Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

I recall taking the subway from finch occasionally at 7:30am 5-6 years ago and the seats all being taken departing finch. By the time it was at Eglinton the train was full.
 
innsertnamehere said:
I recall taking the subway from finch occasionally at 7:30am 5-6 years ago and the seats all being taken departing finch. By the time it was at Eglinton the train was full.
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I've gotten on the subway at Finch at 6:30 *pm* occasionally over the last few years and have departed on trains with all seats taken.
 
Reecemartin said:
That being said I ride the Yonge Line everyday and I do not concur that it's that bad at 7.
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Well, I don't know what to tell you then. All I can tell you is what I see with my own two eyes every morning. And that is that there are people standing around on the platform as the doors close on every southbound train.

Dan
 
BurlOak said:
Another reason why cut-and-cover construction is important. The simpler we can make the construction, the easier it is to find the necessary labour and contractor.
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While cut and cover may seem less labour intensive, the surface 'disruption' can be severe. This is not just in regards to traffic due to closing of a road. There are many other factors to consider.

The permitting and obtaining of utility locates is a time and labour intensive process. There may not be a centralized database of all utilities and the current knowledge of utilities, especially on the east side of the Don River, is likely sparse considering these were put in before the advent of GIS or other spatial database services. Only so much design work can be carried out on old and outdated data.
Performing utility locates for a relatively small area (ie, a site around a single borehole) can often take weeks if not longer. Often, a transit or transport authority will not want to claim responsibility for utility locations. This can be an issue when you have many utility types. For example, a transportation authority may take responsibility for locating only the utilities relating to traffic signals and will not permit or acknowledge hydroelectric lines, which may belong to a private or public electricity company. Similarly, a gas provider may not wish to comment on the presence of a water main suspected to be near their utility lines. Not to mention the many telecommunications companies in the area. You quickly run into issues when using public and private utility locates, with many conflicting interests and liabilities to consider.

Once utilities' locations are roughly 'located', the owner companies must be contacted and diversion or relocation plans must be put in place. In many locations in Toronto (ie the east side near Pape/Gerrard, where cut and cover may seem most attractive due to soil depth) utilities such as gas, water, and telecoms are likely to be located directly below the main streets. These would be expected to be major arterial utilities, where any downtime to the main line may cut water, sewer, or power coverage to large neighbourhoods in the area. There would also need to be plans set up on where to put any relocated utilities, the timing of everything, and how to manage and minimize downtime to the system.

Additional thought could also be given to a tunnel alignment. If cut and cover is desired, would it be better to shift the alignment to be under a local road, instead of a major throughway? Considerations need to be given to residents, businesses, traffic, and property acquisition. Not to mention the plethora of heritage buildings along the eastern corridor. Will the width of a side road provide enough space for a retaining wall, site laydown, equipment, and still allow for residents to access their homes and customers to access businesses? Disruption to these areas may cause a negative PR impact to the project. These issues turn into a management nightmare due to the extensive and mixed priorities of the agencies, authorities, companies, private businesses, and residents involved.

This is not to say cut and cover is out of the picture entirely. Cut and cover techniques can be a very useful tool in a subway design arsenal; especially where stations, crossovers, exit shafts, wye tracks, or portals are concerned. They may not be suitable for large stretches as they were for the older lines. Comparatively, bored tunnels are complex but often have a centralized source of impact directly around the launch shaft and supply shafts/exit shafts. Not to say necessarily that you meant to apply it for large sections, but I thought it was important to outline some of the potential issues here for everyone to consider.
 
^A good point - what’s buried under our roadways, and the criticality of that infrastructure, is certainly more complex than in 1953 when all those photos of dug-up Yonge Street with the propped-up water mains were taken. There are huge risks and costs if, say, a telecom trunk gets severed.

At the same time, however, when I look at the big holes on Eglinton, it strikes me that there must have been an awful lot of utility location work done anyways, and likely a fair bit of reconstruction or outright replacement of said infrastructure.

As a naive observer, on a policy level it strikes me that the City ought to be able to say “mark it correctly, or lose it” and be absolved of legal liability for “discoveries”. However, on a practical level, we may not know where stuff is until the excavators find it.It may be simpler to just plan on replacing it all as part of the project.

