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Transit Fantasy Maps

From another thread:

Especially so in the scenario where the Relief Line is built to Queen West/Roncesvalles area, and people can transfer from Waterfront/Queensway LRT to DRL and to downtown.

This is the kind of network we should want to have.

I've got a crazy idea that probably belongs in this thread. The Relief Line reaches Roncesvalles, then splits in two branches, one of them going up to Bloor.

The other branch takes over 2 lanes of the Gardiner, and is extended in the middle of Gardiner / QEW, through the southern Etobicoke and then into Mississauga up to the Dixie Mall. Then it parts ways with QEW, changes the direction from south-west to west, and cuts diagonally under the street grid to reach Square One.

Voila, Mississauga gets its subway connection to Toronto's downtown. Such connection will work a lot better than a Line 2 extension, because the DRL West branch will have wide stop spacing along its Gardiner section, perhaps 2 to 4 km between the stops.

To compensate for the 2 lost lanes of the Gardiner, a large parking lot can be built in the QEW / 427 area, allowing the commuters to leave their cars and proceed further on the subway.
 
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I'm not sure if this the best thread to stick this in, but I'll give it a try. Does anyone see any abandoned railway lines in Ontario being resurrected as a railway again? For example, the Leslie Spur, or the extention of CN's Uxbridge subdivision between Uxbridge and Lindsay. Others off the top of my head are CP's Owen Sound subdivision between Orangeville and Owen Sound or the rail line between Lindsay and Peterborough?
A number of these abandoned lines were converted to trails in order to save the right of way so that one day a railway may be re-laid.
Fantasy or possibility?
 
I'm not sure if this the best thread to stick this in, but I'll give it a try. Does anyone see any abandoned railway lines in Ontario being resurrected as a railway again? For example, the Leslie Spur, or the extention of CN's Uxbridge subdivision between Uxbridge and Lindsay. Others off the top of my head are CP's Owen Sound subdivision between Orangeville and Owen Sound or the rail line between Lindsay and Peterborough?
A number of these abandoned lines were converted to trails in order to save the right of way so that one day a railway may be re-laid.
Fantasy or possibility?
Mostly fantasy. The one trail that is on the radar for resurrection is the Trans-Canada Trail through Peterborough to almost Ottawa. And it is being considered for VIA HFR. Almost all other RoWs were dropped for good reason: They were redundant, and will always remain so, or just too convoluted and expensive to upkeep, and other routes are extant, in better shape, and cheaper to maintain.
 
The former CP Owen Sound Sub might have returned if a proposal for a giant quarry near Flesherton was approved and started; there was once talk of relaying rails for a few miles from Orangeville to Fraxa Junction. But that's the most serious proposal for any restoration of rail service that I have heard of.
 
From another thread:
I've got a crazy idea that probably belongs in this thread. The Relief Line reaches Roncesvalles, then splits in two branches, one of them going up to Bloor.

The other branch takes over 2 lanes of the Gardiner, and is extended in the middle of Gardiner / QEW, through the southern Etobicoke and then into Mississauga up to the Dixie Mall. Then it parts ways with QEW, changes the direction from south-west to west, and cuts diagonally under the street grid to reach Square One.

Voila, Mississauga gets its subway connection to Toronto's downtown. Such connection will work a lot better than a Line 2 extension, because the DRL West branch will have wide stop spacing along its Gardiner section, perhaps 2 to 4 km between the stops.

To compensate for the 2 lost lanes of the Gardiner, a large parking lot can be built in the QEW / 427 area, allowing the commuters to leave their cars and proceed further on the subway.

Instead of using the DRL, why not Bloor-Danforth? Something like this:



I've always said the section of Hurontario between the QEW and the 403 is dense enough to support a subway, so this would be a win/win.
 
Instead of using the DRL, why not Bloor-Danforth? Something like this:



I've always said the section of Hurontario between the QEW and the 403 is dense enough to support a subway, so this would be a win/win.

Well, first of all, Hurontario LRT has been approved, and it is only a matter of time before it gets built. Even on a Fantasy map, I am reluctant to place the subway and the LRT in the same corridor :) If the B-D subway ever gets extended to Square One, it will almost certainly take a more direct route.

Secondly, I am not very enthusiastic about bringing the B-D line to Square One, as for all the cost, it will not create a truly fast link between the Mississauga's and Toronto's downtowns. The trip from Square one to St George, with a transfer to Line 1 and a ride on Line 1, will take close to 1 hour.

