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

The Don Mills LRT never even finished it's EA, Miller wasn't trying to push it instead of the DRL
 
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Undead said:
To my memory, that was never the plan, but happy to be corrected on that. In any case, I'm glad we're getting all three of the original line 1 relief projects (ATC, Bloor Yonge expansion and new line).
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Though the ATC has been unimpressive so far - and I have some doubts whether it could have squeezed out the capacity they're aiming for without a lot of additional downstream improvements.

Voltz said:
The Don Mills LRT never even finished it's EA, Miller wasn't trying to push it instead of the DRL
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I don't think he tried to push it like he did with the rest of the lines, but DRL of any sort was downright non-existent in pretty much any way during his tenure.

AoD
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Though the ATC has been unimpressive so far - and I have some doubts whether it could have squeezed out the capacity they're aiming for without a lot of additional downstream improvements.



I don't think he tried to push it like he did with the rest of the lines, but DRL of any sort was downright non-existent in pretty much any way during his tenure.

AoD
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And that it doesn't seem to have reduced the number of signal problems on the line.
 
ARG1 said:
My "source" to this is METRO6's video on the Don Mills LRT (I believe that channel is run by @JSF-1 ?) which supplies this graphic about how the southern extension was planned to look at (important to note that at the time, the routing of the line past the Don Valley was not set in stone):
View attachment 465848
Unfortunately he doesn't provide any direct sources, and instead only mentions the Don Mills LRT EA in the description, and I can't seem to find it so I only have to assume this is accurate. This is something that was seemingly only studied during the early days of the line, and was dated to when Transit City was still going to use the exact same specs as the existing Streetcar Network. The important thing to highlight however is the mindsight of the planners of the time, all of these southern alternatives were likely devised with no real thought about how this would integrate with a DRL.
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Here's the actual image from the ea.
DMLRT_Alignments.png
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Though the ATC has been unimpressive so far - and I have some doubts whether it could have squeezed out the capacity they're aiming for without a lot of additional downstream improvements.



I don't think he tried to push it like he did with the rest of the lines, but DRL of any sort was downright non-existent in pretty much any way during his tenure.

AoD
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The last time I rode line 1 was on a weekday afternoon in December and I was appalled at how poor the service was.

I missed my train right in front of my nose at Finch (as one does) and had a 12 minute wait for the next one, which then proceeded to make its way down south very, very slowly. I don't know that we ever cracked 25 km/h at any point between Finch and Union, except for a 100 m jaunt between Rosedale and Bloor, when it inexplicably sped up before slowing back down again. It couldn't have been train traffic because the train ahead left a substantial gap!

I don't like to judge things by one single experience, so I wanted to go back and try it again, but I've been avoiding the subway of late so as to avoid being shanked. Did I have exceptionally bad luck that day?
 
kotsy said:
Demolition of the buildings at Centennial Park was completed a couple months back and the areas under the elevated section of the Gardiner have been cleared of CNE storage and Toronto Police vehicles. I haven't seen any evidence of construction starting on the new tracks while I went for a walk from Dufferin St. to Exhibition Station a few days ago.
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I took a close look from the top deck of the GO Train the other day, where you can see over the wall. No sign of any construction mobilization, at least west of the station building. I wonder if instead of being for the tracks, that much of this is for construction staging to the station rebuild and new subway station.

kotsy said:
The new construction fence along the south platform at Exhibition GO is related to the temporary pedestrian bridge currently under construction for the Ontario Line expansion.
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Why would they put a fence along the west end of the platform, hundreds of metres from the construction of the overpass. Seems a bit early for a future phase of construction ... though there's been no end of stupidity during the construction for Exhibition station during recent years.
 
ARG1 said:
Proof? From what I know there is very little evidence of this.
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I'm not sure why we need to rehash every few years.

ARG1 said:
The main plan for the Don Mills LRT was to have it go underground south of Don Valley and service Pape Station underground.
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It was originally, but go back and look at previous comments - and the comments during the EA for the Don Mills LRT, where it was becoming apparent that the demand south of Eglinton was going to exceed what LRT could deliver in the above ground sections.[/quote]

ARG1 said:
Plus, my understanding is that the project was designed for the Don Mills LRT to be extended further south to eventually connect to the East Bayfront LRT/Queen St in the future.
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I've never heard that before. There was some kind of option in the aborted EA (along with do nothing). But I've never seen any discussion about it seriously. There were other suggestions I recall, even before Transit City, like a surface line along the west side of the Don Valley (somehow linking to Castle Frank), only going underground towards the end.

The earliest indication that things had shifted, and that the DRL was back on the table was the January 2009 council vote, where Miller supported adding the DRL to the 15-year plan (though voted against prioritizing it before the Yonge North extension). https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2009.EX28.1

Even during his term, it was a common meme among his opponents here that he was anti-subway. And yet he advanced the Line 1 extension to Vaughan (though did oppose it north of Steeles). And in pre-Transit City days pushed for the extension of the Sheppard subway - before it became apparent that the province wasn't going to come up with that kind of money.

The Transit City bus plan also took a back seat to the LRT, coming out years later. Does this mean that Miller also opposed buses?
 
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I'm not sure OL is the best template for build RT out in the suburbs. We seem to have become more comfortable with suburban LRT systems, but I think we likely will need something between these two solutions for higher speed, lower capacity/cost suburban connectivity. It will also be interesting to see how GO Expansion and the specific technologies selected there will fit into the mix. As GO Expansion eventually transitions to use lighter, lower capacity rolling stock instead of loco-hauled bilevels, it might open opportunities to cost-effectively branch off the existing GO ROWs to serve some of the suburban centres that are not today well-served by GO. I do expect to see some kind of orbital line similar to elevated OL connecting the radial lines and providing cross-regional connectivity--the provincial government's loop line concept along the 407 to Pearson.
 

Requests for Proposals Issued to Teams for Ontario Line

Infrastructure Ontario (IO) and Metrolinx have issued Requests for Proposals (RFP) for two major works packages for the Ontario Line: Pape Tunnel and Underground Stations and the Elevated Guideway and Stations contracts.
www.infrastructureontario.ca www.infrastructureontario.ca
the rfps are out for the north section and pape tunnel.
a development phase is slated to start in early 2024
 
Some kind of light metro would be really nice, but quite frankly the OL may be nominally light metro equipment but is in every other way a full size system. To some extent I think our best shot at a good model may have sailed when we built the RT instead of Hamilton as an ICTS demonstrator… In the more immediate, can’t we please look to the Canada line?
 
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