Now, I try to be respectful of other posters, so I'll let you off nicely, by saying that was extremely rude; and that my facts are fine. The first person I know of to say Union Station can't hold the DRL was Steve Munro, and a review of any number of studies will tell you why.
I'll try to be respectful of a noob, but I think you're flat out wrong.
And using Steve Munro as a source to me is like quoting George W. Bush on global warming. i.e. virtually no credibility. It's because of Mr. Munro that we have Transit City. Sheppard LRT. Eglinton LRT. Scarborough LRT possibly.
I have used Union Station a lot, having commuted downtown for school for 3 years. Union Subway Station isn't the busiest in the network, and there are times, even during rush hour, that it's pretty empty. True it can get pretty full at times, but those times are rare in my experience. The crowds at (generalized) Union are between the train station and the subway station and the PATH. NOT the subway station. Most GO commuters walk right by.
The suggestion that Union is at capacity is, frankly, ridiculous. The second platform is happening, so it's even less of an issue.
Add to that, the DRL will have it's own platforms. And there are definitely ways to improve the pedestrian traffic in the mezzanine. Things like Presto will definitely help.
I'm sure there are many, many stations in cities like Tokyo, New York City, London, Paris, Hong Kong that are much busier than Union Subway Station.
On your first point, if you read back, this was a discussion posited based on the idea (suggested by others) that the DRL could be run at grade in the existing rail corridor. We're that the case, it might well intercept the main Toronto-Union Station.
Just because part of it might be at grade in the rail corridor, doesn't mean it has to be, and even if it was, there's no reason it would run through Union Train Station. Logic itself would dictate that the DRL station is part of Union Subway Station and not on the other side of the Train Station. It's entirely possible the DRL could run below the Yonge-University line at Union.
Currently Union subway station is overcrowded to a very dangerous point in rush hour and especially after events at the ACC or the Dome.
That is what triggered the new second platform and related improvement projects.
The Union platform is only crowded when people are waiting for trains in both directions. That's why the second platform is being built. But it's not above capacity or anything crazy like that.
The new second platform will alleviate congestion but will not, even assuming flat growth in ridership, create vast swaths of excess capacity. Keep in mind the new second platform will be connected on level to the new LRT platform which will hold a minimum of 1 additional LRT (Harbourfront East), but likely 2 or 3 (as Bremner/Harbourfront West are also likely to be incoming to Union.
The DRL doesn't need "vast swaths of excess capacity". It'll get its own platforms. The concern about the mezzanine is real, but nothing a New York or Tokyo subway engineer couldn't solve in a day.
I think Union's importance to the subway network is quite overstated. Union is busy because of GO, not because of the TTC. GO riders, the vast majority getting off at Union Train Station do NOT take the TTC. You need only go to Union and see them sea of them push PAST the subway station. I don't know what the TTC is so worried about to be honest. And the Train Station is more than DOUBLING the space allocated to GO with the west concourse.
You have further pressures through massive area development, and the strong liklihood of a new inter-city bus terminal on site.
There already is a bus terminal on-site. If you mean the relocation of the Toronto Coach Terminal, then I don't really see that adding much strain at Union at all. It's not rush-hour dominated.
And the all the vast growth of ridership from the GO Expansion and from VIA expansion (conservatively doubling ridership levels in the next decade or so) will have some spillover effect on the TTC as well.
VIA affecting TTC? Not bloody likely. Again, VIA isn't rush-hour oriented. If anything, VIA might make the station busier off-peak, during which there's tons of capacity at Union Subway Station as is.
A quick look at the diagrams for the Union Station plans (both TTC and GO/VIA) will tell you there is no room for a side by side platform aligment for the DRL and YUS. There is no where under Union Station proper to do this either for a variety of structural and spatial reasons. That leaves the only option to go completely under the YUS, this would have to be an extremely deep bore, there would be water table questions, and the none too small matter of how you propose to get the surface. There is no room in the TTC's Union redesign to handle a connection from a lower level, and you are constrained by Toronto-Union to the south and RB Plaza to the north.
Didn't we already have this discussion? I think it was
unimaginative who debunked the notion of no space for DRL platforms at Union Subway Station.
I don't understand your position here. It can't be done! It's impossible! Err, no. Given the money, anything is possible. There's nothing insurmountable about Union capacity issues that money can't fix.
While nothing is impossible in this world; there is an abundance of evidence and common sense that suggests a DRL will not be routed through Toronto-Union. Metrolinx chose an alternative suggested alignment for good reason.
Metrolinx combined the DRL and Queen subway into one line. Whether that's a good idea or not is debatable. But there is no engineering problems with having DRL go through Union.
In fact, Steve Munro has posited, on his blog, and I happen to agree, that there is currently so much proposed growth in GO in the next few years that it is not clear that Toronto-Union can handle (even after all the proposed improvements) the projected train movements or ridership. It will be tight.
I call bullshit, for reasons I've already stated above. Let GO handle its own projections and leave Steve to his LRT fanwanking.
If you would like to look at the all the various studies, I don't have all the links at hand, but they are widely available.
Read the TTC's Union Station project details
Read the City of Toronto's Union Station project details
Read the GO Transit expansion studies released at last week's Metrolinx board meeting
And while your there you may wish look up the ridership numbers for a proposed DRL.
Now could we keep the debate constructive please. Thank you.
I've already looked at all those documents, but thanks anyway.
Just because a naysayer says "it can't be done" doesn't mean it's true.
A DRL hasn't been studied extensively in a long time. At this point it's really just speculation on our part on how busy it'd be, where it'd go, how at-capacity Union train and subway stations will be in the future. Until the DRL itself is specifically studied, we don't have a final answer. There's absolutely ZERO reason to preclude Union Station as a connection point at this time. And there are also good reasons to have all four subway lines connect at that one point. Clearly I'm biased in that I like the idea of being able to make all those connections at one place.
It just seems like madness to me to ignore a trip generator like Union because it mike actually be BUSY! lol... only in Toronto...the city that gives us a mish-mash hodge-podge of transit in Scarborough, the Sheppard Stubway, or Spadina and St. Clair "LRTs".
