Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

unimaginative2 said:
Obviously the longer the better, but I think Finch is a pretty good compromise. You could even put in parking at the hydro corridor like the existing Finch. The key to all this is that the line should be built elevated for most or all of its length along Don Mills, which would save a fortune and not really have significant aesthetic impacts on a street that's wide and lined with set back modernist apartment blocks.
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Okay, this I agree with. Finch is a logical terminus for a Don Mills subway-thing. Also, Don Mills isn't a very pretty road to begin with, and future development on the line could integrate the line more with the road and buildings around it. If it was done above ground, I'd actually rather have it than the LRT, because I imagine the cost difference would be marginal. Developers that are attracted to the Subway will probably do the rest of the redevelopment free of charge.

Even if the ROW is butt-ugly, there will probably be projects to gradually make it prettier and make more a part of the streetscape. I don't see any reason to fear a raised subway on Don Mills, or to build LRT instead of subway. Dang, now none of Transit City is making sense to me :eek:
 
The benefits of a line on Don Mills can only come from grade-separated rapid transit directly connected to the DRL. With a surface-running LRT stopping at red lights and a transfer at Pape, passengers connecting from east-west bus routes--the main source of potential riders--would still find it most advantageous to continue on to the Yonge subway.
 
If a drl subway comes into the picture, I reckon the transfer point will be on Eglinton, not Pape.
 
unimaginative2 said:
The key to successful transit in the 905 is speed. You're never going to get the boys from Vaughan out of their bright white sports car with clumsy implementations of light rail that get stuck in romantic traffic and wind up being even slower than the old Spadina bus. We're living in an age of unprecedented transit investment. I mean, new orleans is sinking and people are finally waking up to the fact that governments need to invest in infrastructure. That's why Giambrone and light rail really are lovers in a dangerous time: we may not get this kind of spending for a long time. If we get this wrong, it could be a funeral for transit in Toronto. It's not all about subways, though. We can't extend the subway all the way up to Echo Beach. At some point, we're going to have to switch to modes that are both cheaper and faster, like regional rail which can really become the backbone of transit in the region. It's the perfect improvement for today's GTA--the high school confidential, if you will. While I'm pretty underwhelmed generally, I'm happy that Metrolinx's plans are fumbling towards ecstasy on this at least. The point is, if you want to get from neighbourhood #1 in Markham to neighbourhood #3 in Mississauga, you want to be on transit for a good time, not a long time. Otherwise you're going to be screaming save me, i'd rather be locked in the trunk of a car. You can coax me and cajole me into thinking that light rail is a decent option as a short range feeder, but Giambrone and friends oughta know that nobody is going to ride it right across the city. If I had a million dollars, the first thing I'd spend it on is regional rail--the cheapest way to bring rapid transit to the entire region. The next thing, honestly, would be some of the frills like trip planners and, if necessary, surveillance cameras. I mean, it may sound like I have my soul to sell on this point, but if it gets union concessions on other issues, I mean we're all living on video anyway, right? The biggest thing is, we need quick wins because we're falling so far behind we're losing to California at this point. Regional rail doesn't need tunnelling or anything like that. Regional rail combined with judicious subway investments the best way to get back out ahead by a century compared to the rest of North America.
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Well, that should fulfill UrbanToronto's CanCon requirements for the next year or so.

Brilliant.
 
I count that as a blessing. The ALRT of the time was incapable of handling snow.

Electric express trains will be better.
 
kettal said:
I count that as a blessing. The ALRT of the time was incapable of handling snow.

Electric express trains will be better.
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ALRT didn't have linear induction motors like the ICTS did...they where basically modern LRTs with driverless systems and on ROWs

The ALRT trains themselves never left the drawing board. So how did you know they didn't handle snow?
 
Imaginary trains are horrible in the snow?

You're right I had it confused with the other ALRT.
 
GO-ALRT was the single biggest missed opportunity in Toronto's transit history. I can't even begin to imagine what the GTA would be like if it had been built. A quarter century later, we at least have a chance to make it right, even though the horse may have already bolted from the barn in terms of built form. It's really not that hard to make an S-Bahn system on all of the rail corridors in Toronto, and it would be such a huge win. In most German cities, the S-Bahn is the backbone of the transit system while the subway serves as a supplement. In some ways, the same can be said of Paris.

One of the cool things about GO-ALRT (for all those interurban fans out there) is that it was both an intercity and local service. In Hamilton, it was planned to loop around the core, and the tracks might have even been shared with a local rapid transit service up the mountain. They also looked at local and express service on the Finch hydro corridor section. They even talked about shifting it down to Sheppard east of Yonge when studies determined it to be a better route for rapid transit than Finch. In effect, the local service would have been the Sheppard subway. It really was an amazing plan. The 407 busway will attempt to approximate the northern line of the GO-ALRT, but it won't really be the same. It won't be able to directly serve North York Centre, Scarborough Centre, and the airport.
 
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Could someone describe to me exactly what GO ALRT really is? From what I understand, it was basically to turn all the Go routes into LRTs, right? I imagine that something like the RER is much better suited for Toronto than a bunch of really long LRT lines.
 
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