Transit Fantasy Maps

gweed123 said:

Looks very similar to what I had in mind for my GO REX plan, only I used Queen, which would leave King/Wellington open for a "local" subway route if demand warranted. The concept definitely deserves some consideration, given that a GO REX DRL would maximize the "relief" component of the DRL far more than a TTC DRL would, because the GO REX option can extend the branches far far beyond what a subway could.

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I agree very much with the concept. That said, what is the service plan in the West of your scheme? I see three lines running through the Queen tunnel and about 5 in the Georgetown corridor. Rather than travelling up the Georgetown corridor though, the lines in the Queen tunnel seem to continue strait on or veering slightly.

Where are they going?

Looking at historical transit plans, in some ways the idea of the DRL as a distributor tunnel echo early proposals for the Queen Streetcar Subway, which in some plans sees Dundas, Queen and King streetcars merging into the tunnel.

Despite three quarters of a century, I still don't really think the demand along any particular corridor downtown really justifies the costs of a subway. Branching obviously presents one solution to low central ridership.

diminutive said:

Despite three quarters of a century, I still don't really think the demand along any particular corridor downtown really justifies the costs of a subway. Branching obviously presents one solution to low central ridership.

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Why not? It would be great if a central GO REX-style tunnel could be built through the core but at this point in time, it will be decades before that occurs. There's the issue of electrification that needs to be addressed first and foremost, as well as changing the diesel trains to EMUs.

Given those issues, there really is no other option besides building the subway line through downtown.

diminutive said:

I agree very much with the concept. That said, what is the service plan in the West of your scheme? I see three lines running through the Queen tunnel and about 5 in the Georgetown corridor. Rather than travelling up the Georgetown corridor though, the lines in the Queen tunnel seem to continue strait on or veering slightly.

Where are they going?

Looking at historical transit plans, in some ways the idea of the DRL as a distributor tunnel echo early proposals for the Queen Streetcar Subway, which in some plans sees Dundas, Queen and King streetcars merging into the tunnel.

Despite three quarters of a century, I still don't really think the demand along any particular corridor downtown really justifies the costs of a subway. Branching obviously presents one solution to low central ridership.

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Here's the full map:

The lines that run through the tunnel are all "short turn" versions of the full GO REX lines. The lines through the tunnel heading westbound terminate at Mt. Pleasant, Mississauga Centre, and Clarkson respectively. In the east, it's Richmond Hill Centre, Unionville, and Pickering. The end effect is that anyone in Toronto has the choice at pretty much any station to take a train bound for City Hall, or a train bound for Union. If their destination is the CBD, flip a coin and see which one comes first. If their destination is specific to a corridor, wait another 4 mins during peak or 7.5 mins outside of peak for the next train bound for your destination.

Translude15 said:

Why not? It would be great if a central GO REX-style tunnel could be built through the core but at this point in time, it will be decades before that occurs. There's the issue of electrification that needs to be addressed first and foremost, as well as changing the diesel trains to EMUs.

Given those issues, there really is no other option besides building the subway line through downtown.

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It's not like the DRL is a short term project either, though.

Of course, as you say, there would be massive changes needed to existing GO corridors for this to work. At the extreme, you may need to even build wholly new corridors parallel to currents ones. Grade separation, new stations, station improvements (e.g. bus bays in the 416), new EMUs (including regulatory challenges), electrification, signalling work and so on.

That said, except maybe new stations and EMUs, these are mostly already long term goals for Metrolinx to create some kind of all-day frequent service network. The DRL still has years, if not decades, of design work ahead of it, let alone actual construction. By consolidating various agencies' projects (e.g. Metrolinx's Union Station capacity issues, TTC's Bloor-Yonge Capacity issues) and making the DRL/GO tunnel simultaneously useful for all of the GTA, you're improving the odds of it getting political support in the first place.

Again, despite the general enthusiasm for the DRL on this forum and elsewhere, the project is hardly a done deal. When the "DRL" was first proposed, after all, it made use of low-cost rail corridor space. Now it is a full-cost subway, which will probably require massive disruptions to the YUS & BD lines for years as well as most of downtown's surface transit network.

diminutive said:

It's not like the DRL is a short term project either, though.

