Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group

I was in Munich once, briefly, but didn't use the public transit system. Spent like 5 days in Vienna and thought its system was very good and used it quite often.
 
I found this in this month's York U alumni magazine...

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CSW2424 said:
^^ Couldn't agree more.

Sheppard should be completed to at least Consumers but, ideally, all the way to Scarborough Town Centre to link three "centres".

As for Eglinton, it has sufficient density or trip-generating desintations to support a subway from the Science Centre to the Airport. But the area that is in most need of subway investment is downtown. An ideal candidate would be a harbourfront-Queen-beaches line The line could be extended to incorporate the DTR idea and be stretched to meet Bloor-Danforth at either end.

I guess downtown and harbourfront voters are so predictable in their voting patterns that we don't have to be courted with election promises or pork-barrel thrifts.
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Just to touch on this a new subway line in the downtown core will probabaly never happen. It's just too complicated and entails too many competing options. One option could have it duplicate the 501, strecthing from the Beaches to south Etobicoke as demand exceeds 50,000 ppd the minimal requirement for subway capacity. Another choice could be a ring line encircling the just the downtown itself (Dufferin to the Don Valley) linking major trip generators en route like the Ex, Skydome, St Lawrence, Distillery, Cabbagetown, Ryerson, City Hall, AGO, Chinatown, Kensington, Little Italy and Queen West. What are the odds that that'll happen anytime soon?

Eglinton's the best candidate right now for a new line as it runs the gammit of the city and could veer up major arteries towards more trip generators at both ends. As for Sheppard though I think the link between the Spadina and Yonge Lines is far more crucial than the link to STC and could be done for alot less $, hence sooner.
 
DENTROBATE54 said:
Just to touch on this a new subway line in the downtown core will probabaly never happen. It's just too complicated and entails too many competing options.
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The DRL isn't very complicated. Moreover, other cities of the world are still building subways in their complicated downtowns.
 
(Here I go again) Much of the Downtown Relief Line can be built on the existing rail corridor, with costs no higher than the laying of new rails and shelters for stations. To the east, a tunnel can be economically cut and covered under Pape, which would be disruptive for the houses along there but would save many millions. To the west of downtown, the city already owns a right-of-way for the Front Street Extension, and west of the Ex they're planning a streetcar between the rail corridor and King. The additional cost of subway tracks should be negligible. If the TTC actually re-learns how to build economically, rather than the gold-plated subway projects they've been building recently, the whole thing can likely be built for less than $2 billion.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
I was in Munich once, briefly, but didn't use the public transit system. Spent like 5 days in Vienna and thought its system was very good and used it quite often.
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I road Vienna's subway for the one day I was in Vienna and I lucked out because I didn't know you had to slide the ticket I bought through through the validation gates, but there was no one checking on the train at the time. Also, that all the doors didn't automatically open and close at each station was surprising.
 
Even if a new subway line is built under Queen or another downtown street, the fact that it'd be complicated is no excuse. How is it that every city in Europe can build multiple subways under their vastly complicated city centres but Toronto can't? It should be easier here, we don't have thousands of years of history to dig through.
 
Darkstar416 said:
The only complicated thing about digging subways in Toronto is wading through the politics of it all.
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all that dense B.S really wears out the teeth on the TBM's.
 
Let me clarify what I meant by complicated. The unlikelihood of it ever happening deals largely with economics, existing infrastructure and land usage. Take Queen Street for instance, with most of the adjacent buildings are erected right to the curve and with no substantial parallel artery throughout it's entire length (Adelaide/Eastern's too far south to be of use), tunneling would have to occur directly underneath Queen or face the backlash of razing hundreds of properties. Either way businesses suffer losses and may close up shop, destroying the Queen West and Queen East shopping districts.

While the main, 'backbone' of the downtown line would naturally be Queen/sway (especially east of the Don and west of Roncesvalles) then there a case for King, Dundas, Bay, Front/Rail corridor or even Gerrard/College to have a portion of the line service major nodes along them not quite walking distance from Queen. With so much vagueness on where it will service the most customers and who will be left out it's doubtful that downtown politicians will come to a clear decision especially with competing projects in the inner and outer suburbs.

