DRL routing. Where would you put it?

[Woodbridge_Heights]

So I decided to do a more detailed version of the transit map that I posted in the Fantasy Maps thread. Specifically, the downtown area.

View attachment 8668

Key Elements:

1) Decoupling of the Yonge and University-Spadina Subways, as has been mentioned before (and what my regional map showed).

2) The partial wye at Yonge & Front would be complex, but I think it would be doable. The existing east to north/south to west option would be retained. Immediately south of King Station, a set of tracks would veer off on the outside of the existing tracks, and drop below the current turn into Union. It would continue south-southwest into a new Union platform underneath the current bus terminal and tracks.

The Downtowner would use the current Union platforms, and where the tracks currently veer north, they would continue east along Front St (but still leaving switches there for trains to go north).

3) After passing Yonge, the tunnel would veer slightly to the south, and go underneath the Esplanade parkland until Parliament, where it would switch to a rail corridor alignment.

4) The Yonge line would terminate at a new Southcore Station, either underneath or directly beside Lakeshore, under the Gardiner. I included this in Phase 1 because it would be easier to put in crossovers leading into Southcore Station than it would be into the new Union. Southcore will also desperately need a subway station when completed.

5) The Yonge line can be pushed as far west as needed, or as funding warrants. It would continue under Lakeshore, and then go through the Ex, veer north, and go up Dufferin to Bloor. This would provide interchanges to every western GO line.

6) DRL East up the usual alignment east of the Don, and up to Eglinton & Don Mills (future extension north of Bloor).

I think it's much better to just build a new DRL rather than try to decouple YUS, no matter how fancy we make it look. It's a great idea still, just I don't know, not here. Build the DRL as planned and it will relieve Yonge-Bloor station, maybe way into the future we can find a way to untangle the wye between Bay-Museum-St George to make the original inter-lined plan for the B-D and YUS lines more logical.

 

[gweed123]

I think it's much better to just build a new DRL rather than try to decouple YUS, no matter how fancy we make it look. It's a great idea still, just I don't know, not here. Build the DRL as planned and it will relieve Yonge-Bloor station, maybe way into the future we can find a way to untangle the wye between Bay-Museum-St George to make the original inter-lined plan for the B-D and YUS lines more logical.

See the thing is, any new "independent" DRL is going to require an expensive and complicated retrofit of at least one, or two, or even possibly 3 downtown stations. That's not going to come cheap. Doing it the way I described, the only station downtown that will need any modification is Union, and that's simply by the addition of a pedestrian pathway between the two platforms (possibly via the streetcar loop connection).

Yes, it involves more modification of the existing tracks, but track modification is much cheaper than station modification. Under the "standard" DRL plan, a good portion of the budget would be going to trying to squeeze a new platform underneath a couple of existing stations.

With this new plan, the only associated delays may be that the Yonge and University lines are decoupled for a bit while track work is being done between King and Union. The stations themselves wouldn't be affected.

 

[BurlOak]

See the thing is, any new "independent" DRL is going to require an expensive and complicated retrofit of at least one, or two, or even possibly 3 downtown stations. That's not going to come cheap. Doing it the way I described, the only station downtown that will need any modification is Union, and that's simply by the addition of a pedestrian pathway between the two platforms (possibly via the streetcar loop connection).

Yes, it involves more modification of the existing tracks, but track modification is much cheaper than station modification. Under the "standard" DRL plan, a good portion of the budget would be going to trying to squeeze a new platform underneath a couple of existing stations.

With this new plan, the only associated delays may be that the Yonge and University lines are decoupled for a bit while track work is being done between King and Union. The stations themselves wouldn't be affected.

I like this as well.
1) I have a question about why the two lines will still be connected using the wye. Would this be for regular service, possible interlining, construction staging, or non revenue train movements. It would be nice is you could close the Yonge line between King and Union, but maintaining service during construction is almost certainly required.

