Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[MrGoose]

2) & 3) None of this seemed to matter when the discarded the previous plan to build a new one (the OL). If Metrolinx had designed this plan in cooperation with local communities instead imposing their will on them, we'd probably see much less resistance.

You keep saying this but this is a meaningless statement. How does Metrolinx design infrastructure in cooperation with local communities? How does that work and how does that square with trying to keep projects in budget, and on time and retain infrastructure effectivity? Is ML supposed to ask communities for where they are permitted to build infrastructure. Will the community themselves pay for the extra 800 million dollars to bury the OL in their neighbourhood? Because if you let every NIMBY give input on where your train line is going to go, its how you end up with shit like the EWLRT being buried, or the 3 stop SSE extension.

Of these 3
1. Transit Line efficiency
2. Cost Control
3. Community (NIMBY) input

you can pick 2 when you build infrastructure of any kind.

4) It is important that communities are able to voice their concerns and that they're taken seriously. I'd also argue that many of their concerns are valid, especially when it comes to safety. I do not live in the area and I'm in favour of not using the GO corridor for practical reasons.

The community is voicing their concerns, it's what all these open houses have been.The community has no right that their concerns be taken seriously if their concerns are not serious.

When it comes to safety, give reasons specifically why. Just saying "I'm scared of the new trains running through my neighborhood" isn't a valid concern. It's paranoia and/or fearmongering.

With proper maintenance, overground trains have been running safely and amicably in and around residential neighborhoods for hundreds of thousands of train-running hours.

 

[Allandale25]

This group is having a press conference tomorrow to release their Health Impact Assessment on whether above ground or below ground is better. I think we all know what it will say. Interestingly, the group appears to be using the same font style that Metrolinx uses for OL notices.

https://www.facebook.com/100063482955041/posts/289981069794656

 

[nfitz]

Fair points? Hah!

Take the Leslieville crowd. Their "reasonable" request is,

1. Throw your original plan for routing the Ontario Line out the window in favor of the napkin drawing plan that Steve Munro drew.
2. Tell us how much extra money the new plan would cost ok mmm thanks.

The first plan was staying under Pape to near Eastern. The second plan was under Pape to near Gerrard, and then under Carlaw to near Eastern. At the conclusion of that process, there didn't seem to be any obstacles to the plan in Leslieville.

Most of the current objections seem to be coming from Riverdale and Riverside ... not Leslieville. And it's hard to blame them, given that the whole alignment issue had been solved, and suddenly without any further consultation an entirely new option was foisted upon them! And then, they were told it was impossible to change - except they keep changing it time, and time again!

 

[Rainforest]

Really, electrified VIA rail trains are the most appropriate thing to tunnel, followed by express GO trains. If there are parallel services with different stopping patterns, the most express service is generally the most appropriate for tunnelling.

The most expensive thing about tunnelling is building stations, and one of the main disadvantages of deep tunnelling is that it takes a long time to access stations. An express tunnel has very few or no stations, and the impact of 5 mins going down escalators or elevators is not a big deal if your destination is Oshawa or Montreal, but it is if your destination is only a few km away.

A VIA tunnel from say, Jones to Cherry would have zero stations, and an express GO tunnel could do with only one 300m station at East Harbour (which probably doesn't even need to be 300m if we increase frequency). Both would probably be cheaper than building an OL tunnel of similar length with three ~100-150m underground stations.

If we were talking about a new multi-track corridor, where only some tracks can fit on surface and some have to be tunneled - sure, it makes a perfect sense to keep the local track on surface and put the express tracks in the tunnel. That saves on the station costs.

But does that apply to the LSE East / OL East situation? The express service (GO) is already at the surface level at Union, as well as east of the study area. Given the overhead costs for portals, does it make sense to create a situation where a short section of the future additional tracks has to be tunneled?

And the local service (OL) is tunneled under Queen and under Pape. The overground section will be relatively short, and therefore part of the savings will be offset by the cost of portals. Some saving will be achieved now, but we are likely pay more overall if some of the GO tracks have to be placed in a tunnel later.

In the meantime, four tracks is more than sufficient. The Berlin Stadtbahn and the eastern approach to Rotterdam Centraal both are four track, and both carry very high volumes of rail traffic of varying service types (local and express), certainly more than LSE.

We should learn from other places that run their rail service more efficiently than we do.

But, would they approve our choice if they were asked? "You know, we had a corridor wide enough for 6 tracks, but decided to limit it to 4 because you guys can run so much service with 4 tracks." And they would probably reply, "Our corridor is 100+ years old and constrained, we would like to have 6 tracks but we can't fit more than 4. If you have space for 6 tracks, surely you want to preserve it .. what do you mean not available anymore?"

 

[Rainforest]

I thought VIAs HFR plan would take trains through Peterborough to get to Montreal and Ottawa? So really there doesn't need to be all that much expansion in this corridor from VIA just GO. It may cause complications to serving Durham-Kingston but shouldn't be a problem connecting to Montreal and ottawa

The exact shape of HFR is unknown at this time. Even if they choose the Peterborough route, they might want to use the Uxbridge sub and then the section of LSE west of Scarborough Junction, in order to reach Union Stn.

In some way it is easier not to connect to Union at all, and place the HFR station somewhere in the north Toronto or south of Markham / Vaughan. But that would likely turn away quite a few riders.

 

[smallspy]

You keep saying this but this is a meaningless statement. How does Metrolinx design infrastructure in cooperation with local communities? How does that work and how does that square with trying to keep projects in budget, and on time and retain infrastructure effectivity? Is ML supposed to ask communities for where they are permitted to build infrastructure. Will the community themselves pay for the extra 800 million dollars to bury the OL in their neighbourhood? Because if you let every NIMBY give input on where your train line is going to go, its how you end up with shit like the EWLRT being buried, or the 3 stop SSE extension.

