My Masters Projects on the Downtown Relief Line

[gweed123]

^ 6-car T1 trainsets typically fit 150 metre long station platform, so 7-cars would require 175 m length platforms.

Interestingly enough, I was reading the detailed documents on the Ottawa LRT project, and all 13 stations proposed are being built to accomodate 180m platforms, enough for 6-car LRT trains. My jaw nearly hit the floor when I saw that.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

It's going to be hard to address everything as I know you guys are all well informed, so people are going to find several minor issues they disagree with on the site. First, regarding how far to take the subway... admittedly, it's a judgment call. The further it goes, the more expensive it gets, and I don't think subways should be providing regional service in the first place. Seneca is an interesting consideration, especially because there is some good density around Finch and Don Mills, but it would seem that the fastest way would still be the DRL or Sheppard and not Yonge anyway, so I'm not sure how much diversion would take place. If I had time to redo all this, I may have put more consideration into Don Mills & Finch, but I don't believe going west from the airport to Hurontario makes sense for a local subway.

Finch is a measly one concession farther and reaches the third largest post-secondary campus in the city, intercepts bus routes moving 75,000 riders a day, and enables real regional connections - and it is likely that a rapid transit line will extend along Don Mills north of Sheppard, anyway, so the cost is truly trivial when you're talking about a $13 billion project. Providing service to the region is not the same thing as providing regional service. 2km stop spacing isn't good enough for a local line. The mere existence of the DRL is what will divert umpteen thousand trips a day off Yonge, not a specific number of minutes saved or not saved. You'll divert a hell of a lot more Finch/Cummer/Steeles(a branch to Seneca would be easy to add) riders if they physically pass through the DRL before reaching Yonge, not by giving them a possibly slightly quicker overall alternate route that involves transferring.

Second, costs on the page are intentionally overstated. Well... let me rephrase that. They're intentionally high. To use the example you gave of station costs eating up the contingency costs, you're correct. But that doesn't change that the station costs are what they are, and future stations should be planned based on those figures. Contingency costs need to be added on top of THAT because more can go wrong, costs can go up even further... One of the studies I mention discusses the underestimation of costs in public works projects, and it's usually fairly significant, so I was trying to avoid that with this, and whenever possible, use the high end estimates, making it less likely that this would end up significantly more expensive than expected.

They are accidentally overstated because you don't acknowledge where inflation and contingency has been added (and we don't even know how much padding is built in before the contingency). There's still hundreds of millions of dollars of contingency left in Spadina's total budget after all the station budgets went up. You said: "When considering that the Spadina line has escalated in cost from $2.1 billion to $2.6 billion, approximately $200 million of which can be attributed to stations, there is still $300 million unaccounted for." but that's not what happened...$2.1B is in 2006 dollars and $2.6B is in year of construction dollars, while the $200M added to station budgets is taken out of the $400M ($500M after inflation) contingency and does not represent a cent of added cost - the cost of the extension hasn't gone up and won't go up unless the half billion dollars of contingency run out, which may not happen.

Oh, and regarding the 2 km spacing on Don Mills... the only thing that can really justify a stop between stations would be one at Graydon Hall, and I discuss in the station page about Moatfield (York Mills) the possibility of instead having the station located there.

"Justified" is an opinion, that can change with political approval or by choosing different numerical standards, while density is just a handy way to quickly compare station contexts and by itself has very little to do with a station's viability. 2km stop spacing is not a standard or a rule. It happened roughly 9 or 10 times in Toronto's existing subway network and almost all of them are either geographical quirks where a mid-concession station wouldn't work (like a ravine or an industrial park) or spots where stations were considered but cut due to cost/NIMBYs. Concession intersections aren't all exactly 2km apart, and when you slightly shift a station so that either the middle, the north end, or the south end is at one or another intersection, 2km gaps can be closed to like 1.5km or opened to like 2.3km, which really changes the need between concessions, especially when station exits are factored in...there's lots of flexibility to accommodate the kind of spacing Second in Pie mentioned, and there's even more flexibility in city policies to support the stations that are built with bus connections, development, pedestrian walkways, etc. Even adding a couple of stations could have tremendous benefits to the corridor and big consequences for the Don Mills bus...2km spacing would require keeping the Don Mills bus quite frequent and/or creating new branches off other routes (branches that could feed additional stations). Transit ridership is more manufactured like a flashlight than captured like fireflies in a jar, but neither happens without stations, and too many stations is better than not enough. Let GO handle express services.

 

[Fred.S]

Phil,

Great project and website, I'm a huge supporter of the DRL. Just wondering though, did you give consideration to the Phase 2 alignment of the western DRL, in terms of bringing it closer to Queen/Roncesvalles?

I think The Queen//King/Queensway/Roncesvalles intersection would be a better spot for a station before the line curves north, for a few reasons:
- TTC already owns a large property for the streetcar yard, which, if I'm not mistaken, eventually has to be retired or rebuilt for the new streetcars, which makes it a little more economical and less disruptive (no or little property expropriations) to build a station there.
- Access to the bottom of roncessvalles village, Parkdale, the hospital and the waterfront via the pedestrian bridge.
- Most importantly, access to the number of intersecting streetcar lines (possibly through a fare-paid area, since there's room if the yard is replaced/modified), and especially a good eastern terminus of the WWLRT, making a very fast connection downtown for those in southwest Toronto

I do realize though it's probably a bit tight for the subway to curve 90 degrees in the smaller space, but it seems possible.

Just some thoughts...

 

[Fred.S]

Ok, so my bad, I just read the "Route Determination" part of the website and saw that Queen/Roncesvalles route was looked at. However, I still think the route would be worth it, not for the GO connection, but for the WWLRT, which could draw in a large amount of riders to the western DRL and make the WWLRT much more attractive.

 

[ssiguy2]

What i think should occur is that the western section of the DRL should head to Keel and east to Pearson as stated in the map BUT I also think that between Keele /Lawrence it should INTERLINE {why Toronto has an issue with this is beyond comprehension} with The Eglinton line so it also heads north along the rail ROW but could continue north along the rail ROW and then head up HWY 27 to Humber College & Etobico GH. It would make for a seemless transfer between the two lines and would serve the long suffering citizens in the northwest.