corridor_dweller
New Member
Now that's connectivity!
GO is expected to run out of capacity at Union. The Queen streetcar is at the limits of what it can do in mixed traffic. A subway on Queen can serve areas the exclusive ROWs on Bremner, Queens Quay, and Waterfront West and the GO station at Exhibition cannot. A DRL which connects to GO at either Dundas West or Jane & St.Clair, the Queensway, Don Station, and Pape and Gerrard, adds a new station to the central business district at Nathan Phillips Square, connects to Bloor-Danforth line stations, and potentially connects to Don Mills and Jane LRT lines will add far more new possibilities than a subway along existing railway tracks, near the Waterfront LRT lines, and serving a Union station which will already be bursting at it seams if the GO services visualized in the Big Move are realized.
GO's capacity at Union has little to do with TTC's capacity at Union, which is well under capacity.
I know. But what exactly would the DRL be connecting to at Union that the Queen line wouldn't.
I don't know if Queen is the answer; but surely a Pape-Queen or Pape-King link would relieve the Yonge line more than a Pape to Union link ... and that's what the objective is ... relieving Yonge.I honestly don't understand this obsession with Queen is. Going to Union through a Front/railway alignment would create so much more connectivity than going under Queen would, and would service many more people.
I dunno, like the whole PATH system? The major part of downtown?
Really, what's at Yonge and Queen? Eaton Centre and a Bay store.
Any place between King and Queen is a good location.
Going west of Yonge or more like Bathurst St, you only have 2 routes to follow. Given what Queen is like, this is where it should run west of Bathurst.
Another thing to remember, is that by intersecting the Yonge (and University) lines at anywhere but Union, will allow for the transfer between the two lines to be dispersed at 2 stations, rather than 1. Can you imagine the mess at the Yonge line platforms at Union when the passengers from Eastbound DRL line, Westbound DRL line, 2 or 3 GO Trains, and Spadina, Harbourfront, Waterfront East and Waterfront West LRTs all arrive at the same time? We need a network ... not a single location in downtown where everybody is going to change.
The bulk of the riders using the section between Roncesvalles and Bathurst got on prior to Roncesvalles (ie on the Queensway or Etobicoke South portions of the line).
That is not supported by the documents that I have read. Of the 12,000 people who ride the 501 in Etobicoke, on a daily basis only 50% travel from or to a place east of Humber Loop. There are over 43,000 riders total on the 501 Queen line, that means less than 15% of riders come from Etobicoke. How could less than 15% of riders ever be "the bulk" of those coming from west of Bathurst, especially considering the walkability of places east of Bathurst to downtown?
another advantage with Wellington is that by having the King and St. Andrew transfer points so close to the 'bottom' of the lines, peak hour flow at these stations is relatively 1 directional (PM rush hour NB platform is full, SB platform is relatively empty). Having the DRL connect there would take advantage of the rush hour frequencies on trains that aren't really full (compared to the trains heading in the opposite direction at that same time).