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

[chinesehorse]

Interesting. I never knew there was a plan for a downtown within the City of York. Your website also looks interesting as well.

Thanks! Here's what the plans for the office development they were planning to build there would have looked like, scuttled by the cancellation of the subway and the recession:

Credit to ACO Toronto and Bob Krawcyzk for that photo.

Toronto Architectural Conservancy - TO Built = York City Centre Phases 1-3

www.acotoronto.ca

 

[W. K. Lis]

This photo is dated 2019. From link.

The driveway, leading to the No Frills and Photography Drive from eastbound Eglinton Avenue West, has since been widened to the east, effectively doubling it. The east half is waiting to be paved with asphalt.

The median is still there. The original plans were for the buses to use Black Creek Drive to reach Photography Drive. Looks like by widening the driveway, the buses will use this driveway/roadway to reach Photography Drive and the bus terminal at Mt. Dennis Station. Waiting for the median to be dug up for an intersection.

 

[CapitalSeven]

The use of TBMs for any of this line is absurd.

 

[Streety McCarface]

The use of TBMs for any of this line is absurd.

Are you a civil engineer? Are you working on the project?

TBMs could be justified for any number of reasons given the constraints of the project (it must be tunneled, it must serve Eglinton avenue, etc): severe utility conflicts, traffic/disruption considerations (especially at the 427), grades, cost (Yes, sometimes it's cheaper to bore a tunnel than to drive millions of piles into the ground or to rent vac trucks for hundreds of thousands of hours, deal with special rebar designs at all points of the tunnel, among so many other things one must consider when building cut and cover), risk reduction, noise/vibration reduction, etc.

The real question is why this line has to be tunneled when elevating the line is an option.

 

[Deadpool X]

In a year or two we will have 3 lines under construction - Line 5, Line 6 (Finch LRT) and SSE.

 

[robmausser]

Premier Doug Ford's nephew city councillor Michael Ford summed up the city council distraction very well in his tweet. It was all a waste of time lol

https://twitter.com/x/status/1311787544275804162

Lol Gord Perks lives in la la land. He doesnt get it. I guess when you're a power hungry politician you cant stand the reality that as a city councilor you have next to no power when it comes to provincial planning.

 

[Steve X]

Lol Gord Perks lives in la la land. He doesnt get it. I guess when you're a power hungry politician you cant stand the reality that as a city councilor you have next to no power when it comes to provincial planning.

This is exactly why Doug Ford took that power away from these city hall fools. The matter has been decided to be a subway and plans are well underway. Most of us agree that it's not the best way to spend the money but thank god they don't have the reset button anymore.

 

[allengeorge]

Lol Gord Perks lives in la la land. He doesnt get it. I guess when you're a power hungry politician you cant stand the reality that as a city councilor you have next to no power when it comes to provincial planning.

This is exactly why Doug Ford took that power away from these city hall fools. The matter has been decided to be a subway and plans are well underway. Most of us agree that it's not the best way to spend the money but thank god they don't have the reset button anymore.

I don’t see Gord Perks as “power-hungry”.

This vote was all about signaling, and everyone knows that. The province has decided to proceed with this waste of money, and 20 years from now someone will write another paper about how Toronto’s costs to build higher-order transit increased crazily. (FWIW, I don’t think Gord Perks should have bothered.)

I think the real problem here (and why you see so much angst), is that an alignment and ROW choice was practically made at the city level, and then the authority to oversee and build it was simply taken away by the province. Then, everything was changed. Of course people are going to be upset and try to put in roadblocks. You’d probably do exactly the same if someone did that to you.

In general we’d probably get more extensive, faster-implemented and cheaper transit builds if the relationship between Metrolinx, the province, the TTC and the city were fixed up through a more collaborative approach with limited points for political input. But that’s not sexy.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Ok gonna get flak but . . . IMO a big reason a lot of people are uncomfortable with LRT's is that we have seen again and again Toronto doing a mediocre at best job with surface transit and streetcars . . . sure the idea of grade separating the intersections ala Calgary West LRT is great but I *really* do not have the faith in the City when combined with Metrolinx. I mean do not forget that due to a single road crossing, the current Crosstown will serve the Grade Separated Science Centre station with way less capacity that otherwise would have been possible. Its really hard to get behind the idea of LRT being this amazing thing when really you cannot point to an example of a single one that works as well as was promised (besides systems that are less LRT Tramways and more just commuter or regional rail (Calgary).

Seattle has an LRT line not too dissimilar to the Crosstown in that it has a blended grade separated vs. non-grade separated approach and they have basically regret it since opening . . . surely we are going to face this problem just as quickly . . .

ION is possibly an example but, its just serving such a different job . . .

I really think as well that LRTs need a lot of supportive policy like high quality TOD and traffic restrictions and TSP . . . these are both things that Toronto is just flat out bad at . . .




TYSSE is egregious yes, but a Subway on Eglinton West built to a smaller standard is certainly a lot less egregious, the real problem we have is flip flopping. We are literally removing the SRT and reducing the total number of stops, bad location or not . . .



Ah the famed "transit experts"



Harder to find one without any underground sections these days . . .



Come on this isn't an SSE thread haha



Or just, yknow elevate it already oh my . . .

