Mississauga Hurontario-Main Line 10 LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

[SaugeenJunction]

Im pretty sure they're doing ballast track on the whole line due to budget cuts from the province

I don’t believe that it will be ballasted, rather the tracks will still be affixed to concrete, but the concrete won’t be poured to be level with the track. They’ve essentially “cut” the finishing layer of concrete. Example below:

 

[turini2]

With regard to the budget cuts, I assume Mississauga/BIAs made no effort to stump up the modest costs for landscaping/streetscape upgrades?

 

[Steve X]

I don’t believe that it will be ballasted, rather the tracks will still be affixed to concrete, but the concrete won’t be poured to be level with the track. They’ve essentially “cut” the finishing layer of concrete. Example below:

View attachment 268830

This is much easier to repair and replace rails than fully embedded rails. Besides those surfaces like TTC streetcar tracks deteriorate quickly when the snowplow comes by and rips chucks of concrete out.

 

[Allandale25]

With regard to the budget cuts, I assume Mississauga/BIAs made no effort to stump up the modest costs for landscaping/streetscape upgrades?

I can't recall how significant/what the cuts were to landscaping/streetscaping upgrades? Anyone remember? Maybe there just wasn't the money given the cost? Did Mississauga already contribute an amount to do upgrades? I seem to have a figure of $25 million in my head for this announced/passed by Council some time after 2015...

 

[drum118]

With regard to the budget cuts, I assume Mississauga/BIAs made no effort to stump up the modest costs for landscaping/streetscape upgrades?

What BIA as there is none that I know of along the corridor. There was talk about one for Cooksville and no idea where it is or happen for it.

Landscaping saw a huge scale back due to funding. I know council was to help with upgrading the corridor for landscaping, but can't recall how much or the cost. In-fact, the city was to build the bridge for Cooksville stop before the LRT was to be built.

As for rail, the last I heard the corridor will have a top coat on them like TTC. There was a push by a few councilors to have open rail or ballast, but the contractor said no. Not sure about the bridges, but wouldn't be surprise if they are like KW. The elevated section will be like the Eglinton LRT line. At the end of the day, the P3 contractor has bid the contract that will cost them the least amount to maintain over the 30 year contract and if the province wants something else that not in the contract, they will have to pickup any extra cost to maintain and built the system to their needs.

The reason TTC top coat gets torn up is based on the road itself as well paving. Asphalt gets worn down next to the concrete that cause the plows to catch the concrete in the first place. This method is use world wide.

St Clair ROW sees cars and trucks make u-turns in mid block since it is easy to do so than a open track.

 

[drum118]

Mobilinx is building the center piers at the 407 underpass. The purpose is to widen the bridge to accommodate the LRT. Only early stage has been completed. There will be construction at this area in the coming years. The bridge once completed will be wide enough to accommodate the LRT.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Is tunnelling an LRT a barrier to creating complete communities & a drain on other badly needed transit investment?

From link.

After months confined to a briefing room at Queen’s Park, communicating with journalists by conference call, Doug Ford has recently set out to journey across Ontario. Viewed by many as a campaign tour, the Premier has travelled around the province making announcements, drawing attention to old projects and offering updates on his government’s response to COVID-19.

On August 19, he was in Mississauga talking about the Eglinton West LRT extension. Ford announced the release of a request for proposals (RFP) to advance tunnelling work on the project, signaling even in the face of a pandemic, the plan will continue undeterred by a microscopic foe.

The Eglinton West LRT Extension will connect Renforth Station, on the eastern limits of the Mississauga Transitway, to Mount Dennis, the eastern most stop on Toronto’s soon-to-be-completed Eglinton Crosstown West Extension. It will largely be built in Toronto.

Upon completion, it will give residents in Mississauga access to a new rapid transit line and another direct connection to the TTC subway system. Future travellers will be able to board a bus at Winston Churchill Boulevard, travel along the Transitway, transfer to the Eglinton LRT route and connect to the Subway at either the Eglinton West or Eglinton station, or continue as far as Kennedy Subway station at the far end of TTC Line 2.

As The Pointer has previously reported, the extension could be a key missing piece in Mississauga’s transit network. It offers a chance for the beleaguered and underused Transitway BRT infrastructure to finally fulfill its cost and potential.

Despite its obvious benefits, question marks hang over the project, too. In particular, the province’s move to build underground — confirmed by the release of RFPs — raises questions about the decision.

Now, Brampton, and its mayor, specifically, are pushing for a tunnel option for part of a proposed extension of the Hurontario LRT, up the city’s Main Street and into the historic downtown.

