Toronto Ontario Line: Exhibition Station | ?m | 2s | Metrolinx | HDR

ComptoirGeneral said:
I wonder if it's possible for them to link up the 511 streetcard loop to the Dufferin loop. Seems like bridging that last mile would be a good redundancy in the network.
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A link from Dufferin to Exhibition has been in various plans over the years. It's currently tied to the replacement of the bridge on Dufferin. Overall it's part of the Waterfront West streetcar plan that is sorta dead rn so they might replace the bridge but not add the tracks when they do it (but the bridge would be built to accommodate adding them later), it's not great. Personally, I'd like to see the tracks built when the bridge is replaced, and the junction for the tracks to go further West future-proofed in south of the bridge, even if the junction is only used as a turn in one direction for a few years. Better than ripping it all up again later.

Operationally though, I'd say it's more likely the 504 gets extended to Exhibition than the 511 goes to Dufferin Gate loop as that would allow the 504 to serve the GO/OL station. Ideally, we'd also move the Exhibition Loop to be closer to the station as it's sort of an annoyingly long walk rn in terms of transfers.
 
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TossYourJacket said:
A link from Dufferin to Exhibition has been in various plans over the years. It's currently tied to the replacement of the bridge on Dufferin. Overall it's part of the Waterfront West streetcar plan that is sorta dead rn so they might replace the bridge but not add the tracks when they do it (but the bridge would be built to accommodate adding them later), it's not great. Personally, I'd like to see the tracks built when the bridge is replaced, and the junction for the tracks to go further West future-proofed in south of the bridge, even if the junction is only used as a turn in one direction for a few years. Better than ripping it all up again later.

Operationally though, I'd say it's more likely the 504 gets extended to Exhibition than the 511 goes to Dufferin Gate loop as that would allow the 504 to serve the GO/OL station. Ideally, we'd also move the Exhibition Loop to be closer to the station as it's sort of an annoyingly long walk rn in terms of transfers.
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I wish the city would stop these piecemeal improvement projects. Like if we know we want streetcar service on the bridge eventually, can we not just lay the track now? Instead of tearing up the bridge twice
 
Metrolinx when designing a parking garage:
1762446906554.png


Metrolinx when designing Union Station 2.0:
1762446944010.png


It's just pathetic that a parking garage with ~1,500 spaces has more flair than a multi-modal transit hub expected to service 10s of thousands of people. Metrolinx needs to be gutted and a proper politics removed organisation needs to replace it.
 
fanoftoronto said:
Metrolinx when designing a parking garage:
View attachment 693688

Metrolinx when designing Union Station 2.0:
View attachment 693690

It's just pathetic that a parking garage with ~1,500 spaces has more flair than a multi-modal transit hub expected to service 10s of thousands of people. Metrolinx needs to be gutted and a proper politics removed organisation needs to replace it.
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I must remind you it's not Metrolinx at the helm here. It's the City of Toronto who is holding the purse strings here (Metrolinx is simply building it for them) - and they have a fixed budget in a rapidly escalating cost environment. I can almost guarantee you it's the City that is driving the value engineering, not Metrolinx.

Metrolinx when set in charge of a major transit station is building Exhibition GO..
47564-142548.jpeg



The problem here is that the City of Toronto was told to go build 6 GO stations in like 2017. They did their typical waffling and decade of consultation, 200 rounds of design revisions.. and what, look at that, their fixed cost envelope is blown out of the water! They have now cut it down to 4 stations and value engineered the hell out of those stations that remain to try to deliver something..
 
innsertnamehere said:
I must remind you it's not Metrolinx at the helm here. It's the City of Toronto who is holding the purse strings here (Metrolinx is simply building it for them) - and they have a fixed budget in a rapidly escalating cost environment. I can almost guarantee you it's the City that is driving the value engineering, not Metrolinx.

