Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

Anything is possible with ML, but I would speculate that it's just a very low res map that can't be taken too literally. Here is a higher res map from the project web site that might be a bit clearer. Does that mean there won't be expropriations? I wouldn't rule them out. Eyeballing the line, particularly at the overpasses, it appears the corridor is certainly good for five tracks (four GO, one OL) but only ML knows if they can squeeze it all in.

Screen Shot 2020-09-30 at 3.58.55 PM.png

See also here, the natural environment study's assessment of where vegetation will be affected, certainly extends to both sides.
Screen Shot 2020-09-30 at 3.54.59 PM.png


- Paul
 
If you argued that utilization at McCowan and Midland are both poor, you would be on safe ground. That owes in part to the former not being served by buses, and the latter by only one, and w/o a terminal.

Crowds are concentrated at Scarborough-Centre and Kennedy; but Lawrence East and Ellesmere, both ugly, poorly located stations that they are; still have ok levels of utilization.

1601499005845.png

These are the TTC's own published ridership numbers for 2018. I think I am on perfectly safe ground, thank you very much.

Those utilization numbers just don't support building new stations at the current Midland, Ellesmere or McCowan locations. And let's be real about Lawrence East.... that station is relatively busier than the others solely because of the 54 Lawrence East bus. There's no other reason. The 54 bus moves almost as many people per day as the Carlton streetcar, and a lot of that is in the Scarborough segment. That's why the SSE includes plans for a Line 2 station at Lawrence & McCowan.

May I suggest, as a new member, who is unfamiliar with many or most of the regular posters than you refrain from presuming what others know or don't know.

I've been on the Relief Line Facebook community for several years so I am already familiar with & to a lot of people posting here.

I'm guessing you didn't know that, which suggests that you need to follow your own advice regarding presumption. ;)
 

Attachments

  • 1601497576127.png
    1601497576127.png
    20.9 KB · Views: 284
  • 1601497605414.png
    1601497605414.png
    20.9 KB · Views: 269
View attachment 273212
These are the TTC's own published ridership numbers for 2018. I think I am on perfectly safe ground, thank you very much.

Those utilization numbers just don't support building new stations at the current Midland, Ellesmere or McCowan locations. And let's be real about Lawrence East.... that station is relatively busier than the others solely because of the 54 Lawrence East bus. There's no other reason. The 54 bus moves almost as many people per day as the Carlton streetcar, and a lot of that is in the Scarborough segment. That's why the SSE includes plans for a Line 2 station at Lawrence & McCowan.



I've been on the Relief Line Facebook community for several years so I am already familiar with & to a lot of people posting here.

I'm guessing you didn't know that, which suggests that you need to follow your own advice regarding presumption. ;)

I take it you think that's funny.

I don't.

I'm not on the Facebook group and I'm not posting there. I therefore have no obligation to research your history.

You are joining UT, and have an obligation to get to know the posters here; prior to passing judgement on their level of expertise.

I did not call your knowledge into question; I called your manner into question, as nicely as possible, and I stand by that.
.
I didn't disagree with you on the SRT routing; I simply suggested you over reached with your statement; which you did. Period. Full stop.

For reference:

" nobody is using the stations that were built after 40 years. "

Is absolutely, entirely and unequivocally, inaccurate

Now, lets not have a flame war.

Just be respectful of other posters; and don't over-reach.
 
And let's be real about Lawrence East.... that station is relatively busier than the others solely because of the 54 Lawrence East bus.
Meanwhile there's been increasing development around there. Your data shows that the ridership is one-third of that at Scarborough Centre. A decade ago, when they started planning this travesty, ridership at Lawrence East was less than one-fifth that at Scarborough Centre, having grown 10% since then.[/QUOTE]
 
Last edited:
You are building only 3 stations in the SSE with the McCowan alignment (2 - Lawrence and STC if you leave Sheppard out because that's literally an extension) - you think your ridership will somehow significantly exceed the current alignment in a subway-subway comparison scenario? It's like people saying the BD alignment sucked looking at low use stations (Old Mill, Castle Frank, whatnot) in between stations with high usage. Better yet - do you sincerely believe, after all the talk about economic efficiency and whatnot, that the new alignment is worth 6 billion? At least BD managed it with an elevated route where needed.

Don't get me wrong here, I can definitely think of other transit projects I'd like to see $6 billion spent on first (e.g. GO RER). I've often thought that extending the Crosstown east to McCowan, then going north to the STC would make a lot more financial sense than a new subway.

But.... here's the thing, right, a subway barrelling through a dedicated tunnel at 90+km/h will be much more attractive to a commuter than the Crosstown's 25 km/h expected overground speed. A combination of both is ideal, of course, but we don't even have a network of high-speed public transit options in Toronto from which one could reasonably attach a network of LRTs to reach out into more local communities like Morningside or Malvern or whatever.

So yeah, build more subways. Do I care how much it costs? Not really. When you're building something that ought to last 100 years or more, you shouldn't "cheap out". I'd rather have a high-speed, high-quality transportation solutions than not, even if it does cost more.
 
For reference:

" nobody is using the stations that were built after 40 years. "

Is absolutely, entirely and unequivocally, inaccurate

You're right. The SRT has only been open for 35 years, not 40, and ~1,700 riders a day at Ellesmere (which, in your opinion, is "ok utilization") is semantically not "nobody".

My mistake. :rolleyes:
 
Huh? Lawrence East is literally the western terminus of the 954 route
Oops, for some reason I thought it fed into Eglinton. Good grief, so they make them change for one stop? Why not just run it down Midland to Kennedy station?

