Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[H4F33Z]

For the deep stations on the relief line, why not build elevators? No walking up steps or using escalators.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Setting aside any non-capacity issues ( I have outlined some ecological concerns in respect of the more northerly Don Valley Crossing and environs); and sub-optimal station locations; and problems with various technical assumptions.........

Its important to evaluate the capacity issue holistically.

By which I mean, one must consider its impacts on the LSE corridor in terms of diminished capacity for GO and VIA.........

One must also consider in respect of O/L capacity itself that the methodology initially outlined for calculating capacity was extremely dubious.

Assumptions were made which I find wholly unsupportable.

(in respect of persons per m2)

****

Also important, is to allow that Line 1 is overloaded; there there is therefore latent demand; and that the object here is not to spend north of 10B (possibly a lot north of)...... in order to get short-term relief only.

The restrictions on RER capacity on the OL are going to cost us billions in the future. The restrictions on the capacity of the OL itself will cost us further billions. This whole OL plan is penny wise, dollar foolish. All of these restrictions to save maybe a billion dollars on this $11 Billion+ project.

 

[Northern Light]

The concern for affecting wetlands may be disingenuous, but I think that if Metrolinx came out and said that they ruled out underground because it would be too expensive, they would be (rightly) slammed for not being as rigorous with costs on Eglinton West or the Line 2 extension. I think the amount of land that would need to be expropriated for portals and the like is enough of a justification for not tunnelling in Riverdale. My biggest concern with the current plan is still whether this will restrain future expansion of GO service.

You mean for entrances/exits for passengers at stations?

Portal is normally used to describe vehicles entering/exiting tunnels.

In that context, the RL was all-tunnel; so there were no portals in central area of the City. (excepting one to Greenwood yard)

The O/L on the other hand has 2, one in Corktown and another in Riverdale.

In terms of expropriation, I don't think the R/L (tunnel) variation results in any greater expropriation.

If nothing else, the O/L variation requires an entirely new MSF (doesn't use Greenwood) which is a lot of net new land cost. A cost that will also likely deplete the commercial tax base of the City, and displace existing jobs.

Though, in truth, we don't have the exact answer on that yet, since detailed design on the stations isn't yet complete, nor have most expropriations even begun.

 

[KhalilHeron]

For the deep stations on the relief line, why not build elevators? No walking up steps or using escalators.

Elevators are a lot lower capacity and are much more expensive. Really deep stations all have multiple sets of escalators for reason also on where a potential westward extension could head I see the appeal of bringing it to Dundas west, but that just duplicates GO service, and honestly even streetcar service (ik they're not comparable but does one station really need 3 modes heading to the core all wit very similar routing). I think running up to Jane or Dufferin (turn and portal would be tight though) makes more sense for the city as a whole even if it would mean not connecting to Kitchener GO or UP

 

[north-of-anything]

You mean for entrances/exits for passengers at stations?

Portal is normally used to describe vehicles entering/exiting tunnels.

In that context, the RL was all-tunnel; so there were no portals in central area of the City. (excepting one to Greenwood yard)

The O/L on the other hand has 2, one in Corktown and another in Riverdale.

In terms of expropriation, I don't think the R/L (tunnel) variation results in any greater expropriation.

If nothing else, the O/L variation requires an entirely new MSF (doesn't use Greenwood) which is a lot of net new land cost. A cost that will also likely deplete the commercial tax base of the City, and displace existing jobs.

Though, in truth, we don't have the exact answer on that yet, since detailed design on the stations isn't yet complete, nor have most expropriations even begun.

I was comparing the current Ontario Line plan to tunnelling more along the current route, which is what I thought Metrolinx was doing as well. For the old Relief Line plan, we didn't know where the TBM extraction shafts would be, where utility buildings and station entrances would be, or anything of the sort, which is why I believe the Ontario Line is a rebranding of the Relief Line and not a whole new proposal.

The MSF doesn't sound like it's an actual issue to me. There's not a surplus of vacant land in this part of Toronto, and I can't imagine that the MSF will result in substantially fewer jobs in the area than whatever business it replaces. If it goes where the storage facility exists now on Beth Nealson, it will actually provide a net increase in jobs.

I don't think Toronto really needs to specifically use the TR rolling stock anywhere. The unusual gauge already makes it more difficult than necessary to procure vehicles, why add to the strain? If anything the Greenwood yard should be reserved for Line 2 as it seemingly continues to expand in both directions.

 

[Northern Light]

I was comparing the current Ontario Line plan to tunnelling more along the current route, which is what I thought Metrolinx was doing as well. For the old Relief Line plan, we didn't know where the TBM extraction shafts would be, where utility buildings and station entrances would be, or anything of the sort, which is why I believe the Ontario Line is a rebranding of the Relief Line and not a whole new proposal.

