This kind of addresses my question...
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/08/28/experts-ponder-if-there-is-to-be-a-downtown-relief-line-where-will-it-go.aspx
Experts ponder: If there is to be a Downtown Relief Line, where will it go?
...(T)oday’s proponents are weighing both practical and fanciful considerations, from whether it has a better chance of getting done if it follows the southern railway corridor, which would be cheaper, to where it could go if cost wasn’t a factor, to whether it should pass through Union Station.
Adam Giambrone, chair of the TTC, mused this week about whether the coming $640-million renovation of Union Station, and a simultaneous $137-million revamp of the cramped subway station beneath it, will preclude routing the DRL through the historic hub.
“It’s unlikely to come to Union Station,” he said. “Putting another subway station in the mix would be complex and perhaps not advisable. You need options and that’s what the downtown relief is, it gives you alternatives. Pushing everything in to Union Station doesn’t necessarily make sense.”
Mr. Giambrone said Union Station is fast running out of room and the thought of tearing it up again not long after the impending work is completed may prove unpalatable.
But to some transit enthusiasts, the DRL skipping Union Station is practically heresy.
“In our view it would stop at Union Station and that would be the major interchange,” said Jonathan English, a transit enthusiast and member of a loose-knit group calling itself the DRL Action Committee. “Some people were talking about how that would be difficult to build, but it was studied in 1985 and the conditions there have not changed significantly since then. They were incorporating the streetcar loop, they were incorporating a GO concourse and they said it actually could be built quite easily.”
Many, however, have already turned their attention to alternative alignments for the DRL (one early suggestion is below). Mr. Giambrone thinks it should run somewhere between Wellington and Queen, and indeed some in the blogosphere are pushing for a Queen Street subway, but Mr. English thinks that’s too far north.
“The issue with that is Queen Street isn’t the hub of downtown employment that it was back in the ‘50s before the office towers were built. And the other thing is that east and west of downtown, Queen Street runs through areas that are zoned and designated in the official plan as stable residential neighbourhoods,” he said. “The route we recommended was more or less the route studied in 1985… which was along Front Street west of Union Station. So it would have stops near the convention centre, near the Sky Dome, near City Place, which is developing like crazy.
“Wellington was another route that was studied and Wellington does have its appeal. You wouldn’t have to interrupt the streetcar route during construction, it’s close to all the office buildings and you could connect to both King and St. Andrew’s Stations.”
The beauty of the DRL, for both cost containment and ease of construction, is that early plans envisioned it making use of an existing rail corridor. As luck would have it, said Jason Paris, another advocate who started a DRL Facebook group, that route also traces a path near most of the employment districts and neighbourhoods a new subway line would ideally be designed to serve.
“In 1988, the railway corridor was basically just that, a corridor that served industrial parts of Toronto where nobody really lived,” he said. “The railway corridor has completely changed, like Liberty Village, the Distillery District and the new waterfront, which probably represents the biggest increase in population into the downtown in the modern history of the city in the next 30 years.”
There is also the question of where the DRL would meet the Bloor-Danforth subway. There is broad consensus that the western terminus should be Dundas West Station, because it is already a hub for GO, subway and streetcar routes. But about the eastern end, debate continues.
Many, like Mr. English, believe Pape is a no brainer, because it, too, is a hub for one of the busiest north-south bus routes, the 25, and would connect with the planned Don Mills light-rail line.
But Mr. Paris thinks there’s merit in pushing it further east if the rail corridor is favoured. There is already a TTC subway yard at Greenwood Station that abuts the rail corridor itself.
Steve Munro, a transit activist and blogger who helped save Toronto’s streetcar fleet from being scrapped in the 1970s, notes the greatest demand for the DRL is in the east. For that reason, he believes the DRL shouldn’t end at the Danforth, but instead be extended north from Pape Station to Eglinton, replacing the proposed Don Mills LRT to that point.
“If we have to build a tunnel and probably a new bridge across the Don [Valley] south of Thorncliffe Park, it may as well have the DRL in it,” Mr. Munro said. “This would create a major junction at Don Mills and Eglinton between the DRL, the Eglinton LRT and the Don Mills LRT.
“Stops to hit en route… assuming we start at Eglinton, there would be one or two stops serving both Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Parks, then across the valley to O’Connor, then Danforth, Gerrard, Queen [East], Distillery District, maybe somewhere near St. Lawrence.”
Dieter Janssen, a professor at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, proposes another pathway altogether for the DRL – one he acknowledges would be more expensive, but which he argues would knit the city together.
He suggests the eastern terminus should be Coxwell, or even Woodbine, so the DRL can head due south and brush the edge of the Beach neighbourhood, before traveling along Queen Street East through Leslieville and South Riverdale.
Once it crosses the Don Valley, however, Prof. Janssen believes the line should then descend to King Street for the thoroughfare’s entire length, before swooping up Roncesvalles Avenue where King meets Queen Street West and the Queensway and concluding at Dundas West Station.
Prof. Janssen agrees with Mr. Giambrone that the DRL should bypass Union Station altogether, connecting to the Yonge and University-Spadina axes of the subway through other stations.
“My inclination would be to skip Union Station as well, as it already has significant congestion,” he said. “You’d have two opportunities to connect to the Yonge line, one to the east and one to the west… It makes sense if you think about who uses Union Station.”
Councillor Michael Thompson (Scarborough Centre), who has become a champion of reviving the DRL in recent months, said he doesn’t want to presuppose any route for the new subway.
“I’m not married to ‘It has to go here’ or ‘It has to go there,’” he said. “I’m married to making it happen.”