Richard White
Senior Member
Finally a second platform at Yonge. This is good news.
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Bloor-Yonge Station Capacity Enhancement
- Thread starter Northern Light
- Start date
Northern Light
Senior Member
What Ontario Line? LOL
No shovel in the ground coming on that anytime soon, sadly.
Northern Light
Senior Member
Of note, the funding announcement also supports 'smart track'.
Since GO/Metrolinx froze the building of new stations...............
Hmmm, the official presser says funding six new GO/Smart Track stations @585M
That's an insane amount per station, and assuming this matching federal funding.........roughly 200M per station????
www.newswire.ca
Since GO/Metrolinx froze the building of new stations...............
Hmmm, the official presser says funding six new GO/Smart Track stations @585M
That's an insane amount per station, and assuming this matching federal funding.........roughly 200M per station????
Getting Torontonians Moving: Making Crucial Investments in Public Transit
SCARBOROUGH, ON, Aug. 26, 2019 /CNW/ - Strategic investments in public transit play a key role in supporting efficient, affordable and sustainable...
www.newswire.ca
Northern Light
Senior Member
innsertnamehere
Superstar
585/6=97.5 million/station.Of note, the funding announcement also supports 'smart track'.
Since GO/Metrolinx froze the building of new stations...............
Hmmm, the official presser says funding six new GO/Smart Track stations @585M
That's an insane amount per station, and assuming this matching federal funding.........roughly 200M per station????
Getting Torontonians Moving: Making Crucial Investments in Public Transit
SCARBOROUGH, ON, Aug. 26, 2019 /CNW/ - Strategic investments in public transit play a key role in supporting efficient, affordable and sustainable...
Edit: oh, that's only the federal contribution.
I know that a few of the SmartTrack stations are extremely expensive, while some of them are quite a bit cheaper. Liberty Village and East Harbour are the most expensive two I believe.
East Harbour includes multiple platforms, an extension of Broadview Avenue, and more.
Liberty Village has some pretty expensive expropriation and staging costs.
St Clair station's funding will also include the St Clair Transportation Master Plan Road improvements from my understanding, which has a $219 million cost associated with it.
My thoughts on this:
1) Expanding Bloor-Yonge is like giving an overweight person bigger pants and saying that it's solved their weight problem.
2) I really hope they get the extra GO service (aka SmartTrack) up and running before they start the Bloor-Yonge expansion. They'll need at least couple relief locations (Dundas West, Main, & Kennedy) to handle the diversions.
1) Expanding Bloor-Yonge is like giving an overweight person bigger pants and saying that it's solved their weight problem.
2) I really hope they get the extra GO service (aka SmartTrack) up and running before they start the Bloor-Yonge expansion. They'll need at least couple relief locations (Dundas West, Main, & Kennedy) to handle the diversions.
Bayer
Senior Member
I suppose Bloor-Yonge improvements are necessary, but I don't see anything being done about the fact that service is at every 3-4 minutes at certain hours, and that is not enough even though there would be capacity for improvement; for example, northbound passengers are often packed like sardines as early as King St. between 3 and 4 pm on weekdays. Same problem between 6:30 and 7:30 southbound at Bloor.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
Not sure if I like this proposal, if only because it can be used as yet another reason to defer the DRL.
Northern Light
Senior Member
That doesn't require large new capital dollars to address though. There are enough trains, ATC is en route, the improved station should cut dwell time at the margins.
It's entirely a TTC/City issue to boost shoulder-peak service, and that is entirely do-able, with existing or coming infrastructure.
It's a matter of more dollars for service. Many TTC lines/routes have that need in and out of peak times.
I'm not sure how much more we (should) be talking about in the TTC's annual appropriation but I think you can safely assume in the 10s of millions per year.
I think the obvious needs are:
Greater peak service
Greater off-peak service
Greater overnight service (20m or better frequency, and 6 or so additional routes)
Greater minimum service (every 20m min, all routes, all times)
Starting Sunday service at 7am
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Northern Light
Senior Member
The RL has clearly been pushed back already, sadly.
Add to that, this is needed regardless.
It's still an overdue project; so is the RL, and we should not settle for an either/or proposition.
salsa
Senior Member
It's baffling to me that even members who usually ought to know better are still putting so much faith in the Ontario Line.
I think the most likely scenario is that if Ford gets dumped in 2022 (or even before then, if it's a coup within his own party), that the TTC dusts off the old Relief Line subway plans and proceeds with those. It would be just another Ford-caused multi-year "run around in a circle just to finish exactly where you started" transit project (see: Finch West LRT).
salsa
Senior Member
Change of government aside, my more immediate concern is the fact that the whole scheme is merely conceptual at this point with many unresolved details. If we use Smarttrack as an analogy, we are at the early stage where John Tory's bunch of google-map consultants were convinced that you can run a heavy rail spur down Eglinton Ave no problem. Sure, those proposed cross-platform transfers and elevated segments sound great in theory, but I'm still waiting to hear how Metrolinx plans to actually fit all of that within the rail corridor without constraining GO Transit expansion. Or how they plan to overcome local neighborhood opposition, or navigate all those tight turns underneath developed areas. Don't be surprised if the province comes back a while later and informs us that key elements of the plan were not technically feasible after having actually studied it (more likely: we find out through a freedom of information request that the scheme was secretly abandoned)...resulting in a significantly different plan and considerable time wasted. So to anyone who tries to compare this to the city's fully developed relief line, just understand that you are comparing apples to oranges.
Avenue
Active Member
LOL Ontario Line is decades away.
Jonny5
Senior Member
We're at the point where King and College seriously need a full on strip it to the guts renovation and expansion too. It's no good to increase capacity in to downtown with trains passing through faster and more frequently at Yonge and Bloor going south when they get to those stations and there's literally no space on the platform left for people to exit from the train.