Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s


I know it's a minor quibble, but it really bugs me when cartographers put angled text on a map when there's clearly enough room to put it horizontally. Just poor form, IMO. And if it does have to be angled, it should be angled up and to the right, with the first letter closest to the point it's related to.

It pains me that it's seemingly too late to get a Parliament St station added in and Sherbourne shifted west towards Jarvis. If only it ccoul be a ballot question or something.

Especially given that the Yonge platform won't be extending very far eastwards.
 
Jarvis would be nice, But honestly, I'm fine with Sherbourne. Keeping the stop count down keeps the lines average speed up. It should take around 9 minutes for a train to do the trip from Pape to Queen, compared to 13 today via Line 1 & 2.
 
How has line 2 “failed to be successful”? The problem in Toronto has been the building of subways on Sheppard and now to Vaughan while critical overcrowding developed on downtown routes.

For those suggested a DRL (or any of the subway) should be under some other fare system, you’re bonkers. This is a transit network and you do NOT start undermining piecemeal because armchair transit enthusiasts and politicians want to tinker with transit authorities.

Line 2 does not go downtown. That means no matter what, if you are going downtown from Scarborough or Etobicoke and not using GO, you must transfer.

Montreal, all lines go downtown.

Boston, All lines go downtown.

San Diego, All lines go downtown.

What about the other RT in Canada?

Ottawa, currently, no rail goes downtown.

K/W, only line under construction will go downtown

Edmonton, all lines go downtown

Calgary, All lines go downtown

Vancouver, 2 of the 3 lines go downtown.

Toronto 1 of the 4 lines goes downtown.

Look at even bigger cities like New York, London, Tokyo, or pick one..... most, if not all lines go through their city centre. Why? Because that is where the demand is. People want to get downtown. People need to get downtown. Downtown isn't dead in major cities. They are alive and flourishing.
 
Line 2 does not go downtown. That means no matter what, if you are going downtown from Scarborough or Etobicoke and not using GO, you must transfer.

Montreal, all lines go downtown.

Boston, All lines go downtown.

San Diego, All lines go downtown.

What about the other RT in Canada?

Ottawa, currently, no rail goes downtown.

K/W, only line under construction will go downtown

Edmonton, all lines go downtown

Calgary, All lines go downtown

Vancouver, 2 of the 3 lines go downtown.

Toronto 1 of the 4 lines goes downtown.

Look at even bigger cities like New York, London, Tokyo, or pick one..... most, if not all lines go through their city centre. Why? Because that is where the demand is. People want to get downtown. People need to get downtown. Downtown isn't dead in major cities. They are alive and flourishing.

I think the Central Business District might be a more apt term - downtown mean different things to different people.

AoD
 
Nomenclature aside, M_C makes a good point. Toronto politicians, and I guess the majority of voters, appear to be unable to conceive of a transit system that builds routes along desire lines coming together at central nodes, and bases investment on passenger volume rather than some bizarre notion of geographic equity. He’s right, CBD, downtown, or whatever one calls it. Other first world cities just don’t screw it up this way. To travel a lot, which I do, is to be constantly reminded of the uselessness of the TTC and the political structure and culture that created it.
 
I think the Central Business District might be a more apt term - downtown mean different things to different people.

AoD

Fine... CBD..... Err, that is still south of 3 of the 4 TTC RT lines.

Not the blue line

Sorry, 3 of the 4 lines go downtown.

Nomenclature aside, M_C makes a good point. Toronto politicians, and I guess the majority of voters, appear to be unable to conceive of a transit system that builds routes along desire lines coming together at central nodes, and bases investment on passenger volume rather than some bizarre notion of geographic equity. He’s right, CBD, downtown, or whatever one calls it. Other first world cities just don’t screw it up this way. To travel a lot, which I do, is to be constantly reminded of the uselessness of the TTC and the political structure and culture that created it.

TTC is wonderful to get around, but not to commute.
 
I think the Central Business District might be a more apt term - downtown mean different things to different people.

