Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group

Thanks for the well thought out responses. Because of the extremely long distances and far-apart spaced stops, I thought DRL would be better off as a commuter rail line. Take the subway technology part out of the equation and I'm sold. DRL south of Bloor, short of a Queen Line, is the best thing the core possibly could and should get.

unimaginative2 said:
Like I said, I agree with you. You'd never build a DRL from Steeles/Woodbine to Union to Steeles in one go, and the western portion north of Bloor would be so far down on any priority list that it would likely never get built. An S Bahn-style service could do the job just as well. I'm afraid I don't understand your last sentence.
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What I meant was that downtown Toronto's growth was/is due to the streetcar network (early development east-west was within 3 blocks of Queen and today alone accounts for 250 jobs per km²). As such, the viability of 501/2/4/5/6 should be recognized by converting parts of routes to subways. The Lakeshore project on the otherhand screams elitist, posh exclusiveness only Bay Street big-wigs can say stops in front of their concierge lobby. Sorry if that's only a hyperbolized misconception. I guess it's too much to hope for a subway directly serving Chinatown, Kensington, Cabbagetown, Queen West, King West, George Brown, the Beaches and other inner city 'tourist' hot-spots.

The reason for the abandonment of the idea in the first place was two-fold. The Metro Plan and other plans indicated that growth was not to be encouraged in the downtown core, and so it explicitly says that no new transit infrastructure should be built downtown. That was obviously a problem with the DRL.
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Metro Plan seriously recommended that :eek:? No wonder the 905's lightyears ahead of T.O. in many aspects. Comparatively every four blocks there's a subway stop in many parts of NYC, go figure.
 
What I meant was that downtown Toronto's growth was/is due to the streetcar network (early development east-west was within 3 blocks of Queen and today alone accounts for 250 jobs per km²). As such, the viability of 501/2/4/5/6 should be recognized by converting parts of routes to subways. The Lakeshore project on the otherhand screams elitist, posh exclusiveness only Bay Street big-wigs can say stops in front of their concierge lobby. Sorry if that's only a hyperbolized misconception. I guess it's too much to hope for a subway directly serving Chinatown, Kensington, Cabbagetown, Queen West, King West, George Brown, the Beaches and other inner city 'tourist' hot-spots.
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Well yeah, that is pretty hyperbolized. The residential neighbourhoods along Queen Street are very high-end, and the new waterfront neigbourhoods will hardly be exclusively for the very rich. The "rich" tend to live in houses in residential neighbourhoods along the streets you mentioned in the downtown core. People have this conception that condo-owners are these multi-millionaires, when most are simply younger people who couldn't hope to afford a home anywhere near downtown.

Anyway, all those neigbourhoods you mentioned are great, but you can't directly serve everywhere with a subway. To have a stop in every one of those places, you'd need three lines or more. That's just not practical. I might add that the Queen/Gladstone West Queen West area would be directly served by a DRL, while King West and George Brown would both be a couple blocks from a stop. The Beach would benefit enormously from being able to connect to the subway at Pape.
 
unimaginative2 said:
Anyway, all those neigbourhoods you mentioned are great, but you can't directly serve everywhere with a subway. To have a stop in every one of those places, you'd need three lines or more. That's just not practical.
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I have to disagree. There's no rule that you have to build subways in a straight line directly underneath a road. As has been said in other threads, the great thing about subways is that you avoid boundaries that other forms like LRT and bus are constrained to.
 
I'm just not quite clear how your comment relates to the quotation above it. I simply said that you have to pick and choose which destinations can be directly served by a subway. Of course diagonal routes are a huge advantage of a subway. Any extension to Scarborough Town Centre or York University would certainly be on a diagonal.
 
I was either tired and misread it, or I assumed that you meant you couldn't possibly link all those specific places together because they don't follow the grid. No big deal really since we seem to both agree anyways.
 
jn_12 said:
I was either tired and misread it, or I assumed that you meant you couldn't possibly link all those specific places together because they don't follow the grid. No big deal really since we seem to both agree anyways.
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Non-linear lines can be great or counterproductive; it depends entirely on what's being served by these suggested non-gridiron routes. Shifting off an arterial road to serve a huge office park or tower cluster or mall is a good idea, but playing connect the dots at the expense of other equally viable areas or established corridors is not a good idea.

The Spadina extension isn't especially useful for the N/S routes it crosses, but its roughly diagonal path will be very useful for the E/W routes it hits since it will slash significant travel times and distances to the subway off routes like Finch West and Steeles West.
 
scarberiankhatru said:
Non-linear lines can be great or counterproductive; it depends entirely on what's being served by these suggested non-gridiron routes. Shifting off an arterial road to serve a huge office park or tower cluster or mall is a good idea, but playing connect the dots at the expense of other equally viable areas or established corridors is not a good idea.
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Yes but jn-12 was responding to Unimaginative's opinion that it'd take multiple, counterproductive subway lines to hit every major node in the downtown core. If we were suggesting surface LRTs, they'd have to follow the street grid. However routing underground opens the door for many possibilities. Take a V-shaped or M-shaped line for instance, either would intercept the same aterials twice or three times but at specific nodal areas as opposed to a minor Christie existing in between major stops. As such more areas of downtown would be accessible in ways a straight Queen Line or limited DRL could never allow.

I wonder what the stations will look like. When can be expect renderings?
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After the crap job they've done on the Sheppard Line, anything that isn't depression era concrete bunker will be much appreciated :eek:!
 
DENTROBATE54 said:
Yes but jn-12 was responding to Unimaginative's opinion that it'd take multiple, counterproductive subway lines to hit every major node in the downtown core.
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Connecting a random list of downtown spots would take one line so meandering it'd be almost useless. If you were driving from Calgary to Regina, would you be fond of a highway that goes through Edmonton and Saskatoon on the way or a highway that goes straight there?
 
DENTROBATE54 said:
After the crap job they've done on the Sheppard Line, anything that isn't depression era concrete bunker will be much appreciated :eek:!
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I was hoping they would follow in the tradition of the Spadina line's investment in design. Downsview is a relevant example from 1996. Sheppard doesn't really look like a bunker with all the different creative elements, finishes and tiles. Nonetheless, I agree that leaving concrete walls beside the tracks should be avoided. That is, unless they're completing the Sheppard line.
 
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