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

[rbt]

The conclusion that deep tunnels would reduce ridership by 15% certainly isn’t consistent with my extensive experience of London’s Central and Piccadilly lines,...

Those lines aren't getting transfers from an elevated GO line less than a 7 minute trip from Union Station, which has an alternative connection (Yonge Line) available.

TTC, when designing the RL they asked GO if they could use a bit of corridor and got told absolutely not (they eliminated those options without any evaluation as a result). They designed around that limitation. Metrolinx is now stating that restriction they put on the RL would severely harm their own goal on getting passengers off GO trains before Union.

I understand why they made that decision at the time; RER hadn't been spec'd out but probably needed corridor space and the underground Lake Shore line station was the preferred Union relief mechanism; but we could have been flushing out these details in 2015 rather than today with a cooperative rather than combative Metrolinx.

 

[ssiguy2]

The use of the Dunsmuir Tunnel had nothing whatsoever to do with the selection of the ICTS system for Vancouver's Skytrain. The tunnel could have easily been adapted to just about any type of rolling stock, provided it used third rail for power - even the TTC's own subway design.

The use of ICTS was due to nothing more than the good salesmanship of UTDC.

Dan

Yes, the Dunsmuir Tunnel did have a huge amount to do with ALRT as the chosen technology. As I stated the province wanted to show off a new technology for it's transportation themed Expo86. Of course the tunnels could have been upgraded to accomodate LRT or subway but the whole point was that they didn't have to be and the province saved a fortune and a lot of construction time by not doing it. This particularly true with subway as not only would the tunnels have to have been enlarged but also there would have had to be a huge rebuild between the tunnels themselves as they are stacked and they would have had to reinforce the sections between the stacks as subway trains are much heavier {especially back in the 80s} than the ALRT cars.

Like I said, I don't know if double stacked trains stations would be a good fit for the DRL but using Vancouver as an example is not a good one because they went with that design because the tunnels already existed.

 

[syn]

The conclusion that deep tunnels would reduce ridership by 15% certainly isn’t consistent with my extensive experience of London’s Central and Piccadilly lines, which are really deep in Zone 1, or of some of Sydney’s CBD train stations. For that matter, the one week I took the Moscow Metro it seemed really well used in spite of being so deep. It would be nice to see reporting of some measure of uncertainty regarding ML’s surprising assertion, in addition to the point estimate. I mean, I know Toronto does lots of things differently from other, more functional cities, so sure why not add subway depth to the list. I also know the MTA generally uses shallow tunnels but I did say functional. It’s possible that the international ridership experience of deep tunnelled systems is irrelevant. But all the same, ML’s ridership assertion needs further scrutiny.

Agreed.

It's also not consistent with the rationale for, say, the SSE, which up until recently was a long, deep tunnel underground. Great that they've added stations, but as far as I know they'll still have to dig fairly deep tunnels.

Are deep tunnels in Scarborough going to deter ridership?

At the very least they could post a source to these 'stats'.

 

[H4F33Z]

Is there any evidence to show that having more types of rolling stock on a transit system increases annual costs to run the system? (ie, maintenance, depots, infrastructure differences.)

 

[rbt]

Is there any evidence to show that having more types of rolling stock on a transit system increases annual costs to run the system? (ie, maintenance, depots, infrastructure differences.)

The vendor is providing the vehicles and doing maintenance; they wouldn't want to share a facility anyway.

 

[W. K. Lis]

By 2018, they were planning for the rebuild of the Exhibition GO Station and the extension of the streetcar tracks from the Exhibition Loop to the Dufferin Loop. All that planning has now been filed for reference purposes only. With the Ontario Line's Exhibition Station, they have to start all over again.

See link.

And from this link.

All those plans from 2018 now need time and money to add the Ontario Line's Exhibition Station to the plans. Need to be altered GREATLY.

 

[CityStay]

All those plans from 2018 now need time and money to add the Ontario Line's Exhibition Station to the plans. Need to be altered GREATLY.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of expertise in the area of Altering Plans Greatly!

 

[officedweller]

Those lines aren't getting transfers from an elevated GO line less than a 7 minute trip from Union Station, which has an alternative connection (Yonge Line) available.

Good point. The writer could have mixed-up the "transfers" and "ridership".

 

[robmausser]

By 2018, they were planning for the rebuild of the Exhibition GO Station and the extension of the streetcar tracks from the Exhibition Loop to the Dufferin Loop. All that planning has now been filed for reference purposes only. With the Ontario Line's Exhibition Station, they have to start all over again.