AoD

Also, I'm not sure that any of NYC, London, or Tokyo even fit that bill, at least when speaking of "all lines heading to one place."

"Downtown" in NYC really means financial district (and South St. Seaport and Battery Park and kind of Tribeca), which is but one of three major employment clusters in the city.

Employment clusters are even more scattered in London; I find people less familiar with London often think that the City and Canary Wharf are the sole clusters, and they're comparatively much less well served by transit than most of the rest of the city core.

And then Tokyo is sort of the ultimate example of having no real "downtown" of any sort at all, and has even more scattered employment clusters than either NYC or London.
 
Line 2 does not go downtown. That means no matter what, if you are going downtown from Scarborough or Etobicoke and not using GO, you must transfer.

Montreal, all lines go downtown.

Boston, All lines go downtown.

San Diego, All lines go downtown.

What about the other RT in Canada?

Ottawa, currently, no rail goes downtown.

K/W, only line under construction will go downtown

Edmonton, all lines go downtown

Calgary, All lines go downtown

Vancouver, 2 of the 3 lines go downtown.

Toronto 1 of the 4 lines goes downtown.

Look at even bigger cities like New York, London, Tokyo, or pick one..... most, if not all lines go through their city centre. Why? Because that is where the demand is. People want to get downtown. People need to get downtown. Downtown isn't dead in major cities. They are alive and flourishing.

For Ottawa they "solved" this by redefining downtown to be a much bigger area that includes the empty field the current O-Train ends at. But we know we're reproducing Toronto's line 2 problem with our own freshly renamed line 2 that forces a transfer for all south end residents heading downtown once the confed line opens later this year
 
For Ottawa they "solved" this by redefining downtown to be a much bigger area that includes the empty field the current O-Train ends at. But we know we're reproducing Toronto's line 2 problem with our own freshly renamed line 2 that forces a transfer for all south end residents heading downtown once the confed line opens later this year

However, if all of Ottawa's Transitways are converted to LRT, then most of the RT is going downtown. That is no small feat.
 
However, if all of Ottawa's Transitways are converted to LRT, then most of the RT is going downtown. That is no small feat.
Not the southeast transitway. It will remain BRT for the foreseeable future, terminating just to the south east of downtown. So by bus or train, south end residents (like me) must switch lines. The crush shouldn't be as bad as bloor-yonge, but it seems like repeating the mistakes of others
 
It would be better for systemload as a whole if things were more dispersed like London or Tokyo, but in North America other employment centres end up where land is cheap, suburban office parks, which breaks the mass transit model
 
And why should Downtowners have to pay for persons not even in Toronto suburbs to travel subsidized?
.

Ummm...commercial buildings (offices, retail, etc) also pay property taxes. And expect that their employees and customers can get to work via transit.

Transit has to serve both residents and the destinations they serve.
 
I think of 3 RT systems I have ridden besides the TTC. Montreal Metro, Boston's MBTA and San Diego Trolley. They all have multiple lines. They all are (mainly) grade separated. All lines go downtown. Some interline, some do not, but they all go to the city centre. Toronto's line 2 has failed to be successful due to it not going downtown. If they had jogged it down to Queen and then back up, that would have changed this.

Line 2 is one of the most successful subway lines in North America. It's about as long as the L in New York City and has pretty much the same ridership. To call it a failed subway line is absurd, even with the design in mind. Also, we can consider Bloor Street: "Downtown", it services the 504, 505, 506, 510, and 511 streetcars (which thousands of people use each day to get closer to their jobs) and has many people that get off at stops like Sherbourne, Broadview, Bay, Spadina, Bathurst, Christie, Dundas West, etc. Dipping the bloor line south would be incredibly stupid because it would lengthen thousands of people's commutes (the majority of people get off between dundas and Bloor Yonge, so having the subway go south to King, then have to transfer there to go north doesn't make the situation any better, if anything a lot worse because there's PATH. The DRL is not just needed to relieve both the Yonge and Bloor lines, but also to generate its own ridership and density by itself.