If there should be a heavy rail link to Square One, it should be either a branch of the Milton GO line, or a completely new subway with a wide stop spacing. In that case, we can hope to reduce the trip time between the Mississauga's and Toronto's downtowns to something like 25 to 35 min.
 
Well, first of all, Hurontario LRT has been approved, and it is only a matter of time before it gets built. Even on a Fantasy map, I am reluctant to place the subway and the LRT in the same corridor :) If the B-D subway ever gets extended to Square One, it will almost certainly take a more direct route.

Secondly, I am not very enthusiastic about bringing the B-D line to Square One, as for all the cost, it will not create a truly fast link between the Mississauga's and Toronto's downtowns. The trip from Square one to St George, with a transfer to Line 1 and a ride on Line 1, will take close to 1 hour.

If there should be a heavy rail link to Square One, it should be either a branch of the Milton GO line, or a completely new subway with a wide stop spacing. In that case, we can hope to reduce the trip time between the Mississauga's and Toronto's downtowns to something like 25 to 35 min.

Bang on. An RER spur to Square One, coupled with a Hurontario LRT and dual LRT/BRT corridor along Dundas east of Hurontario (towards Kipling) will provide superior service at a lower cost. If any TTC line should be extended to Square One, it should be Eglinton via the Mississauga Transitway ROW.
 
Was playing around with to-scale vector maps for the subway/metro systems of a few cities (Montreal, Chicago, NYC). Originally was going to rotate the networks to fit over TO, but decided it looks better and more identifiable to rotate TO and keep the networks' orientation as-is. Particularly for NYC's unique madness. For fun:

TO-NYCSubway-overlay_2.png

TO-ChicagoL-overlay_2.png TO-MontrealMetro-overlay_2.png
 

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It would be quite difficult to superimpose the MARTA on Toronto, especially given that the MARTA is roughly cross-shaped.

Didn't really consider Atlanta, though would've liked to have included DC. But I purposefully only included cities' systems that can lay over Toronto and its shoreline (e.g systems bounded on one side by geography or borders). Even then it didn't fully work, such as Chicago's Purple Line terminating under the lake.
 
Didn't really consider Atlanta, though would've liked to have included DC. But I purposefully only included cities' systems that can lay over Toronto and its shoreline (e.g systems bounded on one side by geography or borders). Even then it didn't fully work, such as Chicago's Purple Line terminating under the lake.
Nagoya would be an interesting one, if you could somehow get it to overlay over Toronto.

It is a city of similar geographic and population size to Toronto, but a much more developed subway system. Map.
 
Well, first of all, Hurontario LRT has been approved, and it is only a matter of time before it gets built. Even on a Fantasy map, I am reluctant to place the subway and the LRT in the same corridor :) If the B-D subway ever gets extended to Square One, it will almost certainly take a more direct route.

Secondly, I am not very enthusiastic about bringing the B-D line to Square One, as for all the cost, it will not create a truly fast link between the Mississauga's and Toronto's downtowns. The trip from Square one to St George, with a transfer to Line 1 and a ride on Line 1, will take close to 1 hour.

If there should be a heavy rail link to Square One, it should be either a branch of the Milton GO line, or a completely new subway with a wide stop spacing. In that case, we can hope to reduce the trip time between the Mississauga's and Toronto's downtowns to something like 25 to 35 min.

Well, suppose the Hurontario-Main LRT is only built from Square One Terminal northwards into Brampton. That was announced in the news before. That leaves the southern half vacant. While it wouldn't result in a one-seat ride for commuters starting in Brampton and heading to the Lakeshore Line, it does recognize the busiest segment of the Hurontario corridor requires higher-order grade-separated rapid transit.

A subway to Square One/Mississauga City Centre would bring transformative change to the area, leaves the Dundas corridor alone to support a crosstown interregional one-seat BRT line, and no diversion of the Milton GO tracks to have to serve Square One (which likely would be as expensive as building a subway without as many benefits). GO should be complimentary to local transit not act as a replacement for it.

The subway I've proposed is also significantly faster to get from downtown to downtown than the current set up, which won't be vastly improved post-LRT. The 109 Express takes 35-40 minutes on a good day just to get to subway. This new subway would do the job in half the amount of time. It's also less ground to cover than starting a brand new subway from Osgoode and extending that into Mississauga. It's far more realistic to suggest an extension how I've outlined it with commuters transferring onto the DRL at either Keele or Dundas West in order to head downtown. A commute like that would only take 45 minutes or less from Mississauga City Hall/Celebration Square to Toronto City Hall/Nathan Philips Square.
 

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