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Officially Unofficial Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan Thread

About REX or Metrolinx in general, I think we should rename it T-Dot and work out some kind of bacronym. It is kind of obnoxious, but I think it would be funny/applicable and far less sterile than "Metrolinx".

Toronto District Overground Transit, T DOT?

Ohh, and the whole idea of a dot would give the organization a wide range of artistic possibilities. The TTC's new adult ticket style.
 
Not necessarily. The O-Train in Ottawa is diesel-hydraulic and runs every 15 minutes. Since the only place to pass each other is in the middle, schedules are critical, and it seems to work pretty well.

Any pilot project will probably use dual-mode trainsets, but full scale rollout would likely be electric.
 
RedRocket191 said:
Not necessarily. The O-Train in Ottawa is diesel-hydraulic and runs every 15 minutes. Since the only place to pass each other is in the middle, schedules are critical, and it seems to work pretty well.

Any pilot project will probably use dual-mode trainsets, but full scale rollout would likely be electric.
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That's exactly the point that should be made, Red Rocket. I'd love to see an O-Train style service on the Stouffville line as an easy first step towards letting people know what regional rail could be like. It could operate on 15 minute headways, like the O-Train, which would only require a couple short sidings. The minimal freight traffic on the line could be shifted to the evening hours. Passengers could transfer either to the subway at Kennedy or to the GO train at Scarborough station if they time it right.

I'm not sure if it's in this thread or another one, but Dentrobate was going on about industrial wastelands east of Kennedy where the Sheppard Subway/Malvern GO/Stouffville GO interchange would be located. That area is set to see some of the most intensive redevelopment around, with thousands of new residential units and commercial development to be centred on the transit hub. It's a fantastic spot for a new subway and regional rail station.
 
I'd like to see a pilot project for REX between Toronto and Brampton, with every second train going to Pearson Airport... but I'm biased. Either way, one of the main problems with new transit technology in Toronto is the lack of practical examples.

Transit City will probably operate more like what they have in Calgary than what we have on Queen, and it probably won't even be anything like Calgary. The subways of the future might not look anything like the subways we have now.

One of these days we'll have to take a gamble and build a pilot project.
 
I'm obviously a big fan of improvements to the Georgetown line, since I'm a pretty regular rider, but the Stouffville line would be much easier to do since there's minimal freight interference.

I doubt subways of the future will be different from subways of today, since they run very well. Toronto's streetcars, on the other hand, have a lot of problems that need solving. My suggestion: a really advanced signalling system tied in with traffic lights that tracks all vehicles with GPS and ensures that their headways are correct and that traffic lights are always green. There's no reason why it's not possible. They do it all over Europe. If we actually had that, I'd support more light rail in Toronto wholeheartedly. I'm already a big fan in the rest of the GTA, where I think there's a chance that it would be operated more like a rapid transit service and where a subway wouldn't be appropriate.
 
I'm not sure if it's in this thread or another one, but Dentrobate was going on about industrial wastelands east of Kennedy where the Sheppard Subway/Malvern GO/Stouffville GO interchange would be located. That area is set to see some of the most intensive redevelopment around, with thousands of new residential units and commercial development to be centred on the transit hub. It's a fantastic spot for a new subway and regional rail station.
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Yea, Tridel is about to make a killing on part of that land ;)
 
Off the top of my head, the wasteland east of Kennedy and around STC should soon be home to: 2000 units at Metrogate, 1800 units at Schick Court, 1200 at the SW corner of Brimley & Progress, 1500 units at Corporate & Consilium, etc., etc.

There's only so much we can do to redevelop industrial areas without kicking out thousands of jobs, but we can still do a lot.

Tridel could sell condos in Love Canal to Bob Hunter's children.
 
On top of all that, though, there was a special secondary zoning plan that came out a year or two ago for the Kennedy/Sheppard/Midland/401 square, including thousands of residential units and commercial space as well.
 
An S-bahn type thing here would be nice, too bad it would be really difficult to implement on the Milton line right now.
 
RedRocket191 said:
I'd like to see a pilot project for REX between Toronto and Brampton, with every second train going to Pearson Airport... but I'm biased. Either way, one of the main problems with new transit technology in Toronto is the lack of practical examples.

Transit City will probably operate more like what they have in Calgary than what we have on Queen, and it probably won't even be anything like Calgary. The subways of the future might not look anything like the subways we have now.

One of these days we'll have to take a gamble and build a pilot project.
Click to expand...

We did and it call the SRT.
 
I was just looking at that Kennedy/401 area again on Google Maps, and I've realized that this is yet another place where the TTC's plans include wildly unnecessary tunneling. There's no reason why the subway couldn't be elevated the whole way from Sheppard and Kennedy to STC. It could follow the route of the creek through south to the Stouffville rail corridor, and then south to the current RT corridor. Ideally, the RT would have been replaced by a subway, and the existing elevated supports could be strengthened to handle subway trains. This could potentially reduce the tunnelled length to a measly 4.5 km. The remaining 3.5 km would be above-ground. This could cut the cost of the line dramatically. If the subway is extended another stop anyway, and then an elaborate interchange station is built to connect with the streetcar, the cost of the Transit City LRT might not be much lower.
 
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