Still, William, I think it's false to soley attribute Lawrence East ridership to the bus, especially given the ridership and share of the line at Lawrence East station has grown a lot in the last decade, while Lawrence East bus ridership has been static.

But.... here's the thing, right, a subway barrelling through a dedicated tunnel at 90+km/h will be much more attractive to a commuter than the Crosstown's 25 km/h expected overground speed.
Why are you overstating the average speed of subway line 2 between Kennedy and Scarborough Centre compared to the Crosstown? Why do you also ignore that much of the speed improvement is from station spacing. Subway line 3 would be much faster if it only had 1 intermediate stop instead of 3?
 
You're right. The SRT has only been open for 35 years, not 40, and ~1,700 riders a day at Ellesmere (which, in your opinion, is "ok utilization") is semantically not "nobody".

My mistake. :rolleyes:

Your statement includes both Scarborough Centre Station and Kennedy as well as all the others.

Otherwise it needs to read 'few people are using some of the stations'; I would have accepted half or even many.

But your statement covered all of the stations.

And no, 1,700 people is not zero people; that's an infinitely high error.

If you had said one person, you still would have been off by 170,000%.

I'm not being pedantic. I'm simply saying your statement was ridiculous.

Now please stop. All you had to do was politely correct yourself and move on.

Instead you've taken more digs at me each time. That is not necessary.

There is no need for defensiveness or snark. Just accuracy.
 
Oops, for some reason I thought it fed into Eglinton. Good grief, so they make them change for one stop? Why not just run it down Midland to Kennedy station?

A sensible thought; thought I suppose we'd need to know what percentage of riders stay on Lawrence vs transfer to the RT.

I'm honestly not sure.

There would be one further complication though. Kennedy is insanely busy in its bus terminal (now aggravated by the TTC policy of bloated schedules.)

I rarely travel that way, but my car was in the shop; and bused through there to get to/from said mechanic a couple of times during the summer.

Even with ridership down, the terminal was very busy; and there were up to 9 buses parked as they had leftover time in their routes and the terminal is too busy to park in the bay.

Though I would agree, in theory, a route serving Kennedy would have seemed more sensible.
 
Last edited:
Not a bad article but they quote a local saying the rails could be at ground level. What? That's not remotely possible. We now know that this will not be on an elevated structure above the current embankment. They will simply widen the embankment where necessary, either enlarging the slope or making it more vertical if there is less room, and strap the stations on the side. If you look at the areas where the entrances will be, this is mostly dead easy. The universe in which anything is at ground level (well, excepting the outbound track at Gerrard, Station, sort of) is an imaginary nimbyverse. And there are illustrations of glass noise barriers which work pretty well (I live and work near an expressway through a park, and have seen this in action).
 

Notes from the article.............they are a bit fuzzy on the property needs question still:

Asked about possible property expropriations, Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said the agency
is “still assessing property needs” and expects to share more information with affected residents later this fall.


Also of note..........some fuzzy slippage on the impossible opening date:

Early works for the line are expected to begin in 2021, but Metrolinx and the provincial government are
no longer committing to the Ontario Line’s initial projected opening date of 2027. Aikins said the winning
bidders on the construction contracts will determine when the line will open.
 
Extremely long connection to East Harbour, requiring a transfer that sees you going up several stories of escalators simply because they wanted to tunnel under don river, and the segment along Queen is a waste. Having the Ontario Line head south and have a stop near Distillery is way better than a stop at Sumach that serviced basically nothing. Key destinations is what matters, not just following corridors.

Not sure about this insinuative "they" wanted to tunnel under the Don. The prov looked at routes too and concluded that a tunnel under the river was necessary. Likely because there's nowhere to bridge, and using the rail corridor came at the expense of track expansion in a pivotal corridor. A notion that seemingly went out the window after the last election, which is ok because any relief line is just as important as GO or VIA.

Regardless seems silly to be dismissive of the RLS route. It was good, had the right curves in the right spots. No question it could've been made shallower, something that undoubtedly could've come about with vehicles that can make steeper grades had that been pursued. The stations on either side of the river weren't even that crazy deep (Gerrard is another story).

View attachment 273212
These are the TTC's own published ridership numbers for 2018. I think I am on perfectly safe ground, thank you very much.

Those utilization numbers just don't support building new stations at the current Midland, Ellesmere or McCowan locations. And let's be real about Lawrence East.... that station is relatively busier than the others solely because of the 54 Lawrence East bus. There's no other reason. The 54 bus moves almost as many people per day as the Carlton streetcar, and a lot of that is in the Scarborough segment. That's why the SSE includes plans for a Line 2 station at Lawrence & McCowan.

Ellesmere and Midland would've been consolidated with any upgrade plan because the stations are way too close. But also using Line 3 numbers in an argument is fundamentally flawed on account of the line being broken and at capacity. The fact that the line is still running and even has numbers is amazing lol. As for the corridor routing itself. It isn't superb, but it bisects the centre pretty well and imo would've been great as it builds-out further into the future. Though the N/S segment has a similar flaw as the proposed OL DeGrassi station, in that it's half a km from the main intersection

Not a bad article but they quote a local saying the rails could be at ground level. What? That's not remotely possible. We now know that this will not be on an elevated structure above the current embankment. They will simply widen the embankment where necessary, either enlarging the slope or making it more vertical if there is less room, and strap the stations on the side.

Wait is this correct? The trains/stations will be on the same grade? I thought it was going to be on its own viaduct...frees up room below, but also acts as safety buffer.
 

Back
Top