Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[diminutive]

Was that one reason for the Underground starting construction in 1860 and opening in 1863? As a way "around" by going "underground"?

Yea, that's covered in the blurb I quoted. The Metropolitan Railway Company he mentions built what would become the underground's first route, the Metropolitan line. The Metropolitan District Railway opened the District line a few years later to connect London's southern terminals. The two now mostly form the Circle line which connects just about all of London's main terminals north of the Thames.

 

[Electrify]

Fun fact: the rational behind the Metropolitan line in London, the first subway, was to connect the commuter rail stations into the city centre.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Fun fact: the rational behind the Metropolitan line in London, the first subway, was to connect the commuter rail stations into the city centre.

The City of Kingston has its VIA station out near the 401, surrounded by sprawl. Maybe they need a subway into their downtown.

For Toronto, if the powers that be want to create a high speed rail into Toronto, maybe the DRL could connect with it, if they decide as well to build their high speed station outside of downtown.

 

[nfitz]

The City of Kingston has its VIA station out near the 401, surrounded by sprawl. Maybe they need a subway into their downtown.

It would make sense - once they are big enough to have commuter rail, and if the terminus is out near Counter and Princess. Though given the population of the part of Kingston east of the Little Cataraqui and south of 401 (the city limits before the Mike Harris amalgamation) is only about 60,000 people and the YUS subway ridership is about 735,000 a day ... I can't see this happening for a few centuries.

 

[gweed123]

It would make sense - once they are big enough to have commuter rail, and if the terminus is out near Counter and Princess. Though given the population of the part of Kingston east of the Little Cataraqui and south of 401 (the city limits before the Mike Harris amalgamation) is only about 60,000 people and the YUS subway ridership is about 735,000 a day ... I can't see this happening for a few centuries.

An express bus down Princess St is about all they can realistically hope for for quite a while I think...

 

[11th]

An express bus down Princess St is about all they can realistically hope for for quite a while I think...

Why not...an LRT?

 

[gweed123]

Why not...an LRT?

Something tells me there isn't quite enough demand for that, haha. Even a dedicated lane BRT would be a stretch.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I don't think anyone is trying to suggest that Union is convenient to literally every major transit destination downtown, though. It's not.

No single station ever will be. Even amongst the trip generators you listed it would be impossible to serve them all with a single station. As far as these things GO though (ha!) Union's a pretty good location. Maybe a station around CityHall/Eaton Center would have been better, but the status quo ain't so bad.

The problem isn't Union's location, as you suggest, but that Union is the only destination GO serves downtown. And the solution to that isn't to build some kind of stupid stub terminal at Bathurst, but a real regional rail line crossing downtown, serving all sorts of areas beyond Union and connecting to local transit.

You're right, diminutive. I would go so far as to say that Union might be one of the 'best located' major railway stations in the world. That's right: the world. None of the European stations are so conveniently located, just by virtue of the fact that European non-skyscraper downtowns are more spread out and don't have intense clusters of jobs in one spot so the number of jobs accessible on foot once you get off the train is going to be less. Ditto with Tokyo. The major Chinese railway stations are all on the edges of their CBDs and the Chinese model of urbanity with 4 or 5 equally-sized office clusters, but no one solid downtown, means that no station will be at the centre of everything.

The only North American cities that have comparable downtown job numbers to Toronto are New York and Chicago. New York has two stations: one is shoved off to the far western edge of Midtown; the other one is quite central in Midtown but it's kind of an inconvenient terminal station with zero intercity traffic and you won't be able to make a connection to more than half of the suburban network, at that (at least for now).

Chicago's Union station is pretty central, too, but, again, it's a terminal station where you can't even connect with all other lines in the suburban network. Plus Chicago Union station is a complete dump and if you think the Great Hall is underused and the GO concourse tawdry, we ain't got nothing on how underused their great hall is and just how deplorable their '70s concourse is.

Toronto Union station, like you said, has some problems but it is a through-track station where all intercity and suburban lines converge in just about the best spot it could possibly be. And, yes, the fact that the powers-that-be would want to ruin this by building a stub station 2 km to the west in an area that is rapidly being built up without any room for office growth is incredibly stupid. I hope nfitz is right about Metrolinx basically providing as bad a solution as possible in order to make a costly Union station more viable.

 

[dunkalunk]

Still off-topic here but how possible do you think it would be to also put Kitchener-Stouffville underground into a GO tunnel? Where at Union Station could High Speed Rail be accommodated?

 

[gweed123]

Toronto Union station, like you said, has some problems but it is a through-track station where all intercity and suburban lines converge in just about the best spot it could possibly be. And, yes, the fact that the powers-that-be would want to ruin this by building a stub station 2 km to the west in an area that is rapidly being built up without any room for office growth is incredibly stupid. I hope nfitz is right about Metrolinx basically providing as bad a solution as possible in order to make a costly Union station more viable.

I would say that both Montreal and Vancouver's central stations are located in an equally good location compared to Union. But your point is well taken.