Of course, as you say, there would be massive changes needed to existing GO corridors for this to work. At the extreme, you may need to even build wholly new corridors parallel to currents ones. Grade separation, new stations, station improvements (e.g. bus bays in the 416), new EMUs (including regulatory challenges), electrification, signalling work and so on.

That said, except maybe new stations and EMUs, these are mostly already long term goals for Metrolinx to create some kind of all-day frequent service network. The DRL still has years, if not decades, of design work ahead of it, let alone actual construction. By consolidating various agencies' projects (e.g. Metrolinx's Union Station capacity issues, TTC's Bloor-Yonge Capacity issues) and making the DRL/GO tunnel simultaneously useful for all of the GTA, you're improving the odds of it getting political support in the first place.

Again, despite the general enthusiasm for the DRL on this forum and elsewhere, the project is hardly a done deal. When the "DRL" was first proposed, after all, it made use of low-cost rail corridor space. Now it is a full-cost subway, which will probably require massive disruptions to the YUS & BD lines for years as well as most of downtown's surface transit network.

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The positive about building the DRL as a GO REX tunnel is that the GO REX system can be largely put in place before the tunnel even opens. Yes service levels may not be able to reach their ultimate level right out of the gate, but if you route the routes that should go through the tunnel into Union instead until the DRL opens, you're still providing a massive service increase.

A TTC DRL without a central tunnel is non-existent. A GO REX system without a central tunnel is still pretty damn effective.

I'm still not sold on building the DRL as a GO-REX. There is still a lot of intermediate-level need in a dense, urban city that subways are very good at serving but S-bahn type services are not. For example, stations like Ossington, Christie, Broadview and Lansdowne always get a healthy amount of demand, but they would be difficult to build as S-bahn stations. For one, somebody coming in from Milton doesn't want to stop every 600 meters in the old City of Toronto, even though demand for those stations is probably warranted. Secondly, the cost of building an underground S-bahn station is immense - dwarfing even that of building a subway station. If you've ever been to a Parisian RER station, you'll notice they're built to accommodate 9 or 10 car double decker mainline railway trains, so they're about 200 meters long and have a platform that's wider than what you'll find at Downsview.

Hipster Duck said:

I'm still not sold on building the DRL as a GO-REX. There is still a lot of intermediate-level need in a dense, urban city that subways are very good at serving but S-bahn type services are not. For example, stations like Ossington, Christie, Broadview and Lansdowne always get a healthy amount of demand, but they would be difficult to build as S-bahn stations. For one, somebody coming in from Milton doesn't want to stop every 600 meters in the old City of Toronto, even though demand for those stations is probably warranted. Secondly, the cost of building an underground S-bahn station is immense - dwarfing even that of building a subway station. If you've ever been to a Parisian RER station, you'll notice they're built to accommodate 9 or 10 car double decker mainline railway trains, so they're about 200 meters long and have a platform that's wider than what you'll find at Downsview.

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What you want is a DL (Downtown Line) rather than a Downtown Relief Line.

For Yonge Relief, it needs to be a better option than Yonge.

Why not 2 for 1?

Hipster Duck said:

I'm still not sold on building the DRL as a GO-REX. There is still a lot of intermediate-level need in a dense, urban city that subways are very good at serving but S-bahn type services are not. For example, stations like Ossington, Christie, Broadview and Lansdowne always get a healthy amount of demand, but they would be difficult to build as S-bahn stations. For one, somebody coming in from Milton doesn't want to stop every 600 meters in the old City of Toronto, even though demand for those stations is probably warranted. Secondly, the cost of building an underground S-bahn station is immense - dwarfing even that of building a subway station. If you've ever been to a Parisian RER station, you'll notice they're built to accommodate 9 or 10 car double decker mainline railway trains, so they're about 200 meters long and have a platform that's wider than what you'll find at Downsview.

