[ssiguy2]

Unless the plan is to use the existing rail/GO corridor , I honestly do need understand this fixation of Union.

Union already has the best transit system in the country so why does it need another subway? It has 2 subway lines, tons of GO rail and bus service, and streetcars including an underground section. Unless there is some HARDCORE money being saved, it seems like beating a dead horse.

Queen is still a viable and affordable route and Queen is only a 2 minute walk to King/Bay and anybody who won't take it for that reason, won't take transit regardless. Queen also serves far more retail and City Hall to say nothing of the Eaton centre and close to Dundas. Yes, the subway/streetcar station would need to be upgraded but that is still a lot cheaper and far simpler than building a new one from scratch. As I stated earlier, the University/Queen station was built with a Queen subway in mind so would not have the massive underground infrastructure to negotiate as all would south of it. The Path system isn't need as large either also saving time and money.

Unless they are going to be using the current rail corridor, a relief line to the best served transit area in the country seems ridiculously redundant and will cost monumentally more than Queen and take much longer to build.

 

[diminutive]

There are really tons of assumptions built into what route and station layout would maximize ridership on the DRL (or whatever it becomes...).

What, if any, plans are there for an S-Bahn like system? If you had a high-capacity regional metro system with relatively frequent spacing and interchanges w/local transit, it would certainly influence how and where a DRL would be built. At the extreme, a RER type service along the rail corridors (w/ stations: Leslieville, Distillery District, St. Lawrence, Union, Spadina, Liberty Village ect...) would severely undermine the demand for transit along King or Queen.

Are there any supporting land-use policies we're assuming? The CBD is a huge transit destination which has, traditionally, been oriented along Yonge and University. Building a new East-West line will have challenges since it will inevitably intersect only a slice of that axis. Ideally, employment growth should be encouraged along whatever route is selected, which could be a challenge in 'established' areas like Queen West.

What kind of construction methods? If this ends up as a deep tunnel, which it almost certainly would given recent trends, the route won't be very appealing for 'local' riders due to added access times.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

People are really overestimating how much money the Queen underground streetcar platform will save. If anything the miniscule savings will be offest by having to remove the utilities that are running though the platform.

 

[ehlow]

What kind of construction methods? If this ends up as a deep tunnel, which it almost certainly would given recent trends, the route won't be very appealing for 'local' riders due to added access times.

Even with a pretty deep tunnel, I would expect anything longer than a 10-15 min walk like Yonge to Bathurst or Liberty Village to Spadina would be faster & more convenient on a subway. Shorter than 10 min walk I feel walking is more convenient than any form of transit anyways.

 

[ssiguy2]

As far as a S-Bahn system goes, it won't make any difference as it stands right now.

The trains could come every 20 seconds but Torontonians still won't take them because GO is ridiculously expensive. They can wait til PRESTO comes but that just means it maybe more convinient to pay but not any cheaper. Unless a S-Bahn systems has basically just local fares plus maybe a small extra fee then GO will continue to be a 905-only service.

 

[gweed123]

As far as a S-Bahn system goes, it won't make any difference as it stands right now.

The trains could come every 20 seconds but Torontonians still won't take them because GO is ridiculously expensive. They can wait til PRESTO comes but that just means it maybe more convinient to pay but not any cheaper. Unless a S-Bahn systems has basically just local fares plus maybe a small extra fee then GO will continue to be a 905-only service.

That's a policy change though, not an infrastructure change. GO and the TTC could announce a co-fare agreement next week if they really wanted to, and have it implemented along with Presto.

Not building infrastructure in a certain way because of a piece of policy that is likely to change soon anyway is quite short-sighted. You're basing your entire trip model (and by correlation billion dollar infrastructure decisions) on an assumption that will become dated in a matter of years, long before any of the infrastructure you're planning comes to fruition.

 

[MisterF]

At the extreme, a RER type service along the rail corridors (w/ stations: Leslieville, Distillery District, St. Lawrence, Union, Spadina, Liberty Village ect...) would severely undermine the demand for transit along King or Queen.

