalunk said:

Under this scenario, if people wanted an express trip, why wouldn't they just take a GO EMU RER-style service? It would surely be cheaper than boring a new tunnel. Once lakeshore trains go underground, a few tracks would be freed up at union for such a service.

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It's a good point, and would certainly apply to the west at Dundas West Station, but people switching at Pape & Danforth don't necessarily have that opportunity. Under this scenario, it would even be possible to make GO RER-style service (say from Georgetown, Barrie, or Milton) utilize those Richmond Express Tracks, no? TTC trains could enter the Adelaide tunnel, while GO Trains enter the Richmond tunnel.

wopchop said:

It's a good point, and would certainly apply to the west at Dundas West Station, but people switching at Pape & Danforth don't necessarily have that opportunity.

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But then, if we actually had a GO RER-style service, it would presumably intercept a lot of downtown-bound trips before they even get to the Danforth line, which might serve the relief function even better than building a Danforth-to-Downtown DRL and hoping that everyone will switch to it at Pape.

car4041 said:

But then, if we actually had a GO RER-style service, it would presumably intercept a lot of downtown-bound trips before they even get to the Danforth line, which might serve the relief function even better than building a Danforth-to-Downtown DRL and hoping that everyone will switch to it at Pape.

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With plentiful funding and thoughtful execution, yes.

But the likely real course of events is that the GO expansion process will remain half-hearted, underfunded, and mostly trying to catch up with the growing demand from 905, with little capacity devoted to GO trips within 416 and no investments in the infrastructure needed to make such trips attractive (new stations, relocating existing stations to major arterials, adding surface routes to make connections to GO easier).

The Danforth-to-Downtown DRL is, in reality, a much better bet to address the capacity crunch in the subway system core; just because it is devoted to Downtown Relief.

Just for fun I have thought that a split routing would be awesome, not for todays number per se but for about 40 years from now....

From east to West....

South from Don mills/Eglington to pape station, curving under the CN line, spliting at dundas, route a(north spur) would run under dundas to lansdowne rejoining with the south sprur, that continued under the CN line, headinging east along adelaide (or wellington) then curving north west under the rail line to rejoin the north spur at lansdowne interchanging with Dundas West stn, continuing north through the junction and ending in weston.

The reason for this routing would be to maximize downtown growth further up the yonge/university corridor, which seems to be where 1000's of condo units are being built. Also I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that over the next 30 years, a lot more commercial will be added in the area. The south spur acts as a catalyst for development along the southern edge of the city. I'm well aware of the fincial cost of spliting the line, but thats not my concern, I'm interested in building a transit line that fits the needs of many people.