2) I very much agree that building a station under the existing stations is very expensive and disruptive. Can the Pape-Danforth station be built above the Danforth line. That is a concept from "TRZ's DRL Keele Belt Line Proposal" (http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/showthread.php/18221-DRL-routing.-Where-would-you-put-it/page7) that I liked - a shallow station above the existing subway line. In a downtown location where stations are 500m to 600m apart and stations are 200m in length, TBM is almost redundant since stations are built cut-and-cover. Just build it all shallow with cut-and-cover and it would be faster to build.

3) How close to Union would the new Yonge line station be. I can see a lot of transfers at this location.

4) What are GO's plans for Union. I thought a good option may be to tunnel GO under Wellington. I heard GO may want a new Union South station built. Would this interfere with GO's plans and/or could GO still relieve their congestion at Union.

 

[Dan416]

I think the best part of the decoupling Yonge from US is that it frees Yonge to operate at its own frequencies, and DRL-US can run at its own frequencies. And if we want to build a DRL West in the future we can do it by extending the Yonge line as in gweed123's map.

 

[gweed123]

I like this as well.
1) I have a question about why the two lines will still be connected using the wye. Would this be for regular service, possible interlining, construction staging, or non revenue train movements. It would be nice is you could close the Yonge line between King and Union, but maintaining service during construction is almost certainly required.

I would think it would be used for transferring vehicles between lines. That location would be the only connection between the Yonge and Downtowner until Sheppard is pushed further west. Ideally, Yonge would use Davisville and the Downtowner would use Wilson, but changing between them would still be required.

Since the Downtowner would be the shallower of the two tunnels, keeping a set of crossovers there would be useful. Think of when you travel between Museum and St. George, coming into St. George you cross over some tracks that continue east into Lower Bay. Same idea. Also, if there is a problem on one of the lines, you can route trains through that and do the existing U.

2) I very much agree that building a station under the existing stations is very expensive and disruptive. Can the Pape-Danforth station be built above the Danforth line. That is a concept from "TRZ's DRL Keele Belt Line Proposal" (http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/showthread.php/18221-DRL-routing.-Where-would-you-put-it/page7) that I liked - a shallow station above the existing subway line. In a downtown location where stations are 500m to 600m apart and stations are 200m in length, TBM is almost redundant since stations are built cut-and-cover. Just build it all shallow with cut-and-cover and it would be faster to build.

South of Danforth, Pape is a relatively minor street, so a cut and cover station construction, and maybe even tunnel construction, is a possibility. To be honest I haven't given much consideration to station design at Pape-Danforth though. I've been more concerned with downtown.

3) How close to Union would the new Yonge line station be. I can see a lot of transfers at this location.

Ideally I'd like it to be that at the east end of every GO platform there is a set of stairs down to a mezzanine that is overtop of the Yonge platform. That mezzanine would also have a connection to the existing Union Subway station via the Streetcar loop area. I don't see very many people transferring from one line to the other at this location, because most people either get on or get off at Union, and those who do ride through Union are normally only going a stop or two past Union, in which case it would be faster for them to reach their destination by getting off either at Yonge or University instead of transferring. Most of the transfers occurring are TTC <-> GO, not TTC <-> TTC.

4) What are GO's plans for Union. I thought a good option may be to tunnel GO under Wellington. I heard GO may want a new Union South station built. Would this interfere with GO's plans and/or could GO still relieve their congestion at Union.

GO's plans for Union right now are still very much up in the air as far as expansion goes. They did that report a few months ago, but that was very preliminary. I'm sure they're still very open to suggestions at this point.

One thing that this proposal does do is it has connections on the Yonge line extension to both all GO lines in the west end (Exhibition West for Lakeshore, Parkdale for all others), so they may get that transfer effect there.

I think the best part of the decoupling Yonge from US is that it frees Yonge to operate at its own frequencies, and DRL-US can run at its own frequencies. And if we want to build a DRL West in the future we can do it by extending the Yonge line as in gweed123's map.

