rbt
Senior Member
Open and Transparent government is both very expensive and very slow.
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Network 2011
- Thread starter SimonP
- Start date
Open and Transparent government is both very expensive and very slow.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
I agree. While normally the best solution would be the one that connects to an existing transit hub, the goal of the DRL is to get people off the Yonge line completely and we know hitting capacity at Union isn't far off. They are adding a second platform for a little extra capacity but with the two LRT lines and all the GO services there would be little space in the existing corridors and stairwells to add a new line in the Union fare-paid zone without spending a lot of money to create more space underground under the existing LRT and subway areas. A King alignment gets most of the central core within walking distance while a Union station connection comes in too far south for people working around Queen. Yes, people will walk that distance to avoid a TTC fare going to Union but will they walk that distance when the fare covers that trip? I think the answer is no.
Why not do Wellington? You're 1 block away from King, and that way you can build a connection to Union, but don't have to make significant changes to the 'Union Complex'. Certainly less changes than building a new platform directly underneath or beside the current platform would be.
rbt
Senior Member
I wouldn't be surprised if Metrolinx already has Wellington set aside for an underground LakeShore line tunnel. It's about as far north as a GO train could conveniently go while offloading pedestrian traffic from Union.
Wouldn't they be better off doing what they did with Grand Central and tunnel under the existing lines (granted, they couldn't do today what they did with Grand Central in the 1910s, everyone would have a shit-fit). Still, tunnelling under existing rail lines I would imagine would be much easier than tunnelling 10+ tracks underneath Wellington. It would also open up the current land used by tracks for office/condo development, land that could potentially be worth a fortune (just look at the Met Life building located directly overtop of the Grand Central tracks).
rbt
Senior Member
Grand Central only serves 140,000 passengers per day. GO is expecting Union will get past that in the near future (10 years) and that's without the REX type service or the benefit of multiple subway lines wisking the passengers away without using the front doors.
Unions big problem is that is the actual destination for the passengers. They're not connecting, they want to go out the front doors.
A REX type system (electrified LakeShore and Milton line really) will easily push Union or any single station over its capacity if everybody offloads there. The tunnel solution is more about spreading the passenger loading/unloading over 3 or 4 different stations (Spadina, University, Yonge, Jarvis) instead of a single point.
A stop-gap for Union will be to load/unload two trains per track, spreading load west to a teamway at Simcoe, PATH connections and exist west of York.
drum118
Superstar
Even if you put in 2 levels of tracks, Union will still not have enough room for riders, let along trains.
One way GO/Metrolinx can go, is doing the same thing like the Lakeshore line and that is running other lines in a u shape or another figure.
If a Milton train arrives at Union, it would wait 5 minutes before continued east and go north to RH or X. That same return train would do the opposite. This would mean the headways would have to be the same. You do the same with the other lines.
One of the bottlenecks now is taking a train from the south side to the north side or the opposite to get to/from a platform. If you set the north platforms for the northbound trains, it will cut down on the crossover and speed up operation.
Lakeshore trains should be using platforms 26-27 all the time, 7 days a week since it is a faster routing in/out of Union now.
Taking existing lines further north of Union would only see 2 lines at best, but the cost to do would be in the Billions.
At some point, Summerhill and Dupont need to have GO Stations on the Crosstown line, but Summerhill cannot happen until the DRL is in operation.
2030-2050 going to be fun time for transit.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
It doesn't help deal with the congestion issues the Queen car experiences. This line is not just for relief of the Yonge line, it is the solution to the King and Queen streetcar issues where the TTC would like these routes in a transit only ROW but the landowners want none of it. On King and Queen you can solve that dilemma but on Front, Wellington, Adelaide, and Richmond you cannot since those streets don't continue from Dufferin to Broadview or in the case of Wellington and Front are a little out of walking distance. With a King subway you eliminate the King streetcar since the subway would run the full length of King, hit the middle of the office core almost directly, and still be focused on the bulk of residential developments which are not served by the Waterfront LRT that exist between the Gardiner and Queen.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
One possible, if somewhat wishful, benefit from the DRL is that it adds enough east-west transport capacity to justify closing either King or Queen to car traffic, making it streetcars-only. There's your speed and reliability fixed.
The southern alignments serve the new developments along the waterfront and wouldn't have huge negative impacts on surrounding neighbourhoods during construction. They could also coexist much more peacefully with the 501 and 504 than the King or Queen alignments.
The alignment simply depends what your priorities are. The arguments have been pretty well outlined for the various alignments during the discussions on this forum that have gone on for years. All we need now is to see what the Downtown Rapid Transit study has to say. Then the real discussion begins.