 

[gweed123]

Still off-topic here but how possible do you think it would be to also put Kitchener-Stouffville underground into a GO tunnel? Where at Union Station could High Speed Rail be accommodated?

Interesting idea. With my GO REX scheme, it may be possible to do this (NOTE: This map does not include the 'diversion' described below):

Notice how I have the 'short turn' routes that run an abbreviated version of the full route. It may be possible to route all of those short turn routes into a tunnel under King, Queen, or Dundas Sts. The short turn routes would diverge and reconnect to the main Union-bound routes at Bathurst and Riverdale, respectively.

This would in effect route every 2nd train away from Union, while still:

1) Maintaining frequency on the outer parts of the line (in the outer 416 and inner 905)

2) Still have every route serving Union in one form or another.

3) Create a second satellite main station somewhere within downtown, thereby increasing travel options and distributing the load.

Under this scheme, nobody would be 'forced' away from Union, as every station on the overlapping parts of the line (where the short turn and full routes are interlined) would be serviced by routes bound for both main stations, aside from the stops immediately adjacent to downtown.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Still off-topic here but how possible do you think it would be to also put Kitchener-Stouffville underground into a GO tunnel? Where at Union Station could High Speed Rail be accommodated?

I don't think we would even need to go undeground. If we had a real electric regional rail system, we'd be able to reconfigure the existing tracks (or, at least, the trackspace) to run a far greater volume of trains than we currently do.

Here's a cutaway model from the top deck of Berlin's central station, which handles a far greater volume of passengers and train movements than Union station:

As you can see, there are only 6 tracks and 3 platforms but they are quite a bit different from GO train platforms, and so are the trains that serve them.

Of the 6 tracks, 2 are dedicated for the S-bahn regional rail system. Trains arrive every 5 minutes, like a subway, and the train dwells on the high level platform for about a minute allowing people to get on and get off. Of course, the S-bahn looks more like a subway than a GO train with its single floor and multiple doors per car. The remainder of the tracks are used for intercity trains, including high speed ICE trains. All platforms are high floor., elevated a meter off the tracks like a subway or like in Montreal's Central station.

I imagine in Toronto, with electric regional rail replacing the Georgetown-Stoufville (combined), Lakeshore and Milton corridors, we could have something like this:

2 tracks, 1 centre high level, wide platform for Georgetown-Stoufville, Lakeshore, Milton electric regional trains - these would arrive and depart like subways
2 tracks, 1 centre high level, wide platform for the Airport Express (also electric)
2 tracks, 1 centre high level, wide platform for HSR
2 tracks, 2 side, low level, narrow platforms for the remaining GO trains (Barrie, Richmond Hill) and maybe "long distance GO" (Niagara, KW, Peterborough).
2 tracks, 2 side, low level, narrow platforms for remaining VIA/Amtrak.

 

[bleu]

You're right, diminutive. I would go so far as to say that Union might be one of the 'best located' major railway stations in the world. That's right: the world. None of the European stations are so conveniently located, just by virtue of the fact that European non-skyscraper downtowns are more spread out and don't have intense clusters of jobs in one spot so the number of jobs accessible on foot once you get off the train is going to be less. Ditto with Tokyo. The major Chinese railway stations are all on the edges of their CBDs and the Chinese model of urbanity with 4 or 5 equally-sized office clusters, but no one solid downtown, means that no station will be at the centre of everything.

You are not entirely right about Europe. La defense near Paris for example receives 180,000 workers daily, compared with 100,000 in financial district Toronto.
As to Asia, Tokyo has the entire population of Canada, so do you think it is possible to have a train station just by the CBD so that everyone can walk to their offices? Toronto can do it because it is a mid sized city.

Regarding Chinese cities, their commute pattern is quite different. Hardly anyone take commute trains to go to work in Shanghai and Beijing. Actually the while idea of commute train is pretty much unknown among them. Instead of relying on trains, they simply build subways. For example, the terminus of line 5 in Shanghai is as far as 36KM away from the city center, basically the distance between Bay/King and Oakville. Line 11 is 45km from the CBD, similar distance between Vaughan and the financial district. Their trains systems are predominantly like VIA, not GO, for longer distance travelling.

Asian cities are much larger than Toronto, usually 3-4X the size, so of course they can't have "one solid downtown" in the North American sense because they will create serious traffic bottle neck problems (imagine 4X people travel from the suburbs to Bay/King every morning?). They choose to have multiple CBDs to spread the commute pattern. That being said, each of their 4-5 CBDS is still as big as Toronto's financial district. Not sure if they are not "solid". Your ideal of "centre of everything" only works for mid sized cities, not megacities with 20M+ people.

 

[ssiguy2]

Hey gweed123, that a very impressive map, congrats.

What I do not quite understand is what is the difference between GO REX and the current GO rail commuter lines? Are you proposing that all GO REX be part of the standard subway system with standard subway fares? If so I'm all for it!

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

where do you guys get the stats for downtown populations???? i'm so lost.