muller877
Senior Member
No reason? Pape to downtown is 6 km. Danforth to Eglinton is 4 km.
Your talking about 8 km of subway. That's a lot of $. Particularly in the west, with no major trip generators, and a parallel rail corridor. Pape to Eglinton is a better sell, given that it's going to be a challenge to do surface LRT south of O'Connor, a Don crossing will cost similar for subway or surface LRT, and there is a huge population at Thornecliffe/Flemingdon, and then a short distance to Eglinton. But I can't see anything in the West north of Bloor in my lifetime. I'm not even sure the numbers are there to justify Dundas West to Queen/King+Dufferin (they might be ... would be nice to see some numbers).
You don't want to waste the main artery of medium and long-distance transit (GO to Milton, Georgetown, Orangeville, Barrie, Bolton and High Speed Rail to Kitchener points west) with 2 dedicated tracks of subway line. Ultimately, you don't even want to parallel it. You'd want to go up another route. I suspect for now you just stop DRL at GO station in the Dufferin Street area.
When looking at demand for the DRL there are 2 purposes. One is to move people from the far reaches of the East and West to downtown. Good to sell it to the 'burbs but this purpose can be served with creating transit nodes in the East and West around GO stations.
The bigger demand is the existing demand within the current city. This we can gather from 2 maps.
1. Employment. Currently the west end would be well served by a DRL in this respect. Liberty Village and King West have a fair concentration of employment lands (and not sprawling...dense mid-rise). The East will have the portlands (eventually) but this is 20+ years out for this growth. Building on future growth potential (cough...Sheppard...cough...once a subway is build will they just do the bait and switch to build condos instead).
Maps from the City here: http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/city_planning/sipa/files/pdf/2012_TES.pdf
http://www1.toronto.ca/city_of_toronto/city_planning/sipa/files/pdf/2012_TES.pdf
2. Residential areas. King and Queen W streetcars are jammed more then Queen E. There is significant density in the west shoulders compared to the East. Residential demand from the East will come from Queen East (streetcar is at not over capacity compared to the west...they are overcapacity...just relative to the west) as well as people travelling from afar (which should be served by rail)
I think the intermediary stops will be busier on the West side than the East (south of Bloor). I'm not knowledgeable enough on what is North of Danforth but when I drive through there I don't see signfiicant density on the commercial side of things. \
Stops at Spadina, Bathurst and Liberty Village/Dufferin will be used by both residential and commercial traffic. Guessing they will be higher than most steps on the older lines outside of the city core. From there to the Bloor Line is 3 km and 1 or 2 stops. Adding this distance will add the benefit of relieving St George. With the number of people commuting to/from these areas, it being a stub-way will also create a choke-point at St Andrew (which is already pretty busy) or whichever station it connects too. Having a second connection will reduce this issue.
The Planners can create models that show whatever they want to show...its an art not a science. But looking at the current transit traffic, current employment land and current residential density around each stop will indicate what traffic will look like day 1. Add on growth (East and West side will have growth along the "Avenues"). It would be nice to see how the planners came up with the numbers to make sure the projections were not skewed to the political answer they wanted.