Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[Rainforest]

I had a meeting with TTC staff Monday night and this was said about the DRL:

"TTC needs to maximizes their system first before building this DRL and it must be push off into the distance future as far as possible."

One can say I don’t want this to happen on my watch as to the price tag of $2.1B. "It’s money that can be use for other things" by TTC staff.

So, one needs to changes some minds with TTC and the City to get the DRL 100 years after it first raise it's head.

Good plan. First, they will spend hundreds of millions trying to prop the Yonge line beyond its design capacity. Then, they will defer DRL until the system is absolutely unable to operate without it.

After that, they will try to operate in that condition for 8 or 10 years while DRL is being actually designed and built. That's the vision!

I am sure that the 800-million section from Steeles West to VCC (a route that does not even warrant a frequent bus service at present) is a better investment than the 2.1 B DRL (which will be only the third busiest segment on the entire system, behind the Yonge / Bloor - Union and St. George - Union segments).

 

[taal]

You can't blame the TTC for either the Yonge line or Spadina expansion ... whether you think they're both warranted or not ...

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I don't think we need the DRL to alleviate stress on the Spadina line .... even after the expansion. It'll be well within it's capicity I believe.

How so? During peak periods there is rarely a seat available south of Yorkdale (often times it is leaving Downsview), and while not 'by definition' crush load, the cars are often full by St Clair west. When the Spadina line moves to Steeles/VCC sure many of those 'park and ride' passengers will simply transfer to next most northerly park and rid facility but the line is also supposed to be intercepting riders in the west on routes such as finch west, steeles west, the brampton/YRT route 77 (if it survives the post VIVA/Acceleride era), and even western GO routes. Ridership numbers will creep up and while we are not talking about the pressures seen on the Yonge line there will be strain that can be alleviated by the western DRL.

I think the biggest difference between the Yonge and Univ/Spadina lines is really in the off peak usage. I believe that far more people along the Yonge line use the subway for far more than their daily commute to and from work whereas the Univ/Spadina line is virtually barren outside of peak periods.

 

[taal]

I see your point but I think it's still far from crush load (remember the TTC deals with that only )

Any figures though to back up your argument, you may be right.
Good point about off peek ridership - it makes sense though, there's a lot of things along the Yonge line and not so much on the Spadina line, other then a method to get downtown or in the future to VCC.

The key question is how much growth do we expect once the expansion is complete. If it's not much, then again I'll stick to my original conclusion that we do not need the DRL to alleviate the Yonge/Bloor lines.

By the way don't forget, no one is saying the DRL should NOT be built, it's just a question of when. The point there is I think we won't need it for the Spadina line by 2016 ... maybe by 2031 though. The plan is to built it by then.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Edit: (simultaneous post) Woodbridge has it right.

Also, why is it we have to have reactive planning? When a subway takes a decade, we need to be looking way down the road in terms of planning. It is hard I'm sure to accurately forecast growth and ridership 30 years from now, but it is a safe assumption to say that an expanded Spandina line will eventually hit it's capacity. Ultimately if we want people out of cars, we have to make the alternative palatable. I find it hard to see people flocking to be rammed in like sardines from Hwy 7 down to Osgoode. The western extension of the DRL would take some of that strain and make the Spadina line that much more attractive.

 

[Disparishun]

Ultimately if we want people out of cars, we have to make the alternative palatable. I find it hard to see people flocking to be rammed in like sardines from Hwy 7 down to Osgoode. The western extension of the DRL would take some of that strain and make the Spadina line that much more attractive.

I agree re: DRL needs to get going now, reactive planning bad, U-S extension full by the time it is built. (Toronto is growing.) If you mean Hwy 7 down to Osgoode as a corridor, then sure. But to the extent a lot of the growth involves going from Hwy 7 right down to Osgoode, then I think we should try and expect as much from GO as we do from TTC.

I come new to this particular conversation, so I don't know the answer -- was there no exploration of colocating a GO stop with the 407 Transitway subway stop, so as to create another GO-TTC-YRT hub? It would make a ton of sense, I'd think. Especially with the Langstaff/RHC hub across the 407, and VIVA buses linking them.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

I think we should try and expect as much from GO as we do from TTC.

I think that is reasonable if not essential. However, with current fare structures, the subway might be the cheaper option and therefore likely to draw riders compared with a more expensive GO ride. All supposition on my part, but if you could take a longer, but cheaper, subway ride you may well do so. Especially as you are probably on transit for cost reasons, (which I don't mean in a negative way).

 

[Disparishun]

if you could take a longer, but cheaper, subway ride you may well do so.

Oh, for sure. If we are to expect as much from GO as from the TTC, then part of what we must expect from both is rational pricing that does not disincent rational transit use.

(In my head right now is: small zones; payment based on 0-1, 2, 3, etc. zones; and no difference in the zone-based fare whether taking GO train or subway. But I do not claim to have thought this through all that carefully yet!)