Not really. The whole downtown area north of Union between Broadview and Dufferin would continue to be poorly served by transit even with an RER type service on the rail corridor. Plus people using RER going north of Union might find it more convenient to transfer in the east or west and take a Queen subway from there. There's a huge amount of density and demand in the downtown shoulder areas that is currently not met by any kind of mass transit. An RER service and a more local DRL would complement each other and serve different needs. Judging by the Big Move, it seems that's how Metrolinx sees it as well.

 

[diminutive]

Even with a pretty deep tunnel, I would expect anything longer than a 10-15 min walk like Yonge to Bathurst or Liberty Village to Spadina would be faster & more convenient on a subway. Shorter than 10 min walk I feel walking is more convenient than any form of transit anyways.

Yea, but what about the existing streetcar or a bike? Maybe for 1/100th (1/1000th?) the price of a DRL, we could get more protected E-W cycling routes along Richmond, Adelaide, Front and such.

And while I fully appreciate all the flaws of the 504 and 501, they'd actually be surprisingly time competitive with a subway over short (<5km) distances once you add a small time penalty for entering and exiting stations and wider station spacing.

The trains could come every 20 seconds but Torontonians still won't take them because GO is ridiculously expensive. They can wait til PRESTO comes but that just means it maybe more convinient to pay but not any cheaper. Unless a S-Bahn systems has basically just local fares plus maybe a small extra fee then GO will continue to be a 905-only service.

Yea, like i said, lot's of assumptions. I think a prerequisite of any successful RER type GO service would be total fare integration with the TTC so that trips of the same distance don't cost 2-3x as much on GO. Obviously there's no real suggestion this will happen at the moment.

 

[ehlow]

Yea, but what about the existing streetcar or a bike? Maybe for 1/100th (1/1000th?) the price of a DRL, we could get more protected E-W cycling routes along Richmond, Adelaide, Front and such.

And while I fully appreciate all the flaws of the 504 and 501, they'd actually be surprisingly time competitive with a subway over short (<5km) distances once you add a small time penalty for entering and exiting stations and wider station spacing.

Cycling is great, but I don't think putting in a few bike lanes makes the DRL obsolete.

Streetcars I personally feel are too slow due to closely spaced traffic lights and experience too much traffic congestion. Also they are over-capacity so giving a capacity boost by using a subway seems justified.

 

[diminutive]

Not really. The whole downtown area north of Union between Broadview and Dufferin would continue to be poorly served by transit even with an RER type service on the rail corridor. Plus people using RER going north of Union might find it more convenient to transfer in the east or west and take a Queen subway from there. There's a huge amount of density and demand in the downtown shoulder areas that is currently not met by any kind of mass transit. An RER service and a more local DRL would complement each other and serve different needs. Judging by the Big Move, it seems that's how Metrolinx sees it as well.

Keep in mind where DRL riders are coming from. Well over half are simply transfers from Bloor-Danforth and, by extension, are originating somewhere in North-East Toronto. The 'shoulder' stations don't actually account for that much ridership. A RER service, with good transfers to the Danforth subway and which serves the areas which feed the Danforth subway would alleviate a good deal of the DRL's potential ridership.

Again, I'm not trying to say that transit to the shoulder areas of downtown doesn't suck or that a RER is the magic bullet to all of Toronto's woes. The DRL might not be that magic bullet either, though.

 

[diminutive]

Cycling is great, but I don't think putting in a few bike lanes makes the DRL obsolete.

Streetcars I personally feel are too slow due to closely spaced traffic lights and experience too much traffic congestion. Also they are over-capacity so giving a capacity boost by using a subway seems justified.

No one thing will make the DRL obsolete. I'm just trying to get at what we can realistically expect from a subway.

And, yes, the streetcars are far too slow. No debate from me there.

If you can improve 'local' service through modest investments in surface transit (biking, streetcar) and get a few new stations along the rail corridors downtown to handle longer distance trips, you end up cannibalizing a lot of the DRL's customer base. And it's not actually that huge of a customer base to start with!