Lastly would we even want a Queen-downtown subway anyway? The line would have to have even more stops than the BD line to be fully effective and by today's standards we'd only see far, far less. Meaning a parallel bus service much like 109 Marlee, 85A Sheppard East and 143 Beaches, hence what 's even the point? It also wouldn't stretch as far as the 501 either (Victoria Park-Brown's Line). Therefore the line we'd end up with would be alot smaller (only going as far as Coxwell/Kingston and St Joseph's if we're lucky) with stops spaced miles apart: Roncesvalles, Dufferin, Shaw, Bathurst, John, Bay [serving both YUS stops], Jarvis, Parliament, Broadview, Carlaw, Leslie and Coxwell). If that were the case I'd rather sacrifice length and opt for intensification within the core via a loop line.
 
Who says a downtown line must continue on where the Queen streetcar lines currently run and not turn up and hit Bloor/Danforth? The dubious obsession with bringing subway access to the Beach is comparable only to that of bringing a subway to Malvern. No matter how intrinsically appealing such a line may be, if Queen out near Victoria Park or south Etobicoke got a subway, it'd probably be substantial overkill with the B/D line so close.

Your "miles apart" would actually result in virtually everything along Queen being less than 500 metres away from a subway entrance and the tiny minority that would be farther than that would see massive overall improvements. Today's standards also gave us Bessarion, Sheppard West, etc., so there's certainly no precedence for a lack of stations...I still think that Blythwood may be the only "missing" station in the entire subway network.

edit - I guess Willowdale could also be seen as "missing," but only if it saw significant development. Chicken & egg: it'd see development if there was a station, but they won't add a station without development...so neither will happen within the next few decades, I think.
 
Lastly would we even want a Queen-downtown subway anyway?
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Not many in the know seriously want a Queen subway, although I'd say the idea still has some merit. A DRL though is easily the next logical and likely subway extension for downtown Toronto. The more the other lines get extended the sooner we'll likely see it. Crazy to think that we almost got it in the 1980s.
 
Steve Munro always uses the argument that downtown subways are bad for neighbourhoods because stations are always so far apart. When it's pointed out that BD stations, among others, are quite close together, he says that "We don't build that way anymore." I would assume that's because all the new subway lines are out in the suburbs where frequent stations are less necessary. Any new downtown subway line should have station as frequent as needed. A DRL from Pape to Spadina, as originally recommended by the DRT study, should have stops at Danforth (at Pape), Gerrard (at Pape), Queen East (at Pape), Cherry (at the rail corridor), Jarvis/Sherbourne (at the rail corridor), Union, Convention Centre/Skydome and Spadina. The original study only recommended Queen East, Union, Convention Centre and Spadina, with Sherbourne and Gerrard as optional stops.
 
Honestly, I think a subway under Queen would destroy the street, even with frequent stops. The streetcars have been a part of the area for a century, providing local service to various nodes on the route. At the same time, a subway along the Union rail corridor wouldn't be very good at providing service where it's needed, at least right now. Who knows what things will be like a few decades down the line, what with the redevelopment, but as of now a DRL in the rail corridor wouldn't be my first choice.

I would build a subway from Dundas West to Pape, running in the rail corridor to King on either end, then along King Street for the middle of it's run. The spacings would be B-D like, and the King car has higher ridership anyway. Sure, it would be more expensive, but the service would actually be in a place where local ridership exists (unlike the rail corridor), yet the surface impact wouldn't be as bad on King as would be on Queen.

I'm sure there's a lot wrong with what's up there, so feel free to tear it to pieces and show me better if you like. That's just my opinion.
 
I neglected to mention that it would leave the rail corridor and run on Front west of Yonge. That should make it very accessible to development downtown, as well as Union Station. East of downtown, development will be much heavier north and south of the rail corridor than up around King and Queen. Running along the rail corridor in the east end in particular is impractical, as the DRT study demonstrated. There would be no cost savings over the Pape underground route, as it would have to be cantilevered over the existing corridor, and there would be major construction disruption and an unsightly intrusion into the neighbourhood. Pape station is also a much better connection point to the BD than Donlands or Greenwood.
 
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