Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

Union station seems to make the greatest sense as the downtown link. Then it truly serves as a hub for the GTA. Since they're already enhancing Union, they could simply build this into their plan.

I'm not sure how difficult it would be to tunnel under the PATH system, but I could also see a version that enters the core along Wellington, but that can be accessed from Union and the King stations. This would cost a mint I'm sure, but would help to distribute the "Union horde" that flows out of and into Union station every day.
 
Union is currently busier than King or St. Andrew or Queen and Osgoode combined. With the massive projected growth of GO Transit and the development of the lands to the south of Union Station it's clear that Union will only become a more important origin/destination in the future.

It's quite standard for the stations serving commuter rail stations to be the busiest in a network. Paris's 5 five busiest stations are those serving the mainline stations. London is similar. Other systems on the European continent are often centred on the city's main station.

Choosing a route that serves the most destinations in the downtown core means choosing Union.
 
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I hate above grade subways for their lack of reliability in the winter, but really the smartest alignment to me would seem to be right along the railway embankment. You'd have easy access to obvious stations like the Distillery, St. Lawrence, Union, SkyDome/CN Tower, Exhibition, Parkdale, etc, and then they could just deviate where convenient. It would make for a bit of a strange connection with the YUS stop, but with the reconfiguring of Union they could make it work.

I think the tendency is to oppose railway alignments for the same reason that people oppose hydro right-of-way alignments (it puts the service where the people aren't), but in this one case it makes perfect sense since the railway is such an ugly scar running right through our core.

Oh, and take the massive, extraordinary, ridiculous cost of tunneling through the core, and then put that money into decking the railway tracks. Some landscaping up top and voila, we have a beautiful park running through the core with the added bonus of enhanced reliability for Via/GO.
 
The SRT is the only line that tends to have winter problems, and that's related to the linear induction technology and not the elevated structure - consider that only once every few years are the surface and elevated subway systems are shut down by snow, as the subways run frequently on them, there aren't the issues some GO lines have with frozen switches and the like.

Also Chicago gets a lot of snow, and most of its system is at grade or elevated - the only subways being the Dearborn and State subways and a few other sections.
 
I suspect CDL is including all of Union and not just the TTC's numbers (which would only include those going through their fare-paid area). Not that that changes his argument regarding choosing a route that serves the most destinations.
 
nfitz said:
Where do you get that? According the latest TTC report:

Union: 80,990
King/St. Andrew: 114,240
Queen/Osgood: 77,220
Click to expand...

You misunderstand. I guess I wasn't clear enough. I said that Union is busier than...
King
-or-
St. Andrew
-or-
Queen and Osgoode combined

I've said in that past that King is a great route for the DRL, but Front/rail corridor is only 300-400m to the south and offers the potential of saving millions of dollars in construction costs.

I also think it's important to have any stop in the vicinity of Cherry Street to be as far south as possible to serve future Portlands developments, which also helps the rail corridor routing.
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Darkstar416 said:
I suspect CDL is including all of Union and not just the TTC's numbers (which would only include those going through their fare-paid area). Not that that changes his argument regarding choosing a route that serves the most destinations.
Click to expand...

I honestly think the city is better served with either Queen or King - which would then dump the passengers at 2 stations, instead of one. If you want to change from GO to the DRL instead of the YUS line, then change at Main or Dundas West (or better yet, build a new GO/Subway station where Lakeshore East crossed the DRL).

Though if you are going to go through Union, I think it would make more sense, to break the YUS subway, and extend the University line to Pape station, and the Yonge line to Dundas West.
 
I think Queen would be a better route than King... but Front is probably still the best of all.

Both the Queen and King streetcars can be given their own ROWs, so building a subway along either street unnecessary.
 
There's an interesting idea. The splitting of Y-U-S. Of course, wouldn't that create some major interchange station problems??
 
CDL.TO said:
You misunderstand. I guess I wasn't clear enough. I said that Union is busier than...
King
-or-
St. Andrew
-or-
Queen and Osgoode combined
Click to expand...
ahh ... very selective of you. The numbers would seem to suggest King makes more sense. Particularily as many of the Union passengers are coming off GO, and the passengers on GO would make more sense to transfer to the DRL further east at a new station (or Dundas West, if the DRL is ever extended west of Yonge).

CDL.TO said:
I've said in that past that King is a great route for the DRL, but Front/rail corridor is only 300-400m to the south and offers the potential of saving millions of dollars in construction costs.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure it would save much money. There's no longer any availability of ROW in the railway corridor, so you'd either have to tunnel beneath it, or beneath Front - which I doubt would be any cheaper. One advantage Queen has that there are less major structures to Yonge.
 
jks said:
There's an interesting idea. The splitting of Y-U-S. Of course, wouldn't that create some major interchange station problems??
Click to expand...
Yes - but no more major than building a new line through there - perhaps less, as I think there would be a lower percentage of changes.

And if done right, you could build a platform like Lionel-Groulx or Snowdon in Montreal, where you have the two lines above each other, so many of the changes are merely across the same platform, so you don't have to climb stairs for EVERY train change (assuming no one changes to simply go back from whence they came!).
 
I agree that Front St. would be the best of them all. Most of it has to with Union Station, but mostly the incredible growth that is to take place on the waterfront. As someone pointed out, at least one station should be near the portlands for future growth. And really do we really want to se 150-meter towers on Queen street and cast it into shadow?

And should Toronto need a new Downtown East-West line, closer to the waterfront they could build on on Queen Going from The Queens way, all the way to up Kingston Road, while the DRL is still on Front.
 
Perhaps ultimately we need ... wait for it ...

2 east-west downtown lines.

One on Queen that is quite straight, and one on Front that does the U, crossing the Queen ...
 
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