Toronto Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown West Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

It's time this line gets built.... Ford is the right man for the right job. Others have failed and now we have a chance at something unprecedented. Yes it may not be perfect but in life nothing is perfect. Only God is perfect. With that being said, I support this extension and the other 3 projects (Yonge North, SSE, Ont Line). Who cares if I have to pay $10 more in taxes. If my fellow citizens can get home quicker to their loved ones its worth every penny.

Also folks don't realize this but within the decade there will be over a hundred condominiums being built on the Eglinton Crosstown that will pay development fees to help this extension getting built. Enough talking, its time to put shovels in the ground.
 
toronto647 said:
It's time this line gets built.... Ford is the right man for the right job. Others have failed and now we have a chance at something unprecedented. Yes it may not be perfect but in life nothing is perfect. Only God is perfect. With that being said, I support this extension and the other 3 projects (Yonge North, SSE, Ont Line). Who cares if I have to pay $10 more in taxes. If my fellow citizens can get home quicker to their loved ones its worth every penny.

Also folks don't realize this but within the decade there will be over a hundred condominiums being built on the Eglinton Crosstown that will pay development fees to help this extension getting built. Enough talking, its time to put shovels in the ground.
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Is he?

Always glad to see any movement on transit, but I'll believe it when shovels are in the ground.

The Fords are one of the reasons transit construction is so far behind.
 
Got to echo some of the other comments here. I would never vote for Ford, but I'm impressed by the speed with which he's pushing projects through, and genuinely stunned that he's prioritizing a line that runs through downtown. One question - will the stops at traffic lights on the Crosstown east of Don Mills mess with the efficiency of the line? Would be a shame considering it's all grade separated west of Don Mills now. Would it ever make sense to divide the crosstown into two lines - Pearson to Don Mills, then an LRT that runs in the street from Don Mills to Kennedy, and some day further into Scarborough?
 
TorPronto said:
I hold the same view as you. All of Transit City was supposed to be running by 2020 and we got nothing.
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We got the Crosstown and Finch West LRT, as well as some work done on the Waterfront LRT (which will likely go ahead albeit later than expected).
syn said:
Is he?

Always glad to see any movement on transit, but I'll believe it when shovels are in the ground.

The Fords are one of the reasons transit construction is so far behind.
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We're getting contracts signed. As much as I hate to admit it, that's a very good step forward.
 
Streety McCarface said:
We got the Crosstown and Finch West LRT, as well as some work done on the Waterfront LRT (which will likely go ahead albeit later than expected).

We're getting contracts signed. As much as I hate to admit it, that's a very good step forward.
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I meant we got nothing in revenue service by 2020
 
NoahB said:
Overbuilding is not that big of a problem. Line 1 ran with 2 car trains when it's first started. Nobody is calling that line overbuilt. This line is going to the airport and is connecting with a lot of important bus routes. You should think of this as a 'Bloor Line North' and not as a 'St Claire South'.

The problem is zoning, the capacity of the line will not be easily filled if most of Eglington doesn't get rezoned appropriately. Luckily the Ford gov forced increased density around transit stations.

If anything, now is the time to build as interest rates are low.
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The problem is, Eglinton is being mismatched with ill-suited developments currently being sprung up across the entire stretch. Eglinton West will never be a dense corridor, nor was it designed to be a dense corridor either.
 
Amare said:
The problem is, Eglinton is being mismatched with ill-suited developments currently being sprung up across the entire stretch. Eglinton West will never be a dense corridor, nor was it designed to be a dense corridor either.
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Exactly. Eglinton West has been misplanned from the get-go. Plus, the communities along the route will not stand for any densification other than on Eglinton itself.

- Paul
 
toronto647 said:
Couldn't have said it better myself. Now is the time to start building and less talking.
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Changing the minds (with a new and improved model) of the Fords is just impossible. Just build it. Prefer to build something now. With a new administration at Queen's Park, they can build extensions or better yet new rapid transit lines (IE. Hamilton LRT).
 
