Ontario Line Extension West of Ontario Place (Speculation)

[Midtown Urbanist]

If there going to take the rail line route starting at Gerrard Street to go to East Harbour. Might as well expedite this project even faster and cheaper by continuing the same train line route to stop at Union Station and the Exhibition and Beyond. As this can be seen in the photo below where I drew it in pink . Small stops can be created between main street areas such as Parliament st, Jarvis st, John streets, Spadina Ave where I marked it in Black. These these new subway stops would be more than adequate to serve the People on both sides over the rail line areas. And there's a lot of development plus entertainment venues etc that's happening or going to happen in that area in the future to serve the public from the EX right to East Harbor, Lower Don park locations. Not to mention rail deck Park another future deck parks it would run underneath. So it will be underground anyway haha! PS if the union Pearson line can run on those tracks why not the subway. The Queens Street project could be put on hold for now build that later. And this would be a good compromise solution being a half smart track and Subway that John Tory and Doug Ford can relate to.

View attachment 198331

Hah, if Tory and Doug could compromise and build a SmartTrack Ontario Line that would be accomplish-able on a shorter time frame.

The two lines makes sense to me. Now if only the Feds would do the prudent thing and invest in Canadian Cities where 80% of people and jobs are located and where their taxes are collected from.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Just to bump this, are there any ideas out there?

 

[Ciarlandini]

I like the idea of extending northwest up through Keele, later switching to Jane at around Wilson, ending at Pioneer Village Station. Only obstacles are the length and the orientation of the line from exhibition through to Keele Station. You could theoretically thread it through Lansdowne and Roncensvalles with stops at Lansdowne and Queen and Roncensvalles and Fermanagh, or just merge it in with the Go corridor.

 

[jcam]

I like the idea of extending northwest up through Keele, later switching to Jane at around Wilson, ending at Pioneer Village Station. Only obstacles are the length and the orientation of the line from exhibition through to Keele Station. You could theoretically thread it through Lansdowne and Roncensvalles with stops at Lansdowne and Queen and Roncensvalles and Fermanagh, or just merge it in with the Go corridor.

Do you join it to Jane south of Eglinton, so it effectively takes over the Jane LRT? I still think an intermodal junction at Jane/Dundas/St.Clair (St. Clair streetcar, GO Hurontario, Jane LRT/Ontario Line) makes sense, maybe call it Lambton.

 

[generalcanada]

interesting, didnt know this was a thread.
MX has said in one of the exhibition open houses that the tracks are being protected for an extension up dufferin.
thats as far as the plans go.
as for fantasy maps theres really only 3 good ideas. going up dufferin, going up keele and going up roncy. the last 2 using a bit of the rail corridor

Roncy seems the best with connections at the roncy intersection maybe? transfers to all streetcars, stops at bloor go. past that im actually not sure. maybe take dundas to jane then north to eglinton?
the problem is, the more north you go, the more the need comes for a westerly maintenance facility. maybe the junction area?

 

[Towered]

interesting, didnt know this was a thread.
MX has said in one of the exhibition open houses that the tracks are being protected for an extension up dufferin.
thats as far as the plans go.
as for fantasy maps theres really only 3 good ideas. going up dufferin, going up keele and going up roncy. the last 2 using a bit of the rail corridor

Roncy seems the best with connections at the roncy intersection maybe? transfers to all streetcars, stops at bloor go. past that im actually not sure. maybe take dundas to jane then north to eglinton?
the problem is, the more north you go, the more the need comes for a westerly maintenance facility. maybe the junction area?

The Stockyards area is littered with big box stores and ugly body shops - you could easily put one there.

 

[tsm1072]

I think extending the line further west before going north makes sense. The RER Kitchener and Barrier lines have plenty of room for capacity growth and infill stations to serve the stockyards area. I could imagine the line elevating over the gardiner with the following stops:

• Roncesvalles Junction
• Windermere
• Park Lawn
• Royal York
• Kipling
• Sherway

The line could then go up the 427 to Renforth and the airport. There is plenty of industrial land along the route for an MSF. It could connect with an extension of line 2 at Cloverdale.

 

[ARG1]

I think extending the line further west before going north makes sense. The RER Kitchener and Barrier lines have plenty of room for capacity growth and infill stations to serve the stockyards area. I could imagine the line elevating over the gardiner with the following stops:

• Roncesvalles Junction
• Windermere
• Park Lawn
• Royal York
• Kipling
• Sherway

The line could then go up the 427 to Renforth and the airport. There is plenty of industrial land along the route for an MSF. It could connect with an extension of line 2 at Cloverdale.

I think that's a bit too far west, because at that point you're just duplicating LSW. This is sort of the problem, you're either duplicating Kitchener, or you're duplicating LSW. Personally I agree with others that keeping it along the LSW corridor to Roncy, Parkside, or S. Kingsway and then bringing it up to Keele/Jane makes the most sense.

