One of the beauty things about the currently alignment is it intercepts so many of the major streetcar lines, without destroying any of them. Also, the subway station with the most AM peak arrivals is Dundas, which at least is walkable from Queen station.
We've been over this before - he did advocate, and vote in favour of the beginning of the DRL studies. From day one, Transit City was never going south of Danforth. And the idea was, to get Transit City being built quickly, with 7 of the 8 routes being quicly constructable - as we've seen with the Transit City lines on Eglnton East in Scarborough and on Finch West.
while this was done, Last we heard this was on hold pending the exhibition station construction being finalized
I'd express complete disbelief - though I was wondering why there's a new construction fence all along the south platform at Exhibition, west of the station building. Though I'd think it's about the new station construction.
Haven't they already awarded the contract to build the new station? They must be very close to finalizing the station footprint, if it's not already finalized already.
Proof? From what I know there is very little evidence of this. The main plan for the Don Mills LRT was to have it go underground south of Don Valley and service Pape Station underground. This more or less precluded any form of subway leading there as well without complex digging. Plus, my understanding is that the project was designed for the Don Mills LRT to be extended further south to eventually connect to the East Bayfront LRT/Queen St in the future.
If they use the speedy construction of the King-Queen-Roncesvalles-Queensway intersection and Queensway right-of-way as our example, it will take decades.
There are two things precluding the construction of any tracks along that section.
I dont know what kind of "advocating" David Miller was doing for the DRL, because from what I remember it wasnt very serious @nfitz. He was pushing hard for funds for Transit City during his time as mayor, and the DRL was a project that sat on the backburner.
Further than that, iirc at that time the TTC was in the midst of pushing for ATC to be introduced to Line 1, and back then the assumption that was being made was that the capacity boost gained from ATC was going to be enough to handle all of the passengers that needed to use it for a long time, so the need of the DRL was massively undermined and underplayed. It wasn't until the early to mid 2010s did the TTC change its tune to the necessity of the DRL, after Miller already left office.
To my memory, that was never the plan, but happy to be corrected on that. In any case, I'm glad we're getting all three of the original line 1 relief projects (ATC, Bloor Yonge expansion and new line).