Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

Here's some of the results of my analysis. If people would like to see more of the methodology I'd be happy to do a bit of a write up.
First off, I had to make some modifications to the rail vector lines provided by Can OpenData. We know at some point in the near future there will be a fourth rail along most of the corridor. Currently, our rails are spaced at about 4-5m from centreline to centreline:
1581092830233.png
1581092840759.png
1581092851909.png


We can also see that in some sections, there are gaps that are arranged to hold the future fourth rail along this corridor:
1581092928458.png
1581092935346.png

Don River bridge:
1581092949360.png

Eastern Ave Bridge:
1581092965744.png

Queen St Bridge:
1581092985838.png


Dundas St Bridge:
1581093003081.png


Logan Ave Bridge:
1581093018944.png


Carlaw Bridge:
1581093030626.png


Gerrard Bridge:
1581093052384.png

[continued in next post...]

Sources for entire analysis:
Arial Photography: Google Maps
Address points: Toronto OpenData
3D Massing (building footprints): Toronto OpenData
Rail Vectorlines: Government of Canada OpenData
 
The problem with transit in this city is that you can NEVER please everyone, and there is always someone waiting to stop or get in the way of any transit proposal.

We finally have a provincial government ready to fund and build a new relief line but as always there are multitudes of groups wanting to stop it. This will never change. AND if you satisfy one group you are then blocked by another group.

This line is crucial to the future of Toronto. By 2046 the GTA will have a population exceeding 10 million, how can we deal with this if we don't get the transit and other infrastructure in place. My daughter gave up her job downtown because she could no longer tolerate the crowds on the Yonge line - and they are getting worse. Let's all just get this line built while we have a government willing to pay for it!!
 
[continued...]

From this knowledge I manipulated the geometry some to produce our fourth rail along the entire corridor at an identical spacing to the main rails:
New rail at Queen:
1581093381635.png


New rail at Jimmie Simpson:
1581093409191.png


New rail at Dundas:
View attachment 229835

New rail at Logan Ave:
1581093442444.png


New rail at Gerrard:
1581093460550.png

Overview of our entire line:
1581093476876.png


From here, we'll look at our OL alignment. If we are following the assumptions made in the facebook post, it will have a 6m setback. With the current tack spacing, that translates to an offset of 11.5m:
1581093522674.png

It should be noted that this allows for future rail expansion at the specified spacing:
1581093544152.png


[continued in next post...]
 
Johnny Au said:
There's this:

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It's a really useful site to check the biases of what I read.
Click to expand...

Conservatives attempt to position small l liberal publications as Socialist in order to make their own right wing views seem more centrist and less extreme
 
[continued...]
Now we will look at one factor of the analysis, the rail bed expansion. I'll be doing two cases, where the rail bed is appx. 2.5m from the centreline (best case, near grade):
1581093726661.png

As well as when the rail bed is appx 7m from the centreline (worst case, elevated):
1581093760199.png


The results of these two buffers are shown below:
DVP to Eastern Ave:
1581093823993.png


Eastern AVe to Queen St:
1581093835275.png


Queen St and Jimmie Simpson Park:
1581093847328.png


Dundas St to First Ave:
1581093878893.png


First Ave to Pape:
1581093889344.png

All of the potentially affected addresses are listed below:
356 Eastern Ave, Toronto, ON M4M 1B8 (Spaces Self Storage)
17 Tiverton AveToronto, ON M4M 2M1 (Home)
845 Gerrard St E, Toronto, ON M4M 1Y7 (ABC Autobody)
449 Carlaw Ave, Toronto, ON M4K 3J1 (Riverdale Shopping Centre)

These are typically affected by the worst case scenario, though that may not be present at all areas. In general though, it seems to be a much less dire picture than the post paints.
This does not take into account the constructability of some of the cases where the rail bed would be very close to an existing building.

In addition, we would likely expect some buildings close to the bridges to be affected by the bridge widening, and we would likely expect the Riverdale Shopping Centre to be demolished for the launch shaft anyways (if TBMs are to be used. Either way, it would be the most likely location for above-below ground transition). It also does not include station impacts. I may do a brief analysis later to see where the stations are most likely to be located. I think we can assume that they would be ideally placed on a side of the road with the least impact to buildings (ie. not directly on the rec centre).

[continued in next post...]
 
Last edited:
[continued...]
Finally, I applied a 90m buffer zone to BOTH tracks, not to the centreline of the corridor. This may be overestimating the noise impact. Also, some houses have more than one address point contained within them, and some buildings have multiple addresses. This is not an entirely accurate metric of how many people would be affected.
The isolated address points are shown below:
1581094424280.png


Unfortunately I cannot upload the excel file here. If anyone wants it please send me a message with your email and I would be able to provide it.
 
tiffer24 said:
More community backlash... this time from the East End Transit Alliance.