Exactly, it eliminates the need for short turns. The ridership on the DRL will be very similar to what University-Spadina is, so they'll match up much more closely. If they do extend the Yonge line further west, short turns may not even be required, because it's not that big of an extension. It's the exact same number of stops between Union and St. Clair West as it would be from Union to Bloor-Dufferin (10). Also makes sense to have trains stop at an interchange station.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Thought you guys would be interested in the tweet from Josh Matlow:

Eglinton & Finch LRTs decided on Feb 8. Sheppard LRT will be approved tomorrow. Action on DRL, Eglinton Crosstown-Airport & more coming soon.

Looks like Council may be getting its act together on the DRL. But don't get your hopes up. This is probably the 700th time Council has talked about the DRL.

 

[CapitalSeven]

I've long thought decoupling Yonge from University had merit. It would give riders quite a lot of options, and would distribute them into a lot of existing stations (additional exits would be needed) rather than dumping tens of thousands from both directions into a couple of stations in the core.

But I think there's an inefficienty in plan shown a few posts back. The west extension to the Exhibition duplicates the current streetcar route yet leaves Front unserviced, and the connection at Union is very long. Instead, I would run west from Union on Front, resulting in two routes in the west. The University line could have a station under York (easier connection) and then hit Queen's Quay East (no need for a streetcar extension) before turning up to the West Don Lands around Parliament. I think this would be cheaper to build and hit more targets.

 

[gweed123]

To put a graphic to the Union complex that I described earlier, here it is:

The grey is the station boxes, the light grey is the non-revenue connection between the lines (the current Union curve), the white is the pedestrian connections (some inside the fare paid area, some not), the green dots are primary entrances, and the blue dots are secondary entrances.

The key with these new stations is pedestrian connectivity to adjacent areas. This is especially important in these locations because of the big barriers in some cases between the station and adjacent areas (rail tracks, Gardiner/Lake Shore, etc). Connecting under them is crucial.

Nothing new from what I posted a couple days ago, just some more detail of the most crucial area of the plan. Sorry for the rough graphic, haha, I just wanted to convey the idea, I didn't think it was necessary to pretty it up.

 

[RC8]

So I decided to do a more detailed version of the transit map that I posted in the Fantasy Maps thread. Specifically, the downtown area.

View attachment 8668

Key Elements:

1) Decoupling of the Yonge and University-Spadina Subways, as has been mentioned before (and what my regional map showed).

2) The partial wye at Yonge & Front would be complex, but I think it would be doable. The existing east to north/south to west option would be retained. Immediately south of King Station, a set of tracks would veer off on the outside of the existing tracks, and drop below the current turn into Union. It would continue south-southwest into a new Union platform underneath the current bus terminal and tracks.

The Downtowner would use the current Union platforms, and where the tracks currently veer north, they would continue east along Front St (but still leaving switches there for trains to go north).

3) After passing Yonge, the tunnel would veer slightly to the south, and go underneath the Esplanade parkland until Parliament, where it would switch to a rail corridor alignment.

4) The Yonge line would terminate at a new Southcore Station, either underneath or directly beside Lakeshore, under the Gardiner. I included this in Phase 1 because it would be easier to put in crossovers leading into Southcore Station than it would be into the new Union. Southcore will also desperately need a subway station when completed.

5) The Yonge line can be pushed as far west as needed, or as funding warrants. It would continue under Lakeshore, and then go through the Ex, veer north, and go up Dufferin to Bloor. This would provide interchanges to every western GO line.

6) DRL East up the usual alignment east of the Don, and up to Eglinton & Don Mills (future extension north of Bloor).

I actually really like your idea. I feel it would also protect the great neighbourhoods downtown that function very well with streetcars.

 

[canmark]

New TTC chief talkin' DRL.

Andy Byford, the TTC’s new CEO, is pushing the city to have a "sensible debate" on subway expansion, starting with a downtown relief line.

