Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[robmausser]

With the switch to elevated beyond Don Valley (Millwood Bridge), it makes the extension to Sheppard even easier.

With the Celestica lands being sold off, if the Ontario Line vehicles use overhead panto like the Montreal RER, it could cross over into the Leaside Spur and run at-grade through it like a separated LRT.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I don't mind that it goes only to Eglinton as a first phase. The problem I have is there's no talk of extending it further at a later date (as far as I know). And it's unclear whether the ridership projections that are being used to cheap out on capacity, take into account any future extensions.

And there will never be any talk of extending the Ontario Line because the Ontario Line doesn't have the capacity to support such an extension

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Saying you're "Committed to funding" is completely different from actually funding a project. So far no level of government has committed any amount of money to the project. I have not seen one budget from any government that outlines funding commitments for the OL. Why haven't we seen commitments yet? Because we don't know how much the damn thing will cost.

Yup. The endorsement City Council gave the Ontario Line was a non-endorsement endorsement. There is a long list of fundamental deficiencies the City has identified with the Ontario Line that will likely need to be resolved before Council agrees to release any funding.

 

[M II A II R II K]

There should be an Interceptor line added to get more people off of Yonge from Donlands to Spadina via Dundas. So there’d be more options to reach Yonge without having to go through Yonge.

 

[BurlOak]

There should be an Interceptor line added to get more people off of Yonge from Donlands to Spadina via Dundas. So there’d be more options to reach Yonge without having to go through Yonge.

Would it make more sense to resurect the Interlining of the Yonge and Bloor Lines to relieve the Yonge-Bloor Station?
Of course in those days, the Spadina leg did not exist.
I've seen a Fantasy suggestion to send it down Spadina - but that already has a reasonably well used LRT. How about going down St. George (and Beverley and John).
It will cost $1B to improve the Yonge-Bloor Interchange. What if that $1B was used to go the 3.5km from Bloor to SkyDome. I imagine using cut-and-cover line @ $300M/km you would get reasonably far?

 

[Hopkins123]

Would it make more sense to resurect the Interlining of the Yonge and Bloor Lines to relieve the Yonge-Bloor Station?
Of course in those days, the Spadina leg did not exist.
I've seen a Fantasy suggestion to send it down Spadina - but that already has a reasonably well used LRT. How about going down St. George (and Beverley and John).
It will cost $1B to improve the Yonge-Bloor Interchange. What if that $1B was used to go the 3.5km from Bloor to SkyDome. I imagine using cut-and-cover line @ $300M/km you would get reasonably far?

View attachment 222182

At 55,000 riders per day, why not upgrade the Spadina streetcar to a subway? Better corridor for a second north-south subway than Bay or St George/Beverley/John (too close to the existing downtown YUS to be effective) in my opinion.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Yea have you seen those lines in the morning waiting to board that streetcar.

 

[BurlOak]

At 55,000 riders per day, why not upgrade the Spadina streetcar to a subway? Better corridor for a second north-south subway than Bay or St George/Beverley/John (too close to the existing downtown YUS to be effective) in my opinion.

3 reasons I can think of:

1. Spadina would turn from a local line with 12 stops (spacing ~300m spacing ave) to likely 5 (College, Dundas, Queen, King, Front) stations (~700m spacing ave). I am not sure locals would be happy.
2. There would be a marginal increase in service to an area with already good service, instead of purely additional service.
3. Maintaining LRT service during subway construction would be much more difficult.

Another advantage of Spadina is it's a straight route down from Bloor, instead of having a jog over to St. George. I don't think being too close to University is a negative, as this serves all of U of T, and SkyDome/Air Canada Centre, as well as being within walking distance (and possible future PATH) of the core of downtown (University, Bay, Yonge).

 

[Tuscani01]

At 55,000 riders per day, why not upgrade the Spadina streetcar to a subway? Better corridor for a second north-south subway than Bay or St George/Beverley/John (too close to the existing downtown YUS to be effective) in my opinion.

3 reasons I can think of:

1. Spadina would turn from a local line with 12 stops (spacing ~300m spacing ave) to likely 5 (College, Dundas, Queen, King, Front) stations (~700m spacing ave). I am not sure locals would be happy.
2. There would be a marginal increase in service to an area with already good service, instead of purely additional service.
3. Maintaining LRT service during subway construction would be much more difficult.