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It's hard to make general statements for all possible permutations of DRL layouts, but in this case I don't think there would be a huge tradeoff.

It's about 6-7 km from Dundas West to the CBD. Current GO trains are scheduled to take 13-15 mins. If we assume a metro-ish subway would travel at 24km/h, that would take about 17-18. Those kinds of time spreads really wont deter many riders. The time savings for riders which would come from serving micro-destinations (e.g. Westcore) would clearly outweigh the time penalties for more frequent service.

Of course, over an entire line, frequent stations will lead to slow service, so that always needs to be balanced. A of blended line with "urban" 800m spacing south of Bloor and more "regional" spacing (1-2km) elsewhere would provide a good balance. It won't be useful for commuters from the outer edges of the GO network. The YUS line, despite frequent stopping in the 'core,' still seems popular out to Hwy 7. It may even popular because it stops fairly frequently in the core, with stations like College and Dundas accounting for a fair number of destinations.

Also, stations wouldn't necessarily need to be RER-scale. You rarely see bilevel cars in Japan, despite demand. I don't see why stations would need be appreciably different in scale than current subway standards. Why would demand necessitate a huge capacity increase?

Hipster Duck said:

I'm still not sold on building the DRL as a GO-REX. There is still a lot of intermediate-level need in a dense, urban city that subways are very good at serving but S-bahn type services are not. For example, stations like Ossington, Christie, Broadview and Lansdowne always get a healthy amount of demand, but they would be difficult to build as S-bahn stations. For one, somebody coming in from Milton doesn't want to stop every 600 meters in the old City of Toronto, even though demand for those stations is probably warranted. Secondly, the cost of building an underground S-bahn station is immense - dwarfing even that of building a subway station. If you've ever been to a Parisian RER station, you'll notice they're built to accommodate 9 or 10 car double decker mainline railway trains, so they're about 200 meters long and have a platform that's wider than what you'll find at Downsview.

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The flip side of the longer platforms though is that you need fewer stations to have the same amount of coverage. For example, yes there wouldn't be a Christie or a Lansdowne station on a GO REX DRL, but with longer platforms you get more coverage than you would with subway platforms. And the stations could be built in such a way to place entrances even beyond the ends of the platforms, to maximize walking radii even further.

I do definitely see the argument for more local demand though. But I think that part of the reason why surface transit (particularly streetcar routes) are so crowded is because of the number of long-haul riders on them. Take for example someone getting on at Park Lawn (501) and off at Bay. With the Lakeshore Toronto GO REX, that's probably 1 less person clogging up a streetcar along Queen. That frees up a spot for someone making the trip from Dufferin to Bathurst or Ossington to Spadina.

Hipster Duck said:

I'm still not sold on building the DRL as a GO-REX. There is still a lot of intermediate-level need in a dense, urban city that subways are very good at serving but S-bahn type services are not. For example, stations like Ossington, Christie, Broadview and Lansdowne always get a healthy amount of demand, but they would be difficult to build as S-bahn stations. For one, somebody coming in from Milton doesn't want to stop every 600 meters in the old City of Toronto, even though demand for those stations is probably warranted. Secondly, the cost of building an underground S-bahn station is immense - dwarfing even that of building a subway station. If you've ever been to a Parisian RER station, you'll notice they're built to accommodate 9 or 10 car double decker mainline railway trains, so they're about 200 meters long and have a platform that's wider than what you'll find at Downsview.

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Definitely. The demand is probably going to keep rising as more people shop and live in the urban west end between Bathurst and the Humber River. There's a need for local rapid transit in this part of the city, and it can't be delivered by regional trains or streetcars.

junctionist said:

Definitely. The demand is probably going to keep rising as more people shop and live in the urban west end between Bathurst and the Humber River. There's a need for local rapid transit in this part of the city, and it can't be delivered by regional trains or streetcars.

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It's more difficult to build "local" rapid transit nowadays, unfortunately. On short trips, access times become a big deal. The TTC faresystem is also highly biased against local trips, unless you have a metropass.