The MSF doesn't sound like it's an actual issue to me. There's not a surplus of vacant land in this part of Toronto, and I can't imagine that the MSF will result in substantially fewer jobs in the area than whatever business it replaces. If it goes where the storage facility exists now on Beth Nealson, it will actually provide a net increase in jobs.

I don't think Toronto really needs to specifically use the TR rolling stock anywhere. The unusual gauge already makes it more difficult than necessary to procure vehicles, why add to the strain? If anything the Greenwood yard should be reserved for Line 2 as it seemingly continues to expand in both directions.

The MSF would likely displace a larger lot than you imagine; but lets set that aside.

Greenwood can't be used for Line 2 beyond 2030 or so, because its getting Line 1's TR rolling stock and the yard and shops are not configured for it, not large enough to support the fleet size w/the SSE on its own.

As such a new yard is going to be built at Obico (roughly beside Kipling).

Repurposing it would make more sense.

 

[ARG1]

The line should go to Dundas West and then Mt Dennis.

The issue with that is you're basically just duplicating the Kitchener Line at this point. Having the line swing west all the way to Jane and have the north south corridor run along jane makes a bit more sense IMO.

 

[superelevation]

700km, 381 stations, all built in about 30 years.

New York did much the same back in the early 1900s, without modern construction tech etc.

Heavier trains won't be able to use that narrow guideway with tight turns.

Sure, but fixing a short section of guideway is way cheaper than tunneling a new line?

The GREY of the guide-way copies the GREY of the buildings.

Too bad they couldn't copy the tree canopies. Maybe they should add trees along them, bad news is that it would take decades before they look decent.
From link.





Unfortunately, trees would be considered "art" and would be cut because it is "gravy" and unneeded to be "functional". Trees would be cut from the budget.

Meh, plenty of Green Space there

"Smack dab in the middle of the street" lol...as it was designed to be. Crosstown is not a subway line. Argue about the decade and a half-old decision to use LFLRVs and in median all you want, but as it stands today Crosstown is an LRT. On top of that the ridership modelling for west of Jane peters off quite a bit.

I've been an advocate of building a light metro system across Eglinton when the decision was doable. Now that's long past. What we have now is a low-floor urban tram, and tunneling it through central Etobicoke is ridiculous. It actually makes more sense to continue it as the LRT design it was meant to be (and is - east of Leslie). Maybe with a couple duck unders/overs not unlike @ Don Mills.

On the Western End it is an Ottawa style substandard light metro, that can continue west and you get metro service to Pearson, which is a giant destination.

Line 1 is already over capacity. 24k-30k by 2041 is not acceptable (and it's only a few decades away).

If the purpose is to relieve Line 1 then it needs maximum capacity.

All you do is push construction of another line off by ten years in the future, building for "maximum" capacity doesn't really make sense - we could build Crossrail if we wanted but its unecessary. Build more smaller lines and create a better network like Paris and Madrid (and some cities in Asia that don't have 10+ million people).

Yikes, where' can I read the latest numbers from? If this is the case, I'd like to think the range of 24k-30k indicates that the system will initially be operating at a low end of 24k with the ability to have service expanded to service 30k pphpd. Which is still a higher design capacity than Line 1 today. But if they do choose a line with a capacity of 24k-26k that would be a limiting factor in extensions and be rather close to whatever projected ridership they anticipate

The reason I prefer the OL over DRL is the flexibility of the trains used allowed for elevated construction, along with a better alignment+interchanges with other modes. However, I do have 3 criticisms, and one of them is the lack of clarity on whether or not platforms will be expandable for future growth. I don't see a problem using these smaller trains at higher frequency, but allowing for the use of longer trains in the future is good - we don't need to use the TRs like DRL just to get high capacity, if all we need to do is attach more cars to an OL train to match it. ezpz.

In Sydney, the current metro is built for 6-car trains with a capacity of 33k pphpd (2 minute headways). There is provision to extend platforms to accomodate 8-car trains and 45k pphpd. That's pretty high but that's also their primary metro line. If OL uses 5-car 750 passenger trains, the capacity ideally is 30k pphpd. Now, if we roughed in a 40 metre platform extension at the 8 underground stations (this is less than what's roughed in for the Sheppard Line, btw), then we expand its capacity to 42k pphpd with 7 car trains carrying 1050 passengers each. This is all just wishful thinking, I haven't seen anything that suggests they're considering provisions for running longer trains

The OL trains will def carry more than 750 people, Vancouver's Mk 3 carries roughly 600 with a four car, 750 with a five car. OL is wider so I would expect you would be close to 1000 riders per train (TR's are like 1500 under crush iirc), which means you can get into the 33-37k ppdph range. What helps substantially is the many transfer points like East Harbour, a bunch of people can get off and transfer allowing more trips to be carried. Allowing far more transfers is how London gets over 1 million riders on deep tube lines with tiny trains.