 

[ShonTron]

How so? During peak periods there is rarely a seat available south of Yorkdale (often times it is leaving Downsview), and while not 'by definition' crush load, the cars are often full by St Clair west.

I take the Spadina Line everyday, usually from Wilson Station. I get on the train typically between 8:10 and 8:30. The seats are almost always gone by Yorkdale, sometimes Wilson. The afternoon peak has lots of capacity to spare, and I think the Spadina Line will be fine and dandy with the York-Vaughan extension as they will short turn half the trains at Downsview.

However, it can be a challenge trying to get on at St. George, even on the trains originating from St. Clair West. Usually there's room, but certainly not always.

The biggest mistake about Spadina is the alignment, as it should have gone under Dufferin, perhaps tunneling under Vaughan Road rather than the ravine from St. Clair West. Otherwise, the Spadina Line, while not dangerously crowded like Yonge, is essential.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

After seeing the mess that was the subway during afternoon rush yesterday, I've decided to attempt to move from silent support for the DRL to more vocal support. I'm thinking of starting a campaign of some sort to mobilize the hundreds of thousands of people who live in Downtown Toronto to become more vocal themselves and demand politically for the line to be built -- because politics is the only way to build this now.

I'm starting small right now, with a Twitter campaign using the hastag #drlNOW and with an account, DRLnow. However, I am planning on attending ChangeCamp this weekend and see if I can get support to build some momentum. As great as the transit geekery circles are, we need to move beyond this very small group of citizens. Especially when most Twitter responses I had yesterday were "What the heck is DRL?", there's a huge program of education that needs to be done on a wide scale.

One of the first things I may work on is a poster campaign. Whatever short, one-liner, easy-to-understand justifications for DRL you can provide to place on a poster, that would be great.

 

[Team Me]

Personally I see the biggest advantage being relief on the King/Queen street cars and better North/South access (close to downtown).

But if the TTC has another solution for the King/Queen lines maybe I'd be willing to hear them out and indeed push this off.

As someone who has had to rely on the King, Queen and College streetcars for much of the past ten years, I couldn't agree more. Living west of Bathurst, I can easily walk past Yonge more quickly than waiting for and riding the King streetcar.

That's a 25 minute brisk walk. A late-night streetcar can do that stretch in less than 10 minutes, but during rush hour you're looking at an average "wait and travel" time of about 30 minutes in unbearably crowded conditions. It's clear there is are more riders than capacity allows.

As the west end (Liberty Village/Queen West etc.) continues to develop this will only get worse. If we wait to wait to start the DRL, these potentially enormous areas of growth and prosperity (and tax revenue!) will probably be in decline as they become more unliveable due to transit congestion. We literally should have started the DRL years ago to deal with what these areas are like now. How could we possibly wait until 2018?

If someone's serious about convincing Metrolinx to build the DRL, all they would need to do is have the whole board commute for one week on the Yonge subway line and one week on the King streetcar. Done.

 

[taal]

After seeing the mess that was the subway during afternoon rush yesterday, I've decided to attempt to move from silent support for the DRL to more vocal support. I'm thinking of starting a campaign of some sort to mobilize the hundreds of thousands of people who live in Downtown Toronto to become more vocal themselves and demand politically for the line to be built -- because politics is the only way to build this now.

I'm starting small right now, with a Twitter campaign using the hastag #drlNOW and with an account, DRLnow. However, I am planning on attending ChangeCamp this weekend and see if I can get support to build some momentum. As great as the transit geekery circles are, we need to move beyond this very small group of citizens. Especially when most Twitter responses I had yesterday were "What the heck is DRL?", there's a huge program of education that needs to be done on a wide scale.

One of the first things I may work on is a poster campaign. Whatever short, one-liner, easy-to-understand justifications for DRL you can provide to place on a poster, that would be great.

Great idea!
I'd love to help in any way possible.

 

[Ansem]

Just don't vote for Miller and his team, choose someone who is for subway extensions...

The ONLY way is to NOT vote for people who think that LST (light slow transit...Spadina...St-Clair...No light priority) is the answer to Toronto transit.

We wait for a candidate that will make DRL, Sheppard and Eglinton is priority.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

The key is to develop vocal advocacy for the DRL, to force it as an issue in the next municipal election. It's great having the odd article appear in newspapers, but really the DRL is not on any non-transit enthusiast's radar and that has to change before anything will happen.

 

[taal]

I really don't think this is a MILLER issue ... MILLER could care less wheather a streetcar / subway line is built. It all comes down to the TTC and what his advisers tell him is best to do. He didn't come into office with this plan personally.

In other words it's not fair to blame Miller for this. At the rate rate though, this could indeed be maid an election issue. If an opposing candidate pushes the DRL option enough though.