Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[nfitz]

Mysterious technology...false. Various trainsets have been identified that can be used to meet the slopes required

I don't think this is true - I don't see a single Metrolinx, MTO, City or TTC document that identifies such technology.

What exactly the Ford government is proposing here does indeed remain a mystery. Sure, everyone knows there are vehicles that can do things - the same way everyone knows that tunnels and elevated track can be built. But the proposal itself remains a mystery - one Ontario document shows it terminating at the existing Exhibition station, another shows it running non-stop from near Bathurst/Front to a terminus on the south side of BMO Field.

 

[smallspy]

2 years to reach 15% is impossible. False. Barcelona can get from 0% to construction started in 3 years. Just need political will (and the ability to make hard decisions)

And how many years of planning and engineering occured ahead of the start of the construction? Because I can assure you that the answer is not "zero".

Dan

 

[rbt]

And how many years of planning and engineering occured ahead of the start of the construction? Because I can assure you that the answer is not "zero".

It both is and isn't zero.

Both Madrid and Barcelona have in-house teams for design/engineering of these projects. The design on a specific line, when selected via election of the mayor, is often very close to 0%. They do have decades worth of drawings, samples, and other work to pull from within their office and several standardized designs to pull from. Metrolinx tenders a different engineering firm for each project and we have far fewer existing soil samples to go from.

Barcelona, like TTC with Sheppard/Spadina, also finish the design during construction. TTC was in the process of ordering TBMs for the relief line at 15% because it's sufficient for tunnels; Barcelona does the same. Designing stations while constructing tunnels is a significant time saver.

Ontario's DBFOM process requires significantly more upfront work in order to get a fixed price tender. Relief line construction will not be tendered prior to the 2022 election; the Finch/HMLRT/GO RER timelines demonstrate that beyond any doubt.

Choosing how to build a line based on an election result sometimes results in poor decisions; Madrid's 41km line 12 still has terrible ridership 15 years after opening. The "business case" aspect is skipped (funding for both capital and operations is provided upstream and guaranteed) so the only entity to please is the elected mayor.

 

[smallspy]

It both is and isn't zero.

Both Madrid and Barcelona have in-house teams for design/engineering of these projects. The design on a specific line, when selected via election of the mayor, is often very close to 0%. They do have decades worth of drawings, samples, and other work to pull from within their office and several standardized designs to pull from. Metrolinx tenders a different engineering firm for each project and we have far fewer existing soil samples to go from.

Barcelona, like TTC with Sheppard/Spadina, also finish the design during construction. TTC was in the process of ordering TBMs for the relief line at 15% because it's sufficient for tunnels; Barcelona does the same. Designing stations while constructing tunnels is a significant time saver.

Ontario's DBFOM process requires significantly more upfront work in order to get a fixed price tender. Relief line construction will not be tendered prior to the 2022 election; the Finch/HMLRT/GO RER timelines demonstrate that beyond any doubt.

Choosing how to build a line based on an election result sometimes results in poor decisions; Madrid's 41km line 12 still has terrible ridership 15 years after opening. The "business case" aspect is skipped (funding for both capital and operations is provided upstream and guaranteed) so the only entity to please is the elected mayor.

But none of that really answers the question though. Because here's the problem - none of it happens in a vacuum, right? The decision has to be made, somewhere, by someone, to go ahead with a line. When the trigger is pulled to go ahead on the given project, the construction can't start tomorrow - there needs to be some basis on which to award tenders to. This is the case regardless of where the construction will occur, be it Toronto or Spain.

The fact that Madrid or Barcelona have "Standardized designs" to draw from means nothing. The TTC has many standards, and standardized designs of their own for their own systems. Despite the fact that they outsource much of the design and engineering of any given line, they keep the intellectual rights to the designs and standards. Which they then dust off when the next project comes along, and use as appropriate. And frankly, much of the engineering time is not referencing the standards, but rather adapting them to meet the current needs and locations. A standard is a good thing to have, but it frequently requires massaging to fit a square peg in a round hole.

That said, yes, I'm not really much of a fan of the DBFOM process in part because of the additional upfront work necessary.

Dan

 

[rbt]

But none of that really answers the question though. Because here's the problem - none of it happens in a vacuum, right? The decision has to be made, somewhere, by someone, to go ahead with a line. When the trigger is pulled to go ahead on the given project, the construction can't start tomorrow - there needs to be some basis on which to award tenders to. This is the case regardless of where the construction will occur, be it Toronto or Spain.