Anyone who rides the Yonge-University-Spadina line knows that the corridor is basically full, Mr. Byford told reporters following a speech at the Toronto Board of Trade. The TTC is in the midst of rolling out new trains that carry more people, and will be changing its signaling system to help them run more smoothly, but he said there is a limit to how much that can do.

"Fundamentally, there will come a point with the city's population increasing exponentially where we do need that new capacity," Mr. Byford said. "The downtown relief line has got to be looked at and has got to be talked about right now."

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Yes!! About time the TTC stop pretending it's not an issue.

gweed:

Been looking at your plan, not a huge fan of a more southerly alignment for the western leg for several reasons:
1. Additional ridership potential is limited, given the majority of sites along the stretch are already under development; that can be contrasted against very clear patterns of ongoing and future commercial AND residential densification in the Entertainment District, Freedville, etc.
2. 509 provides a sufficient level of service for the area served by the southernly alignment, whereas a more northerly alignment can help ease the pressure more effectively off saturated King and Queen streetcar lines (which can in turn lead to changes to /elimination of some of said routes)
3. Key nodes such as Union/Southcore, MTCC, Cityplace, Exhibition can remain well served even if the line is northwards.
4. Infrastructure conflicts/constructability - building underneath/around the Gardiner/Lakeshore corridor might translate into additional costs/risk/inconvenience for what is arguably the busiest arterial route into the city; closeness to the lake/high water table could also increase cost/complexity/risk (recall water intrusion issues for the tunnel for 509)
5. The added costs of 2 interchange stations (on top of Union) might be justifiable by network connectivity reasons.

AoD

 

[k10ery]

"Fundamentally, there will come a point with the city's population increasing exponentially where we do need that new capacity," Mr. Byford said. "The downtown relief line has got to be looked at and has got to be talked about right now."

Odd, since supposedly the TTC (through a consultant) is looking at the DRL right now. Does Byford know that?

 

[rbt]

Odd, since supposedly the TTC (through a consultant) is looking at the DRL right now. Does Byford know that?

There is $0 in funding for the DRL expected when that report completes. This may be what he is referring to.

 

[gweed123]

Been looking at your plan, not a huge fan of a more southerly alignment for the western leg for several reasons:
1. Additional ridership potential is limited, given the majority of sites along the stretch are already under development; that can be contrasted against very clear patterns of ongoing and future commercial AND residential densification in the Entertainment District, Freedville, etc.

My primary rationale with not putting it north of the rail tracks is that any subway north of the rail tracks excludes the semi-realistic possibility of a Queen LRT. By putting it south of the rail tracks, it leaves that door open.

And when the DRL intercepts those streetcar routes at Dufferin, many of the riders will get off, very similar to what happens at Yonge (what % of the streetcar riders actually stay on the streetcar from before Church to past University, 40%?) I would expect that about 40% of the passengers would get off, at least during the morning rush hour. Even if they were going from Dufferin and Dundas to Yonge and Dundas, taking the Yonge extension would still likely be faster than the streetcar.

The end result is reduced pressure on the streetcar network, which will provide more effective transit to that area, until the Queen LRT is built.

2. 509 provides a sufficient level of service for the area served by the southernly alignment, whereas a more northerly alignment can help ease the pressure more effectively off saturated King and Queen streetcar lines (which can in turn lead to changes to /elimination of some of said routes)

The Waterfront LRT isn't using the Harbourfront alignment for the precise reason that it isn't sufficient for much higher passenger volumes than it's currently carrying.

The Queen and King streetcar thing was addressed in my previous point.

3. Key nodes such as Union/Southcore, MTCC, Cityplace, Exhibition can remain well served even if the line is northwards.

One of the big advantages that I see with this alignment is it creates an excuse for the City to sell off some of the surplus parking lands in the Ex grounds, possibly for condo use. A massive new development area with direct subway access could fetch a pretty penny, and may actually even cover some of the construction costs (not a lot, but some).

