Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[rbt]

If the only reason for short trains is the noise, then build the curves to reduce the noise. The DRL should be build with platforms that are at least 1 car longer than the other subways currently are.

We have an interesting cycle in Toronto.

Transit expansion is so expensive that it's very unreliable. Getting politicians/voters on board is tricky because tax rates are always a concern.

Transit expansion is so unreliable that we want to put all our eggs into a single basket creating over-sized expansion when it happens with expensive bus operations feeding that over-sized system. Tunnels are nearly free, stations are really expensive and that's relative to size of the hole which is driven by capacity of the train (not station ridership).

Oversized proposals are relatively expensive for the task at hand. That makes getting politicians/voters on board tricky when tax rates are #1 concern.


IMO, DRL should target a maximum capacity of about 20k using short-tiny trains at very high frequencies (single tunnel, stacked platforms on same side; 40% cost reduction); then twin it in 20 years on a slightly different routing (say King through downtown intersecting Line 2 at Woodbine) with another mid capacity line.


The number of DRL walkins will barely fill 10 trains per day let alone 20 trains per hour. If we're going to pretend subways should be everywhere through the suburbs then proposals for 10x capacity for those lines (with feeders bringing 90% of the load) has got to stop.

If we don't care about subways everywhere in the suburbs, then projects like Spadina and SSE need to stop popping up. Only thing we have now is gridlock between the low tax crowd and the expensive transit expansion crowd; and they're both in the same damn group making the ridiculous proposals.

 

[BurlOak]

If you going to do it right, build the stations to handle 8 cars trains either as single or DD EMU, prefer DD. Need high speed crossovers as well. No issue in running short trains on startup, but if line is taken to Steeles like it should, short trains will be around a short time. Forget about building the stub wall on day one. Make sure there is larger radius than the current one to cut down on the squealing.

Look at Yonge now. 6 car trains work reasonably well. The big problems are:

1. The 1 interchange station is overloaded. The solution is (was) not to make the every station on the line longer, but to make the 1 (or few) stations that are exceedingly busy perform better. A 3 platform station (centre and each side) would have been great if it was built this way. Perhaps a longer station - so that an 8 car train could be used, so that a pair of cars would not be able to access the platforms at all station except for the absolute busiest.
2. No other subway lines have been built. I would much rather have several 6 car trains than 1 line with 10 car trains. Better network coverage and better redundancy.

Going forward, for the DRL, we should be planning on making the critical stations operate better, not simply make everything bigger.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Look at Yonge now. 6 car trains work reasonably well. The big problems are:

1. The 1 interchange station is overloaded. The solution is (was) not to make the every station on the line longer, but to make the 1 (or few) stations that are exceedingly busy perform better. A 3 platform station (centre and each side) would have been great if it was built this way. Perhaps a longer station - so that an 8 car train could be used, so that a pair of cars would not be able to access the platforms at all station except for the absolute busiest.
2. No other subway lines have been built. I would much rather have several 6 car trains than 1 line with 10 car trains. Better network coverage and better redundancy.

Going forward, for the DRL, we should be planning on making the critical stations operate better, not simply make everything bigger.

Pape and Science Centre (and maybe Queen) should be triple platform. The rest should be single centre platform because I don't see double side platforms coming back.

Just an idea, but is there any chance that there will be an actual concourse built at Queen Station? Such as making the "underpass level" the concourse, and having the Yonge Line above it and Relief Line under it.

I made this diagram of a potential Queen Station Concourse I mentioned:
View attachment 140696
View attachment 140697
View attachment 140695

 

[Forgotten]

This is the information you are asking for. I've circled the relevant rows:

View attachment 135008 '

East of Union, SmartTrack frequencies will be something greater than 5 mins, but less than 10 mins. So assuming a TTC fare is used, the Yonge relief expected can be somewhere between 1,200 and 6,700 pphpd.

