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Hipster Duck

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Here's a thought:

Let's say we combined the Milton, Lakeshore and Georgetown corridors so they ran through Union station on to Stouffville (say, Milton East), Richmond Hill (say the continuation of the Georgetown corridor) as well as Lakeshore East. Now let's say we electrified these lines and ran regional rail EMUs every 20 minutes on each line. That would mean that between Strachan and Cherry St. we would have service every 6 minutes, and between the Junction and Scarborough GO we would have service every 10 minutes. During rush hour, you could have headways of 10/5/3 minutes - not too shabby. Enhance Main and Dundas West subway stations to become major rail transfer points and we've effectively killed 2 birds with one stone: DRL and real regional rail. What could the cost of all this be? Probably less than a tunneled full DRL, and you have real regional connectivity.
 
Last edited:
Hipster Duck said:
Here's a thought:

Let's say we combined the Milton, Lakeshore and Georgetown corridors so they ran through Union station on to Stouffville (say, Milton East), Richmond Hill (say the continuation of the Georgetown corridor) as well as Lakeshore East. Now let's say we electrified these lines and ran regional rail EMUs every 20 minutes on each line. That would mean that between Strachan and Cherry St. we would have service every 6 minutes, and between the Junction and Scarborough GO we would have service every 10 minutes. Enhance Main and Dundas West subway stations to become major rail transfer points and we've effectively killed 2 birds with one stone: DRL and real regional rail. What could the cost of all this be? Probably less than a tunneled full DRL, and you have real regional connectivity.
Click to expand...

Can't answer your question but, in the west end, you could add a station at Liberty Village that both the Milton and Georgetown lines could use and now your new alternative to the DRL can also connect with the King Street Car.
 
Interesting idea but it would only provide good service to Union. Union already has the best service in the city. I could see it working well for people going from the burbs to downtown but doesn't change the fact that downtown still needs a cross town route ie Queen.
 
I like the idea. Without fact-checking, I believe Copenhagen does the same sort of thing (combining lines with medium headways into one line with great headways through downtown).

You could always build the line as you've said and reroute the bottom of the 'U' underneath Queen Street at a later date when we have the money (2096). That would also free up space at Union.

I was thinking about using the surface rail lines as a subway-style system, but my version looped the line at the north end along the finch hydro corridor. Also, the east leg of the loop would run tighter through the Don Valley (via some of the straight yet oddly unused tracks) to provide better service to my house.
 
HipsDuck,

So, is this what you envision?

DRL.jpg


https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5Ni4frCefkONTZmYjNiNjMtMTUwYS00YWU2LThhNDItNmNmNGVjMTcyN2Yw&hl=en

This map is in high quality (18x24 inches in size)

ssiguy2,
I disagree. Union is a hub yet only has one line subway station. It should be able to hold more than two metro lines.

valkoholic,

I say that Queen street should be reserved for its own metro line. My proposal for that is Queen Street-Victoria Park line.
 
A problem you will encounter is a lack of capacity with the Union Station rail platforms.

The DRL is most critical during rush hours. That's when Bloor Yonge is problematic.
 
nfitz said:
Sounds like a great idea - but I fear it won't do much to relieve Yonge-Bloor.
Click to expand...

And this whole plan is contingent on:

1) Full fare integration being implemented, so that it doesn't cost any extra for a TTC rider to ride GO in Toronto.

2) That the headways on the GO lines are tight enough that there is actually room left to absorb the subway tranferrees, without packing them in like sardines.

3) That Union (GO) can handle headways of 3 minutes, and that people would actually have enough time to get up to the platform, etc. Say in the evening rush hour, you wanted the next train out of Union, heading west to Dundas West. What platform do you take? There are 3 options, and it's pretty much a toss-up as to which one to take. It's nearly the same scenario that occured at Lower Bay when interlining was in place. You needed to play the guessing game.
 
An alternative to the SRT can be thrown in there also by ceding its tracks to GO as a branch off from Kennedy GO Station and have it go the route the SRT extension would have gone anyway.
 
