Voltz
Senior Member
A continuos route along eglinton is better, there is no real point in trying to build the center section as a 'subway', and the rest as LRT, it would do nothing but create a transfer.
Personally I think having the central section as a subway with the fringes served by bus to be a perfectly acceptable solution and I mentioned it previously.
Now, back on topic: Would an LRT continuation of Jane and Don Mills to create a DRL have enough capacity, that might be easier to sell to City Council (of course, all underground!)??
Fair enough, as long as the line links up with a fully grade separated Eglinton LRT, a northern extension can make sense. I don't like the idea of the line changing to LRT north of Bloor though, it would introduce an unnecesary transfer.I think there's some merit to extending the DRL up the Weston Sub in order to serve local stops that a Brampton REX shouldn't.
Stops could serve The Junction neighbourhood, St. Clair West, and Rogers Road, all dense pre-war neighbourhoods. The line could terminate at an intermodal station at Eglinton with REX and the Eglinton Crosstown line. Eglinton, located at the end of Black Creek Drive would be a great location for a park-and-ride and includes a massive site, larger than City Place, that could be redeveloped. Since it could be on the surface, building such an extension could be incredibly cheap. An LRT is another option, and could include even more stops
The nice thing about the Weston sub is that it's on a diagonal to the grid. A subway or LRT line could simply turn off the corridor and head north or west down a number of streets. Keele, Eglinton, Jane, Lawrence/Dixon, Weston Rd, Albion Rd, Islington, Kipling, Martin Grove...
I'm going to write on the facebook blog to see what can be done.
An idea for getting the DRL onto the agenda front and centre is to start a Facebook group called "I live in Adam Giambrone's ward and I will personally vote for the other candidate in the next municipal election unless he seriously considers building the DRL as a subway as part of Move Ontario 2020".
Then, get your friends to join and once about 500 people have joined, send him a personal invite to this group.
Another head-scratcher from the brain trust. What I cannot understand is why the DRL can only be considered as a function of Yonge capacity--ie, "we will only build this thing as an absolute last resort, and then only to reduce loads on Yonge." The notion that, in addition to such "relief," a huge number of new neighbourhoods and trip generators could get subway service for the first time is bizarrely absent from the equation. The TTC's mandate is to provide public transport for the City of Toronto, not for Yonge Street, but it's easy to forget that sometimes.
I had a meeting with TTC staff Monday night and this was said about the DRL:
"TTC needs to maximizes their system first before building this DRL and it must be push off into the distance future as far as possible."
One can say I don’t want this to happen on my watch as to the price tag of $2.1B. "It’s money that can be use for other things" by TTC staff.
So, one needs to changes some minds with TTC and the City to get the DRL 100 years after it first raise it's head.