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-90866.pdf

Thank you for bringing city staff numbers up again. In light of recent reports about staff making adjustments to the numbers to satisfy their bosses, I think it is relevant to bring up their numbers before they decided a station at the "psychological heart of the city" was absolutely necessary:

IIRC a western extension on King also scored way higher than Queen for financials and numbers.

The decision was made to draw the line to the city hall offices and the numbers for city hall were adjusted upwards by staff who did not show their work AFAIK. I said it before and I'll say it again: If ScamTrack had anything to do with this then everything needs to be look at again with fresh eyes. It's even more important now that we know it's a laughable 4 trains an hour.

That rolls into your next point

This has nothing to do with bleeding hearts. Every minute extra that people have to spend transferring between lines will result in potentially thousands of fewer peak rider users on the DRL. Every minute extra people have to spend transferring makes this nearly $7 Billion investment that much less effective. This is not academic discussion. This has real implications on our network.

One popular rationalization on here is that the PATH can salvage the poor initial choice but fact of the matter is it's irrelevant to the huge numbers of people in the business centres outside of downtown. There is no PATH for the thousands of people who work outside of the King-Bay area.

Do you see private buses shuttling people to places on Queen Street? Of course not because why would they? Are 50,000 people supposed to crowd on to Spadina or Sherbourne bus or the 2 metre sidewalks every morning, afternoon, and evening? Are the thousands of workers supposed to crowd on to the Dufferin bus to go a couple of blocks? All because of the vain need for a station at the psychological heart of the city.

Don Mills is the only logical option.

It's the most logical option.

Round 1 of planning for this project should have taught you that it means nothing. At this point it might be best for Doug Ford to win and put a hold on this project to help save Toronto from itself.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Welp, the thing we didn’t want to happen, is happening, both Osgoode and Queen Stations will reach centre significantly.

 

[aquateam]

Thank you for bringing city staff numbers up again. In light of recent reports about staff making adjustments to the numbers to satisfy their bosses, I think it is relevant to bring up their numbers before they decided a station at the "psychological heart of the city" was absolutely necessary:

View attachment 141118
IIRC a western extension on King also scored way higher than Queen for financials and numbers.

The decision was made to draw the line to the city hall offices and the numbers for city hall were adjusted upwards by staff who did not show their work AFAIK. I said it before and I'll say it again: If ScamTrack had anything to do with this then everything needs to be look at again with fresh eyes. It's even more important now that we know it's a laughable 4 trains an hour.

That rolls into your next point

One popular rationalization on here is that the PATH can salvage the poor initial choice but fact of the matter is it's irrelevant to the huge numbers of people in the business centres outside of downtown. There is no PATH for the thousands of people who work outside of the King-Bay area.

Do you see private buses shuttling people to places on Queen Street? Of course not because why would they? Are 50,000 people supposed to crowd on to Spadina or Sherbourne bus or the 2 metre sidewalks every morning, afternoon, and evening? Are the thousands of workers supposed to crowd on to the Dufferin bus to go a couple of blocks? All because of the vain need for a station at the psychological heart of the city.

Round 1 of planning for this project should have taught you that it means nothing. At this point it might be best for Doug Ford to win and put a hold on this project to help save Toronto from itself.

Round 1 of the planning involved them deciding to go with (B1) Pape-Queen because it was cheaper despite performing worse on other metrics. Then they decided to dip down to King (B2) for Unilever, but kept the downtown part on Queen despite the overall line being longer and more expensive than the option they initially rejected on the "affordability" metric.

I mean, I was initially okay with Queen on the grounds that it would mesh well with a King transit mall. But with the DRL dipping down to King, and with the new Liberty Village station on King, there really isn't any transit justification for keeping it on Queen. This is City Planning at work, not the TTC, which is why all these studies seem to focus on how station exits will "tie together neighbourhoods" instead of how the subway line will interact with the larger transit network or meet travel demands.

Welp, the thing we didn’t want to happen, is happening, both Osgoode and Queen Stations will reach centre significantly.