How has line 2 “failed to be successful”? The problem in Toronto has been the building of subways on Sheppard and now to Vaughan while critical overcrowding developed on downtown routes.

For those suggested a DRL (or any of the subway) should be under some other fare system, you’re bonkers. This is a transit network and you do NOT start undermining piecemeal because armchair transit enthusiasts and politicians want to tinker with transit authorities.
Ironically, the Sheppard Subway with 50,000 daily riders is arguably a huge success for almost all North American cities, but yes...the DRL should have been prioritized. However, come to think of it, when the line is eventually extended to Sheppard, there will be a connection point between the DRL and the Yonge line, making both more useful for commuters in the north.

Line 2 does not go downtown. That means no matter what, if you are going downtown from Scarborough or Etobicoke and not using GO, you must transfer.

Montreal, all lines go downtown.

Boston, All lines go downtown.

San Diego, All lines go downtown.

What about the other RT in Canada?

Ottawa, currently, no rail goes downtown.

K/W, only line under construction will go downtown

Edmonton, all lines go downtown

Calgary, All lines go downtown

Vancouver, 2 of the 3 lines go downtown.

Toronto 1 of the 4 lines goes downtown.

Look at even bigger cities like New York, London, Tokyo, or pick one..... most, if not all lines go through their city centre. Why? Because that is where the demand is. People want to get downtown. People need to get downtown. Downtown isn't dead in major cities. They are alive and flourishing.

Bloor St is downtown. If you shift the line south, you don't get any connections to the streetcar lines, you lose the core of Bloor that was chocked back then, you cannot interline buses efficiently at subway stations, and ridership would have inevitably been much less. A lot of people work along Line 2 so to say that sending it downtown in its entirety is just stupid. If Technically, we have 3 downtown subways: the Bloor Line between Broadview and Dundas West, The University Subway, and the Yonge Subway. It should also be noted that we have an immense streetcar system that have many Light Rail level sections. I could consider the 510 as higher order transit in many respects, as well as the 504 with the new pilot. If the bloor line was built to dip south to Queen, the same problems would have persisted. And where would they build a subway to downtown in that respect?
 
Ummm...commercial buildings (offices, retail, etc) also pay property taxes. And expect that their employees and customers can get to work via transit.

Transit has to serve both residents and the destinations they serve.
You took my comment out of context. I wrote:
So who's going to build it, and with what budget? And why should Downtowners have to pay for persons not even in Toronto suburbs to travel subsidized?

Those points not necessarily mine[...]:
I was making a hypothetical case based on the poster I was answering. But since you're here, who *is* going to pay for it? Property taxes? Are you kidding? It has to be paid for regionally if the region is using it. It then follows that since the region is paying for it, they then should be running it. Unless you wish to invoke the exact hypothetical I posted prior: Torontonians pay for subsidizing 'outside ridership' at the same time losing seats for Torontonians themselves on the very same vehicles.

The Relief Line isn't to relieve the subways of Torontonians, the subways could, albeit creaking, handle all demand from within Toronto. And in fact I think that instead of having to reinvent aspects of it every generation or less, leave it as is, and have the *REGION* pay for a Relief Line that does just that, and bypasses the subway altogether to deliver riders from the regions and northern and eastern burbs to the core without the need to transfer.

Ah, but some say, this is not how it's being projected by the City! No it isn't, the very same City that couldn't even afford to study it, let alone build it.

Is it any wonder that Metrolinx has had to become the 'master' of this project?

And for those thinking that the City delivers transit best to the city, well, explain this:
CITY HALL
Mayor John Tory says budget is ‘just right’ with property taxes kept low

CITY HALL
Updated Scarborough subway costs will be ready but not made public before the next election

What with QP and City Hall, it's Tweedle Dum and Uhhh? With the change of a much more progressive and enlightened CEO for Metrolinx, my 'money' (the Province's) is on Verster, not the next/same clown at City Hall.

If Kessmaat runs, all bets are off...by necessity, to realize the visions she espouses, taxes are going to have to go up.

Cue the kneejerkers!
 

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