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

We are up to 371 members in the Facebook group.

More importantly though, check out today's Spacing Wire (by SeanTrans):

The Case for a Downtown Relief Line

Also, here's our pretty new map!

2411960022_33380eba17.jpg

(thanks to CDL.TO)
 
It'll take a new mayor and a new TTC chair to realized that it's not about Subway VS LRT... it's Subway AND LRT.

More populated areas of the city cannot be moved simply by ROW's. The TTC needs to expand their network of subways for people moving large distances and feed streetcar ROW's off of this network for shorter distances and into less populated areas.
 
Why not call Spadina South, "Cityplace", or Lower Spadina which is the actual street there I think. And Queen West, "Parkdale" perhaps.

And plus Pape would be Pape/Danforth.
 
It'll take a new mayor and a new TTC chair to realized that it's not about Subway VS LRT... it's Subway AND LRT.
The current mayor has already received a commitment for more subway and SRT expansion than anyone in decades.

Knowing in advance that something like MoveOntario2020 was coming, they put together a plan. They could have blown the $6 billion or so that they were expecting on a Yonge subway rebuild and expansion, a Shepherd completion, an SRT rebuild and expansion (or subway extension), and perhaps the construction of those 4 Eglinton West stubway stations (though that seems ambitions for only $6 billion).

Instead he asks for $6 billion of RT expansion. Okay says the province, but you have to also take a Yonge rebuild and extension, SRT rebuild and extension, a new east-west GO line through Dupont and Summerhill, and an electrified Lakeshore East line with more frequent service.

It's starting to look like pure genius!
 
Genius? I'd hardly call the currently "underway" subway proposals "genius". DRL should definitely be subway.
 
Whatever the technology, man oh man was I relieved to see Steve Munro and someone implying they are a City planner say that TC was always envisioned with an eventual underground connection between the Jane and Don Mills lines. The City and Steve often give the impression they just don't care about rapid transit south of Bloor, and so even if we might disagree with underground LRT vs. subway it's nice to know they at least acknowledge that you can't just put a few more streetcars on Queen and call it a day.
 
Whatever the technology, man oh man was I relieved to see Steve Munro and someone implying they are a City planner say that TC was always envisioned with an eventual underground connection between the Jane and Don Mills lines. The City and Steve often give the impression they just don't care about rapid transit south of Bloor, and so even if we might disagree with underground LRT vs. subway it's nice to know they at least acknowledge that you can't just put a few more streetcars on Queen and call it a day.

The amusing thing is that although Steve Munro agrees that a surface streetcar wouldn't be sufficient, there seems to be a number of posters in the Spacing Wire discussion using Steve Munro-based arguments to argue for exactly that. Tunnels are bad and unaffordable! Lay some track on Pape, run streetcars down Pape and across King or Queen and voila! you're serving the same market as a DRL. Completely missing the primary relief and regional aspects of a DRL.

Favourite quote from one of these people: "The people who really love subways are the auto mobile folks who want the street for themselves."
 
Some of these "transit advocates" have their heads so far up their asses that they just come off as, well, asses.
 
The amusing thing is that although Steve Munro agrees that a surface streetcar wouldn't be sufficient, there seems to be a number of posters in the Spacing Wire discussion using Steve Munro-based arguments to argue for exactly that. Tunnels are bad and unaffordable! Lay some track on Pape, run streetcars down Pape and across King or Queen and voila! you're serving the same market as a DRL. Completely missing the primary relief and regional aspects of a DRL.

I found that to be very amusing. They've out Munroed Steve Munro! I don't fully agree with Munro over Transit City, but you've got to hand it to him - he puts a lot of thought into his position, unlike many others out there, and at least realizes the downtown issue.
 
I found that to be very amusing. They've out Munroed Steve Munro! I don't fully agree with Munro over Transit CIty, but you've got to hand it to him - he puts a lot of thought into his position, unlike many others out there, and at least realizes the downtown issue.

Steve Munro has stated many, many times on his blog that he wants a regional-rail U-bahn-style GO system for Toronto, usually in the comments section. But the thing is I'm not aware of any time when he's actually articulated in a blog post what regional rail is, and as we've seen on this forum many times people often have trouble wrapping their heads around a concept that they have no familiarity with.

I now have this mental image of Transit City being under construction and Mr. Munro turning his attention to advocating for regional rail, leading to mass confusion among the more enthusiastic of his fans....

"I don't understand! I thought transit should run on streets because people want to go to streets, not rail corridors! I thought transit should be local with many stops! What about an LRT from Oshawa to downtown on Highway 2? I thought big trains are too expensive! I thought four car trains bad, two car LRTs good!"
 
I got a good chuckle from your image of the LRT superfans who think they read from the Munro gospel and don't realize it's more complicated than they think.

Who knows, I might beat Steve in explaining what a regional rail is in Spacing. I beat him to it for the DRL, though he has mentioned it in passing mostly, or a bit more in the comments. I also see what his vision of a DRL would be as well, which makes sense, but too bad that what's good for Don Mills or Jane to downtown isn't good for Sheppard East - a one seat, transferless ride.
 
I thought four car trains bad, two car LRTs good!"
And as the transit advocates stared upon the list of rules, they noticed something different. They couldn't quite place it, but the last rule looked... different somehow. Munro and his cronies stood looking over the crowds, a grin upon his face. That was when it hit them. The whole time he'd had them advocating for LRTs in street ROWs, he'd had an alternate agenda...

His die hard men stood up in the crowd and rose up in a chorus, reading out that final rule in it's new revised state: "Two trains good, four trains better! Two trains good, four trains better!" The subway and LRT advocates among the crowd stared at Munro in shock, a sort of shimmering overtaking their vision. It cleared up quickly, but something seemed different among their leaders. They looked back and forth from Munro's group to the regional rail activists that had begun to increasingly hang around, however, they found that they could no longer tell the difference between the two...

-----

No offense to Mr. Munro, of course. I just couldn't resist an Animal Farm reference.
 

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