Transit City Plan

[DENTROBATE54]

DRL cannot exist as a subway, Eglinton-Crosstown can. DRL was planned more as a regional railine rather than an urban landscape one. That's why Blue 22 was so close to fruition, the only guaranteed intermediate would've been at Dundas West/Bloor. EC can provide a local service in excess of fulfilling rapid transit to the airport. Looking at the Transit Toronto website, the DRL would have ran on for miles between stops that barely make the bus network's radar (Atiritari, Howard Park). The reason I include Don Mills with Eglinton is I see how potentially beneficial it is for all parties. It saves money and time, guarantees construction on both corridors, covers multiple nodes and alleviates all existing lines. There is nothing wrong with a new subway line that ends in guaranteed nodes (Pearson), minimises and uncomplicates commutes (try getting from Markham/Lawrence to Pearson in a direct, timely manner now and you'd see the benefits).

 

[scarberiankhatru]

A DRL is far and away the single best subway project we could possibly undertake. A DRL with NE and NW "wings" would do more for this city in terms of relatively local urban travel than any other line, and it would do this by bringing subway access to entirely new areas, all of which can support heavy rail. Calls for a subway or tunneled streetcar under Queen are endless; a DRL, however, would bring a subway to within a couple blocks of almost the entire length of King Street, not to mention the quickly developing areas along Front and Queen's Quay which are served in a pretty lousy fashion by transit right now.

Getting from Markham & Lawrence to the airport would still be faster taking the Bloor line, or quite a bit faster, given some all-day improvements, by taking GO.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Not to mention starting from downtown and branching outward, like how other major cities have it.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I would advocate an S-bahn system featuring 3 lines, we will call A,B and C. Sorry, I haven't made a map and not all the stations are listed, but the gist of the routes are:

Line A (Brampton-Markham line):
Brampton-Airport-Weston-Junction-Bloor-Parkdale-Ft York-Spadina-UNION-Jarvis-Cherry-Leslieville-Gerrard-Danforth-Kennedy-Ellesmere Junction*-Agincourt-Unionville-Markham

freq: /20 mins, /10 mins. RH

* explained below

Line B (Lakeshore)
Basically the Lakeshore line from Hamilton to Oshawa

freq: /20 mins, /10 mins. RH

Line C (Milton-Seaton):
Use Milton GO alignment-Junction-Bloor-Parkdale-Ft york-Spadina-UNION-Jarvis-Cherry-Leslieville-Gerrard-Danforth-Kennedy-Ellesmere Junction*-Sheppard/Brimley-Malvern (at Neilson)-Pickering North/Seaton

freq. /20 mins., /10 mins.


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Basically, this would create a trunk "S-bahn line with 10 minute frequencies (5 during RH) from the Junction through to a imaginary station I've tentatively called "Ellesmere Junction". Ellesmere Jct. would be on the present Markham GO line roughly north of where Ellesemere RT station is. I would redevelop this entire parcel of land, north to the 401 as a giant TOD community. I would abandon the Scarborough RT and extend the Sheppard line to STC using the RT ROW from Ellesmere Jct. to the mall. The southern RT ROW from Ellesmere to Kennedy would be appropriated and converted for S-bahn use.

The creation of a station at that locus will, I hope, shift the gravity of Scarborough's commercial centre away from STC and toward the Ellesmere Road and Kennedy intersection where I think there is more potential. With a subway line and 2 S-bahn lines, this station would be quite a mighty hub. The GO and Intercity bus terminal at STC would be moved here.

Passengers traveling from Scarborough to downtown Toronto would no longer have to use an RT and transfer to the subway at Kennedy but would have an S-bahn running every ten minutes into the core. Scarberians heading west to North York would take the Sheppard subway.

Notice also that between the Junction and Scarborough, the spacing of the stations would be at significant nodes every 1 to 1.5 km, replicating the DRL. It would connect to virtually every major neighbourhood south of the BD that doesn't have good connections to the subway, including Parkdale, Riverdale/Little India, Leslieville, the Portlands and Liberty Village. Line C can be expanded along the CP line to gain access to marginalized suburban downtown areas like Whitby and Oshawa (along a spur) that are candidates for redevelopment.

The rolling stock:

-25 kV AC EMUs that are sets of 3 cars. You can expand the capacity by adding sets. I figure that weekend/holiday service would be one set (3 cars); weekday off-peak service would be two sets (6 cars); rush hour service would be three sets (9 cars).

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I'm not sure what I would do with the Richmond Hill and Barrie routes.

 

[jn_12]

Just trying to get a grasp of the S-Baun idea... Would the S-Baun be comparable to the RER in Paris, or more like a Gotrain expansion?

 

[Hipster Duck]

^It would be exactly like an RER.

