muller877
Senior Member
King would be a lousy choice. PATH is to elaborate so it would be a technical nightmare, cost a king's ransom, and the tunnels would be 10 feet short of China to make it all possible. Also King will already have ST /RER/GO so it already has the best transit connections in the city.
Queen is the natural alternative not only because it would more new riders but Queen is a more important commercial and pedestrian strip than King. Also Queen would be the easiest to build under. The biggest problem when building underground is interchange stations with other subway lines and Queen will be as easy as it gets as opposed to any other downtown street. The Queen underground station is there and yes it would have to be completely redesigned and expanded but it is still there. It would get rid of the most of the tunnelling under Yonge station.
Due to Queen station, Osgood was also designed with a Queen subway in mind. The assumption was made that it would be the crosstown route and hence Osgood station has all clearances for plumbing, sewer, electrical etc for the eventuality of a station and this is a bonus that other stations don't have. Queen's PATH system is relatively small and I think there should be subway access to City Hall.
To me Queen is not only the superior choice but also the easiest, less disruptive, and cheapest to boot.
Queen is NOT the commercial strip. I've never heard of it as such and it is not. You don't hear MBA grad's saying I want to work on Queen. It's KING & BAY. Queen is in the hinterland for the business district and is getting even more so with South Core adding to the southern end of the business district.
And looking at the growth in the shoulders to the west and east King has a lot more development than Queen and a lot closer to where people want to go.
The other problem with Queen is the connections to the PATH. Have you tried to get from Queen or Osgoode to the office towers? (wait...you can't at Osgoode!). And the Queen one you have to wander though the Bay. The PATH doesn't have the size required for subway loads of office workers. King is the actual destination and where they want to go and has sufficient connections already there.
Both Queen and King will have to be dug via TBM (below the current subway). This means that only the station envelope will require significant utility and pedestrian disruption. King's PATH connections are above the current subway so they will not be disrupted by the TBM and are plentiful enough that if one needs closing to build the station there is enough slack for alternative routes.