In both cases, going underground means an entirely different cost proposal. For Brampton, the tunnel option preferred by Patrick Brown could be as much as $1.3 billion more than a surface alignment.

The Eglinton West LRT extension serves as a guide, possibly for good rapid transit planning, but perhaps as an example of misused transit investment that is badly needed for other projects, and for the inability to truly connect communities, if the wrong approach is followed.

Both Brampton and Mississauga are desperately trying to shed their suburban pasts, and transit is a key component to a more urban future. But bad decisions could stand in the way.

In the business case for the Eglinton West extension, published by Metrolinx in February 2020, four options were outlined. The first was to run the route at street level, with nine stops along a particular section leading up to the 427-401 interchange, linking communities along the way with closer rapid transit hubs that each attract considerable surrounding investment, in both residential and commercial enterprise that clusters around a station.

The second and third options involved combinations of tunnelling and different numbers of stops, while the fourth option suggested six stops, largely underground.

In recent years, the City of Toronto has expressed a preference to run the route at surface level. When the provincial government confirmed funding, it chose to build the route underground with six stops.

The decision was a costly one.

According to a provincial media release, the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension will cost $4.7 billion and is scheduled to be delivered before 2031. Figures in the Metrolinx business case show a route built at street level would cost $3.5 billion (including operating costs), a significant saving. It would have also delivered three more stops along the tunnelled part of the corridor.

“Decisions on alignments take into account a number of factors, including costs, integration with other transit, community impacts, deliverability and operations, and topography, which are unique to each project,” Matt Llewellyn, a spokesperson for Metrolinx, told The Pointer. “The alignment option we are moving forward from the Initial Business Case provides an optimal trade-off between the ease of local access and the speed of travelling, and outperforms all other options examined in the business case in terms of offering the best network connectivity and travel experience for people living and travelling along the corridor.”

But, does this consider the whole picture?

Transit in the GTA is at a crossroads, stuck between the future and the past. In previous years, planners built transportation on the assumption they needed to get suburban commuters out of their cars. They used subways and GO Transit to get people from far flung suburbia into the downtown as quickly as possible — the destination was key and not the journey, or what was created along the way.

Recent discussions around 15-minute communities and sustainable development have turned the orthodoxy on its head. Instead of getting commuters from Peel neighbourhoods like Erin Mills to Union Station, smart growth looks at limiting the distance people have to travel to work, eat and play by mixing residential spaces with work and recreation. Transit through the community is even more important than transit from it.

One view sees transit as a means to an end, the other includes it as a community building tool. An LRT can do more than funnell suburbanites to their office blocks, it can help communities grow.

“It speaks to the way that [the] Toronto [region] has thought about transit, especially rapid transit, which has been first of all as a long-distance community mode and second of all as doing everything possible not to impede the automobile,” Matti Siemiatycki, an urban planning professor with a focus on transportation at the University of Toronto, told The Pointer. “The model here for the big projects has been to put them underground [and] focus on moving people long distances instead of [developing] community.”

The aim of transit design naturally plays a role in how cities develop.

A subway or GO train with few stops will lead to clusters of new housing in communities around stations, with barren stretches in between. Ariel images of Toronto’s Line 1 illustrate this, with groups of towers at stations and single-detached houses between. A streetcar or rapid bus route, on the other hand, is more likely to yield development the length of the route, with stops usually a few steps away.

In Mississauga, a major influx of development along Hurontario Street, where an LRT will begin running in 2024, is evidence of the boost a surface route can bring. A benefit study for the project, done by consultancy group Steer Davies Gleave (now known as Steer) which was commissioned by Metrolinx and both the cities of Mississauga and Brampton, found it would bring a “development potential/land value uplift” of between $200 and $420 million. That study was for an alignment that included the since cancelled loop around Mississauga’s downtown, but is not far removed from the line currently under construction.

Major developments at Eglinton, in Port Credit and around Square One are evidence of the rush of private sector investment that floods into rapid transit corridors and show the potential attraction of surface alignments.

...

 

[ARG1]

Is tunnelling an LRT a barrier to creating complete communities & a drain on other badly needed transit investment?

From link.