Metrolinx when set in charge of a major transit station is building Exhibition GO..
47564-142548.jpeg



The problem here is that the City of Toronto was told to go build 6 GO stations in like 2017. They did their typical waffling and decade of consultation, 200 rounds of design revisions.. and what, look at that, their fixed cost envelope is blown out of the water! They have now cut it down to 4 stations and value engineered the hell out of those stations that remain to try to deliver something..
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To be fair here, the City should not be paying for provincial transit stations. That was utter incompetence by John Tory. The City has far more restrictions on it's ability to generate revenue, so it's not like it's just "oh the city is cheap the the province isn't", the City is certainly cheaper than many of us would like it to be, but it also has very limited revenue sources.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that yes all of us City staff just sit around cackling about how we can make everything worse all the time :rolleyes: Not to say City processes aren't deeply flawed, but based on the way this forum talks you'd think everyone who works for the City is actively trying to destroy it. I don't even work in anything related to infrastructure and sometimes I wonder why I continue to post here due to how much "City Staff" are somehow to blame for basically every imaginable thing.
 
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TossYourJacket said:
To be fair here, the City should not be paying for provincial transit stations. That was utter incompetence by John Tory. The City has far more restrictions on it's ability to generate revenue, so it's not like it's just "oh the city is cheap the the province isn't", the City is certainly cheaper than many of us would like it to be, but it also has very limited revenue sources.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that yes all of us City staff just sit around cackling about how we can make everything worse all the time :rolleyes: Not to say City processes aren't deeply flawed, but based on the way this forum talks you'd think everyone who works for the City is actively trying to destroy it. I don't even work in anything related to infrastructure and sometimes I wonder why I continue to post here due to how much "City Staff" are somehow to blame for basically every imaginable thing.
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The problem with the city is the amount of Red Tape and the amount of consultants involved in every project.
Projects are announced and 4 years later they are still discussing on how to get it done.
The Gardiner rehab was done quicker with the help of the province but that's not the only reason, the contract was design and build by the winning bidder, all the concrete pouring would need to be done at night regardless of the 24 hrs work schedule that was allowed due to the province putting in extra funds. The contractor had their engineers , the city had their engineers and the city hired an independent engineering company to also do inspections, i can understand the city having oversight on the project but the part of hiring at an extra cost an another engineering firm to check their engineers work and contract engineers seems to be a total waste of taxpayer funds that could be used for other projects that need funding. build but even then they had the contractor engineers.
IMO the city needs to streamline the way that they do things from the very start of the process so that projects don't get talked to death.
 
thaivic said:
The problem with the city is the amount of Red Tape and the amount of consultants involved in every project.
Projects are announced and 4 years later they are still discussing on how to get it done.
The Gardiner rehab was done quicker with the help of the province but that's not the only reason, the contract was design and build by the winning bidder, all the concrete pouring would need to be done at night regardless of the 24 hrs work schedule that was allowed due to the province putting in extra funds. The contractor had their engineers , the city had their engineers and the city hired an independent engineering company to also do inspections, i can understand the city having oversight on the project but the part of hiring at an extra cost an another engineering firm to check their engineers work and contract engineers seems to be a total waste of taxpayer funds that could be used for other projects that need funding. build but even then they had the contractor engineers.
IMO the city needs to streamline the way that they do things from the very start of the process so that projects don't get talked to death.
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Agreed, but that is not the fault of day to day City staff. That is something that needs to be addressed by Council and the people they put into leadership roles. Most people working for the City are doing their best inside a broken framework and yet we get all the blame. There is basically nothing an average City staffer can do to fix any of these processes. UT has a weird obsession with blaming City staff instead of holding Council accountable.

We would need far less consultants if the City would just hire people with the talent directly but for over a decade the priority was "taxes below inflation" which meant we couldn't hire expertise to work at the city long term (IT in particular pays so far below market rate it is insane, but council consistently thinks IT doesn't matter) and therefore short term contractors were the answer even though they cost more in the end.
 
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