 

[felix123]

I'd be in favour of a north-south extension, up Keele/Jane, Roncy or Dufferin. I believe that early fantasy maps of the DRL (edit: DRL future extension) often showed it running up Roncy to Bloor West, but now we would expect a further northward terminus.
All three routes would be sufficiently far enough west of L1 University-Spadina imho.

 

[tsm1072]

I think that's a bit too far west, because at that point you're just duplicating LSW. This is sort of the problem, you're either duplicating Kitchener, or you're duplicating LSW. Personally I agree with others that keeping it along the LSW corridor to Roncy, Parkside, or S. Kingsway and then bringing it up to Keele/Jane makes the most sense.

It does duplicate LSW at first, but the main points of getting that far west are:

• Using the 427 corridor and serving the density along there
• Serving the employment and residential areas along the Queensway
• Allowing those along the LSW corridor a good North-South connection to the airport and Etobicoke
• Providing a good transit connection to the employment are around the airport

I guess it comes down to priorities. Heading North on Jane or Keele serves the travel needs of those more central to Toronto and provides great transit on a local level. Getting out to the 427 better serves west Etobicoke, Mississauga and to some extent Burlington, Oakville, and Hamilton (mainly for LSW to airport trips).

 

[toraerach]

While transit in the West End and the city's Northwest definitely warrants substantial improvement, I'm not convinced that the OL is best positioned to provide it, especially if the Union-relief aspect of the Exhibition connection remains a priority. Others have floated the idea of an additional Jane-Dundas line (AKA DRL2): A line using OL technology which would run down Jane to Dundas, then veer East along that street through downtown. I would argue that bringing such a line south from Regent Park to East Harbour would be warranted, should the development we are expecting there materialize. It may seem like a pipedream, but no more so than the DRL until ~10 years ago.

Unlike its northern counterpart, a westward extension of the OL doesn't have a straight-forward route. Before we plan anything for it, we must clarify our long-term vision for the transit network as a whole so that we do not impede next-generation projects or burden ourselves with short-sighted one-offs. In a hypothetical future with a Jane-Dundas line, for example, a western OL extension might not make sense at all—perhaps a relatively short extension to Sunnyside or up Dufferin to Bloor/Eglinton might be worth investigating.

(Forgive the detour into the realm of subway fantasy.)

 

[generalcanada]

ya...theres no studies. until then, its just pure speculation

 

[TossYourJacket]

While transit in the West End and the city's Northwest definitely warrants substantial improvement, I'm not convinced that the OL is best positioned to provide it, especially if the Union-relief aspect of the Exhibition connection remains a priority. Others have floated the idea of an additional Jane-Dundas line (AKA DRL2): A line using OL technology which would run down Jane to Dundas, then veer East along that street through downtown. I would argue that bringing such a line south from Regent Park to East Harbour would be warranted, should the development we are expecting there materialize. It may seem like a pipedream, but no more so than the DRL until ~10 years ago.

I've been working on a fantasy transit map and I had a similar idea, down Jane to Dundas, but then I ran it along College/Carlton through the core to give better spacing from the OL.

I think that's a bit too far west, because at that point you're just duplicating LSW. This is sort of the problem, you're either duplicating Kitchener, or you're duplicating LSW. Personally I agree with others that keeping it along the LSW corridor to Roncy, Parkside, or S. Kingsway and then bringing it up to Keele/Jane makes the most sense.

For me, the duplication issue is why going up Dufferin to Eglinton makes the most sense. It's the route that doesn't duplicate anything else, plus it addresses the lack of transit capacity along Dufferin. Obviously north of Eglinton is already served well by Line 1 in that area, so either the OL would terminate at Fairbank station, or veer sharply west as it goes north (or it could connect to Eglinton somewhere other than Fairbank before moving over to Dufferin as it goes downtown).

 

[Ciarlandini]

Just something I posted in the main thread that I saw in the last hour on a Metrolinx ad... can anyone make sense of whatever this is? Seems to be a more lateral west extension than I thought, but all of the other lines here are what's confusing me.
.

 

[Ciarlandini]

interesting, didnt know this was a thread.
MX has said in one of the exhibition open houses that the tracks are being protected for an extension up dufferin.
thats as far as the plans go.
as for fantasy maps theres really only 3 good ideas. going up dufferin, going up keele and going up roncy. the last 2 using a bit of the rail corridor

Roncy seems the best with connections at the roncy intersection maybe? transfers to all streetcars, stops at bloor go. past that im actually not sure. maybe take dundas to jane then north to eglinton?
the problem is, the more north you go, the more the need comes for a westerly maintenance facility. maybe the junction area?

Theoretically, Dufferin doesn't make sense to me much at all, given it's proximity to the Allen, but it does make sense when considering that Dufferin and Pape were the two stations that got overhauled on line two.