Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

Hipster Duck said:
Wait a minute, are you proposing that electric S-bahn style heavy rail trains -which weigh 240 tonnes when empty and are powered by 25 kV AV overhead catenary - trundle down a busy city street?

My understanding is that REX is S-bahn. You're talking about something like this on Richmond street, right?

sbahn_frankfurt.jpg
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Since REX talks about trains the same size as the subway fleet, my proposal would have it underground through the core.
 
One of the big reasons for preferring the rail corridor route over a (frequently-advocated) route down Queen is the ongoing development on those lands. The growth of condos and skyscrapers is occurring in downtown's former industrial lands... and former industrial lands usually follow the city's rail corridors.

So here is a map I've made of where major development is occurring in the central city. 'Current projects' are projects of 300 units or more that are recently completed, under construction, in sales, or that have plans (basically, those projects that are in the pipeline). 'Potential future sites' are more major lands that are ripe for redevelopment along the DRL route.

This is not a map designed to selectively highlight those current projects along the DRL route, it is intended to be a map of all major current developments. It's difficult to keep track of all the developments going on in this city. Please consider this map to be a 'beta' - any additions or corrections to the map are appreciated.

drldevelopment2ot5.jpg
 
I like the map. But if you're going to show development, shouldn't you show street names as well?
 
Don Mills LRT Open House

The Don Mills Road Light Rail Class Environment Assessment has an Open House in June. In the newsletter it shows a conceptual corridor for the Don Mills route between the Danforth and downtown. This could be a second stage for the Don Mills route to extend it as a Downtown Relief Line. The public notice shows three possible routes to the Bloor-Danforth Subway.
 
We've really got to ramp up our efforts in order to ensure that the DRL doesn't end up as yet another streetcar. They're going to try to shove that down our throats and pretend like the subway option doesn't even exist. We have to make sure that people know that it does. This is a line that wouuld be a very busy subway from day one.
 
I'm going to write/email another round of comments to the city about these various and dubious streetcar lines but they're just not interested in public comments unless the public is badgering a councillor to adopt their pet cause - input during the actual EA process and public consultations is ignored.
 
Steve Munro, I feel, has been trying to co-opt the DRL as a LRT. I am surprised by how many people just say yes to what ever he says. Though I believe Giambrone is quite open to the DRL as a real subway, it's just that we can't let Steve be the only voice with clout out there.
 
SeanTrans said:
Steve Munro, I feel, has been trying to co-opt the DRL as a LRT. I am surprised by how many people just say yes to what ever he says. Though I believe Giambrone is quite open to the DRL as a real subway, it's just that we can't let Steve be the only voice with clout out there.
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He accuses the TTC and Queen's Park of politicising transit and making expensive mistakes.

Yet he opposes converting the Sheppard Subway to underground LRT and interlining the Sheppard LRT (the only real option other than building the entire Sheppard Subway, since nowhere else in the world will such an asinine arrangement be allowed to exist) because the TTC needs to only build LRT as its new technology.

If we were alive in 1950 he would advocate building an underground freeway down Yonge Street, since we can't afford expensive subways.
 
Seriously this is just getting out of hand. This city is moving completely backwards when it comes to rapid transit expansion.
 
Seriously, what is getting out of hand is the latest whingewave of Scarberiocentric vagina envy. Not evertything can run in a tunnel deep down there. Sometimes you have to accept that life will cruise above it all, a bit slower, but naked, erect, on the surace, efficiently delivering its human cargo.
 
CapitalSeven said:
Seriously, what is getting out of hand is the latest whingewave of Scarberiocentric vagina envy. Not evertything can run in a tunnel deep down there. Sometimes you have to accept that life will cruise above it all, a bit slower, but naked, erect, on the surace, efficiently delivering its human cargo.
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Oh look, scarberiankhatru posted! I must immediately respond to him, even though I'll most likely miss the point entirely. Scarberiankhatru supports subway construction that's at grade, in trenches, or in rail corridors (like the DRL, which would only be partially underground) as much as possible, but I'll have to ignore that because he must automatically be wrong.

It's just so great that we can't afford subways anywhere - even extensions of existing lines - but the plan is to build several billion dollars worth of underground streetcars.
 
An underground streetcar line misses the point of mass transit. Its limited transit, and in a city like Toronto the cars would be overcrowded the moment the line opened. After a year of being open, all the headlines in Toronto papers would be "just a year into service, DRL experiences more traffic and load than system was designed to handle." Then comes the multi-billion dollar need to fix the original mistake.

If there's one thing the DRL needs is a good influx of "get it done the right way the first time" attitude instead of this lovey-dovey belief that we're going to start with some small light rail system and piece-meal a good transportation system.

Toronto is one of North America's major urban centres. Its not Portland or Pittsburgh or Edmonton. Light rail isn't sufficient.

If the powers at be were smart, they would emphasize plans for creating a subway (more at-grade and elevated to avoid costs) DRL, a subway Eglinton line, and finish the Sheppard to Scarborough and possibly replace the Scarborough RT with a looping subway (mostly elevated and at grade) that just becomes part of the Sheppard-Scarborough line that eventually ties into the TTC-Kennedy station without any transfers.
 
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