In Madrid the "trigger" (back when they had money) was simply winning the municipal election. Mayors quite literally campaign on competing expansions plans to use whatever funding is expected (and reliably delivered). The winning mayor has full authority to build whatever was proposed and is the only place staff go to get answers/authorization (some ask the public; most just take the staff suggestion or shoot from the hip). Very little additional approval or study is required, from council or senior levels of government.

The mayor having full control accelerates things quite a bit too. In Toronto the "gating" process via council easily adds 3 months just waiting for council to convene. Gating at the provincial level is done too by withholding funding until an election year.

The fact that Madrid or Barcelona have "Standardized designs" to draw from means nothing. The TTC has many standards, and standardized designs of their own for their own systems.

Not really. Very few of the TTC drawings are immediately usable with today's building code, materials, and construction techniques, and in a variety of soil conditions and depths you might find in Toronto. Even Spadina designs would require months (if not more) of work to be built in a Scarborough or DRL location. TTC seems to rarely use the same TBM size from one expansion to the next; they get a bit bigger every round.

That said, TTC with unrestricted funding on hand would move much faster than they do today; after a couple decades of experience with that funding level I'm sure they could go from proposal to construction in 2 or 3 years too.

Madrid (I'm less familiar with Barcelona) did have this kind of thing ready to go. Since every mayor was proposing major expansions, and they had funding in place, they really just needed to know where to build and what capacity was required. Modifications required due to bore-hole results were very rare at the end of the spending spree as they had a very good idea of what things look like below ground already.

Barcelona Line 9/10 was a highly unusual design, driven by funding issues, and did take unusually long to get from proposal to construction. It's also has had nothing but trouble since with portions up to 15 years late‽ Montreal blue line has been considering using a similar design; I hope it goes better for them.

 

[UT Steve]

With regards to the configuration of the line at Exhibition/Ontario Place: Depending on the length of the trains and the length of the platform, if the station is arranged in such a way that it runs N-S and its northern end is at the current Exhibition Station, it could stretch quite a fair distance south. Build some kind of underground moving walkway at the south end of the station, and it could very well serve Ontario Place while still maintaining the connectivity to LSW & the streetcar.

There seems to be a lot of fixation on connectivity of the Ontario Place/Exhibition stop with Exhibition GO station and the streetcar loop. I'm not sure if there is any benefit to it. With Presto, there is no longer a need for a physical connection for ease of transfer. Additionally, I might be missing something, but I don't see this location ever being a significant transfer point for travel further west. Few arrivals at the Ontario Place/Exhibition stop via the Ontario Line would benefit by the ability to transfer west. Most trips could easily begin their westbound GO trip at Union station, where they would have a chance of boarding an empty train.
There has always been transit to Ontario Place. It just has never been very good. Putting this stop near the current GO station would not change this. To me, the ideal location for this stop would be an East-West station on the north side of Lakeshore Blvd, SE of BMO Field with exits on either side of the Lakeshore Blvd. There would finally be a good transit link to Ontario Place and depending on how the Exhibition lands get developed the exchange between the Ontario Line stop and the Exhibition GO Station wouldn't be that bad.

 

[nfitz]

Additionally, I might be missing something, but I don't see this location ever being a significant transfer point for travel further west.

Surely those coming from downtown to the Lakeshore West line, would be as likely, if not more likely, to change at Exhibition and take the subway 3 stops to University/Queen rather than use Union.

Current travel time from Exhibition to Union is 11 minutes, followed by an often long-walk to the Union subway platform to go a couple of stops. Wouldn't it faster to go 3 or 4 stops from Exhibition - particularly if the transfer is more convenient.

 

[BurlOak]

The stop at Exhibition connects with LSW and is just South of Liberty Village.

I liked the idea of going straight on Queen to White Squirrel Way, and then south to the Ex.
The less curves the better, and this had only has one real curve.
There is a nice empty plot of land there to make this curve.
It could have a stop at Liberty GO station and 800m later BMO, severing EX and O.Place, with station construction in a parking lot.

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I went by there recently, and there is construction on that corner - another opportunity lost. Back to the drawing board.

 

[smallspy]

In Madrid the "trigger" (back when they had money) was simply winning the municipal election. Mayors quite literally campaign on competing expansions plans to use whatever funding is expected (and reliably delivered). The winning mayor has full authority to build whatever was proposed and is the only place staff go to get answers/authorization (some ask the public; most just take the staff suggestion or shoot from the hip). Very little additional approval or study is required, from council or senior levels of government.

The mayor having full control accelerates things quite a bit too. In Toronto the "gating" process via council easily adds 3 months just waiting for council to convene. Gating at the provincial level is done too by withholding funding until an election year.

