Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

Look at London/NYC/Paris' train stations, none is put in a very corner of the city. Grand Central is at 42, Penn station at 31. They are not at the tip of lower Manhattan.
I'd have said many of London and Paris's stations were at corners of the city - at least in terms of the city centre - which is more spread out in those cities. Not much north or east of Paddington ... or north of Gare du Nord. Surely the A40 is the northern boundary of London ... it's the northern boundary of the congestion charging zone ... but how many mainline train terminals are north of it? St. Pancras? Euston? King's Cross? Marylebone? And Paddington is just to the south.
 
Union is already slammed enough.

What if satellite structures were built to the East and West of the Main station. On the East side of Bay at least we have the GO bus station already, adding access to the tracks through a satellite building would take some of the pressure on the station from Bay to Yonge. On the West side of York, granted there is currently nothing, but again adding access to the station on the West side would allow riders to access the station from almost as far West as Simcoe without putting pressure on the main station. Particularly with the West once the SouthCore buildings are complete a direct access to the tracks/station would be useful.
 
What if satellite structures were built to the East and West of the Main station. On the East side of Bay at least we have the GO bus station already, adding access to the tracks through a satellite building would take some of the pressure on the station from Bay to Yonge. On the West side of York, granted there is currently nothing, but again adding access to the station on the West side would allow riders to access the station from almost as far West as Simcoe without putting pressure on the main station. Particularly with the West once the SouthCore buildings are complete a direct access to the tracks/station would be useful.
That's already the plan isn't it? Extend the platforms that they can, so that you can put two 12-car GO trains in place, rather than just one. That would effectively give you platforms from near Simcoe to near Yonge.

The Spadina/Front station or the underground station is the plan for AFTER that.
 
Look at London/NYC/Paris' train stations, none is put in a very corner of the city. Grand Central is at 42, Penn station at 31. They are not at the tip of lower Manhattan.

Union's got a shockingly good location by global standards. Especially as Southcore expands, it's really surrounded by significant trip generators. Arguably King/Bay would be better for commuters, but it's hardly the end of the world.

London and Paris' terminals are all way more peripheral to their traditional downtowns, so I'm not sure why you'd suggest there better. City Thameslink's a good location.

There is no reason whatsoever to think Toronto needs a second terminal. If GO was thinking of adding satellite stations east and west of downtown to reduce passenger loads at Union ok. But they're talking about stub ending lines well away from trip generators and forcing a needless transfer onto a line which doesn't even exist and might not even go anywhere near there.

It's completely anachronistic. European cities have spent the past half century trying to unify their terminal operations to allow through traffic, now even NYC is getting on board with through operations. We have a perfectly good through corridor and we're talkin about stub ending part of it in the middle of nowhere. It's mind boggling
 
City Thameslink's a good location.
It is, but it's only about 20-years old, making it a century newer than any terminal station in London I can think of (ignoring rebuilds on the same site). And it's not a terminal - it's a simple 2-platform station built on an existing line.
 
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It is, but it's only about 20-years old, making it a century newer than any terminal station in London I can think of (ignoring rebuilds on the same site). And it's not a terminal - it's a simple 2-platform station built on an existing line.

Yea, exactly. To be anal it's a terminal for ticketing purposes, but who cares?

Thameslink, and now Crossrail, are all part of London's efforts to unify regional rail operations in London and allow more through running along the lines of Paris's RER or any of the German S-bahn systems, or Milan's tunnel thing. Building a terminal outside of Toronto's downtown is completely opposite to what cities like London have been spending literally tens of billions of dollars over the past few decades doing.
 
Union's got a shockingly good location by global standards. Especially as Southcore expands, it's really surrounded by significant trip generators. Arguably King/Bay would be better for commuters, but it's hardly the end of the world.

that would be true if Southcore would be a big success. I somehow don't believe it would.
 
that would be true if Southcore would be a big success. I somehow don't believe it would.

Even with what's under construction/completed Southcore's a non trivial destination. Unless you foresee the offices sitting empty for decades I'm not sure why you think it would flop or not contribute to Union's location

Plus Union is immediately surrounded by a ton of non-peak trip generators. Sony Center, ACC, Skydome, Aquarium, MTCC, CN Tower. Walking distance to other major trip generators (Eaton Center, 4SC, theaters, harbourfront)

I'm just a little confused how you think Union isn't central I guess. Its location seems like the least of its problems.
 
Even with what's under construction/completed Southcore's a non trivial destination. Unless you foresee the offices sitting empty for decades I'm not sure why you think it would flop or not contribute to Union's location

Plus Union is immediately surrounded by a ton of non-peak trip generators. Sony Center, ACC, Skydome, Aquarium, MTCC, CN Tower. Walking distance to other major trip generators (Eaton Center, 4SC, theaters, harbourfront)

Union is 1KM from Skydome/CN Tower/Aquarium, 1.2km from Eaton Centre, 4SC/theatres. Hardly easy walking distance. It is really not that central.

If you take the area bound by Gardiner/Dundas/Spadina/Yonge as the core area, which I think is appropriate, Union is really in the southeast corner.
 
Union is 1KM from Skydome/CN Tower/Aquarium, 1.2km from Eaton Centre, 4SC/theatres. Hardly easy walking distance. It is really not that central.

If you take the area bound by Gardiner/Dundas/Spadina/Yonge as the core area, which I think is appropriate, Union is really in the southeast corner.