 

[unimaginative2]

DRL cannot exist as a subway, Eglinton-Crosstown can. DRL was planned more as a regional railine rather than an urban landscape one. That's why Blue 22 was so close to fruition, the only guaranteed intermediate would've been at Dundas West/Bloor. EC can provide a local service in excess of fulfilling rapid transit to the airport. Looking at the Transit Toronto website, the DRL would have ran on for miles between stops that barely make the bus network's radar (Atiritari, Howard Park). The reason I include Don Mills with Eglinton is I see how potentially beneficial it is for all parties. It saves money and time, guarantees construction on both corridors, covers multiple nodes and alleviates all existing lines. There is nothing wrong with a new subway line that ends in guaranteed nodes (Pearson), minimises and uncomplicates commutes (try getting from Markham/Lawrence to Pearson in a direct, timely manner now and you'd see the benefits).

Wait...what on Earth are you talking about? Why, pray tell, can the DRL not exist as a subway? It was planned as one. I certainly wasn't a "regional railine" -- its purpose was to relieve pressure on the Yonge line south of Bloor, and Bloor-Yonge station.

It was intended to be an express ride downtown in order to attract more people to switch from the Yonge line, but if it were to be built today, I'd add more stops like the West Donlands (what my rather elderly article labels Ataratiri) at Cherry Street and a couple of others. You'd still get from Pape and Danforth to Union in five stops.

Great ideas Hipster Duck! Since the greatest tragedy in Toronto's transit history (the cancellation of GO-ALRT), this would easily be the next best thing. It would be so easy to implement! Beyond the cost of the rolling stock, you could probably do it all for less than $2 billion -- less than the cost of Transit City's streetcars to Malvern alone.

 

[jn_12]

I don't know if you could do it for $2Billion... if it's anything like the RER in Paris, you're looking at cars similar to Gotrains, only underground (at least for the downtown section). You're probably looking at one of the most expensive projects in Toronto history.

 

[CDL.TO]

But Hipster Duck wasn't proposing any underground sections.

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

Nuts! Crazy! Using existing rights-of-way, like those crazy screwball Euro....AreBe lives!

 

[jn_12]

Hipster Duck, yes he did...

^It would be exactly like an RER.

The RER in Paris is underground throughout the downtown.

The RER currently serves 258 stops and runs over 587 km (365 miles) of track, including 76.5 km (48 miles) underground. Thirty-three stops are inside the city of Paris. Each line crosses the city almost exclusively underground and on dedicated tracks.

 

[Hipster Duck]

^Actually, no. My proposal would be all above ground along existing rail rights of way. It would be like the RER in that you would use single-deck electric multiple units with overhead catenary running at relatively high frequencies.

 

[jn_12]

oh ok, just a misunderstanding. When you said RER, i automatically just assumed it was exactly like Paris'. Although way too expensive, it'd be pretty awesome to have suburban rail network crisscrossing the city underground. Maybe by 2100?

 

[CDL.TO]

Indeed. Saying that "a RER" means underground is like saying that "a streetcar" means running in mixed traffic or that the Spadina line north of Eglinton West isn't "a subway" because it isn't below ground.

 

[DENTROBATE54]

Wait...what on Earth are you talking about? Why, pray tell, can the DRL not exist as a subway? It was planned as one. I certainly wasn't a "regional railine" -- its purpose was to relieve pressure on the Yonge line south of Bloor, and Bloor-Yonge station.

It was intended to be an express ride downtown in order to attract more people to switch from the Yonge line, but if it were to be built today, I'd add more stops like the West Donlands (what my rather elderly article labels Ataratiri) at Cherry Street and a couple of others. You'd still get from Pape and Danforth to Union in five stops.

I didn't know you wrote that article. You're perhaps the perfect person to ask then, how such a line could be logistically possible? The DRL borrows heavily from existing and limited GO corridors and would involve a very long tunnel from BD to Thorncliffe Park serving only one intermediate. There's other ways of alleviating YUS besides a line that doesn't really go anywhere (i.e. nodes few and far in between).

I'm not knocking it per se but it seems improved GO service trivializes the need for a TTC run service in the rail corridors. While downtown needs another east-west subway (BD isn't remotely satisfactory enough) by making it be a DRL, we'd only see stops at Queen/Broadview, the central waterfront and Queen/Dufferin- nice for a suburb but not the core. A cluster of about 15 stops surrounded by trip-generators would be very affective.

What are your thoughts on the Eglinton-Don Mills initiative Unimaginative? Given that not all 416 trips include the CBD and that new Eglinton subway riders would mostly be converts from Eglinton corridor buses (i.e. won't lead to overcrowding the YUS line), could it in fact be just as effective a relief line to Toronto as the DRL would?