The green line wont be going through the beltline, that much is clear and obvious. I was referring to an early comment made about keeping the beltline stop at Central and making it elevated. I personally feel the elevated track on 10th as described in the Jim Gray report seems very reasonable.
I counter that it's not clear cut that beltline is completely off the table. The province is going to do their own assessment, and come back to the city with their proposal. But until the province says that beltline is a no-go, can't cut that option off completely, since it's the alignment that I feel makes the most sense in servicing downtown, which shouldn't be disregarded.
Now to be clear, the Jim Gray concept isn't the worst idea, and if it's the chosen one, it's okay. But that proposal has significant drawbacks in forcing high transfer demand on City Hall station from the jump. We can't be thinking of what the best option is today, we should be forward thinking in what the best option is for tomorrow, when the ultimate build out of the green line is completed. If we're just exclusively thinking about this from the SR LRT point of view, then the terminus of the line at City Hall makes a lot of logical sense. But if this line is going to to extend to North Central, then there are significant compromises on the customer service experience for everyone involved, including Red Line and Blue Line users. If you're coming from the North, and your destination is in the core of downtown, instead of getting dropped off in the middle of downtown like you currently are with the high ridership routes that go down Centre Street currently, you're now being dropped off at City Hall, and forced to transfer to get closer to your destination. If customers have to do that, it actually would discourage the use of the train, as many would prefer to just use the more straight forward bus routes to get nearby where they're going.
But aside from that and going back to
@darwink post earlier today, the capacity of trains on 7 Ave would likely be reached earlier due to the induced demand of this transfer point, resulting in having to accelerate the timeline on the 8 Ave Subway. And if we go down that route of having to build it in say less than 15 years - rather than 50 or so - then how much total money is being spent when you combine the green line and 8 Avenue Subway? And there are other extensions throughout the city that would demand attention also. All that math added up could lead to the outcome that maybe we should've just tunneled the green line in the first place...
If you want the cheapest, easiest option that suitable for today, I say Jim Gray fits that criteria. If you want the option that takes the future network into consideration, and in my opinion provides the better customer experience, then elevated on 10 Ave and 2 ST SW should be the preferred choice.
