lead82
Senior Member
All good points. Somehow the TTC thinks that it or York Region will be able to magically find a place to build a new rail yard up in Thornhill (never going to happen due to heritage and wealthy homes in area). The only places along Yonge would have to be north of Hwy7 in Richmond Hill somewhere. Building long tail tracks would be ok I guess, but if a train needs to be taken out of service for repairs, it's a long deadhead to Wilson.
I had a feeling that the TTC did not seriously consider the Sheppard West extension. They did not even think about just boring a tunnel without any stations, but making the tunnel flat near Bathurst and Downsview. Also, they claimed that a new bridge would have to be built over the West Don. Does that TTC not know how to tunnel under a river? Geez, the Don is no St. Lawrence, it's a stream, surely the tunnel boring machine can dive down and go under the river bed. With no stations really needed until just west of Bathurst, there would be plenty of time for the tunnel to come back up closer to the usual shallow tunnel level.
It's the old-school mentality at the TTC that really hinders progress in building a grid of rapid transit in this city. They under-estimate the usefulness of network connectivity and having some redundancy in the network.
One of the reasons people hate the TTC is because it is very fragile to any delays or problems because there is a lack of redundancy and alternate means to get around if a clog appears on the network. Yonge subway shutdown between St. Clair and Bloor ==> Disaster! Had there been a connection via Sheppard, people would have been able to bypass it via rapid transit instead of waiting for the relatively few shuttle buses.
I had a feeling that the TTC did not seriously consider the Sheppard West extension. They did not even think about just boring a tunnel without any stations, but making the tunnel flat near Bathurst and Downsview. Also, they claimed that a new bridge would have to be built over the West Don. Does that TTC not know how to tunnel under a river? Geez, the Don is no St. Lawrence, it's a stream, surely the tunnel boring machine can dive down and go under the river bed. With no stations really needed until just west of Bathurst, there would be plenty of time for the tunnel to come back up closer to the usual shallow tunnel level.
It's the old-school mentality at the TTC that really hinders progress in building a grid of rapid transit in this city. They under-estimate the usefulness of network connectivity and having some redundancy in the network.
One of the reasons people hate the TTC is because it is very fragile to any delays or problems because there is a lack of redundancy and alternate means to get around if a clog appears on the network. Yonge subway shutdown between St. Clair and Bloor ==> Disaster! Had there been a connection via Sheppard, people would have been able to bypass it via rapid transit instead of waiting for the relatively few shuttle buses.