See link.

And from this link.

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All those plans from 2018 now need time and money to add the Ontario Line's Exhibition Station to the plans. Need to be altered GREATLY.

Would the Ontario Line station be under the Gardiner though? I thought it was going to run elevated in the last portion to the Ex.

Looks like along the GO line, so I could see that it would maybe be elevated above the GO station, with a revamp of the GO station into a indoor multi-level structure with the Ontario Line.

So I dont think that would really interfere with the EX station for the streetcars, the tunnel to GO would just link to the structure that would include the Ontario Line.

Again this is all speculation, who knows, that map above isn't even an official EA. Its just napkin art. But it seems their intention is to have the line above ground in some fashion, albeit north of the Gardiner.

 

[M II A II R II K]

The streetcars could go in a new underground tunnel and gets its own Union type loop station for the 509 and 511.

 

[Allandale25]

Steve Munro has reviewed the latest IO report.

Ontario Line
The Ontario Line was previously reported as a single project with a price tag of over $10 billion. In the Fall 2019 update, the intent was to have the financial close in Winter/Spring 2022 ahead of the election. In the Winter 2020 update, this changed to Spring 2022.

In the Spring 2020 update, the project has been split into separate parts to reflect industry feedback about the original scope.

1. GO Corridor from Don River to Gerrard
2. South Tunnels, Civil Works and Stations CNE to Don River
3. Rolling Stock, System Operations & Maintenance
4. North Tunnels, Civil Works and Stations

The GO corridor work will be done as a conventional procurement by Metrolinx and will be bundled with upgrades to GO Transit trackage.

The financial close for items 2 and 3 above is now Fall 2022, and for item 4 it is Fall 2023.

This means that an actual sign-on-the-dotted-line commitment to the project will not be within the current government’s mandate. Even the so-called “early works” comprising the southern portion of the route from Exhibition to the Don River is not scheduled to close until Fall 2022. The northern portion, from Gerrard to Eglinton will close in Fall 2023. This contract is being held back pending results for the south contract to determine the industry’s appetite for the work.

The southern portion, with a long tunnel through downtown and stations in congested street locations would start first. However, the line cannot actually open without the northern portion because this provides the link to the maintenance facility which is included as part of item 3 above although the actual access connection would be built as part of item 4.

An issue linking all of these projects is the choice of technology which, in turn drives decisions such as tunnel and station sizes, power supply, signalling and maintenance facility design. When the Ontario Line was a single project, Metrolinx could say that this choice was up to the bidders, but now there must be some co-ordination to ensure that what is built can actually be used to operate the selected technology. It is hardly a secret that Metrolinx is promoting a SkyTrain like technology, although which propulsion scheme (LIM vs rotary motors) is not clear. There are well-known problems with LIMs and the power pickup technology used on the SRT, and this would also be a consideration for the outdoor portions of the Ontario Line.

 

[Divas S.]

the reason why everyone on here is going crazy about the smaller trains is that this line needs to be the highest capacity we can get, and even be very expensive at that because we need this to not be at capacity on day one. TR trains can, are and will be automated to achieve whatever headway is physically possible, we shouldn't be using lower capacity trains just because it's cheaper. Metrolinx even said to the TTC years ago that they cannot use their ROW because it would have impacts on RER and increased VIA service, but now all the sudden they've changed their tone when the ruling party changed.. Regardless of who's in power, the Ontario line is not fit for purpose, especially for going west to exhibition and not doing its primary job of relieving the Yonge line.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The GO corridor work will be within this Government's mandate. And I really don't see the liberals kiboshing this if they win, which I'm increasingly doubtful of anyway.

 

[syn]

You state that it doesn't make up for how much lower the capacity is, but we actually don't know right now so . . .

That being said once again the "standard" subway line is only standard in Toronto, plenty of cities do fine with shorter trains and the suggestion has never been made that something tiny like the Canada Line trains would be used.Suggested trains sound roughly in line with 4 car TRs on Sheppard.

Don't we?

The province has stated that they intend to use smaller trains at much higher frequencies that don't seem reasonable.

It's already projected to have lower capacity than a full-fledged subway, with little room for growth after it's completed.

 

[rbt]

Don't we?

I don't. Are they targeting 20k pphpd, 25k pphpd, 30k pphpd 35k pphpd? All of those are quite a bit lower than Toronto Rockets with ATO pocket-track turnbacks, and very wide platforms.