 

[nfitz]

OL is pretty high capacity, isn't it? I used to think of it as light metro, but it's wider than the lot of metro trains around the world. Also, at 90 second headways with 800 pax results in 32k pphpd which is more than any subway line in Toronto today. If they were proactive and roughed in extensions at underground stations, you could see up to 40k pphpd in the future. I hope they are - it might be necessary if this line is extended in either direction. Given the line is automated and has PSDs, one can expect that actual capacity will see less deviation from the theoretical max capacity, with less failures during rush hour (unlike Line 1 in its current state, which doesn't always achieve its theoretical capacity)

Higher capacity than Line 4. And if they go with 3-metre trains, significantly wider than many subway systems, such as the Montreal and Paris Metros, most of the London Underground trains, It's a subway. It's heavy rail.

 

[44 North]

The restrictions on RER capacity on the OL are going to cost us billions in the future. The restrictions on the capacity of the OL itself will cost us further billions. This whole OL plan is penny wise, dollar foolish. All of these restrictions to save maybe a billion dollars on this $11 Billion+ project.

Yeah I'll wager a toonie that within ten years we'll see a multi-billion dollar proposal from the Prov that looks at tunneling two GO tracks from east of Pape to Union, due to this throttling of the corridor. Bookmark this page.

 

[afransen]

Yeah I'll wager a toonie that within ten years we'll see a multi-billion dollar proposal from the Prov that looks at tunneling two GO tracks from east of Pape to Union, due to this throttling of the corridor. Bookmark this page.

Could we just deck it?

 

[ssiguy2]

This is why I have always thought the DRL should be a RER tunnel and not a subway.

Certainly build the DRL as planned with the same number of stations and frequency but use standard gauge with catenary. This way the system can be part of RER so electrfied RER trains can also use the tunnel. This allows for some 'relief' on Union station and fewer transfers for those not going right to the financial core. If RER is successful, trains could be arriving every 20 seconds in 20 years and that will put too much pressure on Union and a RER DRL tunnel would also allow for a back-up way into the city if for any reason there is n incident at Union.

By building standard gauge the system will also be vastly cheaper and easier to expand north of Eglinton as it can then make use of the already existing Richmond Hill GO corridor.

 

[syn]

All you do is push construction of another line off by ten years in the future, building for "maximum" capacity doesn't really make sense - we could build Crossrail if we wanted but its unecessary. Build more smaller lines and create a better network like Paris and Madrid (and some cities in Asia that don't have 10+ million people).

Context matters of course.

Building a line with 20% higher capacity from an already existing plan certainly makes more sense than cutting corners and handicapping future GO capacity.

 

[JSF-1]

Yeah I'll wager a toonie that within ten years we'll see a multi-billion dollar proposal from the Prov that looks at tunneling two GO tracks from east of Pape to Union, due to this throttling of the corridor. Bookmark this page.

Bound to happen at some point. Union Station and the corridors that access it with RER and VIA HFR are going to be slammed for capacity, so sooner or later something is going to happen. In all honesty it is sad that GO hasn't built a single stretch of brand new track since Bill Davis was in power. Every expansion since has been on pre-existing corridors. While that has worked so far there is only so much track we can take from CN and CP before they have only the essentials left which they aren't willing to give up; and we have hit that point with the Kitchener and Milton lines. In an ideal world we would have built our own trackage and avoided the issue with CN and CP at the start but that idea died with GO ALRT. I do believe though that GO absolutely needs to get back into the business of building brand new lines out in the suburbs to connect to more people, and to stop having to rely on CN and CP playing along.

 

[ARG1]

Bound to happen at some point. Union Station and the corridors that access it with RER and VIA HFR are going to be slammed for capacity, so sooner or later something is going to happen. In all honesty it is sad that GO hasn't built a single stretch of brand new track since Bill Davis was in power. Every expansion since has been on pre-existing corridors. While that has worked so far there is only so much track we can take from CN and CP before they have only the essentials left which they aren't willing to give up; and we have hit that point with the Kitchener and Milton lines. In an ideal world we would have built our own trackage and avoided the issue with CN and CP at the start but that idea died with GO ALRT. I do believe though that GO absolutely needs to get back into the business of building brand new lines out in the suburbs to connect to more people, and to stop having to rely on CN and CP playing along.

I mean where would you build them to? The only thing I can think of is maybe some dispersed routes such as a DMU service on Orangeville-Brampton, and maybe the Bolton Line? Obviously we still have the midtown corridors available to us, both the CP midtown corridor, and the CN Steeles Avenue corridor, but those would be very difficult to put passenger trains on.