You're not wrong at all. The way Finch, Jane, Don Mills were bungled was really bad. That's why finch needs to work, otherwise that's game for surface LRTs in Toronto. Steeles definitely won't get one if Finch under performs.

To your Crosstown point, if the Scarborough section was underground, do we even have a Scarborough subway debate? Things to ponder.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

To your Crosstown point, if the Scarborough section was underground, do we even have a Scarborough subway debate? Things to ponder.

I argue no, because the Scarborough LRT could have been interlined with the Crosstown.

The Scarborough portion of the Crosstown just gives me a headache to think about the poor planning involved. The Ontario Line is now on the horizon with an interchange station at Don Mills and the line turns back half of trains at Laird, and I thought that was the worst of it. Now that a few more years have passed, we can see that essentially the entire Golden Mile is slated for redevelopment with some 60+ highrise towers altogether (). How did we think to make that part of the line surface transit with no guarantee of TSP at intersections?

The annoying part with Eg West is that it's not even that we are taking "lessons learned in Scarborough" and doing "things right this time around". The built form in Etobicoke would never allow for whats happening in Scarborough to occur there.

 

[sixrings]

The annoying part with Eg West is that it's not even that we are taking "lessons learned in Scarborough" and doing "things right this time around". The built form in Etobicoke would never allow for whats happening in Scarborough to occur there.

The good people of Eglinton West rightfully concluded if Scarborough deserved underground transit then so did Eglinton West too. The " lesson learned" from Scarborough is that if you complain enough you too will get underground transit. Essentially we should all brace for a whole new level of complaining and nothing actually getting built because it's too expensive in the future.

 

[W. K. Lis]

The good people of Eglinton West rightfully concluded if Scarborough deserved underground transit then so did Eglinton West too. The " lesson learned" from Scarborough is that if you complain enough you too will get underground transit. Essentially we should all brace for a whole new level of complaining and nothing actually getting built because it's too expensive in the future.

You're forgetting that Eglinton West in Etobicoke is Doug Ford's 'hood. It could have been "grade separated", meaning elevated, but Doug does not want to SEE the peasants as they use it.

 

[Rainforest]

The good people of Eglinton West rightfully concluded if Scarborough deserved underground transit then so did Eglinton West too. The " lesson learned" from Scarborough is that if you complain enough you too will get underground transit. Essentially we should all brace for a whole new level of complaining and nothing actually getting built because it's too expensive in the future.

You can see it this way, but I don't remember seeing many complaints from the Etobicoke residents about the at-grade line.

I think two factors led to the Eg West tunnel plan. First, Doug wanted to give some transit goodie to every part of the city, and that's somewhat reasonable. Scarborough gets SSE, downtown gets OL, North York gets the Yonge extension. Doug needed something for the west end, and Eg West was the most obvious choice.

Secondly, Doug is allergic to at-grade rail transit anywhere, thus an at-grade extension was ruled out. Furthermore, Doug felt like giving some pork to his loyal constituents, and chose underground. Otherwise, Eg West could go elevated. Elevated is apparently good enough for Leslieville, Overlea, and Flemington Park, but not for Doug's own neck of woods.

 

[kamira51]

I have a question regarding the elevated Alignment, what would they do once it reached the 427? would they go underground?

 

[Rainforest]

I argue no, because the Scarborough LRT could have been interlined with the Crosstown.

The Scarborough portion of the Crosstown just gives me a headache to think about the poor planning involved. The Ontario Line is now on the horizon with an interchange station at Don Mills and the line turns back half of trains at Laird, and I thought that was the worst of it. Now that a few more years have passed, we can see that essentially the entire Golden Mile is slated for redevelopment with some 60+ highrise towers altogether (). How did we think to make that part of the line surface transit with no guarantee of TSP at intersections?

The annoying part with Eg West is that it's not even that we are taking "lessons learned in Scarborough" and doing "things right this time around". The built form in Etobicoke would never allow for whats happening in Scarborough to occur there.

I would not be too worried about the Eglinton East operations though. The demand from those 60+ residential highrises will be very easily handled by the at-grade LRT. The subway-level demand never comes from any kind of local residential density; such demand is always generated by the feeder routes. Downtown is the only area of the city that can fill the subways with walk-in traffic, and even that is due to the very high employment density, not residential density.

Eglinton East is not a trunk route and will have very few feeders, therefore it will not surpass the light-rail capacity.

No contest that the overall Crosstown design will look odd, being a messy blend of competing design concepts. The original concept of tunneling the central section only and doing the rest at grade, certainly was sensible for keeping the cost down. But if we are tunneling the whole west side anyway, and the total cost will be >80% of the cost of a fully grade-separate line, then it would make more sense to build the whole line as grade-separated.

Furthermore, the designers of the original ECLRT put the Don Mills Stn underground to strengthen the eastern section and improve the connection to DRL, but then the actual OL/DRL station shifted to elevated resulting in a very long transfer. If the ECLRT planners knew that OL is going to be elevated at Eglinton, they would probably keep the ECLRT's Don Mills station at grade.

But despite all those oddities, the Crosstown will operate just fine. The eastern section will be a bit slower than it could be, but will not become overloaded. And in the west, should the demand exceed the expectations, the second branch serving the west and short-turning at Laird can be added. Laird is a dumb location for short-turn, the short-turning trains will be nearly empty between Yonge and Laird, but operationally this is not a big problem.