Well that's fairly disappointing, although it's hard to make out the exact station boxes. From the sticky notes it looks like there was room for feedback, so I hope you gave some.

Where is this image from?

 

[Leo_Chan]

Round 1 of the planning involved them deciding to go with (B1) Pape-Queen because it was cheaper despite performing worse on other metrics. Then they decided to dip down to King (B2) for Unilever, but kept the downtown part on Queen despite the overall line being longer and more expensive than the option they initially rejected on the "affordability" metric.

I mean, I was initially okay with Queen on the grounds that it would mesh well with a King transit mall. But with the DRL dipping down to King, and with the new Liberty Village station on King, there really isn't any transit justification for keeping it on Queen. This is City Planning at work, not the TTC, which is why all these studies seem to focus on how station exits will "tie together neighbourhoods" instead of how the subway line will interact with the larger transit network or meet travel demands.



Well that's fairly disappointing, although it's hard to make out the exact station boxes. From the sticky notes it looks like there was room for feedback, so I hope you gave some.

Where is this image from?

Tonight’s open house. I’ll upload other images in a bit.

 

[Leo_Chan]

 

[Leo_Chan]

 

[Forgotten]

Welp, the thing we didn’t want to happen, is happening, both Osgoode and Queen Stations will reach centre significantly.
View attachment 141120

City planning decided it was what they wanted a long time ago.

Well that's fairly disappointing, although it's hard to make out the exact station boxes. From the sticky notes it looks like there was room for feedback, so I hope you gave some.

Citizens have been leaving comments and telling those mighty planners that it was a bad idea for several years now at every single event. Planning wants what it wants. I know Planning fans will say having everything up north on Queen won't be a disaster for people flow in the PATH, the streets or the YUS stations but you can't seriously look at this and think it's a good idea or otherwise solve more problems than it causes. City Planning has its head up its ass.

 

[Amare]

Great pics @Leo_Chan

It's sad that this city has a seemingly endless infatuation with recreating Bloor-Yonge style interchanges, I mean really how clueless are these people? Excuse my language, but shift the damn station boxes so they are somewhat centered under Osgoode and Queen so we're not crippling pedestrian flows through one end of a station.

First it's the stupidity with the interchange at Eglinton station, now they seem hell bent on doing it again with another 2 critical interchange stations. Pape is a trickier situation so I understand why the station box may be placed where it is, but with the 2 aforementioned stations there's really no reason for this non-sense.

 

[Kitsune]

Well the last hope are the Station design contracts, otherwise they should just merge them and save the 200 million +. Also interesting direction for the Wye - and the tail tracks going up to Mortimer.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Great pics @Leo_Chan

It's sad that this city has a seemingly endless infatuation with recreating Bloor-Yonge style interchanges, I mean really how clueless are these people? Excuse my language, but shift the damn station boxes so they are somewhat centered under Osgoode and Queen so we're not crippling pedestrian flows through one end of a station.

First it's the stupidity with the interchange at Eglinton station, now they seem hell bent on doing it again with another 2 critical interchange stations. Pape is a trickier situation so I understand why the station box may be placed where it is, but with the 2 aforementioned stations there's really no reason for this non-sense.

The reasoning seems to be that the transfer volume at Yonge and Osgoode will be pretty low. I don’t think this will be comparable to B-Y Station at all.

Pape absolutely does need a proper “t” configuration though.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I

View attachment 141138 View attachment 141139 View attachment 141140 View attachment 141141 View attachment 141142

Hold on. Is Osgoode and Yonge one continuous station structure? Am I reading this right?

I want Osgoode shifted to the west to improve access from the Entertainment District.

 

[Amare]

The reasoning seems to be that the transfer volume at Yonge and Osgoode will be pretty low. I don’t think this will be comparable to B-Y Station at all.

That would be piss pour reasoning if that's what they're thinking. The whole point of building an interchange station is to optimize as much as possible the flow of pedestrians between two different lines at any given station. If that's their thought process, they might as well just build another Spadina style interchange with a moving pedestrian walkway.