I said my piece about this in another thread, but in short, complete communities are utopic at best, and denies the reality that people want to commute to cultural centers even outside of rush hour commutes, and focusing on building transit to serve "complete communities" will just further unnecessary car use. Now arguably, brampton could probably get away with at grade transit in the downtown, however the logic behind making Hurontario LRT underground in downtown Brampton follows a completely separate line of logic, which is space. Unlike in Mississauga, many areas of Main St. in Brampton are quite narrow with not a lot of room for widening, meaning that your options are becoming limited to either having the LRTs run in mixed traffic, which is horrible, leaving Main St. with only 2 lanes of traffic in both directions, which would make travel for both pedestrians and cars cumbersome, leaving underground being the only option that serves the area properly. York Region faced a similar problem in Richmond Hill, and is likely going to face the same problem again in Aurora, if and when they will connect the Newmarket and Richmond Hill Rapidways. These downtowns are narrow areas that are already basically 2 lane roads since 1 lane is unofficially reserved for streetside parking, and thus unless they want to build a tunneled busway (which some of the early concept art actually suggested), they have to basically end the rapidway at these downtown sections, and busses run in mixed traffic, where they become the slowest section of the entire line.

 

[adrianaliu]

is having 2 general purpose lanes in narrower sections really that bad? this arrangement is present for most of ions length. brampton has at least a few large parking lots downtown i dont see how paralell parking is so badly needed. im not nessecarily opposed to tunelling in that section but i think the cost will be offputting

 

[Bojaxs]

Mobilinx is building the center piers at the 407 underpass. The purpose is to widen the bridge to accommodate the LRT. Only early stage has been completed. There will be construction at this area in the coming years. The bridge once completed will be wide enough to accommodate the LRT.

Surprised at how accommodating the 407 has been. Are they allowing this construction purely as good PR? Doesn't the 407's contract with the province forbid the construction of mass transit projects near or on 407 property?

 

[drum118]

Surprised at how accommodating the 407 has been. Are they allowing this construction purely as good PR? Doesn't the 407's contract with the province forbid the construction of mass transit projects near or on 407 property?

407 must allow work on bridges going over them since they don't want them falling on their road and stop $$ since traffic can't use the road. It most likely in the contract they must allow access to 407 for any type of work on the bridges. 407 is most likely responsibly for work on the underpasses.

The 407 BRT is to be built next to the 407 that not on the 407 property.

 

[ARG1]

is having 2 general purpose lanes in narrower sections really that bad? this arrangement is present for most of ions length. brampton has at least a few large parking lots downtown i dont see how paralell parking is so badly needed. im not nessecarily opposed to tunelling in that section but i think the cost will be offputting

While I'm not 100% familiar with Brampton Downtown, based off what I've heard from people, and my own experience in similar areas like Downtown Richmond Hill, narrowing the street down to two lanes would be an absolute disaster. Furthermore, the last thing we want is to encourage the construction of more parking lots in the area, rather than letting people do side parking.

 

[drum118]

While I'm not 100% familiar with Brampton Downtown, based off what I've heard from people, and my own experience in similar areas like Downtown Richmond Hill, narrowing the street down to two lanes would be an absolute disaster. Furthermore, the last thing we want is to encourage the construction of more parking lots in the area, rather than letting people do side parking.

It been on Richmond Hill Books since 2007 that a tunnel is to be built from the north side where it become narrow to the southside where it becomes wider again.

The different between Brampton and RH is the fact RH see far more traffic and major road in RH are farther apart for N-S.

Boo Hoo that there is only a single lane of traffic each way with no parking on the street. There should be no parking on major streets period as it slow the flow of traffic to a snail pace. We need to change the thinking cars are the all to be things as well king of the road by removing parking and investing heavily in transit.

If Mississauga is going from 3 lanes to 2 lanes, why can't Brampton do it, let a lone 2 to 1??

 

[ARG1]

It been on Richmond Hill Books since 2007 that a tunnel is to be built from the north side where it become narrow to the southside where it becomes wider again.

The different between Brampton and RH is the fact RH see far more traffic and major road in RH are farther apart for N-S.

Boo Hoo that there is only a single lane of traffic each way with no parking on the street. There should be no parking on major streets period as it slow the flow of traffic to a snail pace. We need to change the thinking cars are the all to be things as well king of the road by removing parking and investing heavily in transit.

If Mississauga is going from 3 lanes to 2 lanes, why can't Brampton do it, let a lone 2 to 1??

How much extra lanes improve traffic basically operates on a log graph. Reducing a 4 lane road to a 2 lane road is a MASSIVE deal. Meanwhile reducing a 6 lane road to a 4 lane road, eh, doesn't do nearly as much, especially on a regular major street (this is different than for instance on a highway), so its not a fair comparison.

Also, digging a tunnel under Yonge? Neat. To bad it will never happen

 

[Wm Perkins Bull]

The alternative to the tunnel or the awkward surface option is to do bus lanes in the downtown and remove car lanes between Wellington and Nelson, with cars looping around. Every parking garage would remain accessible, and when you combine a detour around Four Corners, with changing the speed to 30 km/h, people will stop driving through the downtown, because other roads would be faster.