W. K. Lis said:
Changing the minds (with a new and improved model) of the Fords is just impossible. Just build it. Prefer to build something now. With a new administration at Queen's Park, they can build extensions or better yet new rapid transit lines (IE. Hamilton LRT).
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At the very least they seem really committed to their ideas, and the speed at which the current steps are done should be the standard. After a little over a year of the announcement of the alignment, we are already getting RFPs for tunnel construction, and boring should commence next year. Compared the the pace the liberals took things its a breath of fresh air.
 
ARG1 said:
At the very least they seem really committed to their ideas, and the speed at which the current steps are done should be the standard. After a little over a year of the announcement of the alignment, we are already getting RFPs for tunnel construction, and boring should commence next year. Compared the the pace the liberals took things its a breath of fresh air.
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Based on current timelines, tunnel construction is expected to commence in 2022. Launch shaft construction is expected to commence next year.

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Even though tunnelling the extension may not have been the best idea, I'm glad to see this project moving forward towards construction. I still think Ford's plan for the extension is much better than the old at-grade idea. So here's to getting shovels in the ground. :)
 
JMSRead said:
One question - will the stops at traffic lights on the Crosstown east of Don Mills mess with the efficiency of the line?
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Hopefully not:
- The main problem for on-street transit is being stuck in general traffic; won't happen with this LRT that has exclusive lanes everywhere.
- Traffic lights are not that frequent on Eglinton East, and those at intersections with minor streets give a lot of green time to Eglinton anyway.
- It's not like the subways are 100% free of accidents and delays. Even being totally free of traffic lights, they experience delays occasionally.

JMSRead said:
Would be a shame considering it's all grade separated west of Don Mills now. Would it ever make sense to divide the crosstown into two lines - Pearson to Don Mills, then an LRT that runs in the street from Don Mills to Kennedy, and some day further into Scarborough?
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I think that will create more problems than it will solve. First of all, the line will only be grade-separated west of Laird (that's half-way between Yonge and Don Mills), not west of Don Mills. From the network perspective, that would be a very illogical location for a transfer. Furthermore, turning back all trains from both west and east efficiently would require multiple platforms and crossovers at the transfer station. Neither Laird nor Leslie nor Don Mills will have that kind of infrastructure.

However, there may be a case for running more LRT branches west of Laird compared to east of Laird. For example, 534A from Pearson all the way to Kennedy, and 534B from Mississauga (if a branch into Mississauga is built at some point) to Laird. In that case, Laird only needs to turn back 1/2 or 1/3 of trains from the west, and no trains from the east; that might be manageable.
 
Interesting to read the past few pages and see the consensus shift decisively towards "get something done". I admit, I feel rather similarly too.

I am pessimistic over whether we will achieve urban planning objectives with this extension, but there is some important things to keep in mind. It will intercept bus riders and routes across Etobicoke, and it will take us within steps of a major employment centre at Airport Corporate Centre. The last mile problem there can be resolved once a transit hub is created at Renforth.

In the not-to-distant future, it will make logical sense to get tri-government commitment to complete the connection of FWLRT and EGWest to Pearson Airport, providing yet another massive connection to the network.

As for the urban planning. The fault there is with Toronto City Planning and lack of municipal ambition, so I feel like I must separate my thoughts on that from the line itself.
 
WislaHD said:
Interesting to read the past few pages and see the consensus shift decisively towards "get something done". I admit, I feel rather similarly too.
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I share the sentiment, but this is about heads and not just hearts.

Putting this line underground will inflate its cost by many hundreds of millions. That same increment is what was used to kill the Hamilton LRT. So, Ford's home turf gets a subway instead of an LRT - with a delay while the subway is designed where the LRT was already at some % of designed. Meanwhile, Hamilton, who had an LRT designed in rough, gets nothing, or at best spends 18 months spinning its wheels trying to figure out how to retool its plans.

So how is Ford getting transit done sooner, where most needed?

I do agree that the Ford government has gone far faster, and made more binding commitments to transit, than the previous government ever did. I would never have predicted that so many projects would get off the ground.... I really figured that most would be cancelled completely. But this particular project is not deserving, certainly not as subway quality infrastructure.

Do we really want to allow politicians a vanity project of this scale, just because they have done a good job in other areas?

It's not too late to name this the Rob Ford line, either. Be careful what you ask for.

- Paul
 
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