Transit Fantasy Maps

[muller877]

It hugs the south side and might eat up a little bit of Coronation Park and Battery Park space just wide enough for ROW and a stop at the end of Strachan. Remembrance Drive is deleted from the area.

When looking at infrastructure we cannot forget history. The City of Toronto is starting to remember our past (Victoria Park). But it is easily forgotton. Coronation Park is one that has been forgotton. Let's keep it clear of this park...and even if it was buried the roots of the trees would be comprimised.

Let us remember the fallen in Toronto (every time I see that dog park I feel angry that politicians would allow a tree that is a monument to be deficated upon)

http://www.219fortyork.com/5122/50223.html

 

[Hipster Duck]

Ok, would something like this work?:

I think an exclusive King street alignment is better than something that goes north to Queen. Liberty Village is probably a more important trip generator than anything in Parkdale along Queen. I also think it's more important to go up Roncessvalles to Dundas West than up Parkside Drive (half of which is a park that cannot be built on, the other half being very low density residential that will face militant opposition to redevelopment). Dundas West will be an important intermodal station in the future.

 

[Translude15]

I think an exclusive King street alignment is better than something that goes north to Queen. Liberty Village is probably a more important trip generator than anything in Parkdale along Queen. I also think it's more important to go up Roncessvalles to Dundas West than up Parkside Drive (half of which is a park that cannot be built on, the other half being very low density residential that will face militant opposition to redevelopment). Dundas West will be an important intermodal station in the future.

I know a GO link at Dufferin-Queen is generally seen as an key feature for the western leg of the future DRL. This alignment makes a Queen-Roncessvalles stop quite difficult however with the curvature being too tight for current TTC standards. Does Dundas West not negate the need for a Dufferin-Queen stop, as well as having a station at Roncessvales for connections to the 504? Realistically then, would the alignment not be better off following King Street for its entirety?

 

[Hipster Duck]

I know a GO link at Dufferin-Queen is generally seen as an key feature for the western leg of the future DRL. This alignment makes a Queen-Roncessvalles stop quite difficult however with the curvature being too tight for current TTC standards. Does Dundas West not negate the need for a Dufferin-Queen stop, as well as having a station at Roncessvales for connections to the 504? Realistically then, would the alignment not be better off following King Street for its entirety?

GO trains are quite long, so a platform on the southeastern side of the Queen-Dufferin intersection would not be too far a walk to a King-aligned DRL.

 

[diminutive]

My idea for a DRL:

The core distributor tunnel, which would run from about Bathurst and Front to the East Donlands, would serve RER or long distance metro trains, whose routes would approximate today's Georgetown, Lakesore East and West and, some kind of NS route along the Don Mills corridor.

Rough service patterns into and out of the tunnel in peak hours would be, ~10-12 trains/hour towards Oakville or Clarkson, 24-26 trains to Northwest Toronto/YYZ/Brampton. In the other direction, you'd have 10-12 trains out towards Pickering or Ajax and 24-26 tph up, through Pape station and the normal DRL routing until Eglinton & Don Mills, then up the Don Mills corridor.

This would solve several issues: reduce (eliminate) congestion @ Union Station by moving the bulk of commuter traffic into this new corridor, reduce congestion @ Y/Bloor, serve downtown's shoulder areas better, provide more downtown destinations for regional trips besides Union Station, serve new employment areas ("Westcore?"), provide better connectivity for the streetcar network, facilitate frequent, metro-like service throughout the 416/inner 905 and so forth.

 

[dunkalunk]

My idea for a DRL:

The core distributor tunnel, which would run from about Bathurst and Front to the East Donlands, would serve RER or long distance metro trains, whose routes would approximate today's Georgetown, Lakesore East and West and, some kind of NS route along the Don Mills corridor.

Rough service patterns into and out of the tunnel in peak hours would be, ~10-12 trains/hour towards Oakville or Clarkson, 24-26 trains to Northwest Toronto/YYZ/Brampton. In the other direction, you'd have 10-12 trains out towards Pickering or Ajax and 24-26 tph up, through Pape station and the normal DRL routing until Eglinton & Don Mills, then up the Don Mills corridor.

This would solve several issues: reduce (eliminate) congestion @ Union Station by moving the bulk of commuter traffic into this new corridor, reduce congestion @ Y/Bloor, serve downtown's shoulder areas better, provide more downtown destinations for regional trips besides Union Station, serve new employment areas ("Westcore?"), provide better connectivity for the streetcar network, facilitate frequent, metro-like service throughout the 416/inner 905 and so forth.

While I do like the idea of tunneling the Lakeshore and Kitchener lines through downtown, I don't know how technically feasible it would be to run it beneath King and have it emerge at Gerrard Square. I always imagined that the portals for such a tunnel would be west of Bathurst and the Don Yards. I don't think there's room within the rail corridor at Gerrard Square to bring the tunnel portal to grade.