Odds are any new subway through downtown will be tunnelled pretty far down, which means lots of escalators and such, which can add a fairly large amount of time to a short trip.

Though I'm keenly aware that the status quo doesn't exactly work well, either. I spent 40minutes going from Bay to Bathurst yesterday on the 504! That's literally slower than walking.

I maintain that an EW rapid transit line with ~800m spacing downtown would provide good service to both local and regional travellers, but no line will ever be perfect for everyone.

The DRL "U" also has an advantage in that the north-south ends of the U would seem to have pretty infrequent stations by nature. For both the East and West end, there'd really only be one station between Bloor/Danforth and Queen.

P.S. Despite how frequently terms like "local" vs. "regional" get thrown about, I'm not sure anyone could formally define either trip type. Given that routes like Yonge are useful for both local and regional riders, it's worth not playing up the antagonism between the two too much.

diminutive said:

It's more difficult to build "local" rapid transit nowadays, unfortunately. On short trips, access times become a big deal. The TTC faresystem is also highly biased against local trips, unless you have a metropass.

Odds are any new subway through downtown will be tunnelled pretty far down, which means lots of escalators and such, which can add a fairly large amount of time to a short trip.

Though I'm keenly aware that the status quo doesn't exactly work well, either. I spent 40minutes going from Bay to Bathurst yesterday on the 504! That's literally slower than walking.

I maintain that an EW rapid transit line with ~800m spacing downtown would provide good service to both local and regional travellers, but no line will ever be perfect for everyone.

The DRL "U" also has an advantage in that the north-south ends of the U would seem to have pretty infrequent stations by nature. For both the East and West end, there'd really only be one station between Bloor/Danforth and Queen.

P.S. Despite how frequently terms like "local" vs. "regional" get thrown about, I'm not sure anyone could formally define either trip type. Given that routes like Yonge are useful for both local and regional riders, it's worth not playing up the antagonism between the two too much.

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Exactly, local & regional travel aren't mutually exclusive. Both subway lines are pretty much used now for both short & longer distances. I would say anything between 600m to 2km stop spacing like Bloor or Yonge, with most between 800m to 1km, are viable for a wide variety of trips, from Finch to Union to only one or two stops. Closer stop spacing downtown with larger stop spacing in the suburbs works well in my opinion (like the Yonge line).

Unfortunately, as your long streetcar trip shows, E-W travel downtown can and should be faster than the current streetcars. Any grade-separated transit line with 600m to 1km stop spacing would cut down significantly on many people's commutes, since most people take either the subway or GO trains downtown, and then take the streetcar to their final destination.

So there was a discussion in the GO Construction thread about transferring some of the mid-regional travel (to Kingston and London for example) from Via to a quasi-GO service. This got me thinking, so I updated my GO REX map to include this type of service. I've called it SOGO (Southern Ontario GO). Large white stations are GO REX stations, small grey stations are SOGO stations, and large grey stations are transfer stations between the two. The end result is that you have trains that run local way further out, but as they reach the edge of GO REX territory, they run express or semi-express into Union.



Link to full image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43869799/GO REX v6.jpg

^Again, I think there really is a lot of merit in building intermediate level stations that cannot, and should not, be handled by regional rail.

What sort of message are we sending if we have subway stations at places like Bessarion and Chaplin, but nothing at King and Bathurst? Or Broadview? Or anything in Parkdale between Dufferin and Roncessvalles? You can't get a lot of political support if you expect people in dense urban neighbourhoods to endure years of dirt, detours and delays and then basically run an express train underneath their feet to serve suburbanites.

Why is there only one stop in the entire financial district for the DRL? Wouldn't that lead to huge dwell times as trains disgorge thousands of passengers?

Like I said, I support regional rail, but it should stick to the established regional rail corridor (that is, the USRC). Many, if not most, of the trips on the DRL will probably be old City of Toronto residents traveling around the old, urban city, like from Ossington to St. Lawrence market (impossible in your map), or from Roncessvalles to Spadina, or Thorncliffe Park to Sherbourne (15 minute waits).