T-Bor
Active Member
A one time cost of $30M would enable you to move Oriole directly on-top of Leslie with an okay connection no worse than the SRT and potentially quite a bit better.
Another $40M and you can have a station at Lawrence near DVP with a very small bus terminal (for Lawrence route only).
$700M to triple track (double GO + freight), electrify, and potentially remove a few kinks like following the DVP instead winding west then back east. An electric GO train has the potential to deal with the greater slope. $700M is likely larger than necessary based on Georgetown grade separation but Don Valley is tricky to deal with.
Anyway, for $1B, about half of the cost of the estimated Subway replacement for the SRT, you can have near subway level service with TTC connections at Leslie Station, Lawrence, Union, and potentially Queen/King at new West Donlands neighbourhood by widening the bridge by 4 lanes for a very large centre tram platform and staircases.
Once you're at leslie station it's seriously a 40-minute commute still once you factor in waiting for trains just getting to union station. I'd totally pay an extra dollar to shave 20 minutes off a commute like that. A station in Don Mills would take congestion off the dvp as well if it followed the same route, since thats the way people drive anyway. How this would work from an engineering point of view is beyond me, but if there was somehow the ability to build a huge parking garage somewhere near the dvp so people could park and take the train downtown it'd do wonders for traffic.
I agree that something like a fare card is the way to go, maybe a metropass style thing with zones a la London or..you know...many other major world cities