4. Infrastructure conflicts/constructability - building underneath/around the Gardiner/Lakeshore corridor might translate into additional costs/risk/inconvenience for what is arguably the busiest arterial route into the city; closeness to the lake/high water table could also increase cost/complexity/risk (recall water intrusion issues for the tunnel for 509)

The reality is that tunnelling anywhere in downtown is going to be complex. And I have no doubt that there may be some associated delays on Lakeshore, but at least that route has an alternative route directly above it. The Big Dig managed to dig a highway tunnel directly underneath an existing elevated highway, so there's precedent with something even more complex than a subway tunnel.

5. The added costs of 2 interchange stations (on top of Union) might be justifiable by network connectivity reasons.

But the thing is network connectivity in this area isn't a big deal. It's a destination, not a transfer node (with the exception of Union). The vast majority of the people getting off subway trains in downtown are not transferring to surface routes or other subway routes. Their trip ends (or begins) there.

I mentioned Union as the exception but even it isn't a big TTC <-> TTC transfer location, it's mostly TTC <-> GO. The only big transfer is to the Harbourfront Streetcar, which would basically become redundant if a subway was put there instead, although the East Bayfront LRT would still use that platform. I would venture to say that if the DRL were to connect in at Union, in some shape or form, the number of YUS <-> DRL transfers would be very low, especially if my plan were adopted, because both lines would still connect to the more northern sections of downtown (no need to transfer from DRL to YUS to get up to Queen, because both parts of the X would go up to Queen without a transfer).

I think in downtown, accessibility matters more than connectivity.

Your points are very valid though, I'm just trying to say where I'm coming from on this, and why I went the way that I went.

 

[Dan416]

My primary rationale with not putting it north of the rail tracks is that any subway north of the rail tracks excludes the semi-realistic possibility of a Queen LRT. By putting it south of the rail tracks, it leaves that door open.

And when the DRL intercepts those streetcar routes at Dufferin, many of the riders will get off, very similar to what happens at Yonge (what % of the streetcar riders actually stay on the streetcar from before Church to past University, 40%?) I would expect that about 40% of the passengers would get off, at least during the morning rush hour. Even if they were going from Dufferin and Dundas to Yonge and Dundas, taking the Yonge extension would still likely be faster than the streetcar.

The end result is reduced pressure on the streetcar network, which will provide more effective transit to that area, until the Queen LRT is built.



The Waterfront LRT isn't using the Harbourfront alignment for the precise reason that it isn't sufficient for much higher passenger volumes than it's currently carrying.

The Queen and King streetcar thing was addressed in my previous point.



One of the big advantages that I see with this alignment is it creates an excuse for the City to sell off some of the surplus parking lands in the Ex grounds, possibly for condo use. A massive new development area with direct subway access could fetch a pretty penny, and may actually even cover some of the construction costs (not a lot, but some).



The reality is that tunnelling anywhere in downtown is going to be complex. And I have no doubt that there may be some associated delays on Lakeshore, but at least that route has an alternative route directly above it. The Big Dig managed to dig a highway tunnel directly underneath an existing elevated highway, so there's precedent with something even more complex than a subway tunnel.




But the thing is network connectivity in this area isn't a big deal. It's a destination, not a transfer node (with the exception of Union). The vast majority of the people getting off subway trains in downtown are not transferring to surface routes or other subway routes. Their trip ends (or begins) there.

I mentioned Union as the exception but even it isn't a big TTC <-> TTC transfer location, it's mostly TTC <-> GO. The only big transfer is to the Harbourfront Streetcar, which would basically become redundant if a subway was put there instead, although the East Bayfront LRT would still use that platform. I would venture to say that if the DRL were to connect in at Union, in some shape or form, the number of YUS <-> DRL transfers would be very low, especially if my plan were adopted, because both lines would still connect to the more northern sections of downtown (no need to transfer from DRL to YUS to get up to Queen, because both parts of the X would go up to Queen without a transfer).

I think in downtown, accessibility matters more than connectivity.

Your points are very valid though, I'm just trying to say where I'm coming from on this, and why I went the way that I went.

Well said