Another advantage of Spadina is it's a straight route down from Bloor, instead of having a jog over to St. George. I don't think being too close to University is a negative, as this serves all of U of T, and SkyDome/Air Canada Centre, as well as being within walking distance (and possible future PATH) of the core of downtown (University, Bay, Yonge).

Or, instead of reinventing the wheel... just turn on signal priority and let it function the way it was intended. Also eliminate some of the less used stops.

 

[BurlOak]

Or, instead of reinventing the wheel... just turn on signal priority and let it function the way it was intended. Also eliminate some of the less used stops.

I suspect you were responding to MARK :
I thought our brief sidebar was about relieving Yonge-Bloor (admittedly not related to the thread title) - in which case I don't think small changes to the Spadina LRT will make much of a difference.

 

[rbt]

Or, instead of reinventing the wheel... just turn on signal priority and let it function the way it was intended. Also eliminate some of the less used stops.

You would need to run fewer Spadina cars to enable signal priority without impacting service on King, Queen, Dundas, and College routes.

That said, you don't need a ~$6B subway when $200M in grade separations at specific intersections would do the job. TTC would lose a large number of turning options from that change though.

 

[W. K. Lis]

You would need to run fewer Spadina cars to enable signal priority without impacting service on King, Queen, Dundas, and College routes.

That said, you don't need a ~$6B subway when $200M in grade separations at specific intersections would do the job. TTC would lose a large number of turning options from that change though.

After they rebuild the Union streetcar loop, they could order 56m long streetcars (compare with the current 30.20 m streetcars) to use on the 510 Spadina.

(If they had to use 3 buses for each streetcar when they had track problems on Queen, they would need almost 9 buses with those long ones.)

 

[Hopkins123]

3 reasons I can think of:

1. Spadina would turn from a local line with 12 stops (spacing ~300m spacing ave) to likely 5 (College, Dundas, Queen, King, Front) stations (~700m spacing ave). I am not sure locals would be happy.
2. There would be a marginal increase in service to an area with already good service, instead of purely additional service.
3. Maintaining LRT service during subway construction would be much more difficult.

Another advantage of Spadina is it's a straight route down from Bloor, instead of having a jog over to St. George. I don't think being too close to University is a negative, as this serves all of U of T, and SkyDome/Air Canada Centre, as well as being within walking distance (and possible future PATH) of the core of downtown (University, Bay, Yonge).

Assuredly there'd be a stop at Harbord. Front and King could be consolidated into one stop (Clarence Sq being the southern exit). Here's an idea for replacing the 510 with an extension of the Spadina Subway. The Yonge-University Line now ends at St George Stn:

This hits many nodes en route: U of T (a PATH system could even connect the Harbord stop directly to Sidney Smith and Robarts), CAMH, Kensington Market, Chinatown, Fashion District, West Queen West/SoHo, King West, CityPlace, Rogers Centre, Harbourfront Centre, One York, Queen's Quay Ferry Docks, Weston Harbour Castle, Scotiabank Arena/Jurassic Park. It's also very complimentary to the Ontario Line.

 

[BurlOak]

Assuredly there'd be a stop at Harbord. Front and King could be consolidated into one stop (Clarence Sq being the southern exit). Here's an idea for replacing the 510 with an extension of the Spadina Subway. The Yonge-University Line now ends at St George Stn:

This hits many nodes en route: U of T (a PATH system could even connect the Harbord stop directly to Sidney Smith and Robarts), CAMH, Kensington Market, Chinatown, Fashion District, West Queen West/SoHo, King West, CityPlace, Rogers Centre, Harbourfront Centre, One York, Queen's Quay Ferry Docks, Weston Harbour Castle, Scotiabank Arena/Jurassic Park. It's also very complimentary to the Ontario Line.

One of my comments was on disruption to the Spadina LRT during construction. It is a nice straight run down Spadina, whereas jogging over from Spadina to St. George would take some effort.

Speaking of Ontario Line, would it make more sense to go along Richmond for this same reason. It's less than 100m to Queen, but would allow Queen streetcars to run uninterrupted during construction.

 

[NotAToy]

I'm still mad about Ontario Line being LRT. We have full, underused subway extensions in suburbs like TYSSE, Sheppard, SSE yet we have a line that would be going through dense areas, and supports Scarborough-downtown traffic, and is yet proposed to be LRT. If this is built, it will probably be at capacity in 20 years.