How much closer to the CN tower can it really be... Im sorry but you are asking for perfection and its not possible. It is easy walking distance from the opera house, sony centre, cn tower, skydome, acc, hockey hall of fame, the aquarium, the railroad museum, the ferry to centre island. I do agree that Yonge and Dundas area is another hot spot but really it would be walking distance to sony centre, opera house, city hall, dundas square and eaton centre. That's not the major difference you are making it out to be.
 
How much closer to the CN tower can it really be... Im sorry but you are asking for perfection and its not possible. It is easy walking distance from the opera house, sony centre, cn tower, skydome, acc, hockey hall of fame, the aquarium, the railroad museum, the ferry to centre island. I do agree that Yonge and Dundas area is another hot spot but really it would be walking distance to sony centre, opera house, city hall, dundas square and eaton centre. That's not the major difference you are making it out to be.

what I am saying is Union station was put there back in the days when the north boundary of Toronto is something like Queen street. now it is far from that central any more.
Somewhere near University/Adelaide is most central.

There is hardly any urban street south of Union station, is there? department stores? Movie theatres? Hospitals? Schools?
Plus, how often do we really go to ACC/CN tower, versus Eaton Centre, downtown Yonge, Queen West, King West? I myself haven't been to the ACC/Roger's centre even once.
 
Union is 1KM from Skydome/CN Tower/Aquarium
There's an entrance to the Union Station York teamway at York and Bremner. It's all of 400 metres from there to standing in front of the CN Tower. The aquarium is closer than that. The entrance to Skydome at Rees and Bremner is 500 metres.

A GO Train itself is over 300 metres long!

Can't get much closer ...
 
what I am saying is Union station was put there back in the days when the north boundary of Toronto is something like Queen street. now it is far from that central any more.
Somewhere near University/Adelaide is most central.

Surely the weighted average of 'downtown' has moved south since Union was built. Well into the 1970s there really was nothing south of Union until you reached Buffalo. Even accepting that recent development hasn't been without flaws, there clearly has been a massive development effort south of Union which has seen thousands of new residents as well as millions of new square feet of office.

There is hardly any urban street south of Union station, is there? department stores? Movie theatres? Hospitals? Schools?
Plus, how often do we really go to ACC/CN tower, versus Eaton Centre, downtown Yonge, Queen West, King West? I myself haven't been to the ACC/Roger's centre even once.

You'd be surprised. GO runs extra trains during events like the Grey Cup or the recent Swedish House Mafia concert.

I don't think anyone is trying to suggest that Union is convenient to literally every major transit destination downtown, though. It's not.

No single station ever will be. Even amongst the trip generators you listed it would be impossible to serve them all with a single station. As far as these things GO though (ha!) Union's a pretty good location. Maybe a station around CityHall/Eaton Center would have been better, but the status quo ain't so bad.

The problem isn't Union's location, as you suggest, but that Union is the only destination GO serves downtown. And the solution to that isn't to build some kind of stupid stub terminal at Bathurst, but a real regional rail line crossing downtown, serving all sorts of areas beyond Union and connecting to local transit.
 
I'd have said many of London and Paris's stations were at corners of the city - at least in terms of the city centre - which is more spread out in those cities. Not much north or east of Paddington ... or north of Gare du Nord. Surely the A40 is the northern boundary of London ... it's the northern boundary of the congestion charging zone ... but how many mainline train terminals are north of it? St. Pancras? Euston? King's Cross? Marylebone? And Paddington is just to the south.

19th century London specifically prohibited railways from entering what's now the congestion zone, which resulted in its particularly inane distribution of termini

Soon many other railways sought to connect to London. To avoid disruption in the core, a Royal Commission on Railway Termini, appointed in 1846, drew a box around central London and decreed no line shall enter the cordon. [This box resembles the congestion charging zone adopted in the early 21st century, which aimed to reduce cars, rather than prohibit trains]. The result was railway terminals locating on the edges of the central region. London, like many cities, has no unified railway station, as the North, South, East, and West lines have no common intersection. The problem is worse though in London, as even lines from the north run by different organizations would be build adjacent (St. Pancras/ Kings Cross), or nearly adjacent (Euston), stations without convenient interchange. Later (between 1858-60) some penetrations of the box were permitted by Parliament, but most of the City of London (the original walled city where the financial district still lies) remained untouched. While preventing railways from severing the most densely populated part of the city, which would have been expensive for both the railways and the city, it created a need for a connection between the termini to allow transfers. The Metropolitan Railway, a private concern like all railways of the era but with some support from the Corporation of the City of London, was approved by Parliament in 1854. It aimed to connect the northern termini (Paddington, Euston, St. Pancras, King's Cross, and Farringdon, which was later added to the plan) to ease movement for through travelers.

If 19th Century London was smart, it would have unified its rail system and avoided the need to build a secondary metro system to shuttle people across terminals.

Yet here's 21st Century Metrolinx proposing to do exactly the same thing!
 
19th century London specifically prohibited railways from entering what's now the congestion zone, which resulted in its particularly inane distribution of termini



If 19th Century London was smart, it would have unified its rail system and avoided the need to build a secondary metro system to shuttle people across terminals.

Yet here's 21st Century Metrolinx proposing to do exactly the same thing!

Was that one reason for the Underground starting construction in 1860 and opening in 1863? As a way "around" by going "underground"?
 

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