 

[diminutive]

While I do like the idea of tunneling the Lakeshore and Kitchener lines through downtown, I don't know how technically feasible it would be to run it beneath King and have it emerge at Gerrard Square. I always imagined that the portals for such a tunnel would be west of Bathurst and the Don Yards. I don't think there's room within the rail corridor at Gerrard Square to bring the tunnel portal to grade.

I guess it wasn't totally clear from the map I posted, but the alignment tried to portray is mostly under Wellington/Front, not King. I don't have a specific idea of where the tunnel would transition to grade in the east, but I would imagine it being somewhere before Eastern Avenue. Odds are the tunnel would go under the WDL & Don River, then emerge somewhere in the Sunlight factory area and rejoin the rail corridor.

After that, the line would run parallel to the rail corridor, with above ground stops at Eastern/EDL, Leslieville and Gerrard Square. Shortly after Gerrard Square, one branch of the line would have to veer north to get under Pape

 

[gweed123]

Ok, would something like this work?:

As you can see, I made the curvature/turning radii wider with the turns onto Queen from Pape and Parkside Dr starting well in advance of the stations at Logan and Roncesvalles. I used Niagara St as the transition in the west and gradually have the line curve up on a diagonal via Eastern from Front to Queen in the east.

Better, but it still looks kinda funny with the transition there (speaking of the west end, the east end looks good). As others have said, having a station on a curve is a bit tough.

I personally prefer to have the DRL going up Dufferin instead of Parkside or Roncesvalles, because I think that Parkside is too low density to be effective, while Roncesvalles already has a streetcar route. Dufferin on the other hand has an overcrowded bus route that has no chance of relief with any kind of a surface route. It would also allow the DRL to stay under King until the rail corridor, and then cut north to a N-S platform under Queen & Dufferin.

 

[gweed123]

My idea for a DRL:

The core distributor tunnel, which would run from about Bathurst and Front to the East Donlands, would serve RER or long distance metro trains, whose routes would approximate today's Georgetown, Lakesore East and West and, some kind of NS route along the Don Mills corridor.

Looks very similar to what I had in mind for my GO REX plan, only I used Queen, which would leave King/Wellington open for a "local" subway route if demand warranted. The concept definitely deserves some consideration, given that a GO REX DRL would maximize the "relief" component of the DRL far more than a TTC DRL would, because the GO REX option can extend the branches far far beyond what a subway could.

 

[BurlOak]

I like the idea of having all trains near Union. This means using Wellington for GO trains with connection to Union. The portals would be Bathurst and the Don Yards.

The DRL would be just north of here - maybe at or between King and Queen - with transfer stations to the East and West.

I wouldn't be surprised if the GO gets built before the DRL since it would be easier to sell since it better serves (or at least is percieved to better serve) the boroughs and the 905.

 

[diminutive]

I like the idea of having all trains near Union. This means using Wellington for GO trains with connection to Union. The portals would be Bathurst and the Don Yards.

The DRL would be just north of here - maybe at or between King and Queen - with transfer stations to the East and West.

I wouldn't be surprised if the GO gets built before the DRL since it would be easier to sell since it better serves (or at least is perceived to better serve) the boroughs and the 905.

It seems like there's a lot of redundant transit capacity in this design; parallel transit tunnels only a couple meters apart.

Likewise, schemes like terminating Kitchener & Barrie GO trains at some kind of "Union Station West" and then forcing a transfer to a DRL just beg the question of why not just run trains THROUGH the tunnel.

We may as well just think of the "DRL" as a distributor for regional metro/enhanced GO services.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The bathurst station was never really serious I don't think, but we will see. Metrolinx is just looking for excuses to bury the Lakeshore line once it is electrified.

 

[diminutive]

The bathurst station was never really serious I don't think, but we will see. Metrolinx is just looking for excuses to bury the Lakeshore line once it is electrified.

I've always thought it was horribly idiotic, but people like Steve Munro seem to think it's inevitable. I dunno if he really has any specific knowledge or reason to think that.

Plus, Metrolinx's "alternative" (a Lakeshore tunnel for a whopping 12 trains/hour!) is even stupider. There's absolutely no reason to build a Lakeshore tunnel AND a DRL, more or less, within a few blocks of eachother.

 

[innsertnamehere]

but it makes more sense to run the DRL at 12 trains an hour?

 

[diminutive]

but it makes more sense to run the DRL at 12 trains an hour?

No...

a.) Run desired frequencies on the "DRL" part and short turn trains to maintain demand appropriate frequencies on less used portions, like on the ECLRT.

b.) Run multiple lines through the central tunnel, the S-bahn approach. Like I tried to portray in my fantasy map a few posts back with Georgetown, Lakeshore East/West and some kind of notional Don Mills corridor converging to maintain high frequencies in the central part.

c.) Increase frequency on Lakeshore... If we moved towards a "Lakeshore Metro" situation, presumably we'd see >20 trains/hour.

Of the three, my preferred would probably be B.)

In any case, I don't think there's any reason to think that reconceptualizing the DRL as a distributor for a regional metro system would necessitate running 12 tph on it.