Good point, but on the other hand, that means two separate services. One up the Bala sub terminating in Orillia, another up the Bala sub following the Northland route. And, both of them will compete with freight for the track time. There is an appeal of piggy-backing on the Barrie line...

I'm not familiar with the grounds, but just looking at the map, a rail route running south of Hwy 26 should be possible. I can't see why it would be harder than the 413 or the Bradford Bypass. Such a route may not be able to serve downtown Collinwood as the old ROW is partly taken. So, less...

Quite a few potential future uses for the BCR corridor, especially for the Barrie section. 1. A new station within Barrie, near the Ferndale Dr. 2. A new rail link that goes north-east around Barrie, roughly follows Hwy 11 to Orillia, then further north passing Lake Couchiching on the west and...

The elevated portion is out of question, buses won't fit there. But the at-grade north-south section, next to the Uxbridge sub rail, may be used as a temp bus corridor.

The ROW can be found; that's the 407 / 427 / 409. OL trains will be agile enough to fit in or over the medians. But the demand wouldn't match, the downtown OL should have several times higher usage than any line from Pearson to RHC. Plus, it would be very hard to manage such a long line...

Indeed. Sounds like a please-everyone option, that might in effect be worse than either of the two consistent options.

? Cars are better ..

I think that was a joke. Matlow faced opposition in his own riding. IMO, little chance for him to win enough support in the whole city. Scarborough certainly won't love him, and that's basically -20%. Etobicoke and North York, maybe not as negative as Scarborough, but another sensible/centrist...

I think EE LRT and FW LRT are comparable in that. FW: 11 km length, underground termini at Keele and at Hwy 7, all the rest on surface. EE: 15 km length, underground terminus at Kennedy, probably tunneled to east of Brimley with an underground station at Brimley, and one more underground...

The MSF in the east end will be needed, and will be useful for both EELRT and ECLRT. But even accounting for that .. $3.9B for a 15-km long mostly surface line sounds like a lot. That's $260M / km, a lot more than for Finch West which came at something like $120M / km with 2 underground termini.

Indeed, I am not in favor of the 413 as proposed. The route runs too close to the GTA centre, will act as a sprawl magnet, and might increase the congestion on the 400 and 410 during the weekday rush. I would have no objections to a new 4xx highway bypassing the GTA entirely, connecting...

Ah, OK. I didn't realize the previous price tag included the operations and future maintenance.

^ Subsidy is a dicey argument. First of all, much of the highway maintenance costs cover the impact of trucks. If I am not mistaken, the impact on the road surface grows as the fourth power of the axle load. Goods transported by trucks are used by all residents, regardless of whether they drive...

That $4.4B price tag may be somewhat overstated. Just like Hamilton LRT. When the province didn't want to fund it and the Feds were not at the table, the price tag was very high. Once both the province and the Feds came on board, the price went down.

That may be due to the current bus fleet composition, rather than lack of demand. Artics are a relatively recent addition to the fleet, while regular buses have been in use forever and probably still outnumber the artics.

The risk here is that Metrolinx will ditch all "neighborhood" stations in order to stay within their funding envelope while reverting to the tunnel option. There will be stations at Steeles and at Hwy 7, and maybe at High Tech if the latter is so cheap. But none at Royal Orchard, Clark, or...

Mississauga Lakeshore line will likely be separate from the Toronto Lakeshore line. The benefit of running through service would be minimal, even if the gauge was same. Such a long line will be extremely hard to manage, and noone would travel end to end due to the trip time. Even today, few...

I'd love to share that hope. Unfortunately, prior actions of our public transit agencies don't provide many examples of a great foresight. Perhaps this time is different, and Metrolinx is perfect :)

Scarborough Junction (not grade separated) might limit the possible frequency, as well as the single track section just north of the junction.

Definitely, more jobs = more opportunities. Probably works better for more remote places though. Say, commuting from Peterborough or Stratford to DT Toronto every day is a major pain, most of people will only do that if they really have to, and look for other options. So, offices located in...