There’s also the problem of what old or forgotten infrastructure may be buried, without any current owner or recorded location info. Always interesting what gets found during excavation. I know of a case of excavation on a site where a gas station had closed in the 1950’s and was bulldozed and forgotten. There was a concrete storage tank underground, still filled with gasoline....it lay there for 60 years, never leaked, no one knew until the digging started.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
At the same time, however, when I look at the big holes on Eglinton, it strikes me that there must have been an awful lot of utility location work done anyways, and likely a fair bit of reconstruction or outright replacement of said infrastructure.
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You are absolutely correct. I was hoping to outline this by mentioning that cut and cover is still a useful option. it may just not be applicable to every scenario. Eglinton Avenue I am sure has many utilities located beneath it, likely even some trunk lines, but relocating a junction and relocating an entire trunk for multiple utilities is quite the hassle. If Eglinton crosstown had done cut and cover for the entire bored tunnel section, it may have been a different story. Each method of construction has applicable cases and situations where another method may be preferable. There is no skeleton key.
I'll leave it as an exercise for everyone here to determine if Pape or Gerrard have considerable trunk utilities beneath them. I am sure the information is available somewhere, or you can poke around Google maps looking for T.H.E.S. manholes or gas line markers ;)

crs1026 said:
As a naive observer, on a policy level it strikes me that the City ought to be able to say “mark it correctly, or lose it” and be absolved of legal liability for “discoveries”. However, on a practical level, we may not know where stuff is until the excavators find it.
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It would make my life considerably easier if “mark it correctly, or lose it” were the status quo! Sadly, this is often not the case. Especially when dealing with hydro and gas, you do not want your excavators to run into any live wire or active gas line.

crs1026 said:
It may be simpler to just plan on replacing it all as part of the project.
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It certainly gives a good excuse to do so. I believe outdated utilities were upgraded during the ION construction in K-W, despite it being a surface route. A partnership between utility companies and transit authorities to upgrade everything all at once and share some costs would be quite the ideal scenario. For many situations though a company may want to instead say "you want to move it so you pay for it".
 
^ Interesting. I was about to ask why would they be drilling on Berkeley because I was under the impression it was going to curve to be under Parliament, but I then looked at the map more closely. Rough map I created below.

1576276839956.png
 
Tommy521 said:
You are absolutely correct. I was hoping to outline this by mentioning that cut and cover is still a useful option. it may just not be applicable to every scenario. Eglinton Avenue I am sure has many utilities located beneath it, likely even some trunk lines, but relocating a junction and relocating an entire trunk for multiple utilities is quite the hassle. If Eglinton crosstown had done cut and cover for the entire bored tunnel section, it may have been a different story. Each method of construction has applicable cases and situations where another method may be preferable. There is no skeleton key.
I'll leave it as an exercise for everyone here to determine if Pape or Gerrard have considerable trunk utilities beneath them. I am sure the information is available somewhere, or you can poke around Google maps looking for T.H.E.S. manholes or gas line markers ;)

It would make my life considerably easier if “mark it correctly, or lose it” were the status quo! Sadly, this is often not the case. Especially when dealing with hydro and gas, you do not want your excavators to run into any live wire or active gas line.
Click to expand...

Locating buried infrastructure is not an exact science. Surface detection only gives a general indication and usually doesn't indicate depth. Some of the utilities, sewer and watermains are decades old and the records may be missing or cryptic (do they show where infrastructure was planned to go or actually went?). How many times have we heard on the news that a crew ruptured a gas line. It happened to us, by a crew that was guided by all the flags and stakes. Even with the best of skill and intentions, excavation equipment is not surgical instruments.
 
Tommy521 said:
While cut and cover may seem less labour intensive, the surface 'disruption' can be severe. This is not just in regards to traffic due to closing of a road. There are many other factors to consider.

The permitting and obtaining of utility locates is a time and labour intensive process. There may not be a centralized database of all utilities and the current knowledge of utilities, especially on the east side of the Don River, is likely sparse considering these were put in before the advent of GIS or other spatial database services. Only so much design work can be carried out on old and outdated data.
Performing utility locates for a relatively small area (ie, a site around a single borehole) can often take weeks if not longer. Often, a transit or transport authority will not want to claim responsibility for utility locations. This can be an issue when you have many utility types. For example, a transportation authority may take responsibility for locating only the utilities relating to traffic signals and will not permit or acknowledge hydroelectric lines, which may belong to a private or public electricity company. Similarly, a gas provider may not wish to comment on the presence of a water main suspected to be near their utility lines. Not to mention the many telecommunications companies in the area. You quickly run into issues when using public and private utility locates, with many conflicting interests and liabilities to consider.

Once utilities' locations are roughly 'located', the owner companies must be contacted and diversion or relocation plans must be put in place. In many locations in Toronto (ie the east side near Pape/Gerrard, where cut and cover may seem most attractive due to soil depth) utilities such as gas, water, and telecoms are likely to be located directly below the main streets. These would be expected to be major arterial utilities, where any downtime to the main line may cut water, sewer, or power coverage to large neighbourhoods in the area. There would also need to be plans set up on where to put any relocated utilities, the timing of everything, and how to manage and minimize downtime to the system.