Hipster Duck said:
Here's a thought:

Let's say we combined the Milton, Lakeshore and Georgetown corridors so they ran through Union station on to Stouffville (say, Milton East), Richmond Hill (say the continuation of the Georgetown corridor) as well as Lakeshore East. Now let's say we electrified these lines and ran regional rail EMUs every 20 minutes on each line. That would mean that between Strachan and Cherry St. we would have service every 6 minutes, and between the Junction and Scarborough GO we would have service every 10 minutes. During rush hour, you could have headways of 10/5/3 minutes - not too shabby. Enhance Main and Dundas West subway stations to become major rail transfer points and we've effectively killed 2 birds with one stone: DRL and real regional rail. What could the cost of all this be? Probably less than a tunneled full DRL, and you have real regional connectivity.
Click to expand...

This has been discussed quite a bit in the past. DRL discussions often include at least one person declaring that "a DRL is unneccessary when we upgrade GO". Your proposal is also a copy of what forms important backbones of networks in Paris, Munich, Berlin, Copenhagen, Milan, Madrid, and other cities. You're clearly calling for a S-Bahn, RER, or a Cercanias.

Overall, it's a great idea that should be implemented and probably will be implemented eventually.

The big problem is that this fails to properly serve local trips. A large part of of the purpose of the DRL is to speed up crosstown trips and relieve the overcrowded streetcar network. You're going to have a tough time adding enough stations to the corridor to serve these trips without adversely affecting capacity and travel times for other regional services. It also fails to serve the Don Mills corridor which is a necessary part of relieving the Yonge line.

If you could find a way to add enough stations and fit in extra tracks to make this feasible, then yes I would say that this would be essentially the DRL concept but with different rolling stock. But those roadblocks are very serious ones.
 
Another problem with this is that the rail lines in Toronto just aren't in the right place. The only really important node they serve is Union, whereas in Paris or Berlin, the rail lines pass several important junctions and centres. So while increased frequency on the lines is crucial to overal commuter capacity, the result is never going to function like the RER or Berlin's S-Bahn.
 
Such GO improvements are needed and will get a lot of people off the B/D line in particular, but the key with the DRL is that running up Don Mills is really the only way to get a lot of people off the Yonge line, which will maximize relief.
 
CDL,

Yes, it would be RER-style service. I thought about this some more, and maybe the best idea would be to have regional rail rolling stock run local service every 5 minutes between, say, the Junction and Danforth. GO trains from farther afield would still use the same rolling stock and be under the same ATC (use the same tracks), but would run through to Union stopping only at certain "Express" stops.

It would look like this.

Name of Station (X = regular GO corridors, L = local)

Junction - L
Bloor/Dundas West - X,L, BD
Lansdowne/Parkdale - L
Dufferin-Queen - L
King-Liberty - X,L
Fort York - L
Spadina South - L
Union - X,L, YUS
St. Lawrence - L
Donlands - L
Queen East (Leslieville) - L
Pape-Gerrard - L
Coxwell South (name may need to be tweaked - this is only 4 blocks south of Coxwell station) - L
Danforth-Main - X,L, BD

Yes, the station platforms at Union need to be enhanced and integrated with the TTC somehow. Yes, some sort of fare sharing mechanism needs to be in place. Yes, we need to build some new tracks in certain places and upgrade them for the kind of frequency we would expect. And, yes, I don't know whether the TTC or GO would run the local service. Still, I think that this would be much cheaper than tunneling a 10 km HRT subway and it would create the trunk infrastructure for regional rail through downtown, including Union Station.
 
It's always rather hard to say how much cheaper GO projects are. They are invariably done on a continuous and incremental basis - an added train here, a second track there, an expanded station and parking lot and pedestrian bridge somewhere else. A DRL subway would be one large project with all related costs combined into one grand announcement under one umbrella pricetag...and getting such a project funded and built may or may not be easier than getting a hundred small projects that combine into 'improved GO' funded and built.

Really, we should be pushing for both, because we need both.
 
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