diminutive
Active Member
Minimizing cost within the same performance envelop is one thing; minimizing cost and reducing performance envelop is another. Except that if you take this view, you can easily justify building the original Yonge line as a Canada line-esque project and you would never have gotten to the point where you have the option of extend it past Eglinton and being able to handle the load we have today. Building the DRL to HRT specs should be a given.
Right, the question becomes what kind of capacity levels are needed on a DRL? Off the top of my head, the DRL study the TTC did suggested that, even with a Dundas West - Eglinton DRL, anticipated demand was well within a Canada Line-esque envelope.
Maybe if you extend the thing way out to Steeles on both sides you'll get more ridership, but unless you managed to get the costs on those outer legs significantly less than the costs we've seen on Spadina, odds are that'll never happen. Frankly even the odds of getting anything more than a Pape-Downtown line are, in all honesty, slim.
That's like the perfect justification for never doing anything because nothing is ever utilized above 95% everyday. And interesting that you mentioned London (not forgetting that we routinely have to wait the same for the YUS already) - what's the performance of alternate lines in that system, vis-a-vis the transit options in Toronto?
My point wasn't that you should never do anything. It was that you shouldn't assume that because YUS is slightly over-capacity that there will be the political will to build the DRL or that the DRL is in some way 'necessary.'