1581098660880.png
Click to expand...
Even looking at the typical section, it looks like the 6m setback is a big waste of space. They are widening for 7+ tracks, but only getting 6 due to the setbacks.
Perhaps the logical thing to do is widen the corridor to 5 tracks with minimal (to no) additional land being required, and put the "subway" elsewhere.
 
BurlOak said:
Even looking at the typical section, it looks like the 6m setback is a big waste of space. They are widening for 7+ tracks, but only getting 6 due to the setbacks.
Perhaps the logical thing to do is widen the corridor to 5 tracks with minimal (to no) additional land being required, and put the "subway" elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Oh, I dunno...........maybe a tunnel would work?
 
BurlOak said:
Even looking at the typical section, it looks like the 6m setback is a big waste of space. They are widening for 7+ tracks, but only getting 6 due to the setbacks.
Perhaps the logical thing to do is widen the corridor to 5 tracks with minimal (to no) additional land being required, and put the "subway" elsewhere.
Click to expand...

I have high doubts that this is the actual 'typical section' for the OL along the GO transit corridor. We know that the track arrangement at East Harbour is as shown below:
1581102661335.png

(Source: OL Business Case)

However, considering that we need to go north at Pape, you would run into issues quite quickly trying to get both lines to the same side:
1581102828593.png


I would highly suspect that at some point before this, we will get a section more akin to this:
1581103020717.png

Especially given the business case states "Ontario Line assumes some elevated guideways, especially at key transfer stations", I would not be surprised if the section shown is only present across the Don up until the Eastern Ave station. At some point between it and Leslieville station, I would expect it to switch to the other side, either above or below. In my earlier post you can see that there is room for at least two tracks on either side of the current corridor, even including a 4th rail. I would say the potential locations for this switch boil down to:
  • BMW Parking lot, Immediately after the transfer
  • Bruce Mackey Park, somewhere within the already widened rail ROW on the west side
  • Utilizing the parking lot near Thackeray St, as here the track is nearly at grade
  • Gerrard Square (owned by Davpart)
  • Riverdale shopping centre
Given the immense amount of real estate value that will be generated by the stations, I would be not surprised if the "insider" talks going on with ML were with the owners of the two shopping centres where the line would transition from above-ground to below-ground, as well as the BMW dealership. These large spaces could certainly be the location of some of the construction work, and it's possible the land owners want to ensure they get a slice of the cake instead of having all their land expropriated and getting nothing. Hard to know for sure though.
 
BurlOak said:
Even looking at the typical section, it looks like the 6m setback is a big waste of space. They are widening for 7+ tracks, but only getting 6 due to the setbacks.
Perhaps the logical thing to do is widen the corridor to 5 tracks with minimal (to no) additional land being required, and put the "subway" elsewhere.
Click to expand...

It may be a big waste of space, but the fact of the matter that the two types of vehicles meet very, very different sets of standards in terms of crashworthiness. The space may be mandated by Transport Canada to ensure that the two types of vehicle never have a chance to come in contact with each other.

Dan
 
smallspy said:
It may be a big waste of space, but the fact of the matter that the two types of vehicles meet very, very different sets of standards in terms of crashworthiness. The space may be mandated by Transport Canada to ensure that the two types of vehicle never have a chance to come in contact with each other.

Dan
Click to expand...
The SRT is built to the same minimum distance standards, so this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
 
Tommy521 said:
Especially given the business case states "Ontario Line assumes some elevated guideways, especially at key transfer stations", I would not be surprised if the section shown is only present across the Don up until the Eastern Ave station. At some point between it and Leslieville station, I would expect it to switch to the other side, either above or below. In my earlier post you can see that there is room for at least two tracks on either side of the current corridor, even including a 4th rail. I would say the potential locations for this switch boil down to:

Given the immense amount of real estate value that will be generated by the stations, I would be not surprised if the "insider" talks going on with ML were with the owners of the two shopping centres where the line would transition from above-ground to below-ground, as well as the BMW dealership. These large spaces could certainly be the location of some of the construction work, and it's possible the land owners want to ensure they get a slice of the cake instead of having all their land expropriated and getting nothing. Hard to know for sure though.
Click to expand...

I thought it was pretty much concluded awhile ago that between Carlaw and East Harbour it will be elevated above the rail corridor, one side. With the guideway roughly taking up the equivalent of one track on the expanded corridor. And the guideway wouldn't use regular T columns, but an inverted L, sort of cantilevered and allowing one mainline track below. The two station structures will probably straddle a bit outside the rail corridor though.

The real estate aspect seems a bit unfortunate with the Leslieville station. Obviously the better bet for a station would be Carlaw/Queen, not DeGrassi 500m away with no N/S transit route.
 
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