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TransitBart
Senior Member
He did. And though I have said it before, cheaper is often far less than the best we can do.
crs1026
Superstar
While it would be expensive, I keep coming back to wondering if an extended Bay transit line that goes at least as far north as City Hall, and possibly all the way to Bloor, would actually be better than a line that stops at Front and feeds Union/Line 1. Do we really want to add all those waterfront people to the existing congestion in those parts?
Rather than *enlarge* the LRT loop at Union, why not spend the same money tunnelling northwards? There is room for a portal north of Albert St, and Bay could handle the surface LRT ROW. That would get the LRT ridership where they are going without adding them to the flow at Union, and it would provide a relief line for people coming from Union and currently transferring to Line 1.
Yeah, I know, there is lots of underground stuff in the way - but.....
- Paul
Rather than *enlarge* the LRT loop at Union, why not spend the same money tunnelling northwards? There is room for a portal north of Albert St, and Bay could handle the surface LRT ROW. That would get the LRT ridership where they are going without adding them to the flow at Union, and it would provide a relief line for people coming from Union and currently transferring to Line 1.
Yeah, I know, there is lots of underground stuff in the way - but.....
- Paul
Neil
Active Member
That would be expensive. Consider the tunnel coming back up to the surface in front of the ACC and continuing north from there. Bay street would then be a pedestrian/transit mall. More useful, accessible and btw cheaper. I would hope more people start thinking along these lines and hope the city doesn't screw up King street trial returning the car to its priority status.
junctionist
Senior Member
At some point, you need to stop trying to come up with impractical alternatives and get out the cheque book to build the most functional option from a design standpoint. If we can't support a thriving and booming area like the downtown core with the right infrastructure, I question whether the region can be successful over the long run.
crs1026
Superstar
Yeah, we all may be overthinking this. How bad would it be, really, to just fill in the tunnel and put the LRT line on the surface with a standard at grade Y junction at QQ? With transit priority signalling, dedicated LRT row, and Bay as a transit/pedestrian mall? That woukd be cheapest, and with the funds freed up we could push LRT further north on Bay. We may be trying too hard to find optimised solutions that preserve too much latitude for the automobile.
Perhaps the experience with the King mall, good or bad, will give us the courage to make transit work in the downtown, autos be damned.
- Paul
TransitBart
Senior Member
Seriously folks. You are all dancing in circles to avoid the following statements.
Infrastructure costs money.
More infrastructure costs more money.
Great infrastructure costs even more money.
If we were discussing using lower quality cement to build an airport runway and there were safety considerations, you’d all be up in arms.
The underground tunnel exists because the pedestrian volume at the surface (think ferry docks) is huge and moving vehicles through the intersection is not practical.
Politicians need to come to grips with strangling the golden goose or getting people about. Voters and transit advocates need to focus less on little details like track here, track there and much more effort on how to lever political focus to the funding issues.
Infrastructure costs money.
More infrastructure costs more money.
Great infrastructure costs even more money.
If we were discussing using lower quality cement to build an airport runway and there were safety considerations, you’d all be up in arms.
The underground tunnel exists because the pedestrian volume at the surface (think ferry docks) is huge and moving vehicles through the intersection is not practical.
Politicians need to come to grips with strangling the golden goose or getting people about. Voters and transit advocates need to focus less on little details like track here, track there and much more effort on how to lever political focus to the funding issues.
BurlOak
Senior Member
What underground "stuff" is in the way? Are their major sewer lines? What is the depth of the PATH - would the LRT go above or under, would the PATH be relocated deeper? Would it go above or below the DRL?
The question should be what is the cheapest way to do this best solution (or a very good solution), and not to find the most expensive way to do it, nor the cheapest solution the barely meets the needs for a few years.
Amare
Senior Member
It's incredible how politicians have transformed over the past 50 years. From having the foresight to anticipate demand and build projects to handle increasing demand, to cheapening out wherever possible where demand is needed the most and building white elephants where there is zero demand.
I'd wager we're going to see a moving walkway since city council is just waiting to display their sheer stupidity.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
And remove the said moving walkway in a couple of decades, like they did with the couple at Spadina Station.
pstogios
Senior Member
Blame amalgamation.
CapitalSeven
Senior Member
The subway is in the way. The concourse is one level below the surface, and the tracks and platform are a level below that, at the same level as the streetcar. So to run the tunnel north of Front, you would need to drop it another 20 feet or so, which would mean demolishing the existing station and building a ramp down in the existing tunnel from about the south edge of the railway tracks. Feasible but expensive. And then you have to tunnel on from there. I believe there is also an east-west sewer line roughly the size of a doorway, but I'm not sure what level it's at
44 North
Senior Member
Drum wants this solution, and Steve Munro wanted it 30yrs ago - arguing, *rightfully*, that the current loop is grossly insufficient. But I dunno, I just don't think it'd work well. Yes, even as a pedestrian-only street. There are too many pedestrians, too many cross-streets with too high volume, too many unknowns like need for future midblock crossings. This is the core area of the city, so by default and sheer logic a surface line would be slow, suffer from issues like bunching, and be over-capacity. Yes even in a pedestrian mall. This isn't rocket-science. Large cities realized this issue well over a century ago. Any line through such an area needs to be grade-separated. That's what gave rise to subways and streetcar-subways (i.e. LRT/stadtbahn/pre-metro type lines).
We've already done the hard part by creating half a km of tunneled streetcar from QQ to Union, so it seems most logical to expand on that. And we can do that by bookending via a second tunnel up Freeland/Yonge and across to Bay to create one seamless keystone in a +20km waterfront LRT line. This is why I'll always support going back to the Loop Extension option.
Johnny Au
Senior Member
Blame Harris and his "Common Sense" Revolution, which is much more baloney than common sense. Amalgamation is because of him.
TransitBart
Senior Member
It is twenty-five years since amalgamation and twenty since Mr. Harris. Neither is to 'blame' which is a petty, useless and rearward-looking sentiment. We are all responsible for this. A generation has been born and grown up since or died since. Multiple city and provincial governments have come and gone.
Hold responsible - politicians who are eager to buy voters with their own money - and an electorate - that's us - including me - who fall for it. There is no gravy train. There is little easy, found money - which is not to say that ways to run the place better ought not be sought. There are a lot of competing needs. And there needs to be some leadership on all of this.
It would help - if the electorate had more confidence in government's ability to spend money well. The city is not perfect, but is reasonably run. Mrs. Wynne and Mr. McGuinty have a murkier record, and that will allow politicians like Doug Ford the chance to exploit people's fears over how their money is spent even though these are two distinct levels of government.
Hold responsible - politicians who are eager to buy voters with their own money - and an electorate - that's us - including me - who fall for it. There is no gravy train. There is little easy, found money - which is not to say that ways to run the place better ought not be sought. There are a lot of competing needs. And there needs to be some leadership on all of this.
It would help - if the electorate had more confidence in government's ability to spend money well. The city is not perfect, but is reasonably run. Mrs. Wynne and Mr. McGuinty have a murkier record, and that will allow politicians like Doug Ford the chance to exploit people's fears over how their money is spent even though these are two distinct levels of government.