Than that's possibly an even worse scenario. Are you suggesting that they did the engineering for all of the different campaign plans all at the same time? What's the sunk costs in that kind of situation?

More realistically, the swearing-in of the new mayor would launch the engineering and design program for that new subway. Even if they start at 15%, that doesn't mean that the shovels start digging on Tuesday after a Monday swearing-in.

Not really. Very few of the TTC drawings are immediately usable with today's building code, materials, and construction techniques, and in a variety of soil conditions and depths you might find in Toronto. Even Spadina designs would require months (if not more) of work to be built in a Scarborough or DRL location. TTC seems to rarely use the same TBM size from one expansion to the next; they get a bit bigger every round.

The preliminary engineering of the TYSSE extension was entirely based on the Sheppard extension. Changes were made, sure, to deal with things like curves and changes in soil conditions. (In fact, the curves were the sole reason why the TYSSE used larger diameter tubes when compared to the Sheppard line.) And the building code and other regulations didn't change drastically between the construction of the two lines.

And by that same token, the engineering and design of the DRL and Scarborough extension started using those same basic standards and designs. It should be noted that the change to a single tube on the Scarborough line was not suggested by the TTC, and in fact the engineering department had been resistant to it.

That said, TTC with unrestricted funding on hand would move much faster than they do today; after a couple decades of experience with that funding level I'm sure they could go from proposal to construction in 2 or 3 years too.

That would be far more dependent on having a department being able to continually come up with plans that actually had a chance of being implemented - call it a "push" situation, if you will - versus being pulled towards a project as is currently the case. And even then, I have my doubts. Experience isn't the question here.

Dan

 

[rbt]

Than that's possibly an even worse scenario. Are you suggesting that they did the engineering for all of the different campaign plans all at the same time? What's the sunk costs in that kind of situation?

Madrid built out their metro quite cheaply (so one assumes sunk costs were pretty minimal); part of that was having an engineering department on salary rather than contract. Between projects they made generic turn-key designs more portable, efficient, and updated with any legislative/safety/best practices changes.

The station in the tunnel design was highly standardized. Suitable interchange points in the existing network were pre-researched and somewhat predesigned under the assumption it would be used (and they often were given the rate of expansion).

More realistically, the swearing-in of the new mayor would launch the engineering and design program for that new subway. Even if they start at 15%, that doesn't mean that the shovels start digging on Tuesday after a Monday swearing-in.

Not that quickly, still took a couple of years to line everything up for a construction start; though prep-work (like utility moves) sometimes started within 6 months. Election, with a plan like SmartTrack, to construction would occur within a couple years.

Having a guaranteed fixed size funding pool to pull on greatly helped.

 

[M II A II R II K]

It should connect with Exhibition and the new King/Liberty at both ends, which would intercept all western GO routes.

 

[nfitz]

It should connect with Exhibition and the new King/Liberty at both ends, which would intercept all western GO routes.

All the proposed alignments I've seen are east-west not north-south. At Atlantic it's over half-a-kilometre from the Kitchener to Lakeshore tracks. With plans for smaller stations than the current subway, that's not going to be long enough to provide a decent transfer for everything.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Then east-west in between Exhibition and King Liberty then.

 

[muller877]

All the proposed alignments I've seen are east-west not north-south. At Atlantic it's over half-a-kilometre from the Kitchener to Lakeshore tracks. With plans for smaller stations than the current subway, that's not going to be long enough to provide a decent transfer for everything.

I assumed the new Liberty roadway area would be the staging area for the construction. And the Front Street extension lands (Front & Bathurst) would be the extraction site for the TBM going downtown. Between these sites it could either be at grade on the N side of the tracks (if there is room). Or either cut & cover or elevated over the tracks...whichever is cheaper.

 

[gibsonm]

I’d run it along Queen to Dufferin and shoot it slightly Southeast from there, with stations at Bathurst, Shaw (with east ends of platforms leading to an exit at Trinity-Bellwoods), Gladstone (connecting to Liberty ST and poised for future expansion farther westwards along Queen), and for the time being terminating north-south at Exhibition/Ontario Place (northern end of platforms at Exhibition GO, southern end of platforms leading to Ontario Place). White Squirrel can also work as the point along Queen to shoot south, but there should be one more station west of Bathurst along Queen before hitting Liberty ST. A Shaw station would be the perfect midpoint to serve Ossington and Trinity-Bellwoods Park. If part of the reason for building this line is to make tourist/recreation destinations more accessible, a Shaw station does that. There is also boring and/or staging space at Shaw in front of CAMH.