Additional thought could also be given to a tunnel alignment. If cut and cover is desired, would it be better to shift the alignment to be under a local road, instead of a major throughway? Considerations need to be given to residents, businesses, traffic, and property acquisition. Not to mention the plethora of heritage buildings along the eastern corridor. Will the width of a side road provide enough space for a retaining wall, site laydown, equipment, and still allow for residents to access their homes and customers to access businesses? Disruption to these areas may cause a negative PR impact to the project. These issues turn into a management nightmare due to the extensive and mixed priorities of the agencies, authorities, companies, private businesses, and residents involved.

This is not to say cut and cover is out of the picture entirely. Cut and cover techniques can be a very useful tool in a subway design arsenal; especially where stations, crossovers, exit shafts, wye tracks, or portals are concerned. They may not be suitable for large stretches as they were for the older lines. Comparatively, bored tunnels are complex but often have a centralized source of impact directly around the launch shaft and supply shafts/exit shafts. Not to say necessarily that you meant to apply it for large sections, but I thought it was important to outline some of the potential issues here for everyone to consider.
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Somehow I doubt Vancouver was forced into cut-and-cover on the Canada line because TBM was not possible, and they suffered with higher costs as a result.
 
Amare said:
^Heck you dont even have to look as far as the Yonge Line, even at 7am eastbound trains to Bloor-Yonge are pretty damn busy after they hit Islington. I'll even go as far to say that the very first train eastbound on the Bloor-Danforth line is packed by the time it reaches Bloor-Yonge.

Westbound is a similar story from Victoria Park onwards.
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So why can't we have an extra pair (or four) of T1s in service on Line 2 at rush hour? They are sitting in Greenwood Yard...Gods the revenue loss on PRESTO would pay for this alone...
 
Tommy521 said:
While cut and cover may seem less labour intensive, the surface 'disruption' can be severe. This is not just in regards to traffic due to closing of a road. There are many other factors to consider.

The permitting and obtaining of utility locates is a time and labour intensive process. There may not be a centralized database of all utilities and the current knowledge of utilities, especially on the east side of the Don River, is likely sparse considering these were put in before the advent of GIS or other spatial database services. Only so much design work can be carried out on old and outdated data.
Performing utility locates for a relatively small area (ie, a site around a single borehole) can often take weeks if not longer. Often, a transit or transport authority will not want to claim responsibility for utility locations. This can be an issue when you have many utility types. For example, a transportation authority may take responsibility for locating only the utilities relating to traffic signals and will not permit or acknowledge hydroelectric lines, which may belong to a private or public electricity company. Similarly, a gas provider may not wish to comment on the presence of a water main suspected to be near their utility lines. Not to mention the many telecommunications companies in the area. You quickly run into issues when using public and private utility locates, with many conflicting interests and liabilities to consider.

Once utilities' locations are roughly 'located', the owner companies must be contacted and diversion or relocation plans must be put in place. In many locations in Toronto (ie the east side near Pape/Gerrard, where cut and cover may seem most attractive due to soil depth) utilities such as gas, water, and telecoms are likely to be located directly below the main streets. These would be expected to be major arterial utilities, where any downtime to the main line may cut water, sewer, or power coverage to large neighbourhoods in the area. There would also need to be plans set up on where to put any relocated utilities, the timing of everything, and how to manage and minimize downtime to the system.

Additional thought could also be given to a tunnel alignment. If cut and cover is desired, would it be better to shift the alignment to be under a local road, instead of a major throughway? Considerations need to be given to residents, businesses, traffic, and property acquisition. Not to mention the plethora of heritage buildings along the eastern corridor. Will the width of a side road provide enough space for a retaining wall, site laydown, equipment, and still allow for residents to access their homes and customers to access businesses? Disruption to these areas may cause a negative PR impact to the project. These issues turn into a management nightmare due to the extensive and mixed priorities of the agencies, authorities, companies, private businesses, and residents involved.

This is not to say cut and cover is out of the picture entirely. Cut and cover techniques can be a very useful tool in a subway design arsenal; especially where stations, crossovers, exit shafts, wye tracks, or portals are concerned. They may not be suitable for large stretches as they were for the older lines. Comparatively, bored tunnels are complex but often have a centralized source of impact directly around the launch shaft and supply shafts/exit shafts. Not to say necessarily that you meant to apply it for large sections, but I thought it was important to outline some of the potential issues here for everyone to consider.
Click to expand...
There are many professional and armchair quarterback opinions here and damn I like the exchanges. I am (was) an engineer earlier in my career - but not a civil or mechanical so this stuff is fascinating to me. The restrictions on design in my career were money and bosses and physics.

I am so much more aware of many issues reading these discussions. That being said, it is a f*ckin' miracle that anything gets built in a city this complex.
 
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