 

[MisterF]

Keep in mind where DRL riders are coming from. Well over half are simply transfers from Bloor-Danforth and, by extension, are originating somewhere in North-East Toronto. The 'shoulder' stations don't actually account for that much ridership. A RER service, with good transfers to the Danforth subway and which serves the areas which feed the Danforth subway would alleviate a good deal of the DRL's potential ridership.

Again, I'm not trying to say that transit to the shoulder areas of downtown doesn't suck or that a RER is the magic bullet to all of Toronto's woes. The DRL might not be that magic bullet either, though.

No there's no magic bullet, but RER style GO service combined with a DRL would go a long way. The shoulder areas are generating most of the streetcar ridership, and most of those people wouldn't be well served by RER. And streetcar ridership is constrained by how slow and crowded they are; the amount of induced ridership from a faster, more reliable option like a subway would be huge. As it stands now the King car alone has more ridership than the Sheppard subway, so there's more than enough demand just from the "shoulder" riders.

I agree that RER with integrated fares would take a lot of the demand from neighbourhoods farther from downtown, but consider this: if fares are integrated that would probably mean cheaper fares downtown, which would make downtown shoulder ridership rise even more. It's not an either/or case, both are needed and would be very well used.

 

[MisterF]

A few more thoughts: It's pretty fair to say that a DRL would essentially replace all the ridership of the streetcar line it replaces. If it's built somewhere between King and Queen it would replace both and have 100,000 daily riders from those two routes alone. Added to that, you can't forget:
-Traffic induced from the subway would make that number much, much higher. All the growth in the shoulder areas in the last 15 years combined with maxed out streetcars means that there's huge pent up demand.
-If fares are reduced for short rides by an integrated fare system, that means even more riders who would otherwise walk.
-A Pape transfer to the #2 line would be more convenient than anything possible in the Danforth/Main St area, so ridership diverted to GO would be limited.
-Not everybody going into the city is going to the financial district immediately around Union, there are destinations all over the core and shoulder areas that would be better served by a line farther north. With transfer stations where the DRL intersects the RER lines a lot of people would be transferring there onto the DRL there. RER could actually add to DRL ridership.

 

[ehlow]

A few more thoughts: It's pretty fair to say that a DRL would essentially replace all the ridership of the streetcar line it replaces. If it's built somewhere between King and Queen it would replace both and have 100,000 daily riders from those two routes alone. Added to that, you can't forget:
-Traffic induced from the subway would make that number much, much higher. All the growth in the shoulder areas in the last 15 years combined with maxed out streetcars means that there's huge pent up demand.
-If fares are reduced for short rides by an integrated fare system, that means even more riders who would otherwise walk.
-A Pape transfer to the #2 line would be more convenient than anything possible in the Danforth/Main St area, so ridership diverted to GO would be limited.
-Not everybody going into the city is going to the financial district immediately around Union, there are destinations all over the core and shoulder areas that would be better served by a line farther north. With transfer stations where the DRL intersects the RER lines a lot of people would be transferring there onto the DRL there. RER could actually add to DRL ridership.

Agreed, especially if it has reasonable stop spacing of 600m to 1km, which in my opinion, when combined with being in the tunnel will both make it much faster & reliable than the streetcars while still being convenient enough for going anywhere along the corridor. The faster & better service will likely mean people are willing to walk more to get to the stations, so it will take ridership from much of the surrounding areas.

 

[MisterF]

Agreed, especially if it has reasonable stop spacing of 600m to 1km, which in my opinion, when combined with being in the tunnel will both make it much faster & reliable than the streetcars while still being convenient enough for going anywhere along the corridor. The faster & better service will likely mean people are willing to walk more to get to the stations, so it will take ridership from much of the surrounding areas.

Reasonable stop spacing downtown is on the lower end of that at most. It'll be faster than Yonge/Bloor and the streetcars even if the stations are close together. Save the express station spacing for the GO RER lines.