This ignores the fact that the original DRL EA was being created by the City and the TTC with the neighbourhoods involved.

That's part of what they are complaining about. They were involved in the process the first time. They haven't been this time.

Dan

 

[MrGoose]

This ignores the fact that the original DRL EA was being created by the City and the TTC with the neighbourhoods involved.

That's part of what they are complaining about. They were involved in the process the first time. They haven't been this time.

Dan

And that’s how we ended up with a line that only went from osgoode to pape without addressing any of the congestion at Union.

 

[Rainforest]

And that’s how we ended up with a line that only went from osgoode to pape without addressing any of the congestion at Union.

But had the capacity to meet the future demand, and didn't block the future rail corridor expansion.

 

[ARG1]

If we were talking about a new multi-track corridor, where only some tracks can fit on surface and some have to be tunneled - sure, it makes a perfect sense to keep the local track on surface and put the express tracks in the tunnel. That saves on the station costs.

But does that apply to the LSE East / OL East situation? The express service (GO) is already at the surface level at Union, as well as east of the study area. Given the overhead costs for portals, does it make sense to create a situation where a short section of the future additional tracks has to be tunneled?

And the local service (OL) is tunneled under Queen and under Pape. The overground section will be relatively short, and therefore part of the savings will be offset by the cost of portals. Some saving will be achieved now, but we are likely pay more overall if some of the GO tracks have to be placed in a tunnel later.

It does, because any future tracks will be for super express services like HSR where there are literally no stations. With 4 tracks you can get away with having 2 local services and 2 express services. In order to justify having even more tracks, you need a scenerio where the existing express tracks are still far too slow and cause many bottlenecks for potential intercity services, and if you reach that point, a new tunnel is more than justified. Even if OL wasn't there, the cost of realligning the entire corridor to support these new super express tracks would still involve a massive amount of work and service disruptions.

We should learn from other places that run their rail service more efficiently than we do.

But, would they approve our choice if they were asked? "You know, we had a corridor wide enough for 6 tracks, but decided to limit it to 4 because you guys can run so much service with 4 tracks." And they would probably reply, "Our corridor is 100+ years old and constrained, we would like to have 6 tracks but we can't fit more than 4. If you have space for 6 tracks, surely you want to preserve it .. what do you mean not available anymore?"

That's literally what Cities like Tokyo and London do, especially the former. London has most of its regular heavy rail routes run on the surface with minimal tunneling (crossrail notwithstanding), meanwhile all of their HSR projects involve massive underground stations and tunnels.

 

[ARG1]

But had the capacity to meet the future demand, and didn't block the future rail corridor expansion.

The Ontario Line is being allegedly designed around the projected demand for 30+ years, so by the time that happens we are going to be at a point where another new line is justified.

To quote you:
'We should learn from other places that run their rail service more efficiently than we do.'

Most cities don't build absolutely massive high capacity subway lines. The TRs on a global scale are absolutely MASSIVE in terms of capacity and size. If you ask any european city on how to properly build a new metro line, they'll all tell you the same thing. Smaller trains, Faster frequencies, more lines. Having more lines > Having fewer high capacity lines.

 

[Undead]

Thing is, this is Sparta Toronto, we're not going to build those additional lines, at least in this lifetime

 

[innsertnamehere]

Thing is, this is Sparta Toronto, we're not going to build those additional lines, at least in this lifetime

The point is that they won't be needed in this lifetime!

 

[syn]

You keep saying this but this is a meaningless statement. How does Metrolinx design infrastructure in cooperation with local communities? How does that work and how does that square with trying to keep projects in budget, and on time and retain infrastructure effectivity? Is ML supposed to ask communities for where they are permitted to build infrastructure. Will the community themselves pay for the extra 800 million dollars to bury the OL in their neighbourhood? Because if you let every NIMBY give input on where your train line is going to go, its how you end up with shit like the EWLRT being buried, or the 3 stop SSE extension.

Of these 3
1. Transit Line efficiency
2. Cost Control
3. Community (NIMBY) input

you can pick 2 when you build infrastructure of any kind.

The same way the Downtown Relief Line was planned - by taking local considerations into account.

Planners have been doing this for ages. It doesn't make any sense to suggest Metrolinx couldn't do the same.

The community is voicing their concerns, it's what all these open houses have been.The community has no right that their concerns be taken seriously if their concerns are not serious.

They are voicing their concerns after being told what will be done. It's not community input. It's "here's what we're going to do, hope you like it, and if not too bad.".

This ignores the fact that the original DRL EA was being created by the City and the TTC with the neighbourhoods involved.

That's part of what they are complaining about. They were involved in the process the first time. They haven't been this time.

Dan

Exactly.

 

[syn]

Is there a world where OL could be designed with "cooperation with local communities" where the line would remain above-ground through East York/Leslieville? Seems like its just a polite way to say "bribe wealthy communities at the expense of marginalized ones".. remember that the cost savings from building above ground allow for the line to be extended through Thorncliffe and Flemingdon.

There is nothing to suggest this is the case at all.

The government has chosen the most expensive options for the EWLRT and SSE. They could easily afford to bury the line instead of utilizing GO capcity. They could easily afford to build this thing all the way up to Don Mills. That they're not doing so is a choice, one with repurcussions that will impact local transit for generations.

 

[ARG1]

Same with this solution.

Most peak-hour GO trains will be skipping the East Harbour stop (due to congestion at the Stouffville/Lake Shore interchange and limited platforms at East Harbour), and those that do stop involve a fairly clumsy transfer.

Limited platforms? I think the current plan involves a platform per track. Also what congestion?