The London Olympic village land was created by burying a hydro corridor in tunnels. You'd need some major incentive to get HydroOne to agree to burying its lines, but you'd theoretically open a lot of land for development that they could reap benefits from.
drum118's close links to construction and his non-support definitely merits attention.
The transmission pylons and cables will eventually fall apart, less than 100 years from now. They don't last forever.
Hydro Corridor Burial Economics Might Work Later
Could the power lines be buried
this century, when pylons are up for a rebuild? Rebuilding a corridor is money too, how much more does it cost to bury?
Economically, that cost difference needs to be considered, too.
Land Economics Changes
Lest someone say the lands are worthless; let's assume it won't be in the future. What money return can we get on the freed lands, for non-residential purposes, with the condition of strict rapid-business-evacuation plans as bylaw of land-use in the freed hydro corridor lands? It might more than pay for the difference between phased pylon rebuild versus burial. Also, what if the transmissoin corridor is only partially buried?
Economically, that cost difference needs to be considered, too.
Rolling Blackouts May Not Be Necessary By Then
Lest someone say it requires a rolling blackout to do the hydro corridor rebuild; let's assume that's not necessary, especially if only one or two pylon corridors are shut down at a time; considering we've very slowly migrated to distributed electric generation and this will be much more the case in 50 years (e.g. solar, wind, etc). Let's set aside how silly expensive that cost may be (not everyone supports what's currently going on), but let's assume in 50 years from now, that is to the hydro corridor's benefit.
So because of that, the ongoing future grid-resistance improvements to hydro corridor disruption needs to be considered, too.
Lease Progressively Declines In Value
Yes perhaps we need to let the 99 year lease expire first. But we don't have to wait the full 99 years. And we don't necessarily have to buyback the
whole 407 -- just non-revenue generating slivers of land. The way the lease was worked out,
the lease progressively becomes less valuable over time to the 407 consortium. Eventually it's a game of chicken -- waiting until the buyout of a sliver is worthwhile. That might happen in less than 50 years (The lease will be almost 3/4th over in 50 years from now), for example, especially if they ceased to plan further widenings of the 407 freeway surface.
The study authors need to consider the opportunistic factors from the gradually declining value of the 99-year lease as time passes.
Business Case Might Not Work Today, But Might Later
Assuming 50 years from now, Toronto is so valuable, and our grid is so distributed (solar, wind, alternates, etc) that a Hydro Line corridor burial would not require rolling blackouts during a burial -- and assuming 50 years from now, we have money to bury the Hydro One corridor -- in a multibillion massive megaproject. The business case would need to work (e.g. getting more return), but assuming it did, could it happen in the 50 year timescale?
Economically that needs to be considred.
Also, it's not Lac Magentic
Also, with proper trenching, a Lac Magentic scale wreck wouldn't burn nearby houses "en-masse", because of the ultrawide ROW. And assuming you
mitigate it even further by properly and deeply-enough trench/downslope the corridor. There was a
downhill slope involved at Lac Magentic that isn't involved in the 407 corridor that amplified the disaster and killed more people. This ain't the case here in the 407 corridor where the land is flat, and where in a wide downsloped trench you can have a big pile of 50 flaming and exploding oil tanks (successfully contained by sheer topography differences between the 407 corridor and Lac Magentic, as well as proper deep downslope trenching), and the nearest residential houses are over 200 meters
uphill. Not a nice place to be a resident, radiative heat may ignite a few nearest dark-painted decks and walls on the 407 abutments, and small bits of flaming shrapnel may light isolated fires, but a flowing flaming oil slick wouldn't decimate several square blocks like it did in Lac Magentic -- due to topography and how the leaking flaming oil flowed there. If any disaster happens in the 407 bypass, it's definitely disruptive,
BUT, this is
NOT a Lac Magentic league risk in terms of house burnings and deaths by flaming leaking oil tanks due to the topography. (Chemicals are another matter entirely, chlorine cloud wafting over Toronto population...but this is even far riskier in the North Toronto subdivision -- so the risk is actually decreased due to lower population densities. Ditto for oil tanks, too)
The 407 Shutdown Issue Is a Legitimate Worry, so how to mitigate, hypothetically?
The comments about a 407 shutdown is
definitely legitimate and worrisome. Perhaps, then, perhaps, use ultrathick bunker tunnels under the critical section of the major interchanges. With wide funnel mouths deep below the ground (in a deeply sloped trench) and 200 meters beyond the criticals, so if an accident occured beyond, the flaming mess goes into the ultra-reinforced tunnel rather than besides it and onto a major interchange. The flaming mess at a tunnel mouths near the interchanges would be a disruptive inferno, but would reduce an interchange shutdown to a temporary shutdown rather than a ultramajor disruption and reconstruction matter (burnt and destroyed interchange ramps). So there are ways to 'mitigate' the risk.
Consider The Tradeoff/Loss Of Mobility Gain vs Loss (including shutdowns)
Let's consider the simple tradeoff of 1 major 407 shutdown every 10 years, versus the greatly improved mobility unlocked 50+ years into the future by a hypothetically successful 407 Freight Bypass.
Let's remember just a mere 8 full GOtrains moves as many people as 1 hour of peak period traffic of the full width of the 401 freeway - but in much narrower corridors. A single car lane is only about 2000 cars per hour. Imagine if done properly, we'd successfully recieve
multiple 401 freeway equivalents of mobility, installed into Toronto, thanks to the 407 Bypass. Improvements that may actually possibly not be currently ever possible without the bypass. Just because some car zealots are anti-401-shutdown, doesn't consider the timescale tradeoff.
That has to be considered, at least by the study authors.
Still cheaper than building subways -- even with extra costs of mitigations
Let's say, throwing a hypothetical 30 billion dollars (or "X billion", pick number) at the combined multi-corridor megaproject cost (Partial or full hydro burial + 407 Freight Bypass + activation of freed freight corridors for commuter use) could still be cheaper than trying to gain the same mobility improvements by building over 100 kilometers of stupendously expensive subways that bring in more suburban residents. Upon closer inspection, it is highly likely to be considered by any studies to be economically far better use of money than building a 407-corridor high speed train, which should more efficiently run through Brampton/Pearson, to more properly pull economic benefit out of high speed rail / high-performance rail (in express/semiexpress plans, so places like Brampton can benefit from relatively fast trains too).
The study authors need to consider this.
It's not the end of the world, we've had rare major 401 shutdowns because of unusual weather and flaming pile of vehicles -- we've coped -- it didn't kill the inconvenienced.
Definitely, we can't afford it now.
Or before 50 years if we had to do such a scale of all the above mitigations.
But assuming the economics later richly warranted, business case warranted it, it in 50+ years or beyond. Let's think this, as a thought exercise. Assuming we trusted the record of tomorrow's government to pull off the mobility improvements, and assuming our population voted for moves like this, and changed gruding minds then. Let's assume we did find corridor space (e.g. via funding burial of Hydro corridor, and/or via expensive negotiation with 407 consortium --
remember in 50 years, only one-quarter of the 99 year lease is left and is not very valuable anymore!). Perhaps it will never happen, but let's for the moment put this aside, and just run this thought exercise.
drum118's concerns are legitimate, and reduces likelihood, increases timecales,
but this doesn't cancel the thought experiment.
So here comes the new question.
-- what mitigations are needed to change the mind of a future construction industry minded guy (like drum118) in the future few generations? I'm talking,
hypothetically, of course, as a legitimate
thought exercise.
That's my new question now.
